Chapter XVIII: Introduction: The Boy Companies (16)

SHANK, JOHN, or SHANKS, for the name is variously spelt, describes himself to Lord Chamberlain Pembroke in the _Sharers Papers_ of 1635 as ‘beeing an old man in this quality, who in his youth first served your noble father, and after that the late Queene Elizabeth, then King James, and now his royall Majestye’.[993] Presumably the Pembroke’s company in question was that of 1597–1600, and the Queen Elizabeth’s men the travelling company of the latter years of the reign. Shank’s account of his own career may be amplified from the records of his name in the 1610 list of Prince Henry’s men and in the patent issued to the same company when they became the Elector Palatine’s men in 1613. He lived in Rochester Yard, Southwark, in 1605, but the register of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, shows him later in Golden Lane, and records several baptisms and burials of his children between 1610 and 1629.[994] He had joined the King’s men between 1613 and 1619, as his name is in the patent of the latter year. It recurs in the official lists of the company up to 1629, but occasionally only in actor-lists up to 1631, including that of the First Folio Shakespeare. Amongst his ‘boyes’ or apprentices were Thomas Pollard, John Thompson, John Honiman, and Thomas Holcome. Thompson cost him £40; for other boys he had spent by 1635 as much as £200. After the death of John Heminges, Shank bought from his son William, surreptitiously, as his fellows averred, two shares in the Blackfriars and three in the Globe, for a total sum of £506. It was these transactions, which took place between 1633 and 1635, that led to the petition of Benfield, Swanston, and Pollard to the Lord Chamberlain recorded in the _Sharers Papers_. As a result Shank was directed to transfer one share in each house to the petitioners. He, however, complained that he could not get satisfactory terms from them, and that they restrained him from the stage. The Cripplegate register records Shank’s burial on 27 January 1636.[995] James Wright calls him a ‘comedian’,[996] and the following verses, signed W. Turner, and quoted by Collier from Turner’s _Dish of Stuff, or a Gallimaufry_, may perhaps be taken as confirming this[997]:

That’s the fat fool of the Curtain,
And the lean fool of the Bull:
Since Shancke did leave to sing his rhimes,
He is counted but a gull:
The players on the Bankside,
The round Globe and the Swan,
Will teach you idle tricks of love,
But the Bull will play the man.

The verses are dated 1662, but the theatres named indicate a much earlier date.

SHAW (SHAA, autograph), ROBERT. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s, 1597–1602. John, son of Robert Shaw, ‘player’, was baptized on 10 April 1603, at St. Saviour’s, and Robert Shaw, ‘a man’, buried on 12 September 1603 (H. ii. 309; _Bodl._).

SHEALDEN. A ‘player’, who witnessed a loan for Henslowe on 24 August 1594 (H. i. 76).

SHEPARD. Paul’s door-keeper, 1582.

SHEPPARD, WILLIAM. A ‘player’, whose son Robert by his wife Johane was baptized at St. Helen’s, 26 November 1602.

SIBTHORPE, EDWARD. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.

SIMPSON, CHRISTOPHER. Shoemaker of Egton, Yorks, recusant and unlicensed player in 1610–12 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

SIMPSON, CUTHBERT. Of Egton, recusant and unlicensed player, 1616 (_ibid._).

SIMPSON, JOHN. Of Egton, recusant and unlicensed player, 1616 (_ibid._).

SIMPSON, RICHARD. Of Egton, recusant and unlicensed player, 1616 (_ibid._).

SIMPSON, ROBERT. Shoemaker of Staythes, Yorks, recusant and unlicensed player, 1612, 1616 (_ibid._).

SINCLER (SINKLO, SINCKLO), JOHN. Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Pembroke’s (?), 1592–3; Chamberlain’s, 1594 (?)-1604.

SINGER, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583, 1588; Admiral’s, 1594–1603. He became an ordinary Groom of the Chamber in 1603. A John Singer in 1571 owed money to a Canterbury citizen, who had also debts from players (H. R. Plomer in _3 Library_, ix. 253). Children of John Singer, ‘player’, appear in the St. Saviour’s register from 1 August 1597 to 5 October 1609, and his name is in the token-books from 1596 to 1602 (_Bodl._). The _Quips upon Questions_ (1600) of Armin (q. v.) has been ascribed to Singer in error. Rowlands couples him as a clown with Pope (q. v.) in 1600, and Dekker, _Gull’s Horn Book_ (1609), says, ‘Tarlton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of fooles that now come drawling behind them, never played the clowns more naturally than the arrantest sot of you all shall’. Heywood praised him as dead in the same year (H. ii. 310).

SKINNER, RICHARD. Interluders, 1547–58.

