Chapter XVI: Introduction: The Boy Companies (14)

BAYLYE, THOMAS. Shrewsbury’s (provincial), 1581. J. Hunter, _Hallamshire_ 80, and Murray, ii. 388, print from _College of Arms, Talbot MS._ G. f. 74, a Latin letter written by him to Thomas Bawdewin from Sheffield on 25 April 1581, in which he mentions a brother William, thanks him for a tragedy played by the company on St. George’s day, and begs him to procure ‘librum aliquem brevem, novum, iucundum, venustum, lepidum, hilarem, scurrosum, nebulosum, rabulosum, et omnimodis camificiis, latrociniis et lenociniis refertum ... qua in re dicunt quod Wilsonus quidam Leycestrii comitis servus (fidibus pollens) multum vult et potest facere’.

BAYLYE. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

BEART, RUDOLF. Germany, 1608.

BEESTON, CHRISTOPHER, has been conjectured to be the ‘Kit’ who played a Lord and a Captain in _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ for Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1. The actor-list of _Every Man in his Humour_ shows that he belonged to the Chamberlain’s men in 1598. He is not, however, named as a performer of Shakespeare’s plays in the Folio of 1623. Probably he was at one time the hired man of Augustine Phillips who left him 30_s._ as his ‘servant’ in 1605. By 1602 he had passed to Worcester’s men, and with this company, afterwards Queen Anne’s, he remained until it was reconstituted on the Queen’s death in 1619, taking a prominent part in the management of the company, after the death of Thomas Greene in 1612. He seems to have built or acquired the Cockpit theatre, and to have successively housed there Queen Anne’s men (1617–19), Prince Charles’s men (1619–22), Lady Elizabeth’s men (1622–5), Queen Henrietta’s men (1625–37), and ‘the King’s and Queen’s young company’, also known as ‘Beeston’s boys’ (1637). By 1639 he had been succeeded as ‘Governor’ of this company by his son William Beeston, and was doubtless dead. The Cockpit had passed by June 1639 to ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Beeston, alias Hutcheson’.[934] It appears from the lawsuit of 1623, in which Queen Anne’s men were concerned, that Christopher Beeston also bore the _alias_ of Hutcheson or Hutchinson. But if Elizabeth was his widow, she must have been a second wife, for the records of the Middlesex justices for 1615–17 record several true bills for recusancy as brought against a wife Jane. In these records Beeston, whose _alias_ is also given, is described as a gentleman or yeoman, and as ‘late of St. James-at-Clerkenwell’, or in one case ‘of Turmil streete’. In 1617 his house was burgled by Henry Baldwin and others.[935] The registers of St. James’s, Clerkenwell, record the baptism of a daughter Anne on 15 September 1611, and the burial of a servant on 1 July 1615.[936] But at an earlier date Beeston lived in St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, where his sons Augustine, Christopher, and Robert were baptized, and the first two buried between 16 November 1604 and 15 July 1610. Robert also was buried there on 26 December 1615, but Christopher was then described in the register as of Clerkenwell. Possibly he afterwards returned to Shoreditch, as Collier states that his name is traceable in the register up to 1637.[937] His son William, also a suspected recusant, was living in Bishopsgate Without just before his death in 1682.[938] An earlier William Beeston, with whom Christopher may have had some connexion, is the ‘Maister Apis Lapis’ and ‘Gentle M. William’, to whom Nashe addressed his _Strange Newes_ (1592).[939]

BEESTON, ROBERT. Anne’s, 1604, 1609.

BEESTON. A player at Barnstaple in 1560–1 (Murray, ii. 198).

BELT, T. Strange’s (?), 1590–1.

BENFIELD, ROBERT, is first named in the actor-lists of Beaumont and Fletcher’s _The Coxcomb_ and _The Honest Man’s Fortune_, both of which probably represent performances by the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613. Subsequently he joined the King’s men, but at what date is uncertain. It may have been upon the death on 16 December 1614 of William Ostler, whom he succeeded in the part of Antonio in Webster’s _Duchess of Malfi_. He is in the actor-list of _The Knight of Malta_ (1616–19) and in the patent of 1619. He seems to have been a member of the company to the end, as he signed the dedication of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio in 1647. He is in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays. Collier found some late records of his family (B. 181).

BENTLEY, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583. He is named by Heywood as before his time, lauded by Nashe, _Pierce Penilesse_ (1592) (_Works_, i. 215) with Tarlton, Alleyn, and Knell, coupled with Knell in the undated challenge to Alleyn (q.v.) to play one of their parts, and placed by Dekker in _A Knight’s Conjuring_ (1607) in the company of the poets, Watson, Kyd, and Achelow, ‘tho he had ben a player molded out of their pennes, yet because he had been their louer and register to the muse, inimitable Bentley’. He may be the John Bentley whose poems are mentioned by Ritson, _Bibliographia Poetica_ (1802), 129.

BIERDT, BURCHARD. Germany, 1612.

BILLINGESLY, JOHN. Payee for Westminster boys, 1572.

BIRCH, GEORGE. Interluders, 1538–59.

BIRCH, JOHN. Interluders, 1547–56.

BIRD, _alias_ BORNE, WILLIAM. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–1622. Many personalia of his family and debts are recorded in Dulwich manuscripts and church registers (H. ii. 241; B. 204).

‘BLACK DICK.’ Admiral’s, 1597.

BLACKWOOD, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1602–3; Germany, 1603–6(?). The conjecture of Fleay, i. 290, that an earlier German tour is referred to in _How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_ (1602) is baseless (H. ii. 244).

BLANEY, JOHN. Revels, 1609; Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived near the Red Bull in St. John’s Street in 1623 (J. 347).

BLANK, WILLIAM ALEXANDER. A Scottish dancer in Germany, 1605.

BOONE, WILLIAM. A ‘player’ mentioned in books of St. Saviour’s, _c._ 1600 (Rendle, _Bankside_, xxvi). Possibly an error for Borne.

BORNE, WILLIAM. _Vide_ Birde.

BOWER, RICHARD. Master of Chapel, 1545–61, and possibly author of _Apius and Virginia_ (1575); cf. ch. xxiv.

BOWRINGE, GREGORY. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

BRADSHAW, RICHARD. Edward, Lord Dudley’s (provincial), 1595. He was Gabriel Spencer’s ‘man’ in 1598, and concerned in financial transactions with Henslowe during 1598–1601. He may be the same Richard Bradshaw who had a provincial company, with a licence to which his title was dubious, in 1630–33 (H. ii. 245; Murray, ii. 42, 106, 163).

BRADSTREET, JOHN. Germany, 1592–7, 1604. He _ob._ in 1618.

BRETTEN, WILLIAM. Chapel, >1546.

