‘Sep. 2. Kemp, mimus quidam, qui peregrinationem quandam in Germaniam et Italiam instituerat, post multos errores, et infortunia sua, reversus: multa refert de Anthonio Sherley, equite aurato, quem Romae (legatum Persicum agentem) convenerat.’

Possibly Kempe rejoined the Chamberlain’s for a while. In 3 Parnassus (? January 1602), iv. 3, he is introduced as a fellow of Burbadge and Shakespeare, and greeted with allusions to his ‘dancing the morrice ouer the Alpes’ and ‘the Emperour of Germany’. But on 10 March 1602 he had a loan from Henslowe, and during the winter of 1602–3 he was certainly one of Worcester’s men. The dates do not lend support to the suggestion of Fleay, ii. 20, that he had already in 1599–1600 been at the Rose with Pembroke’s men. After the end of Elizabeth’s reign he is not traceable, and he is mentioned as dead in Heywood, Apology (c. 1608), and dead or retired in Dekker, Gull’s Hornbook (1609), 11, ‘Tarlton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of fools that now come drawling behind them, never played the clown more naturally.’ A William Kempe is recorded in token-books of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, as living in Samson’s Rents in 1595, 1596, 1598, and 1599, in Langley’s New Rents in 1602, and later near the old play-house (Collier, iii. 351, and Bodl.; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi). Collier, but not Rendle, gives the date ‘1605’ for the last entry, probably with a view to supporting his notice of Kempe, as playing with Armin at the Blackfriars (q.v.) in 1605, which is doubtless a fabrication. On the other hand, though the date is plausible, the notice of ‘Kempe a man’ as buried at St. Saviour’s on 2 November 1603 (Rendle, xxvii) is not so worded as to be absolutely conclusive. The name was a common one, and Collier, Actors, xxxvi, gives notices of it from other parishes. In T. Weelkes, Ayres on Phantasticke Sprites (1608), it is said of Kempe that ‘into France He took pains to skip it’. His visit to Venice and meeting with Sherley are dramatized in Travels of Three English Brothers (1607) and apparently misdated after the Englands Joy of November 1602. Finally, an epitaph upon him is in R. Braithwaite, Remains after Death (1618), sig. F 8v, which suggests that he died not long after his morris.

KENDALL, THOMAS. Blackfriars manager, 1602; Revels patentee, 1604. He died in 1608.

KENDALL, WILLIAM. Admiral’s, 1597–8; Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, >1614. His son John was baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 5 January 1615 (Bodl.).

KEYSAR, ROBERT. Revels manager, 1606–10 (?); Blackfriars lessee, 1606–8. To him was written the epistle to K. B. P.

KING, ARTHUR. Berkeley’s, 1581.

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

KINGMAN (KINGSMAN), PHILIP. Germany, 1596; Porter’s Hall patentee, 1615. ‘Mr Kyngman the elder’ was a witness for Henslowe on 16 April 1599 (H. i. 205).

KINGSMAN, ROBERT. Germany, 1599, 1601; afterwards a tradesman in Strassburg, 1606 (?), 1618, 1626.

KIRCK (KIRCKMANN), JOHN. Denmark, 1579–80.

KIRKHAM, EDWARD. Chapel manager, 1602; Revels patentee, 1604–6. He is probably the Yeoman of the Revels (cf. ch. iii).

KITE, JOHN. Gentleman of Chapel, 1508; afterwards Abp. of Armagh.

KNAGGES, RICHARD. Of Moorsham, Yorks, unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

KNELL, WILLIAM (?). Queen’s, >1588. A Rebecca, widow of William Knell, married John Heminges (q.v.), 10 March 1588. Heywood notes Knell as before his time. Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592, Works, i. 215), names him with Tarlton, Alleyn, and Bentley, and he is coupled with Bentley in the undated challenge to Alleyn (q.v.) to play one of their parts.

KNIGHT, ROBERT. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

KOSTRESSEN, JOHAN, musician. Germany, 1623.