SLATER (SLAUGHTER), MARTIN. Admiral’s, 1594–7; Scotland, 1599; Hertford’s, 1603; Anne’s, 1606; King’s Revels manager, 1608; Chamber of Bristol, 1618–19. He is sometimes recorded by his Christian name only. He had a wife on 22 July 1604, and is described as a citizen and ironmonger in 1608. His name is in the Southwark token-books from 1595 to 1602, and Martin Slawter, ‘a servant’, was buried there on 4 August 1625 (H. ii. 310; _Bodl._).

SLAUGHTER, WILLIAM. ‘Ghost-name’ evolved by Mr. Fleay for a supposed Queen’s man.

SLEE (SLYE), JOHN. Queen Jane’s, >1537; Interluders, 1539–40.

SLY, WILLIAM, was doubtless of Strange’s men or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, when he played in _2 Seven Deadly Sins_. On 11 October 1594 Henslowe sold him ‘a jewell of gowld seat with a whitte safer’ for 8_s._ to be paid for at the rate of 1_s._ weekly.[998] But apparently he never paid more than 6_s._ 6_d._ An inventory of garments belonging to the Admiral’s men on 13 March 1598 includes ‘Perowes sewt, which W^m Sley were’.[999] Presumably this had come from Strange’s men, as Sly is never traceable as a member of the Admiral’s company. Probably he joined the Chamberlain’s men on their formation in 1594. He is in all the lists of this company from 1598 to 1605, and in the Induction to _The Malcontent_ (1604). He is also in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare. The fact that ‘Christopher Sly, old Sly’s son of Burton Heath’ is the name given to the beggar in _The Taming of the Shrew_ (_c._ 1594), led Collier to suggest that he migrated from Warwickshire about the same time as Shakespeare. But the beggar in _A Shrew_ is already Sly, and the name occurs in various parts of London. The Southwark token-books show a William Sly in Norman’s Rents during 1588, in Horseshoe Court during 1593, and in Rose Alley during 1595 and 1596.[1000] In 1605 he was named as one of the overseers and residuary executors, with a legacy, in the will of Augustine Phillips. The register of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, records the baptism on 24 September and the burial on 4 October 1606 of John, base-born son of William Sly, player, by Margaret Chambers; and the register of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, records his own burial on 16 August 1608, from Halliwell Street. His nuncupative will was made on 4 August 1608. He left legacies to Cuthbert Burbadge, and James Sandes, and the rest of his property to Robert and Cecily Browne and their daughter Jane. Robert is to have his part of the Globe, and Cecily is appointed executrix. The will was witnessed by several illiterate women, and disputed by a relative named William Sly, but proved on 24 August.[1001] He was not one of the original shareholders in the Globe, but was admitted to a share in 1605 or later. On 9 August 1608, between the date of his will and that of his death, he was granted a lease of a seventh share in the Blackfriars, and this his executrix afterwards surrendered to Richard Burbadge.[1002] Heywood names Sly (_c._ 1608) amongst other dead players, whose ‘deserts’ he commemorates.

SMITH, ANTONY. Charles’s, 1616, 1625.

SMITH, JOHN. Interluders, _c._ 1547–80. Is he the John Smith who assisted George Ferrers as Lord of Misrule in 1552–3 (Feuillerat, _Edw. and Mary_, 120)?

SMITH, JOHN. Revels, 1609.

SMYGHT, WILLIAM. A ‘player’ who witnessed a loan from Philip to Francis Henslowe on 1 June 1595 (H. i. 6; ii. 312).

SOMERSET, GEORGE. Admiral’s, 1601–2. See also JOHN WILSON.

SOUTHEY, THOMAS. Interluders, 1547–56.

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

SPENCER, GABRIEL. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s, 1598. He was slain by Ben Jonson (cf. ch. xxiii) on 22 September 1598, and was buried on the next day but one at St. Leonard’s, where the register records him as from Hogge Lane (Collier, _Actors_, xxii). On 3 December 1596 a coroner’s inquest found that he had himself slain James Feake with a rapier in the house of Richard East, barber, in St. Leonard’s (Jeaffreson, i. xlv, 234). Henslowe sometimes describes him merely as ‘Gabriel’, and under this name Heywood praises him (H. ii. 312).

SPENCER, JOHN. Germany, 1605–23. He was known by the clown-name of Hans Stockfisch.

SQUIRE, LAWRENCE. Master of Chapel, 1486–93.

STEVENS, THOMAS. Denmark-Germany, 1586–7.

STOKEDALE, EDMUND. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

STRATFORD, WILLIAM. Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1610–23. He lived at the upper end of White Cross Street in 1623. His children appear in the St. Giles’s register in that year, and he was buried as a ‘player’ there on 27 August 1625 (J. 348, 350; _Bodl._).

STROWDEWIKE, EDMUND. Interluders, 1559–68.

SUDBURY, THOMAS. Interluders, 1530.