BRISTOW, JAMES. Augusten’s boy, 1597; Admiral’s, 1597–1602 (H. ii. 245).

BROMEHAM. Paul’s, >1582.

BROWNE, EDWARD. Worcester’s, 1583; Admiral’s, 1602. He was a witness for Henslowe in 1599 (H. ii. 246).

BROWNE, JOHN. Interluders, 1551–63.

BROWNE, JOHN. Revels (?), 1608.

BROWNE, ROBERT. Worcester’s, 1583; Holland, 1590; Germany, 1592–3, 1594 (?)-9; Derby’s, 1599–1601; Germany, 1601–7; Revels patentee, 1610; Germany, 1618–20. His wife and family died at Shoreditch in the plague of 1593, but a son Robert and daughter Elizabeth were baptized at St. Saviour’s on 19 October 1595 and 2 December 1599. On 11 April 1612 he wrote to Alleyn from Clerkenwell (_H. P._, 37, 63; B. 229; Rendle, _Bankside_, xxvi).

BROWNE, WILLIAM. Anne’s, _c._ 1616.

BROWNE. It is not safe to identify the Browne whom Henslowe paid to ‘feach’ for the Admiral’s in 1596 (H. i. 45), or the ‘old Browne’ who, as well as Edward, played in _1 Tamar Cham_ for the Admiral’s in 1602 (_H. P._ 148), or ‘Browne of the Boares head’ who, according to Alleyn’s wife on 21 Oct. 1603, ‘is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all’ (_H. P._ 59). The last may be the man whose widow married Thomas Greene (q.v.).

BRYAN, GEORGE, was one of the English company which visited Helsingör in Denmark and Dresden in Germany during 1586–7. He is one of the three actors distinguished as ‘Mr.’ in the plot of Tarlton’s _The Seven Deadly Sins_ as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, and is named in the Privy Council warrant for the travelling of Strange’s in 1593. He was payee for the Chamberlain’s men on 21 December 1596, but is not in the _Every Man in his Humour_ actor-list of 1598 or traceable at any later date amongst the Chamberlain’s or King’s men. Probably he left to take up duty as an ordinary Groom of the Chamber, as he is found holding this post at Elizabeth’s funeral in 1603 and still held it (_Chamber Accounts_) in 1611–13. His son George was baptized at St. Andrew’s Wardrobe on 17 February 1600.[940] He is in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays.

BUCKE, PAUL. A ‘player’ whose d. Sara was buried on 23 July 1580 and his bastard son Paul buried on 23 July 1599 at St. Anne’s (B. 237). It is apparently his name which, for whatever reason, appears at the end of Wilson’s _Three Ladies of London_ (1584). ‘Paule Bucke’s praier for Sir Humfrey Gilberte’ was entered in S. R. on 17 July 1578.

BUGBY, JOHN. Grammar Master of Chapel, 1401.

BULL, JOHN. Chapel, 1572 (?)->1586.

BULL, THOMAS. Denmark, 1579–80.

BURBADGE, JAMES. The Shakespearo-centric tendencies of literary historians have led them to suggest a regional connexion between the dramatist and the family of his most famous interpreter.[941] There was a Warwickshire family of Burbadge, of whom John was bailiff of Stratford-on-Avon in 1555, and Malone was thus led (_Var._ iii. 187) to ‘suspect’ that James Burbadge was Shakespeare’s countryman. Collier (iii. 258) having learnt that the arms claimed by Cuthbert Burbadge at the London visitation of 1634, ‘crest, a boar’s head; and three boars’ heads on a shield’ (_Harleian Soc._ xv), were those of a Hertfordshire family, attempted the explanation that the two families ‘were in some way related’. He committed himself deeply by publishing in 1835 (_New Facts_, 32; cf. Ingleby, 256) a forged letter from H. S. to Sir Thomas Egerton, containing the statement that Shakespeare and Richard Burbadge are ‘both of one countie, and indeede almost of one towne’. Burbadges are traceable in various parts of England, including Somerset, Oxfordshire, and Durham (Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 344; Stopes, 134, 243), and the conjecture has about as much value as Malone’s derivation of the name (_Var._ iii. 182) from ‘Borough-bridge’, or Chalmers’s from ‘Boar’s badge’. Nor is any connexion known between James Burbadge and various other Burbadges--Robert, John, and Edward--who appear in contemporary documents (Collier, iii. 282; Stopes, 152), although A. Wood (_Fasti Oxon._ i. 303) makes himself responsible for the statement that one John Burbadge, of Lincoln College, was nearly related to the actor. The name is indifferently spelt Burbadge, Burbage, or Burbege by contemporaries, but usually Burbadge in family signatures (Wallace, 61, 63 ‘James Burbage’, 252; Collier, iii. 294; _Malone Soc. Coll._ ii. 69, 76). James sealed the Blackfriars indentures of 1596 with a griffin.

James was about sixty on 16 February 1591 (Wallace, 61) and was therefore born in 1530–1. He was ‘by occupacion a joyner and reaping but a small lyving by the same, gave it over and became a commen player in playes’ (Wallace, 141). He was one of Leicester’s men in 1572, 1574, and 1576, and apparently continued a ‘fellow’ of this or some other company for a year or two after he established the Theatre in 1576 (Wallace, 142). In this year he was a poor man, and of small credit, not worth above 100 marks (Wallace, 134, 141, 153), but he had enlisted the capital of John Brayne, whose sister Ellen he had married (Wallace, 40, 139). His business history thereafter is bound up with that of the Theatre (q.v.) and of the Blackfriars, which he planned, but probably never used, during the last years of his life. Cuthbert Burbadge says of him (_Blackfriars Sharers Papers_, 1635) that he ‘was the first builder of playhowses, and was himselfe in his younger yeeres a player’. He was described as ‘joyner’ in the lease of the Theatre site in 1576, but in later years usually as ‘yeoman’ or ‘gentleman’. Presumably he went to live in Shoreditch in 1576, as entries for his family then begin in the registers of St. Leonard’s (Stopes, 139). They testify to the baptism (17 March 1576) of a daughter Alice, mentioned as Alice Walker in the will of Nicholas Tooley (q.v.) in 1623, and the burial (18 August 1582) of a daughter Joan. Another daughter, Helen, was buried at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, on 15 December 1595 (_Bodl._). Besides Alice and Helen he had in 1588 (Wallace, 39) two sons, Cuthbert and Richard, who would both have been born before 1576. James himself was buried at Shoreditch on 2 February 1597 and his widow on 8 May 1613. The registers generally give the family residence as ‘Halliwell Street’, and the ‘Halliwell’ which appears in 1597 and 1601 is perhaps an accidental variant. But the lawsuits suggest that James had built himself a house in the old inner cloister yard of the priory, which lay a little north of Halliwell Street, if that is the same as Holywell Lane (Wallace, 232, 236). They also represent him as a man of violent temper and not over-honest, while an independent record (App. D, No. lxxiv) refers to him as ‘a stubburne fellow’. Before his death he seems to have made over his interest in the Blackfriars to his son Richard, while that in the Theatre had passed by redemption of a mortgage to Cuthbert (Wallace, 55, 73, 108, 145, 278).