KRAFFT, JOHN. Denmark, 1579–80.

LANEHAM, JOHN. Leicester’s, 1572–4; Queen’s, 1583, 1588–91. Heywood notes him as before his time. Was he related to Robert Laneham, Keeper of the Council Chamber door, who described the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv) in 1575?

LANMAN, HENRY. Owner of Curtain, 1581–92. Adams, 80, suggests, apparently from the similarity of the names, that he was a brother of John Laneham.

LEBERWURST, HANS. Germany, 1613.

LEDBETTER, ROBERT. Admiral’s, 1597; Germany, 1599, 1601, 1606.

LEE, ROBERT. Admiral’s (?), >1591; Anne’s, 1604–19; Revels Company, 1622. He had a business transaction with Edward and John Alleyn and Thomas Goodale (q.v.) in 1593. He lived in Clerkenwell Close in 1623 (H. ii. 294; J. 347; Murray, i. 198).

LEEKE, DAVID. Possibly an actor at Canterbury, c. 1571 (3 Library, ix. 253).

LEVESON, ROBERT. Oxford’s, 1580.

LISTER, EDWARD. Weaver of Allerston, Yorks, unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

LONG, NICHOLAS. Revels (provincial) manager, 1612, 1617; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1614–15. For his later career, cf. Murray, i. 192, 361; ii. 101. He was buried at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 21 January 1622 (Bodl.).

LOVEKYN, ARTHUR. Chapel, 1509–13.

LOWIN, JOHN, was a member of Worcester’s company during their season of 1602–3 with Henslowe at the Rose. On 12 March 1603 Henslowe lent him money to go into the country with the company, but during the course of the year he must have transferred his services to the King’s men, presumably as a hireling, since, although in the cast of Sejanus (1603) and the Induction to Malcontent (1604) he is not in the official lists of 1603 and 1604. A portrait of him in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, has the inscription ‘1640, Aetat. 64’, and he may therefore be identified with the John, son of Richard Lowen, baptized at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 9 December 1576. If so, his father seems to have been a carpenter, and he had a sister Susan and a brother William.[969] He remained through a long life with the King’s men, appearing in most of the casts, in the actor-list of the First Folio, and in the official lists from 1619 onwards. He played Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi. A pamphlet entitled Conclusions upon Dances (1607) has a dedication to Lord Denny, dated 23 November 1606, and signed ‘I. L. Roscio’. Collier claims to have found in a copy of this the note ‘By Jhon Lowin. Witnesseth Tho. D. 1610’.[970] A John Lowen married Joan Hall, widow, by licence, in St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, on 29 October 1607.[971] Shortly afterwards a John Lowin was paying a poor-rate of 2d. weekly in the liberty of the Clink. The Southwark token-books attest his residence ‘near the play-house’ and in other parts of the parish at various dates from 1601 to 1642.[972] He was overseer of Paris Garden in 1617–18.[973] But in 1623 he lived in Lambeth (J. 348). He is named as a legatee and overseer in the will of his ‘fellow’ John Underwood in 1624. It appears from the Sharers Papers that he had no interest in the play-houses until after the death of Heminges in 1630, when he was admitted to purchase two sixteenths of the Globe and one eighth of the Blackfriars. From this time onwards he seems to have shared the business responsibilities of the company with Joseph Taylor. He was also prominent as an actor.[974] Wright enumerates amongst his parts Shakespeare’s Falstaff; but when Roberts adds Hamlet and Henry VIII, he is presumably guessing that Lowin was ‘fat and scant of breath’. He may have been the original Henry VIII, for Downes reports that Betterton was instructed in the part by Sir William Davenant, ‘who had it from old Mr. Lowen, that had his instructions from Mr. Shakespeare himself’.[975] Wright tells us that at the outbreak of civil war he was ‘superannuated’, and ‘in his latter days kept an inn (the Three Pigeons) at Brentford, where he dyed very old (for he was an actor of eminent note in the reign of King James the First), and his poverty was as great as his age’.[976] He signed with Taylor the dedication to Fletcher’s The Wild-goose Chase in 1652, the publication of which was an attempt to relieve their necessities. A ‘John Lewin’ who left a widow Martha, was buried at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields on 18 March 1659, and a ‘John Lowen’ at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, on 16 March 1669.[977] Probably a G. Lowin who played Barnaveldt’s daughter to Lowin’s Barnaveldt in 1619 was his son.