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

SWANSTON, ELIARD. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1622; King’s, 1624–42 (Murray, i. 172, 255).

SWINNERTON (SWETHERTON), THOMAS. Anne’s, 1604–19; for his later career cf. Murray, ii. 101, 105.

SYFERWESTE, RICHARD. Worcester’s (?), 1602 (H. ii. 314).

SYMCOCKES. Lennox’s, 1605.

SYMONS, JOHN. A tumbler. Strange’s, 1583; Oxford’s, 1585; Strange’s, 1586–8 (?); Queen’s, 1588 (?)-9.

TAILOR, ROBERT. Admiral’s, 1601–2.

TARBUCK, JOHN. Revels patentee, 1610.

TARLTON, RICHARD, first appears in the ‘Q^d Richard Tarlton’ at the end of a ballad called _A very lamentable and wofull discours of the fierce fluds ... the 5. of October, 1570_ (Arber, i. 440).[1003] This is preserved (Halliwell, 126; Collier, _Old Ballads_, 78; H. L. Collman, _Ballads and Broadsides_, 265). The Stationers’ Registers also record in 1576 ‘a newe booke in Englishe verse intituled Tarltons Toyes’ (Arber, ii. 306), in 1578 ‘Tarltons Tragical Treatises conteyninge sundrie discourses and pretie conceiptes bothe in prose and verse’ (Arber, ii. 323), and in 1579 ‘Tarltons devise upon this unlooked for great snowe’ (Arber, ii. 346); but these are all lost. _Tarltons Jigge of a horse loade of Fooles_ (Halliwell, xx) should, if it is genuine, date from about 1579, as the jest at the Puritan fool ‘Goose son’ is obviously aimed at Stephen Gosson; but it reads to me like a fake, and Halliwell took it from a manuscript belonging to Collier, who had already quoted it in his tainted _New Facts_, 18. It is improbable that Richard is the ‘one Tarlton’ whose house in Paris Garden is included in a list of suspected papist resorts sent by Richard Frith to Alderman Martin at some date not earlier than 1585 (Wright, _Eliz._ ii. 250). The first mention of him is by Gabriel Harvey (cf. p. 4) in 1579, when he had already acquired some reputation. He became an original member of the Queen’s men (q. v.) in 1583, and remained their principal comedian until his death in 1588. For this company he wrote _The Seven Deadly Sins_ (q. v.) in 1585. Music for some of his jigs is in existence (Halliwell, _Cambridge Manuscript Rarities_, 8) and his facility as a jester made him, until he pushed it too far, a _persona grata_ in Elizabeth’s presence. Bohun, 352, says that the Queen admitted ‘Tarleton, a famous comedian, and a pleasant talker, and other such like men, to divert her with stories of the town and the common jests or accidents, but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty and chastity’. He adds, ‘Tarleton, who was then the best comedian in England, had made a pleasant play, and when it was acting before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Raleigh and said “See, the Knave commands the Queen”, for which he was corrected by a frown from the Queen; yet he had the confidence to add that he was of too much and too intolerable a power; and going on with the same liberty, he reflected on the overgreat power and riches of the Earl of Leicester, which was so universally applauded by all that were present, that she thought best to bear these reflections with a seeming unconcernedness. But yet she was so offended, that she forbad Tarleton and all her jesters from coming near her table, being inwardly displeased with this impudent and unseasonable liberty.’ An anecdote of Tarlton ‘playing the God Luz with a flitch of bacon at his back’, fighting the Queen’s little dog Perrico de Faldes with sword and long staff, and exchanging chaff with the Earl of Sussex (Halliwell, _Death-bed_, 30, from _S. P. Dom. Eliz._ ccxv, 89) might have some point if Luz was a take-off of Leicester. On 27 October 1587 Tarlton was allowed as a Master of Fence, and is described as an ‘ordenary grome off her majestes chamber’ (_Sloane MS._ 2530, f. 6). The same description recurs in his will, which was signed on 3 September 1588, the actual day of his burial at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, from Halliwell Street. He left his property to his son Philip, as whose guardians he appointed his mother Katharine, then a widow, his friend Robert Adams, and his fellow of the Queen’s men, William Johnson. One of the witnesses, Charles Barnard, was his sister’s husband. This will was disputed by Katharine Tarlton, who brought a bill in Chancery, alleging that after signing it and making over property worth £700 to Adams, Tarlton repented, tried in vain to recall the will, and made another. A rejoinder by Adams accuses Katharine of acting under the influence of another son-in-law, Thomas Lee, a butcher, and describes how Adams was called to Tarlton’s death-bed in the house of one Emma Ball in Shoreditch, ‘of a very bad reputacion’. Some colour is given to his mother’s complaint by a death-bed petition from Tarlton to Walsingham, begging his protection for Philip, who was Sidney’s godson, against ‘a sly fellow, on Addames’ (_S. P. Dom. Eliz._ ccxv. 90). There is no mention of Tarlton’s wife; the boy was six years old. Robert Adams was apparently a lawyer, and to be distinguished from John Adams of the Queen’s men, who is referred to as a fellow of Tarlton’s by the stage keeper in _Bartholomew Fair_ (Induction 38), ‘I kept the Stage in Master _Tarletons_ time, I thanke my starres. Ho! and that man had liu’d to haue play’d in _Bartholmew Fayre_, you should ha’ seene him ha’ come in, and ha’ beene coozened i’ the Cloath-quarter, so finely. And _Adams_, the Rogue, ha’ leap’d and caper’d vpon him, and ha’ dealt his vermine about, as though they had cost him nothing.’ After Tarlton’s death, several pamphlets, ascribed to him or otherwise exploiting his popularity, came to the press; in 1588 ‘a ballad intituled Tarltons Farewell’ (Arber, ii. 500); in 1589 ‘a sorowfull newe sonnette, intituled Tarltons Recantacon uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Bel savage without Ludgate (nowe or ells never) beinge the laste theame he songe’ (Arber, ii. 526); in 1589 ‘Tarltons repentance of his farewell to his frendes in his sicknes a little before his deathe’ (Arber, ii. 531); in 1590 ‘a pleasant dyttye dialogue wise betwene Tarltons ghost and Robyn Good Fellowe’ (Arber, ii. 559). These are lost, unless, indeed, _Tarltons Farewell_ is identical with ‘A pretie new ballad, entituled Willie and Peggie, to the tune of Tarlton’s Carroll’, printed in _Archiv._ cxiv. 341, and A. Clark, _Shirburn Ballads_, 351, from _Rawl. Poet. MS._ 185, f. 10. This ends ‘qd. Richard Tarlton’, but it is in fact a lament over the death of Tarlton under the name of Willie, as is clearly shown by lines 23 ‘None would be wery to see him one stage’, 41 ‘A groome of her chamber my Willie was made’, 55 ‘To singe them their themes he never denied’. These verses support the theory, based upon a contemporary note in a copy of Spenser (cf. _6 N. Q._ xi. 417; Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 394), that Tarlton is the ‘pleasant Willy’ mourned as dead in the _Tears of the Muses_ (1591), 208, and if he is also the Yorick of _Hamlet_, v. 1. 201, he was sufficiently honoured. Another ballad in the same manuscript on the Armada (_Archiv._ cxiv. 344; _Ballads from MS._ ii. 92) also claims to be to the tune of Tarlton’s ‘carroll’; the ‘Carroll’ itself is unknown. ‘_Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie. Onelye such a jest as his Jigge, fit for Gentlemen to laugh at an houre, &c. Published by an old companion of his, Robin Goodfellow_’ (n.d., but entered in S. R. 26 June 1590; Arber, ii. 553) is a volume of _novelle_, put into the mouth of Tarlton’s ghost. The writer describes him as ‘only superficially seene in learning, having no more but a bare insight into the Latin tung’, and physically as ‘one attired in russet, with a buttond cap on his head, a great bag by his side, and a strong bat in his hand’. Similarly, Henry Chettle, who put into his mouth a defence of plays forming a section of _Kind-hartes Dreame_ (1592; cf. App. C, No. xlix), knew him in a dream ‘by his sute of russet, his buttond cap, his taber, his standing on the toe, and other tricks’. _The Cobler of Caunterburie or an Invective against Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie_ (1590) is also a volume of _novelle_, and has practically nothing about Tarlton. On the other hand, _Tarltons Jests_ at least claims to be biographical, although its material, like that of Peele’s _Jests_, largely consists of the flotsam and jetsam of all the jest-books. The earliest extant edition is of 1611. But it was transferred from one publisher to another in 1609 (Arber, iii. 402), the second of its three parts, which mentions the Globe (Halliwell, 23), was entered in S. R. on 4 August 1600 (Arber, iii. 168), and probably therefore the first part was already in print in the sixteenth century. It speaks of Tarlton as a Queen’s man (Halliwell, 13, 27, 29, 30, 33), as playing at the Bull in Bishopsgate (13, 24), where he did both the clown and the judge in ‘Henry the Fifth’ (_The Famous Victories_) to Knell’s Harry, the Curtain (16), and the Bell in Gracechurch Street (24), as singing themes (16, 27, 28, 40), and as jesting in clown’s apparel in the royal presence or in the Great Chamber at Court (7, 8). It also tells us, for what the statements are worth, that his father lived at Ilford (40), that he had a wife Kate of light character (17, 19), that he kept the Saba tavern in Gracechurch Street, where he was scavenger of the ward (15, 21, 22), and an ordinary in Paternoster Row (21, 26), and that he had a squint (12) and a flat nose (28). A woodcut on the title-page confirms these peculiarities of feature, and represents a short, broad-faced, cunning-looking man, with curly hair, an elaborate moustache and a starved beard, wearing a cap, and a bag or moneybox slung at his side, and playing on a tabor and a pipe. This appears to be taken from a drawing by John Scottowe in an initial letter to some verses on Tarlton’s death in _Harl. MS._ 3885, f. 19. Nashe, _Pierce Penilesse_ (1592, _Works_, i. 188), gives us a hint of his stage methods in describing how at a provincial performance, as the Queen’s men ‘were now entring into their first merriment (as they call it) the people began exceedingly to laugh, when _Tarlton_ first peeped out his head’, and how a ‘cholericke wise Iustice’ laid his staff about their pates, ‘in that they, being but Farmers & poore countrey Hyndes, would presume to laugh at the Queenes men, and make no more account of her cloath in his presence’. According to Fuller (_Worthies_, iii. 139) Tarlton was born at Condover in Shropshire, and kept his father’s swine there, until a servant of the Earl of Leicester, struck with his witty replies, brought him to Court. On the other hand, in the _Three Lords and Three Ladies of London_ (1590), by his fellow Robert Wilson, Simplicity produces his picture, and says he was ‘a prentice in his youth of this honorable city: ... when he was yoong he was leaning to the trade ... waterbearing: I wis he hath tossed a tankard in Cornehil er now’ (sign. C^v). Halliwell (xxx) has collected a large number of allusions to Tarleton and his humours, lasting well into the middle of the seventeenth century. Taverns were named after him, and one is said to have still stood in Southwark in 1798. Much of the action of W. Percy’s _Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants_ (q. v.) takes place at the Tarlton Inn, Colchester, of which he is said to have been the ‘quondam controller and induperator’. Tarlton himself speaks the prologue to the play. George Wilson, _The Commendation of Cockes and Cock-fighting_ (1607), records that on 4 May 1602 there fought at Norwich ‘a cocke called Tarleton, who was so intituled, because he alwayes came to the fight like a drummer, making a thundering noyse with his winges, which cocke fought many batels with mighty and fierce adversaries’.