Cuthbert Burbadge, the elder son of James, was not an actor, although as holder of the leases of the Theatre and afterwards of the Globe (q.v.) he was concerned during the greater part of his life with theatrical management. On 16 February 1591 he was servant to Walter Cope, gentleman usher to Lord Burghley. He was then twenty-four, and must have been born in 1566–7. He was then probably living in the Strand (Stopes, 152), but the subsidy rolls for 1597 (Stopes, 195) show him as assessed at 10_s._ 8_d._ in Holywell Street, and the registers of St. Leonard’s have the records of his children, Walter (bapt. 22 June 1595), James (bur. 15 July 1597), and Elizabeth (bapt. 30 December 1601). Of these only Elizabeth, the wife first of Amias Maxey and secondly of George Bingley, was alive in 1634 and her son Amias had been adopted by his grandfather. Cuthbert himself was buried at Shoreditch on 17 September 1636, and his widow Elizabeth, daughter of John Cox, on 1 October 1636 (Stopes, 134, 140). His friendship with members of the King’s company is commemorated by notices in the wills of William Sly (1608), Richard Cowley (1618), and Nicholas Tooley, who died in his house in 1623. Collier (iii. 285) identified him with Cuthbert Burby the stationer, but Burby was in fact the son of Edmund Burby of Beds., husbandman (Arber, ii. 127). Possibly, however, the families were related, since Burby’s name is given at least once in the Stationers’ Register (Arber, ii. 612) as ‘Burbidge’.

BURBADGE, RICHARD, makes his first appearance, picturesquely enough, in the brawl at the Theatre which followed upon the Chancery Order of 13 November 1590, restoring a moiety of the profits of the house to the widow Brayne (cf. p. 392). John Alleyn deposed (Wallace, 101) that he ‘found the foresaid Ry. Burbage the yongest sone of the said James Burbage there, w^t a broome staff in his hand, of whom when this deponente asked what sturre was there, he answered in laughing phrase hew they come for a moytie. But quod he (holding vppe the said broomes staff) I haue, I think, deliuered him a moytie with this & sent them packing.’ Nicholas Bishop (Wallace, 98, 115), one of Mrs. Brayne’s agents, adds the confirmatory detail that ‘the said Ry. Burbage scornfully & disdainfullye playing with this deponentes nose, sayd, that yf he delt in the matter, he wold beate him also, and did chalendge the field of him at that tyme’. Very possibly Richard was then playing with the Admiral’s men at the Theatre. His exact age is unknown, but he was younger than Cuthbert, born in 1566–7, and as Cuthbert, long after, spoke of the ‘35 yeeres paines, cost, and labour’ out of which his brother ‘made meanes to leave his wife and children some estate’ in 1619 (_Sharers Papers_), it may perhaps be inferred that his histrionic career began as early as 1584. The ‘plot’ of _The Dead Man’s Fortune_, wherein the doubtful direction (cf. p. 125) ‘Burbage a messenger’ suggests that he played a minor part, may belong to a performance by the Admiral’s _c._ 1590. It is a little more difficult to suppose that at a date when the Queen’s men were still active the Admiral’s or Strange’s had already acquired Tarlton’s _Seven Deadly Sins_, in the ‘plot’ of which ‘R. Burbadg’ is cast for the important characters of Gorboduc and Terens. But perhaps it is even less probable that, after the breach of the Admiral’s with his father in 1591, he took part in the performances of the same play by the amalgamated Admiral’s and Strange’s men at the Rose in 1592. His name does not appear amongst those of the Strange’s men who were travelling in 1593. But when the amalgamation broke up, and the Chamberlain’s company was formed, with some of its elements as a nucleus, in 1594, he joined that company, and became a prominent member, often acting as its representative or payee, both before and after its metamorphosis into the King’s men, and to the end of his own life. His name is constant in its lists (cf. ch. xiii), and his personal relations with his fellows are reflected in the wills of Augustine Phillips in 1605, Shakespeare in 1616, and Nicholas Tooley, whose ‘master’ he had been, in 1623. It would appear that in the somewhat irregular disposition of James Burbadge’s theatrical interests the Blackfriars freehold fell primarily to Richard. The leases of 1608 were made by him as lessor to his brother and other members of the King’s men’s syndicate as lessees. This, however, was doubtless a mere family arrangement, for Cuthbert spoke of the Blackfriars in 1635 as ‘our inheritance’, and the two brothers shared in the supplementary transactions which rounded off the original purchase (cf. ch. xvii). At the Globe, on the other hand, Cuthbert and Richard held in common a moiety of the housekeepers’ interest under the lease from Nicholas Brend (cf. ch. xvi). They continued to live as close neighbours in Halliwell Street, Shoreditch, where they shared the misfortune of having their houses burgled in 1615 (Jeaffreson, ii. 108) and where the registers of St. Leonard’s (Stopes, 139) record Richard’s children: Richard (bur. 16 August 1607), Julia or Juliet (bapt. 2 January 1603, bur. 12 September 1608), Frances (bapt. 16 September and bur. 19 September 1604), Anne (bapt. 8 August 1607), Winifred (bapt. 10 October 1613, bur. 14 October 1616), a second Julia (bapt. 26 December 1614, bur. 15 August 1615), William (bapt. 6 November 1616), and a posthumous Sara (bapt. 5 August 1619, bur. 29 April 1625). ‘Richard Burbadge, player’ was himself buried on 16 March 1619. He had died, not as Camden records in his _Annals_ on 9 March, but on 13 March, after making the day before a nuncupative will (Collier, iii. 293), witnessed by his brother and by Nicholas Tooley and Richard Robinson of the King’s men, in which he left his wife Winifred sole executrix. She subsequently married Richard Robinson, and was still alive, as was Burbadge’s son William, in 1635 (_Sharers Papers_). According to the gossip of the day he left ‘better than £300 land to his heirs’ (Collier, iii. 297).