LYLY, JOHN. Blackfriars lessee, 1583; Oxford’s payee, 1584; and dramatist.

MACHIN, RICHARD. Germany, 1600–3, 1605–6.

MAGETT, STEPHEN. Admiral’s tireman, 1596, 1599 (?) (H. ii. 295).

MARBECK, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1602.

MARSHALL, CHARLES. Palsgrave’s (provincial), 1616.

MARSTON, JOHN. Blackfriars lessee, 1603–8, and dramatist.

MARTINELLI (?), ANGELICA. Italians, >1598.

MARTINELLI, DRUSIANO. Italians, 1578.

MARTON, THOMAS. Chapel, 1602.

MARTYN, WILLIAM. Payee for a company at Ipswich, 20 February 1572 (Murray, ii. 290).

MASON, JOHN. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, and dramatist.

MASSEY (MASSYE), CHARLES. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–>1635 (?); Fortune lessee, 1618–>1635; and dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii). He is probably the Charles Marcy or Mercy, variously described as ‘player’, ‘gentleman’, and ‘yeoman’ in the registers of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, from 30 December 1610 to 20 July 1625. He died before 6 December 1635, leaving a widow Elianor, and had a cousin Ned Collins (H. ii. 296; Bodl.).

MAXE, ROBERT. Chapel, 1509–>1513.

MAY, EDWARD. Interluders, 1494–1503.

MAY, NATHAN. Licensee for 2 King’s Revels, 1615. Possibly the name, as given in Murray, ii. 340, may be a mistake for Clay (q.v.).

MAYLER, GEORGE. Interluders, 1525–40.

MEADE, JACOB. Keeper of the Bears, by 1599, and partner with Henslowe in the Bear Garden and Hope. He was buried at St. Saviour’s on 9 July 1624 (Bodl.).

MELYONEK, JOHN. Master of Chapel (?), 1483–5.

MERYELL, HENRY. Chapel, 1509.

MILS (MYLLES), TOBIAS. Queen’s, 1583. Heywood notes him as before his time. He was buried as ‘one of the Queenes Maiesties players’ at St. Olave’s, Southwark, on 11 July 1585, and his sons William and Toby were baptized on 3 January 1584 and 5 September 1585 (Bodl.). Probably, therefore, ‘one Myles, one of my lord of Summersettes players’, whose testimony to the value of Bath waters for the gout is cited in a hydropathic treatise of 1557 (Collier, i. 139), was of an older generation. Somerset was beheaded on 22 January 1552. Robert Cecil had a Secretary Milles, whose son Tobias was buried at Chelsea on 9 April 1599 (R. Davies, Chelsea Old Church, 296).

MOON, PETER. Payee for a company of players at Ipswich, 1562 (Murray, ii. 287).

MOORE, JOSEPH. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611; 1616–29. He lived at the Harrow in Barbican in 1623 (Murray, i. 252; J. 347).

MOTTERAM, JOHN. Chapel, 1600–1.

MUFFORD, JOHN. Beauchamp’s, 10 June 1590 (Murray, ii. 337).

MULCASTER (MONCASTER), RICHARD. Head Master of Merchant Taylors, 1561–86; of St. Paul’s Grammar School, 1596–1608.

MUNDAY, ANTONY. A player before 1582, according to a contemporary pamphlet, possibly with Oxford’s, whose ‘servant’ he was in 1580, and dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii).

NASION. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

‘NED.’ Musician (?) in Summer’s Last Will and Testament, prol. 7.

‘NED.’ Strange’s (?), 1590–1.

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

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

NEWARK, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1493–1509.