TAWYER, WILLIAM. At _M. N. D._ v. 1. 128, F_{1} has the s. d. ‘Tawyer with a Trumpet before them’. The St. Saviour’s burials give in June 1625, ‘William Tawier, M^r Heminges man’.

TAYLOR, JOHN. Choir Master at St. Mary’s, Woolnoth, 1557; at Westminster, 1561–7.

TAYLOR, JOSEPH, is conjectured by Collier to be the Joseph Taylor who was baptized at St. Andrew’s by the Wardrobe in Blackfriars on 6 February 1586, the Joseph Taylor who married Elizabeth Ingle, widow, at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 2 May 1610, and the Joseph Taylor who is shown by the Southwark token-books as dwelling in ‘M^r Langley’s new rents, near the play-house’ during 1607, in Austen’s Rents during 1612 and 1615, as ‘gone’ in 1617, and as dwelling ‘near the play-house’ in 1623 and 1629, ‘on the Bankside’ in 1631, and in Gravel Lane during 1633. ‘Joseph Taylor, player,’ is entered in the St. Saviour’s registers as the father of Elsabeth (bapt. 12 July 1612), Dixsye and Joseph (bapt. 21 July 1614), Jone (bapt. 11 January 1616), Robert (bapt. 1 June 1617), and Anne (bapt. 24 August 1623).[1004] On the other hand, a Joseph Taylor, not improbably a player, was living in Bishopsgate near the Spittle in 1623 (J. 347). He was a member of the Duke of York’s company in 1610, but left them without the consent of his fellows for the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1611, and thereby involved himself during the same year in a lawsuit with John Heminges.[1005] He is in the actor-lists of _The Honest Man’s Fortune_ (1613) and of _The Coxcomb_, as played by the Lady Elizabeth’s men about the same date, and is also named in the text of their _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614). There seems to have been some sort of amalgamation between the Duke of York’s, now Prince Charles’s, and the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1615, and when this terminated in the following year, Taylor became again a member of the Prince’s company. He was still with them between 6 January and 2 February 1619, when he appeared as Dr. Almanac in Middleton and Rowley’s _Mask of Heroes_, but on 19 May 1619 he appears in a livery warrant issued for the King’s men. As he is not in their patent of the previous 27 March, it is to be supposed that he joined them to replace Burbadge, who had died on 13 March.[1006] The rest of his stage career was spent with the King’s men. He succeeded Burbadge in several of his characters, including Ferdinand in the _Duchess of Malfi_ and Hamlet, although the incidence of dates must cast some doubt upon the statement of Downes that he was instructed in the part ‘by the Author M^r Shakespear’.[1007] Wright says that he played it ‘incomparably well’, and praises him also as Iago in _Othello_, Truewit in _Epicoene_, and Face in _The Alchemist_.[1008] He is included in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. In 1623 Nicholas Tooley left him £10 to pay a debt for which Tooley had become his surety. With Lowin he seems to have assumed the leadership of the company in succession to Heminges and Condell, and after Heminges’s death in 1630 he was admitted to two shares in the ‘house’ of the Globe and one in that of the Blackfriars, which he still held in 1635. About 1637 he petitioned for a waiter’s place in the Custom House of London,[1009] and on 11 November 1639 he obtained the post of Yeoman of the Revels, probably through the influence of Sir Henry Herbert, with whom he had been in frequent contact as representative of his company.[1010] After the closing of the theatres he joined his fellows of the King’s men in publishing the First Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays in 1647, and for his benefit and Lowin’s _The Wild-goose Chase_ was added in 1652. He died at Richmond and was there buried on 4 November 1652.[1011] The ascription to his brush of the ‘Chandos’ portrait of Shakespeare is now discredited.