Burbadge had a high reputation as a player, both in life and after death. A note of 13 March 1602 by John Manningham (_Diary_, 39) records how his impersonation of Richard III touched the heart of a citizen’s wife, and how Shakespeare prevented him at a resultant assignation. John Davies of Hereford coupled him with Shakespeare in 1603 (_Microcosmos_) among players whom he loved ‘for painting, poesie’, and in 1609 (_Civile Warres of Death and Fortune_) amongst those whom Fortune ‘guerdond not, to their desarts’. He is introduced _in propria persona_ into _2 Return from Parnassus_ (1602) and into Marston’s induction to _The Malcontent_ (1604). Probably he is the ‘one man’ of the London stage with whom the player in _Ratseis Ghost_ (1605; cf. ch. xviii) is advised ‘to play Hamlet for a wager’. Jonson, in _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), v. iii, makes Cokes ask the master of the puppets, ‘which is your _Burbage_ now?... your best _Actor_. Your _Field_?’ He was apparently the model for the _Character of an Actor_ in the _Characters_ of 1615 (App. C, No. lxi). And other evidences of his fame can be traced down to Restoration days in Richard Corbet’s _Iter Boreale_, in Sir Richard Baker’s _Chronicle_ and _Theatrum Redivivum_, and in Richard Flecknoe’s _Short Discourse of the English Stage_ and his _Euterpe Restored_ (cf. Collier, iii. 279; Stopes, 121; _Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse_, N.S.S., 128, 250).

Shortly after Burbadge’s death, on 20 May 1619, the Earl of Pembroke wrote to Lord Doncaster in Germany of a great supper given the same night by the Duke of Lennox to the French ambassador, and adds that the company were now at the play, ‘which I being tender-harted could not endure to see so soone after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbadg’ (E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1882), i. 103). Several epitaphs and elegies upon Burbadge are preserved. The shortest--‘Exit Burbadge’--was printed in Camden’s _Remaines_ (1674), 541. Another is by Middleton (Collier, iii. 280, 296). A third, which begins

Some skillfull limner helpe mee, yf not soe,
Some sad tragedian, to expresse my woe,

has been the subject of much controversy (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 88; C. M. Ingleby, _The Elegy on Burbadge_, in _Shakespeare, the Man and the Book_, ii. 169). It exists in two versions, one of 86 lines, the other of 124 lines. Of the shorter version several undoubtedly genuine manuscripts are known, and it is probably only by accident that one of these omits ll. 2–5 of the following passage, which is given completely by all the rest:

Hee’s gone & with him what a world are dead,
Which he reuiud, to be reuiued soe.
No more young Hamlett, ould Heironymoe.
Kind Leer, the greued Moore, and more beside,
That liued in him, haue now for ever dy’de.
Oft haue I seene him leap into the graue,
Suiting the person which he seem’d to haue
Of a sadd louer with soe true an eye,
That theer I would haue sworne, he meant to dye.
Oft haue I seene him play this part in ieast,
Soe liuely, that spectators, and the rest
Of his sad crew, whilst he but seem’d to bleed,
Amazed, thought euen then hee dyed in deed.

In the longer version ll. 2–5 are not only omitted, but are replaced by an interpolation of many lines, detailing a number of parts, some of which belonged to other companies than the King’s, and are not likely to have been played by Burbadge. No manuscript of this version is forthcoming, and there can be little doubt that the interpolation is due to Collier, who referred to the version in his _New Particulars_ (1836), 27, and published it in his _Memoirs of the Actors_ (1846), 52, professedly from a manuscript in the possession of Richard Heber. Of the shorter version I can add to what has been recorded by others that in _Stowe MS._ 962, f. 62^v, I have found a copy of it, with the title ‘An Elegie on the death of the famous actor Rich: Burbage, who died 13 Martij A^o. 1618’, and an ascription to ‘Jo ffletcher’. Other copies also give the date of Burbadge’s death, or refer, as do the opening lines themselves, to the fact that he was skilled not only as an actor but as a limner. John Davies testifies to this in the verses of 1603 already cited. The accounts of the Earl of Rutland for the birthday tilt of 1613 contain the entry, ‘31 Martij, To M^r. Shakspeare in gold, about my Lordes impreso, 44^s. To Richard Burbage for paynting and makyng yt, in gold, 44^s’; and those for the tilt of 1616, ‘25 Martij, 1616, paid given Richard Burbidg for my Lordes shelde and for the embleance, 4^{li} 18^s’ (_H. M. C. Rutland MSS._ iv. 494, 508). The gallery at Dulwich contains a picture presented by William Cartwright, which is described in his catalogue as ‘a womans head on a boord done by M^r. Burbige y^e actor’. The inveterate tendency of mankind to guess has led to suggestions that he may have painted the portrait of himself in the same gallery, the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, or the original of the Droeshout print.

One other record of Burbadge, apart from his company, may be noted. On 31 May 1610 he was employed by the City, with his fellow James Rice, to deliver a speech to Prince Henry at a water-pageant on the Thames (cf. ch. iv). Presumably he represented Amphion, ‘a grave and judicious Prophet-like personage’, and Rice Corinea.

BURGES, ROBERT. A ‘player’ buried at St. Bennet’s, Gracechurch, 14 April 1559 (B. 251).

CANDLER, JAMES. Leader of a company at Ipswich, 1569–70 (_Hist. MSS._ ix. 1. 248).

CARIE (GARY), GILES. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1613.

CARLETON, NICHOLAS. Paul’s, >1582.

CARPENTER, WILLIAM. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611; Charles’s, 1619, 1625. He was apparently porter at the Marshalsea in 1623 (J. 347).

CARTWRIGHT, WILLIAM. Admiral’s-Henry’s, 1598–1622 (H. ii. 247). He lived at the upper end of White Cross Street in 1623 (J. 347).

CASTLE, THOMAS. A ‘player’, whose son Nicholas and daughter Hester were baptized at St. Giles’s on 9 October 1608 and 15 April 1610 (B. 262).

CATTANES. Worcester’s, 1602 (H. ii. 248).

CAVALLERIZZO, CLAUDIO. Italians, 1576 (?).

CHAPPELL, JOHN. Chapel, 1600–1.

CHESSON, THOMAS. Oxford’s (?), 1580.

CLARK, SILL. Prince’s, 1603< >1641.

CLARKE, ROBERT. A ‘player’ whose son Ezekiel was buried at St. Giles’s, 7 November 1617 (B. 268).

CLARKE, THOMAS. Leicester’s, 1572.

CLAY, NATHANIEL. Anne’s, 1618; Chamber of Bristol, 1618.

CLEMENT, WILLIAM. London player, 1550 (App. D, No. v).

CLIFTON, THOMAS. Kidnapped for Chapel, 1600.

COBORNE, EDWARD. A ‘player’ whose son John was baptized at St. Giles’s on 23 Nov. 1616. Of other family entries, 1613–25, some are for Edward Coborne ‘gentleman’ (_Bodl._). He may be identical with COLBRAND.

COKE, RICHARD. Interluders, 1547–56.

COLBRAND, EDWARD. Palsgrave’s, 1610–13.

COLE. Paul’s, 1599.

COLMAN, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509.