NEWMAN, JOHN. Blackfriars lessee, 1581–3.

NEWTON, JOHN. Charles’s, 1610, 1616, 1619, 1625.

‘NICK.’ Admiral’s, 1601–3. See also Tooley.

NILL, JOHN. A ‘player’ whose daughter Alice was baptized at St. Saviour’s on 13 August 1601 (Bodl.).

NORWOOD. Paul’s, 1599.

NYCOWLLES, ROBERT. A ‘player’ who witnessed a loan to Francis Henslowe on 1 June 1595 (H. i. 6).

OFFLEY, THOMAS. Paul’s, c. 1522.

OSTLER, WILLIAM, began his career as a boy actor in the Chapel company. He took a part in Jonson’s Poetaster in 1601. From the Sharers Papers we learn that on growing up he was, like Field and Underwood, ‘taken to strengthen the King’s service’.[978] He first appears amongst the King’s men in the cast of Jonson’s The Alchemist in 1610, and played also in Catiline, The Captain, The Duchess of Malfi, in which he took the part of Antonio, Valentinian, and Bonduca. The following epigram in John Davies, Scourge of Folly (c. 1611), attests his fame and his participation in some forgotten brawl:

To the Roscius of these Times, Mr. W. Ostler.
Ostler, thou took’st a knock thou would’st have giv’n,
Neere sent thee to thy latest home: but O!
Where was thine action, when thy crown was riv’n,
Sole King of Actors! then wast idle? No:
Thou hadst it, for thou would’st bee doing? Thus
Good actors deeds are oft most dangerous;
But if thou plaist thy dying part as well
As thy stage parts, thou hast no part in hell.

Ostler married Thomasine, daughter of John Heminges, in 1611. His son Beaumont was baptized at St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, on 18 May 1612.[979] He acquired shares in the Blackfriars on 20 May 1611, and the Globe on 20 February 1612, and died on 16 December 1614, leaving his shares a subject for litigation between his widow and Heminges (q.v.).

PAGE, OLIVER. A London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v).

PALLANT, ROBERT. Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Worcester’s-Anne’s, 1602–19; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1614; Charles’s, 1616; King’s, 1619, unless, indeed, the R. Pallant who played the female part of Cariola in Duchess of Malfi was of a younger generation. This is not unlikely, for while the St. Saviour’s registers record the burial of Robert Pallant, ‘a man,’ on 4 September 1619, the token-books give the name in 1621 as well as in 1612 and 1616. Ephraim and Hanburye, sons of Robert Pallant ‘player’, were baptized there on 1 January 1611 and 3 July 1614 respectively. There were others earlier. Pallant wrote commendatory verses for Heywood’s Apology (1612), and is noted as visiting Henslowe on his death-bed on 6 January 1616 (H. ii. 20, 300; Bodl.).

PANT, THOMAS. Unlicensed player, 1607–10 (cf. ch. ix, p. 304).

PARR, WILLIAM. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1602–20.

PARROWE (PARLOWE), RICHARD. Interluders, 1538–45.

PARSELEY, RICHARD. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

PARSONS, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1597, 1602 (H. ii. 301).

PATESON, WILLIAM. Worcester’s, 1584.

PAVY. Admiral’s, 1602.

PAVY, SALATHIEL (SALMON). Chapel, 1600–3. An epitaph on him is in Jonson’s Epigrams (1616), cxx, which gives his age at death, after three years of playing, as 13. He was ‘apprentice to one Peerce’, when he was pressed for the Chapel. This is not likely to have been the Master of Paul’s, from whom it would have been rash to take a boy.

PAYNE, ROBERT. Revels patentee, 1604.

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

PEARCE (PIERS), EDWARD. Gentleman of Chapel, 1589; Master of Paul’s, 1600.

PEDEL, ABRAHAM. Germany, 1614–15; Palsgrave’s, 1623. He lived at George Alley in Golden Lane in 1623 (J. 348, 350).

PEDEL (BEHEL, BIEL), JACOB. Germany, 1597, 1614–15.