THARE (THAYER), JOHN. Worcester’s, 1602–3; Germany, 1603–6 (?).

TILBERY, JOHN. Chapel, 1405.

TOMSONE, JOHN. A ‘player’ who borrowed 5_s._ from Henslowe on 22 December 1598 (H. i. 40).

TOOLEY, NICHOLAS, appears in the 1619 patent to the King’s men, but not in that of 1603. He probably joined the company about 1605, as he received a legacy under the will of Phillips on 4 May as his ‘fellow’. He is not in the actor-list of _Volpone_ in that year, but is in most of the later actor-lists from _The Alchemist_ (1610) to _The Spanish Curate_ (1622), and in that of the First Folio Shakespeare. In 1619 he witnessed Richard Burbadge’s will. He made his own will as Nicholas Tooley, Gentleman, on 3 June 1623. After legacies to charity, to the families of ‘my good friend Mr. Cuthbert Burbadge (in whose house I do now lodge)’, of ‘my late Mr. Richard Burbadge deceased’, and of ‘my good friend Mr. Henry Condell’, and to Joseph Taylor, and remissions of debt to John Underwood and William Ecclestone, but not to Richard Robinson, he ends by making Burbadge and Condell his executors and residuary legatees. By a codicil of the same date, signed as Nicholas Wilkinson _alias_ Tooley, he guards against any danger of invalidity due to his failure to use the name of Wilkinson.[1012] Presumably, therefore, Wilkinson, and not Tooley, was his original name. The name of Tooley was fairly common in London, and more than one Nicholas Wilkinson has been traced. He may have been the Nicholas, son of Charles Wilkinson, baptized at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, on 3 February 1575.[1013] There seems no reason to connect him with a Nicholas Tooley found on the Warwickshire muster-book in 1569.[1013] His reference to Richard Burbadge as his ‘master’ suggests that he was his apprentice. It is tempting, but arbitrary, to identify him with the ‘Nick’ who played with Strange’s men in _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ about 1592, or the ‘Nycke’ who tumbled before Elizabeth for the Admiral’s in 1601 and is commended by Joan to Edward Alleyn on 21 October 1603.[1014] The register of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, records the burial of ‘Nicholas Tooley, gentleman, from the house of Cuthbert Burbidge, gentleman’, on 5 June 1623.[1015]

TOTTNELL, HARRY. A ‘player’ whose daughter Joan was baptized at St. Saviour’s on 20 March 1591 (_Bodl._).

TOWNE, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583, 1588, 1594–7. Greg (H. ii. 315) rather arbitrarily suggests that Henslowe’s note of him as a witness to a loan to Francis Henslowe of the Queen’s on 8 May 1593 (H. i. 4) is by an error for Thomas (q. v.).

TOWNE, THOMAS. Admiral’s-Henry’s, 1594–1610. His name is in a s. d. to _1 Honest Whore_ (1604). Alleyn’s papers record a widow Agnes. Towne’s name is in the Southwark token-books during 1600–7, and Thomas Towne ‘a man’ was buried on 9 August 1612. Towne’s will of 4 July 1612 names his wife, whom he calls Ann, and his brother John, of Dunwich in Suffolk (‘if he be still living’) and leaves £3 to his fellows Borne, Downton, Juby, Rowley, Massey, and Humphrey Jeffes, ‘to make them a supper when it shall please them to call for it’ (H. ii. 316; _Bodl._, citing will in P. C. C.).

TOWNSEND, JOHN. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1616–32 (?); for his later career, cf. Murray, i. 252–60; ii. 8.

TOY. The performer of Will Summer in _Summer’s Last Will and Testament_.