CONDELL, HENRY, has been conjectured to be the ‘Harry’ cast for Ferrex and a Lord in the ‘plot’ of _The Seven Deadly Sins_, as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1. The first definite notice of him is in the cast of Jonson’s _Every Man in his Humour_, as played by the Chamberlain’s men in 1598. Thereafter he appears in all formal lists of the Chamberlain’s and King’s men, up to the Caroline patent of 1625, including the list in the First Folio of 1623, of which, with Heminges, he acted as editor. He is also in all the casts up to _The Humourous Lieutenant_ (_c._ 1619). About this date he presumably ceased to play; his part of the Cardinal in _The Duchess of Malfi_ had passed to Richard Robinson by 1623. The fact that he took this part somewhat discredits the conjecture of John Roberts (_Answer to Pope_, 1729) that he was a comedian; nor can the statement of the same writer that he was a printer be verified. He is staged with other members of the company in Marston’s _Malcontent_ (1604), and appears as ‘Henry Condye’ in the verses on the burning of the Globe in 1613. He is assigned 26_s._ 8_d._ to buy a ring as Shakespeare’s ‘fellowe’ in his will of 1616, and appears also as a legatee in the will of Augustine Phillips in 1605, as trustee in that of Alexander Cooke in 1614, as executor and joint residuary legatee in that of Nicholas Tooley in 1623, under which also his wife and his daughter Elizabeth receive legacies, and as executor in that of John Underwood in 1625. By 1599 he was married and apparently settled in St. Mary Aldermanbury, where he held various parochial offices during 1606–21, and the register records his children: Elizabeth (bapt. 27 February 1599, bur. 11 April 1599), Anne (bapt. 4 April 1601, bur. 16 July 1610), Richard (bapt. 18 April 1602), Elizabeth (bapt. 14 April 1603, bur. 22 April 1603), Elizabeth (bapt. 26 October 1606), Mary (bapt. 30 January 1608, bur. from Hoxton at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 24 March 1608), Henry (bapt. 6 May 1610, bur. 4 March 1630), William (bapt. 26 May 1611), Edward (bapt. 22 August 1614, bur. 23 August 1614).[942] Subsequently he had a ‘country house’ at Fulham, at which on 10 September 1625 a pamphlet written by certain players on their travels during the plague, as a reply to Dekker’s _A Rod for Run-awayes_, under the title of _The Run-awayes Answer_, was addressed to him, with an expression of gratitude for a ‘free and noble farewell’ which he had given the writers. At Fulham, too, on 13 December 1627, he made his will, leaving to his widow Elizabeth, his sons Henry and William, and his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Herbert Finch, much household property at Aldermanbury and elsewhere in London, including ‘rents and profits’ by ‘leases and terms of years’ of ‘messuages houses and places’ in Blackfriars and on the Bankside, which were to pass for a time to William and ultimately to the widow.[943] Condell had not been an original sharer in the house of the Globe, but by 1612 had acquired an interest jointly with Heminges; of the Blackfriars house he was an original sharer in 1608. _The Sharers Papers_ of 1635 indicate that Mrs. Condell had held four-sixteenths of the Globe and one-eighth of the Blackfriars, but had transferred two-sixteenths of the Globe when Taylor and Lowin were admitted as sharers. A minor legacy in Condell’s will is to his old servant, Elizabeth Wheaton, of her ‘place or priviledge’ in the Globe and Blackfriars. Heminges and Cuthbert Burbadge are named as overseers. Condell was buried on 29 December 1627, and his widow on 3 October 1635, both at St. Mary Aldermanbury.[944]

COOKE, ALEXANDER, has been conjectured to be the ‘Sander’ who is cast in the ‘plot’ of _The Seven Deadly Sins_ as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, for the parts of Videna in _Envy_ and Progne in _Lechery_. But, as far as this goes, he might just as well be the ‘San.’ who took the part of a player in _Taming of a Shrew_ (1594), ind. 1, which was a Pembroke’s play. Malone ‘presumes’, with some rashness, that he performed ‘all the principal female characters’ in Shakespeare’s plays.[945] It must be doubtful whether he was on the stage as early as 1592. He is traceable as a member of the King’s men in the casts of _Sejanus_ (1603), _Volpone_ (1605), _Alchemist_ (1610), _Catiline_ (1611), and _The Captain_ (1612–13). The fact that in the first two of these his name occurs at the end of the lists has been somewhat hazardously accepted as an indication that he played women’s parts. He is also in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. Augustine Phillips left him a legacy as his ‘fellow’ in 1605.

‘Mr. Cooke and his wife’ commend themselves to Alleyn in his wife’s letter of 21 October 1603.[946] The token-books of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, show an Alexander Cooke in Hill’s Rents during 1604, 1607, 1609, and 1610; and the parish register, recording the baptism of Francis Cooke, son of Alexander, ‘a player’, on 27 October 1605, makes an identification possible. There were three more children, Rebecca (bapt. 11 October 1607), Alice (bapt. 3 November 1611), Alexander (bapt. 20 March 1614). This last was posthumous; the register records Alexander Cooke’s burial on 25 February 1614.[947] His will, dated 3 January 1614, leaves £50 each to Francis, Rebecca, and the unborn child, and the residue to his wife.[948] He owned £50 ‘which is in the hand of my fellowes, as my share of the stock’. He appoints ‘my master Hemings’, to whom he had presumably been apprenticed, and Condell trustees for his children, and mentions brothers Ellis and John, of whom the latter is conjectured by Collier to be the author of Greene’s _Tu Quoque_.

COOKE, EDWARD. Chapel, 1509.

COOKE, LIONEL. Queen’s, 1583, 1588.

COOKE, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1583.

COOKE, WILLIAM. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.

CORNISH, JOHN. Gentleman of Chapel, and pageant-master at wedding of Arthur in 1501.

CORNISH, KIT. A ‘ghost-name’ in Chapel records.

CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Song School, Westminster, 1479–80.

CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1509–23. Conceivably identical with the last, and in any case probably of the same family.

COWLEY, RICHARD, was of Strange’s men in 1593. He had played minor parts with that company or the Admiral’s in _The Seven Deadly Sins_ of 1590–1, and is mentioned in Alleyn’s correspondence as travelling with the company. He joined the Chamberlain’s men, probably on their formation in 1594, and was payee for the company in 1601. The stage-directions to the Quarto (1600) and Folio texts of _Much Ado about Nothing_, IV. ii, show that he played Verges. He is in the 1603 and 1604 lists of the King’s men, and received a legacy from Augustine Phillips as his ‘fellow’ in 1605, but does not appear to have been a sharer in the houses of the Globe or Blackfriars. He is in the Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. He dwelt in Holywell, or for a short period in Alleyn’s Rents, both in the parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, whose register records his children, Robert (bapt. 8 March 1596, bur. (?) 20 March 1597), Cuthbert (bapt. 8 May 1597), Richard (bapt. 29 April 1598, bur. 26 February 1603), Elizabeth (bapt. 2 February 1602), as well as the funeral of his wife Elizabeth on 28 September 1616, and his own on 12 March 1619.[949] His will, dated on 13 January 1618, appoints his daughter Elizabeth Birch executrix and is witnessed by Heminges, Cuthbert Burbadge, Shank, and Thomas Ravenscroft, perhaps the madrigalist.[950]

CRANE, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v).