PEDEL, WILLIAM. Holland, 1608; Germany, 1614–15. Children of a William Peadle, variously described as ‘tumbler’ and ‘gentleman’, were baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1610, 1617, and 1629 (Bodl.).

PENN, WILLIAM. Revels, 1609; Charles’s, 1616, 1625. He lived at George Alley, Golden Lane, in 1623 and had children baptized and buried at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, in 1636 (J. 347; Bodl.).

PENTON, FABIAN. Germany, 1602.

PEPEREL, GILES. Possibly an actor in the Bugbears of John Jeffere (cf. ch. xxiii).

PERKIN, JOHN. Leicester’s, 1572–4. Is he the Parkins who assisted George Ferrers as Lord of Misrule in 1552–3 (Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 120)?

PERKINS, RICHARD. Worcester’s-Anne’s, 1602–19; for his later history, cf. Murray, i. 198, 200, 266. He wrote commendatory verses for Heywood’s Apology (1612), and Webster praises his acting in The White Devil (1612) in a note at the end of the print. His portrait is at Dulwich. He lived at the upper end of St. John’s Street in 1623 (H. ii. 301; J. 347).

PERRY, WILLIAM. Licensee for 2 King’s Revels, 1615; Queen’s Revels manager, 1617.

PERSJ (PERSTEN), ROBERT (RUPERT). Denmark-Germany, 1586–7.

PERSONN, JOHANN. Denmark, 1579–80.

PERY, ROBERT. Chapel, 1529–31.

PERY, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1530.

‘PETER’ (?). King’s. At Taming of the Shrew, iv. 4. 68, F1 has the s.d. ‘Enter Peter’, apparently a servant of Tranio, who does not speak.

PFLUGBEIL, AUGUST. Germany, 1614–15.

PHILIP, ROBERT. Chapel, 1514.

PHILLIPPE, ROBERT. A ‘momer’, buried at St. Leonard’s, on 9 April 1559 (Collier, Actors, 79). He might be identical with the foregoing.