TREVELL, WILLIAM. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, 1621.

TRUSSELL, ALVERY. Chapel, 1600–1.

TUNSTALL (DONSTALL, DONSTONE), JAMES. Worcester’s, 1583; Admiral’s, 1590–1, 1594–7. Guilpin, _Skialetheia_ (1598), refers to him in conjunction with Alleyn (q. v.). The variation in his name is made more, rather than less, puzzling by the baptism at St. Botolph’s of Dunstone Tunstall on 20 August 1572 (H. ii. 261).

UBALDINI, PETRUCCIO. Italians, 1576 (?).

UNDERELL. Worcester’s, 1602. A Thomas Underell was a royal trumpeter in 1609–24 (_Chamber Accounts_).

UNDERWOOD, JOHN, was a Chapel boy in the year 1601, and continued at Blackfriars until, as the _Sharers Papers_ state, on growing up to be a man, he was taken to strengthen the King’s service. This was in 1608 or a little later. He is not in the Queen’s Revels actor-list of _Epicoene_ (1609), and is in the King’s men’s actor-list of _The Alchemist_ (1610), and thereafter in the official lists and most of the actor-lists of the company, including that of the First Folio Shakespeare, up to 1624. Tooley in his will of 1623 forgave him a debt. His own will was made on 4 October 1624 and has a codicil appended on 10 October, doubtless from his oral directions, but after his death. He describes himself as ‘of the parish of Saint Bartholomew the Less, in London, gent.’, and leaves his shares in the Blackfriars, Globe, and Curtain to his executors, of whom Henry Condell is one, in trust for his five children, all under twenty-one--John, Elizabeth, Burbage, Thomas, and Isabel. The executors and his ‘fellowes’, Mr. John Heminges and John Lowin, who are appointed overseers, have 11s. each for rings.[1016] The baptism of his son John on 27 December 1610 is in the register of Saint Bartholomew the Less, West Smithfield.[1017] The trust was still unexpired at Condell’s death in 1627, and was handed on by him to his wife. The _Sharers Papers_ of 1635 show one share in the Blackfriars still in the hands of an Underwood; but apparently a third of it had been parted with about 1632 to Eliart Swanston.[1018]

VINCENT. Strange’s (?), 1590–1.

VIRNIUS, JOHANN FRIEDRICH. Germany, 1615.

WAKEFIELD, EDWARD. Germany, 1597, 1602.

WALPOLE, FRANCIS. Anne’s, 1616–17.

WARD, ANTHONY. Vide ARKINSTALL.

WAYMUS (WAMBUS), FRANCIS. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1617–24.

WEBSTER, GEORGE. Germany, 1598, 1600–3.

WEBSTER, JOHN. Germany, 1596. Is he identical with the dramatist?

WESTCOTT, SEBASTIAN. Master of Paul’s, 1557–82. He is sometimes described by his Christian name alone.

WHETSTONE, _c._ 1571. Cf. s.v. FIDGE. Plomer suggests that he might be George Whetstone (cf. ch. xxiii).

WHITELOCKE, JAMES, afterwards Sir James. Merchant Taylors, 1575–86.

WILDER, PHILIP VAN. Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and lutenist, commissioned to raise a royal company of young minstrels in 1550; cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel.

‘WILL.’ Strange’s, 1590–1.

‘WILL.’ Admiral’s, 1597.

WILLIAMS, JOHN. Chapel, 1509.

WILSON, JOHN. In _Much Ado_, ii. 3. 38, for the ‘Enter Balthaser with musicke’ of Q_{1}, F_{1} has ‘Enter ... Iacke Wilson’, who therefore, at some date before 1623, sang ‘Sigh no more, ladies!’ He is probably the son of Nicholas Wilson, ‘minstrel’, baptized at St. Bartholomew’s the Less on 24 April 1585. He had an elder brother Adam, and buried a wife Joan on 17 July 1624, and an unnamed son on 3 September 1624 at St. Giles’s from the house of George Sommerset, musician (Collier, _Actors_, xviii). He seems to have become a city ‘wait’ about 1622 and to have still held his post in 1641, and has been confused (Collier in _Sh. Soc. Papers_, ii. 33; E. F. Rimbault, _Who was Jacke Wilson?_, 1846) with another John Wilson, born in 1595, a royal lutenist and musician of distinction (cf. _D. N. B._). One or other of them was concerned with a performance of _M. N. D._ in the house of John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, on 27 September 1631, which gave offence to the Puritans (Murray, ii. 148).