CRANE, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1523–45.

CROSSE, SAMUEL, is named amongst the performers of Shakespeare’s plays in the First Folio, but in no list of the Chamberlain’s or King’s men. Probably, therefore, he belongs to the very beginning of Shakespeare’s career, and is to be identified with the Crosse named by Heywood amongst famous actors of a generation before his time.[951]

CUMBER, JOHN. Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived in Aldermanbury in 1623, and died in that year (J. 347; Fleay, 279).

CURTEYS, JAMES. Chapel, 1509.

CUTLER, JAMES. Chapel, > 1605.

DABORNE, ROBERT. Revels patentee, 1610, and dramatist.

DANIEL, JOHN. Chamber of Bristol patentee, 1615–17.

DANIEL, SAMUEL. Allower of Revels’ plays, 1604, and dramatist.

DARLOWE. Admiral’s, >1590.

DAVIES, HUGH. Admiral’s (?), 1601 (H. ii. 255).

DAWES, ROBERT. Duke of York’s, 1610; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1614.

DAY, JOHN. Admiral’s (?), _c._ 1600. John, son of John Day, ‘player’, was baptized at St. Saviour’s, 3 June 1604 (B. 308; cf. ch. xxiii).

DAY, THOMAS. Chapel, 1601, 1602.

DOB. Admiral’s, 1598–1601.

DOWNTON (DOWTON, DOUTON (?), DOWTEN, DOWGHTON, DENYGTEN, DOUBTON), THOMAS. Strange’s, 1593; Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1594–_c._ 1618. The St. Saviour’s registers record various family events, including the baptism of Christopher, son of Thomas Dowton ‘musycyon’ on 27 December 1592 and that of Thomas Dowton ‘baseborne, the supposed son of Thomas Dowton, a player’, 25 May 1600. He apparently married a vintner’s widow on 15 February 1618, became a vintner, and was still alive on 18 August 1622 (B. 316; H. ii. 262, 265). Dr. Greg regards him as one of the Dutton family.

DRAKE, ROBERT. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

DRAYTON, MICHAEL. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, and dramatist.

DREWE, BARTHOLOMEW. A ‘player’, whose son George was baptized at St. Saviour’s on 12 November 1614 (B. 314).

DREWE, THOMAS. Anne’s, 1616–19.

DROM, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1601.

DRUSIANO. _Vide_ MARTINELLI.

DUKE, JOHN. Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Chamberlain’s, 1598; Worcester’s-Anne’s, 1602–9. Four children were baptized at St. Leonard’s, where he lived in Holywell Street, from July 1604 to January 1609 (H. ii. 265; Collier, _Actors_, xxxi).

DULANDT (DOWLAND?), ROBERT. Musician in Germany, 1623.

DUTTON, EDWARD. Admiral’s, 1597, with a boy ‘Dick’. Children of his were baptized at St. Saviour’s during 1600–2 (B. 326).

DUTTON, JOHN. Warwick’s, 1575–6; Oxford’s, 1580; Queen’s, 1583, 1588–91. Lincoln’s Inn paid him for musicians in 1567–8 (Walker, i. 362). There are family records of a John Dutton at St. Botolph’s, who is called ‘player’ in the entry of a daughter Elizabeth’s baptism of 3 July 1586 (B. 328).

DUTTON, LAURENCE. Lane’s, 1571–2; Clinton’s, 1572–5; Warwick’s, 1575–6; Oxford’s, 1580; Queen’s, 1589–91. It is curious that a John and a Laurence Dutton also appear as Court Messengers. I find a payment on 23 May 1578 to John for carrying letters to Antwerp (_Pipe Office, Chamber Declared Account_ 541, m. 211^v), and Laurence was paid for ‘sondry jorneys’ in 1561–2 (ibid. m. 39) and was during 1576–82 one of the regular Messengers of the Chamber in attendance on the Privy Council (Dasent, ix. 223, x. 223, 228, xi. 437, xii. 23, xiii. 135, 392, etc.). The ‘Edward’ Dutton of the last entry may be an error. In 1592 the Council (xxii. 493) recommended John the son of Laurence who had ‘of long tyme served her Majestie’ as Messenger, for admission as a Queen’s Scholar at Westminster. But this Laurence can hardly have been the actor, for he was acting as Messenger on 20 May 1580, while the affray for which Laurence the actor had been committed to the Marshalsea on 13 April was still uninquired into. Somewhat earlier a Thomas Dutton was employed as a post between Edward VI’s Council and Thomas Gresham in Antwerp, and was Gresham’s agent in Hamburg, c. 1571 (Burgon, _Gresham_, i. 109; ii. 421). It is easier again to conjecture than to prove a connexion between the actors and the house of Dutton, which had a hereditary jurisdiction over minstrelsy in Cheshire (cf. ch. ix), although in this the names John and Laurence both appear. It is perhaps an accident that two of the recorded visits of the Queen’s men to Lord Derby’s northern seats in 1588–90 synchronize with visits by a Mr. Dutton (Murray, ii. 296).

ECCLESTONE, WILLIAM, appears as a King’s man in the casts of _The Alchemist_ (1610) and _Catiline_ (1611). Mr. Fleay’s statement that he joined the company from the Queen’s Revels in 1609 rests upon a confusion with Field.[952] In 1611 he became a member of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, but left them in 1613 after playing in _The Honest Man’s Fortune_ during that year. He returned to the King’s, and his name is found in the official lists of the company for 1619 and 1621 and in most of the casts of their plays, from _Bonduca_ in 1613–14 to _The Spanish Curate_ in 1622, as well as in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. Nicholas Tooley forgave him a debt in his will of 3 June 1623. As he is not in the Caroline patent of 1625, he had probably died or retired by that date. He may be the W. E. who writes commendatory verses to _The Wild-goose Chase_ in 1652. If he is also the ‘William Eglestone’ whose marriage to Anne Jacob is recorded in the register of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 20 February 1603, he lived to be an old man.[953]

EDMONDS, JOHN. Globe lessee, 1612; Chamber of Bristol, 1618–19. The St. Saviour’s registers record the marriage of a John Edmonds to Margaret Goodyere on 22 February 1600 and the baptism of children of John Edmonds, ‘player’, from 6 January 1605 to 17 July 1615 (B. 334). Probably the two are not identical and the player is the John Edmans who seems to have married his fellow-legatee, Mary Clarke, of the will of Thomas Pope (q.v.) in 1604.