PHILLIPS, AUGUSTINE, is included in the 1593 list of Strange’s men, and played for them or the Admiral’s in 2 Seven Deadly Sins about 1590–1 as ‘Mr. Phillipps’. Probably he joined the Chamberlain’s men on their formation in 1594. He appears in the actor-lists of 1598 and 1599, was one of the original Globe shareholders of 1599, and on 18 February 1601 gave evidence as to the performance of Richard II by the company before the Essex rising. He is also in the official lists of the King’s men in 1603 and 1604, in the actor-list of Sejanus in 1603, and in that of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. ‘Phillips his gygg of the slyppers’ was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 26 May 1595 (cf. p. 552). It has been conjectured that Phillips was a brother-in-law of Alleyn, to whom Henslowe wrote on 28 September 1593, ‘Your sister Phillipes & her husband hath leced two or thre owt of ther howsse, yt they in good health & doth hartily comend them unto you.’ If so, his wife was probably Elizabeth Woodward. But it is also possible that the family in question was that of one Edward Phillipes, who was also in relations with Henslowe and Alleyn.[980] An Augustine Phillipps buried at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1592, was probably a relative of the actor, whose children the register of the same parish records as Magdalen (bapt. 29 September 1594), Rebecca (bapt. 11 July 1596), and Austen or Augustine (bapt. 29 November 1601, bur. 1 July 1604). The father is designated histrio, ‘player,’ or ‘player of interludes’. The parish token-books show that he dwelt in Horseshoe Court during 1593 and 1595, thereafter near the Swan in Paris Garden, in Montagu Close during 1601, in ‘Bradshaw’s Rents’ during 1602, and in Horseshoe Court again during 1604.[981] But by 4 May 1605, when he made his will, he was of Mortlake, Surrey, where he had a house and land of which he had lately purchased the lease.[982] Doubtless he had prospered. A note of heraldic irregularities delivered by William Smith, Rouge dragon, to the Earl of Northampton as commissioner for the Earl Marshal states that ‘Phillipps the player had graven in a gold ring the armes of Sr Wm Phillipp, Lord Bardolph, with the said L. Bardolph’s cote quartred, which I shewed to Mr. York at a small gravers shopp in Foster Lane’.[983] The will mentions Phillips’s wife, whose name was not Elizabeth but Anne, his daughters Magdalen, Rebecca, Anne, and Elizabeth, his mother Agnes Bennett, his brothers William and James Webb, his sister Margery Borne, and her sons Miles and Philipps, and his sister Elizabeth Gough. Elizabeth had been married at St. Saviour’s in 1603, to Robert Gough (q.v.) of the King’s men, who witnesses the will.[984] Margery Borne may have been the wife of William Borne alias Bird (q.v.) of the Prince’s men. Presumably the Webbs were his brothers-in-law, in which case his wife was obviously not a Woodward. There are legacies of £5 to ‘the hyred men of the company which I am of’, of 30s. pieces to his ‘fellows’ William Shakespeare and Henry Condell, and his ‘servant’ Christopher Beeston, of 20s. pieces to his ‘fellows’ Laurence Fletcher, Robert Armin, Richard Cowley, Alexander Cook and Nicholas Tooley, of silver bowls to John Heminges, Richard Burbadge, and William Sly, and of £20 to Timothy Whithorne. Samuel Gilburne, ‘my late apprentice’ is to have 40s. and ‘my mouse colloured velvit hose and a white taffety dublet, a blacke taffety sute, my purple cloke, sword, and dagger, and my base viall’. James Sands ‘my apprentice’ is to have 40s. and ‘a citterne, a bandore and a lute’. The widow is appointed executrix, but if she re-marries she is to have ‘no parte or porcion of my goods or chattells’, and is to be replaced by the overseers of the will, Heminges, Richard Burbadge, Sly, and Whithorne. After proving the will on 13 May 1605, the widow did in fact re-marry, with John Witter, and it was proved again by John Heminges on 16 May 1607. His share in the Globe was subsequently the subject of litigation.[985] Heywood (c. 1608) praises his deserts with those of other dead actors.

PICKERING, JAMES. Mason of Bowlby, Yorks, unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

PLUMMER, JOHN. Master of Chapel, 1444–55.

POKELEY, RICHARD. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

POLE. Gate-keeper at Paul’s, 1582.

POPE, THOMAS, was one of the English players, who visited Denmark and Germany in 1586 and 1587. He is in the 1593 list of Strange’s men and played as ‘Mr. Pope’ for them or the Admiral’s in 2 Deadly Sins about 1590–1. He joined the Chamberlain’s men, probably on their foundation in 1594, was joint payee for them with Heminge from 1597–9, and appears in the actor-lists of 1598 and 1599. On 30 August 1598, William Bird borrowed 10s. of Henslowe, ‘to folowe the sewt agenst Thomas Poope’.[986] In 1600 he is mentioned, with Singer of the Admiral’s, by Samuel Rowlands in The Letting of Humour’s Blood in the Head-Vein, sat. iv:

What meanes Singer then,
And Pope, the clowne, to speak so boorish, when
They counterfaite the clownes upon the Stage?