WILSON, ROBERT, was one of Leicester’s men in 1572, 1574, and 1581. A reference in Gabriel Harvey’s correspondence of 1579 suggests that he was conspicuous amongst the actors of the day, and Lodge’s praise about the same date in the _Defence of Plays_ of his _Shorte and Sweete_, ‘the practice of a good scholler,’ shows that he was also a playwright. This piece Lodge compares with Gosson’s _Catiline’s Conspiracies_, and it may have been on the same theme. Further evidence of his reputation is in the letter of 1581 from T. Baylye (q. v.). In 1583 he joined the Queen’s men, and is described by Howes in his account of the formation of that company as a ‘rare’ man ‘for a quicke, delicate, refined, extemporall witt’. He is not in the Queen’s list of 1588. This may not be quite complete; on the other hand he may by then have left the company. I see no solid foundation for the conjectures of Fleay, ii. 279, that he was the player of _Greenes Groatsworth of Wit_ (cf. App. C, No. xlviii) who penned the _Moral of Man’s Wit_ and the _Dialogue of Dives_, that he wrote _Fair Em_, that he left the Queen’s for Strange’s in 1590 and thereby incurred Greene’s hostility, that he is the Roscius of Nashe’s _Menaphon_ epistle, that he died of the plague in 1593. It is extremely unlikely that he died in 1593, for in his _Palladis Tamia_ of 1598, after lauding Tarlton as famous for ‘extemporall verse’, Meres continues, ‘And so is now our wittie Wilson, who for learning and extemporall witte in this facultie is without compare or compeere, as to his great and eternall commendations he manifested in his chalenge at the Swanne on the Banke side.’ The common use by Meres and Howes of the phrase ‘extemporall witte’ renders it almost impossible to suppose that they are not speaking of the same man. It is true that, in the _Apology for Actors_, Heywood, whose knowledge of the stage must have gone back at least to 1594, classes Wilson with the older generation of actors, whom he never saw, as being before his time, and I take it the explanation is that, at or before the virtual break-up of the Queen’s men in the plague of 1592–3, Wilson gave up acting, and devoted himself to writing, and occasional extemporizing on themes. He is generally supposed to be the R. W. of _The Three Ladies of London_ (1584) and _The Three Lords of London_ (1590), and the ‘Robert Wilson, Gent.’ of _The Cobbler’s Prophecy_ (1594). The ‘Gent.’ is hardly an insuperable obstacle to identifying him with the ‘Robert Wilson, yoman (a player)’, who was buried at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 20 November 1600 (Collier, _Actors_, xviii). A Wilson is in the suspected Admiral’s cast of _c._ January 1600. But now comes the real difficulty. Meres, also in the _Palladis Tamia_ and without any indication that he has another man in mind, includes ‘Wilson’ in a group of ‘the best for comedy amongst vs’, which is composed of the principal writers for the Admiral’s in 1598, and amongst these writers, as shown by Henslowe’s papers, was a Robert Wilson, who collaborated in eleven plays during 1598, and in three more during 1599 and 1600. He is last mentioned in a letter of 14 June 1600. This is generally taken to be a younger man than the Queen’s player, possibly a Robert Wilson who was baptized at St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, on 22 September 1579, and married Mary Eaton there on 24 June 1606, possibly the Robert Wilson (not described as ‘a player and the younger’ as Collier suggests in _Bodl._) whose son Robert was baptized at St. Leonard’s on 15 January 1601 (Stopes, _Burbage_, 141), possibly the Robert Wilson whose burial is recorded at St. Bartholomew’s the Less on 21 October 1610. On the whole, I am inclined to think that, in view of the character of Meres’ references, of the use of Catiline as a play-theme both about 1580 and in 1598 (cf. ch. xxiii), and of the sudden disappearance of Wilson from Henslowe’s diary in the year of the ‘player’s’ death, the balance of evidence is in favour of one playwright rather than two. The undefined share of the Admiral’s man in the extant _1 Sir John Oldcastle_ does not really afford a basis for stylistic comparison with the more old-fashioned manners of the 1584–94 plays. There is nothing to show that the Bishopsgate man had any connexion with the stage, still less that he was a son of the Queen’s player, as has been suggested.

WINTER, RICHARD. Possibly an actor at Canterbury, _c._ 1571 (_3 Library_, ix. 253).

WODERAM, RICHARD. Oxford’s, 1586–7 (?).

WOODFORD, THOMAS. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, 1621.

WOODS, JOHN. Holland, 1604.

WORTH, ELLIS. Anne’s, 1615–19; for his later career, cf. Murray, i. 198, 218. He is described as ‘gentleman’ in the register of St. Giles’s at the baptism of his daughter Jane on 19 July 1613, and as ‘player’ at that of his son Elizeus on 12 March 1629 (_Bodl._).

WYLKYNSON, JOHN. A London ‘coriour’, who maintained players in his house in 1549 (cf. App. D, No. ii).

YOUNG, JOHN. Queen Jane’s, >1537; Interluders, 1539–53 (?). He seems to have been still alive in 1569–70.