EDWARDES, RICHARD. Master of Chapel, 1561–6, and dramatist.

EICHELIN. Germany, 1604.

ELDERTON, WILLIAM. One Elderton, dressed as a fool, played the part of one of the Lord of Misrule’s sons in George Ferrers’s Christmas revel of 1552–3 (Feuillerat, _Edw. and Mary_, 120; cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 407). Conjecture may identify him with the Elderton who brought the Eton boys to Court on 6 January 1573 and the William Elderton who brought the Westminster boys on 1 January 1574, and with the rhyming William Elderton, some of whose ballads are preserved and reprinted in Collier, _Old Ballads from Early Printed Copies_ (1842, _Percy Soc._), 25, 45; H. Huth, _Ancient Ballads and Broadsides_ (1867, _Philobiblon Soc._); and H. L. Collman, _Ballads and Broadsides_ (1912, _Roxburghe Club_); or recorded, with ballads against him, in the Stationers’ Register (Arber, i. 179, 180, 181, 199, 384, 403, 439; ii. 338, 363, 369, 388, 396, 399; cf. v. lxxvi), while his ‘ale-crammed nose’ and ‘rymes lying a steepe in ale’ are subject for much humour among the pamphleteers (Lyly, iii. 398; Nashe, i. 197, 256, 280; iii. 123, 133, 177, 354). Stowe (_Survey_, i. 272) makes him an attorney in the sheriff’s courts at the Guildhall about 1568, but he can hardly be the ‘master Elderton’ who sat as a justice at the Guildhall in a coining case of 1562 (Machyn, 290). He appears to have been dead by 1592 (Harvey, i. 163; Nashe, i. 280). A recent paper on Elderton by H. E. Rollins is in _S. P._ xvii (1920), 199.

ENGLISH, JOHN. Interluders, 1494–1531.

EVANS, HENRY. Blackfriars lessee, 1583, 1600–8; payee for Oxford’s, 1584; manager of Chapel, 1600–3. He was a scrivener, and overseer to the will of Sebastian Westcott, Master of Paul’s, in 1582.

EVANS, THOMAS. Blackfriars lessee, 1608.

EVESEED, HENRY. Chapel, >1585.

FARNABY, RICHARD. Musician in Germany, 1623.

FARRANT, RICHARD. Master of Children of Windsor, 1564–80; Acting Master of Chapel and Blackfriars lessee, 1576–80.

FERRABOSCO, ALFONSO. Italians, 1576, and Court musician (cf. ch. ii).

FETHERSTON, WILLIAM. Of Danby, Yorks., unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

FIDGE, WILLIAM. H. R. Plomer (3 _Library_, ix. 252) cites from a Canterbury record of 1571, ‘William Fidge and Whetstone owe the said [Robert] Bettes [a painter] for their portions in buying of certen playebookes 35_s._ 4_d._’

FIELD, NATHAN, was the son of John Field, preacher and castigator of the stage (cf. App. C, No. xxxi), and was baptized at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 17 October 1587 (Collier, iii. 425). His name is always spelt Nathan in formal contemporary documents, although he was familiarly known as Nat or Nid. But he appears in many reputable modern works of learning as Nathaniel. This error perhaps originated with the compilers of the 1679 Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, who in four out of the six actor-lists in which his name is found used the form Nathan and in two (_Loyal Subject_ and _Mad Lover_) Nathanael. It was certainly encouraged by a muddle of Collier, who finding in the Cripplegate registers that another son of John Field had been baptized Nathaniel on 13 June 1581, and not realizing that a cranky theological father might quite well use the names as distinct, thought it necessary to assume that this Nathaniel had died before 1587. As a matter of fact, he survived, was apprenticed to a stationer at Michaelmas 1596, took up his freedom on 3 June 1611, and between 1624 and 1627 published some books, including two sermons by a third brother, Theophilus Field, Bishop of Llandaff (McKerrow, _Dict._ 101). I need hardly linger over the suggestion that Nathan Field lived a double life as actor and bookseller. At this time of the apprenticeship he was not yet nine years old, and he was still a scholar of St. Paul’s Grammar School when, not earlier than 1600, he was impressed by Nathaniel Giles and his deputies to serve as one of the Children of the Chapel (_Clifton v. Robinson_ in Fleay, 128). His education was not entirely interrupted, for he fell into the hands of Ben Jonson, who told Drummond in 1619 that ‘Nid Field was his schollar, and he had read to him the Satyres of Horace, and some Epigrames of Martiall’ (Laing, 11). Field remained a member of the Chapel and the Queen’s Revels throughout the vicissitudes of the company from 1600 to 1613. He is in the actor-lists of _Cynthia’s Revels_ (1600), _The Poetaster_ (1601), and _Epicoene_ (1609), and presumably played Humfrey in _K. B. P._ (1607).[954] With his fellows he became absorbed into the Lady Elizabeth’s in March 1613, contracted with Henslowe and Meade on behalf of this company (_Henslowe Papers_, 23), acted as their payee in 1615, and appears in the actor-lists of _The Coxcomb_, _The Honest Man’s Fortune_, and _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), in the text of which Jonson compliments him (v. 3) as follows:

_Cokes._ Which is your _Burbage_ now?

_Lanterne._ What meane you by that, Sir?

_Cokes._ Your best Actor. Your _Field_?