He had an original fifth share of a moiety of the Globe, increased to a fourth on the retirement of Kempe. But he does not appear in the lists of the King’s men, and had therefore probably retired by 1603. On 22 July of that year he made his will, which was proved on 13 February 1604.[987] He leaves his interests in the Globe and Curtain to Mary Clark, alias Wood, and Thomas Bromley, and legacies to Robert Gough and John Edmans. He mentions the house in Southwark, in which he dwelt, held with other tenements of the late Francis Langley; also his brothers John and William Pope, and his mother Agnes Webbe. This hardly justifies Collier in connecting him with the Webbes of Snitterfield, Shakespeare’s kin. Bazell Nicholl, scrivener, and John Wrench, are left executors. As in 1612 a sixth of the Globe was in the hands of Basil Nicoll and John and Mary Edmonds, it is probable that John Edmonds married Mary Clark. It appears from the Southwark token-books that one Pope lived in Blamer’s Rents during 1593, in Wrench’s Rents during 1595, and in Mr. Langley’s New Rents during 1596, 1598, 1600, and 1602.[988] Dr. Greg thinks that Thomas Pope, rather than a Morgan Pope who also had interests in Southwark, was the ‘Mr. Pope’ with whom Henslowe had an interview on 25 June 1603, ‘at the scryveners shope wher he lisse’, concerning the renewal of the lease of the Rose.[989] But Thomas Pope clearly lived in his own house. Collier (Actors, xxxvi) gives a marriage of a Thomas Pope and Elizabeth Baly at St. Botolph’s on 20 December 1584, but the indications of the will do not suggest a married man. William Smith complains that ‘Pope the player would have no other armes but the armes of Sir Thomas Pope, Chancelor of ye Augmentations’.[990] Heywood mentions the ‘deserts’ of Pope in his Apology. He is included in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare.

POWLTON, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1584.

PRICE, JOHN. Musician in Germany, 1609.

PRICE (PRYOR?), RICHARD. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1600 (?), 1610, 1613, 1622. He lived in White Cross Street in 1623, and records of his children are in the registers of St. Giles, Cripplegate, from 1620 to 1627, where he is variously entered as ‘gentleman’, ‘yeoman’, and ‘player’ (J. 348; Bodl.).

PROCTOR. Admiral’s, 1599.

PRUN, PETER DE. Germany, 1594. He was of Brussels.

PUDSEY, EDWARD. Germany, 1626. He was presumably the owner of the manuscript note-book from which extracts are given in R. Savage, Stratford-upon-Avon Notebooks (1888), i; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Chapman, Blind Beggar of Alexandria.

PULHAM, GEORGE. Anne’s, 1612.

PYE, JOHN. A ‘momer’, whose son Samuel was baptized at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, on 28 May 1559 (Bodl.).

PYK (PIK, PYGE, PIGGE), JOHN. Strange’s, 1593; Admiral’s, 1597–9 (H. ii. 303).

PYKMAN, PHILIP. Chapel, 1600–1.

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

RASTALL, WILLIAM. Chapel manager, 1602. He died in 1608.

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

READE, EMANUEL. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1613; Anne’s, 1613 (?)-17.

READING, WILLIAM. Interluders, 1559–63 (cf. App. D, No. v).

REASON, GILBERT. Charles’s, 1610, 1616, 1625.

REDFORD, JOHN. Master of Paul’s, c. 1540, and dramatist (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 454).

REEVE, RALPH. Germany, 1603–9; Revels manager (provincial), 1611; Porter’s Hall patentee, 1615.

REYNOLDS, ROBERT. Anne’s, 1616–17; Germany, 1616, 1618–20, 1626. He was known in Germany by the clown-name Pickleherring. He and his wife Jane were indicted for non-attendance at church in 1616 and 1617 (Jeaffreson, ii. 120, 127).

RICE, JOHN, was ‘boy’ to Heminges when he delivered a speech in Merchant Taylors’ hall on 16 July 1607, and must have been still with the King’s men when he took part as Corinea with Burbadge in the water-pageant of 31 May 1610. He became one of the original Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1611, and seems to have joined the King’s men again in 1619. The Southwark token-books indicate a John Rice as a resident in 1615, 1619, 1621, and 1623, with an ‘uxor’ in 1621, and another record names John Rice ‘of the Bankside’ amongst players in 1623.[991] He is not in the official list of May of that year, but played in Sir John van Olden Barnavelt about August, and is in the official list of 1621. He is traceable up to the list of 1625, but is not in that of 1629. It is not improbable that he retired, and went into Orders, for Heminges, in his will of 1630, leaves 20s. to ‘John Rice, clerk, of St. Saviour’s in Southwark’, and also names ‘Mr. Rice’ as overseer. Rice is in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare.

