The Earl of Pembroke's Men was an Elizabethan era playing company, or troupe of actors, in English Renaissance theatre.
Severe epidemics of bubonic plague forced a halt to public performances in and around London; the actors' troupes toured the provinces, splintered and recombined, and generally did whatever was necessary to continue.
Their season began in the spring and early summer without incident, as far as is known; but in July 1597 they performed The Isle of Dogs, by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson.
The other theatre companies in London were allowed to resume activity after the summer was over; but the Privy Council decided to punish Langley in particular (he was in trouble for additional, non-theatre-related causes), and kept the Swan closed.
The company broke apart under the strain: Jones and Downton returned to the Admiral's, and three more Pembroke men, William Borne and the recently released Shaw and Spencer, followed them.
They appear to have taken some Pembroke's playscripts with them, titles that may have included a Dido and Aeneas, plus Hardicanute, Black Joan, Friar Spendleton, Alice Pierce, and others.