He seems to have been suspected by the company of taking bribes from Henslowe to connive at transactions contrary to their interest (_Henslowe Papers_, 88). Certainly he was in financial straits and on more than one occasion appealed to Henslowe to secure his release from an arrest (_Henslowe Papers_, 66, 67). Perhaps it was as a result of this friction with his fellows that he abandoned their amalgamation with Prince Charles’s men in 1615. Instead he joined, at or about this date, the King’s men, and appears as one in the actor-lists of _The Loyal Subject_, _The Knight of Malta_, _The Queen of Corinth_, and _The Mad Lover_. It must, I think, have been by a slip that Cuthbert Burbadge, in the _Sharers Papers_ of 1635, spoke of him as joining the King’s with Ostler and Underwood in 1608 or 1609. It seems probable that Field brought with him to the King’s a share of the plays which had formed the repertory of the joint Lady Elizabeth’s and Queen’s Revels, including Chapman’s _Bussy D’Ambois_, in which a King’s prologue vaunts his success as Bussy. He did not stay with the company very long, for though he is in the patent of 27 March and the livery list of 19 May 1619, he is replaced by John Rice in the livery list of 7 April 1621. And as he does not appear and Rice does appear amongst the actors named in the stage-directions to _Sir John von Olden Barnevelt_ in August 1619, it is probable that he had left in the course of the summer (_M. L. R._ iv. 395). If so, his departure synchronizes with a scandal which attached itself to his name. His moral character was hardly becoming to the son of a preacher. More than one manuscript commonplace book (e. g. _Ashm. MS._ 47, f. 49, which appears from the spelling of the name to be a late copy) contains an epigram with some such heading as _On Nathaniell Feild suspected for too much familiarity with his M^{ris} Lady May_. And on 5 June 1619 Sir William Trumbull wrote from Brussels to Lord Hay (E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1882), i. 103) that he was told that the Earl of Argyll had paid for the nursing of a child, ‘which the world sayes is daughter to my lady and N. Feild the Player’. Lady Argyll was Anne, daughter of Sir William Cornwallis of Brome. Field’s later life is obscure. There is an unimportant jest about him in John Taylor’s _Wit and Mirth_ (1629). He was married to a wife Anne, and had children baptized and buried at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, during 1619–25. If another epigram, printed by Collier, iii. 437, can be trusted, he very properly suffered from jealousy. In relevant register entries the name is given as Nathan. The Blackfriars registers give children both of Nathan and of Nathaniel Field, and on 20 February 1633 occurs the burial of Nathaniel Field, whom, if the entry does not indicate that the confusion of persons had already begun, we are bound to take to be the bookseller. There is no reason why both brothers should not have resided in Blackfriars.

Field was dramatist, as well as actor. In addition to the two plays published under his single name, he collaborated with Massinger in _The Fatal Dowry_, which was a King’s play and not likely, therefore, to fall outside the dates 1616–19. And as the Henslowe correspondence (_Henslowe Papers_, 65, 84) show him as collaborating also with Fletcher, Massinger, and Daborne for the Lady Elizabeth’s, he has been conjectured as a possible sharer in the authorship of several of the plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher series. He also, about the time of his joining the King’s, wrote a defence of the stage, in the form of a remonstrance to Mr. Sutton, a preacher of St. Mary Overies (App. C, No. lxiii). A portrait of Field is at Dulwich.

FLETCHER, LAWRENCE. Scotland, 1595, 1599, 1601; Admiral’s (?), 1596; King’s, 1603. Although included as a King’s man in the royal patent, there is no reason to suppose that Fletcher ever joined the company acting at the Globe; the absence of his name from the actor-list in the Shakespeare F_{1} of 1623 is strong evidence that he did not. He lived in St. Saviour’s, where he had a homonym, a victualler, who survived him. One of the two is shown by the token-books as housed in Hunt’s Rents, Maid Lane, during 1605–7; probably this was the actor, who was buried on 12 September 1608. The description ‘Lawrence Fletcher, a man: in the church’ of the register is amplified in a fee-book to ‘Lawrence Fletcher, a player, the King’s servant, buried in the church, with an afternoon’s knell of the great bell, 20s.’ (Collier, _Memoirs of the Actors_^1, x; Rendle, _Bankside_, xxvii).

FLOWER. Admiral’s (?), _c._ 1600.

FOSTER, ALEXANDER. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1618; Charles’s, 1616.

FREYERBOTT, BARTHOLOMEUS. Germany, 1615.

FRITH, MOLL. It appears to be suggested in the Epilogue to _The Roaring Girl_ (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Dekker) that this lady was to appear in person on the Fortune stage, _c._ 1610.

FROST, JOHN. Chapel, 1601.

GARLAND, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583, 1588; Lennox’s, 1605; Duke of York’s, 1610. He appears to have dwelt in 1605 at ‘the ould forde’ (H. ii. 267).

GARLICK. In I. H., _This World’s Folly_ (1615), an actor of this name is apparently said to have personated himself on the Fortune stage, ‘behung with chaynes of Garlicke’ (App. C, No. lix); cf. Dekker, _If This be not a Good Play_ (1610–12), sc. x (ed. Pearson, iii. 325), ‘Fortune fauours no body but Garlicke, nor Garlike neither now, yet she has strong reason to loue it; for tho Garlicke made her smell abhominably in the nostrills of the gallants, yet she had smelt and stuncke worse but for garlike’; H. Parrot, _Laquei Ridiculosi_ (1613), Epig. 131, ‘_Greene’s Tu Quoque_ and those Garlicke Jigs’; in Tailor, _Hog Hath Lost his Pearl_ (1614, ed. Dodsley^4, p. 434), a jig will draw more whores ‘than e’er Garlic had’.

GARRET, JOHN. Anne’s, 1619.

GEDION. Admiral’s, 1602.

‘GERRY.’ King’s Revels, 1607.

GEW. A blind player, referred to in _1 Ant. Mellida_ (1599), ind. 142, ‘’t had been a right part for Proteus or Gew. Ho! blind Gew would ha’ done ’t rarely, rarely’; E. Guilpin, _Skialetheia_ (1598), _Sat._ v, ‘One that for ape tricks can put Gue to schoole’, and _Epig._ xi, ‘Gue, hang thy selfe for woe, since gentlemen Are now grown cunning in thy apishness’; Jonson, _Epig._ cxxix, ‘Thou dost out-zany Cokely, Pod; nay, Gue.’ Pod was a puppet-showman.

GIBBS. Admiral’s, 1602.

GIBSON, RICHARD. Interluders, 1494–1508; afterwards Yeoman of the Revels.

GILBURNE, SAMUEL, is recorded in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. All that is known of him beyond this is that Augustine Phillips left him as his ‘late apprentice’ in his will of 1605 the sum of 40_s._, various garments, and a bass viol. Collier’s inference that he could play on the viol is a fairly harmless example of biographical conjecture.[955] The identification of him with the ‘b[oy?] Sam’ of the ‘plot’ of _The Dead Man’s Fortune_, a play probably belonging to the Admiral’s, and of a date not later than 1591, is more dangerous.[956]

GILES, NATHANIEL. Master of Windsor Choir, 1595–1634; Master of Chapel, 1597–1634.

GILES, THOMAS. Master of Paul’s, 1585–1590 <; Instructor in Music to Henry, 1606, and Charles, 1613.

GOODALE, BAPTISTE. ‘Ghost-name’ (?) in Queen’s list (1589) forged by Collier, _New Facts_, ii.

GOODALE, THOMAS. Berkeley’s, 1581; Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Chamberlain’s (?) at date of _Sir Thomas More_ (cf. ch. xxiv). If he is the Thomas Goodale, mercer, who entered with John Alleyn and Robert Lee into a bond to Edward Alleyn on 18 May 1593 (H. ii. 295, from _Dulwich MS._ iv. 29), he was not improbably connected with the Admiral’s >1590.