 Savage may have built the theatre under the patronage of the Earl of Warwick whose company of actors first performed at court on 14 February 1575.Warwick had been appointed to the Privy Council in the autumn of 1573, and the more powerful privy councillors – the earls of Sussex, Lincoln, Arundel and his younger brother Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester – were all patrons of playing companies.Warwick's company appears to have flourished for around five years, before ill-health forced him to retire to his home in Hertfordshire.