‘ROBIN.’ Chapel, 1518.

ROBINS (ROBINSON), WILLIAM. Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived on Clerkenwell Hill in 1623 (J. 348).

ROBINSON, JAMES. Chapel manager, 1600.

ROBINSON, RICHARD, first appears in the Catiline actor-list of the King’s men in 1611, and as playing the Lady in a stage direction (l. 1929) to The Second Maiden’s Tragedy of the same year. In The Devil is an Ass (1616), ii. 8. 64, Merecroft describes ‘Dicke Robinson’ as a lad, and as masquerading ‘drest like a lawyer’s wife’. I think it not impossible that he was a son of James Robinson, who was a member of the Children of the Chapel syndicate in 1600. If so, he may have been a Blackfriars boy. He played in Bonduca (c. 1613), is in the 1619 patent to the King’s men, and in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare, and is traceable as a King’s man up to the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647. He may have married Richard Burbadge’s widow, who held shares in the Globe and Blackfriars as Mrs. Robinson in 1635. He owed Tooley £29 13s. when the latter made his will in 1623. According to Wright he was a comedian. The same author states that he took up arms for the King, and was killed by Major Harrison at the taking of Basing House, on 14 October 1645. A contemporary report of this event by Hugh Peters confirms the death of ‘Robinson, the player, who, a little before the storm, was known to be mocking and scorning the Parliament’. There were, however, other actors named Robinson, and probably this was one of them. If Richard had been killed in 1645, he could not have signed the dedication of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays in 1647. Moreover, the register of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, records the burial of ‘Richard Robinson, a player’ on 23 March 1648.[992] He seems to have lived at the upper end of Shoreditch in 1623 (J. 347).

ROBINSON, THOMAS. Germany, 1626.

ROLL (ROE), JOHN. Interluders, 1530. He died in 1539.

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

ROSE. Henry’s, 1612, where his wife became (?) a gatherer (H. P. 63).

ROSSETER, PHILIP. Whitefriars lessee, 1609–15; Revels patentee, 1610; Porter’s Hall patentee, 1615; Revels manager, 1617. He was one of the royal lutenists from Midsummer 1604 to Easter 1623, and published A Booke of Ayres (1601) with Campion, who left him his property in 1620. He died on 5 May 1623 (D. N. B.; Chamber Accounts).

ROSSILL. Chamberlain’s, 1597.

ROWLEY, SAMUEL. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–1624 (?), and dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii; H. ii. 307).

ROWLEY, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1602.

ROWLEY, WILLIAM. Charles’s, 1610–19; King’s, 1623–5. But he remained technically a Prince’s man until the death of James in 1625 (Murray, i. 162, 172, table).

RUSSELL, JOHN. Gatherer for Palsgrave’s, c. 1617 (H. P. 28, 29, 85).

RUTTER, WILLIAM. Interluders, 1503.

SACKVILLE, THOMAS. Germany, 1592–3, 1597–1602. He used the clown-name Johannes Bouset, was a merchant in Frankfort, 1604–17, and died in 1628.

‘SAM.’ Admiral’s, >1591.

SANDERSON, GREGORY. Anne’s, 1617–19.

SANDS, JAMES. King’s, 1605; Anne’s, c. 1617? He received legacies from Augustine Phillips (q.v.), to whom he was apprentice, in 1605 and from William Sly (q.v.) in 1608. A James Sands appears in the Southwark token-books in 1596, 1598, and 1612 (Bodl.).

SANDT, BERNHARDT. Germany, 1600–1.

SAUNDERS, WILLIAM. Chapel, >1517.

SAUSS, EVERHART. Netherlands, 1592.

SAVAGE, JEROME. Warwick’s, 1575–9.

SAVEREY, ABRAHAM. Lennox’s, 1605.

SCHADLEUTNER, SEBASTIAN. Germany, 1623.

SCARLETT, JOHN. A ‘player’ whose son Richard was baptized at St. Giles’s on 1 September, and buried on 19 September 1605 (Bodl.).

SCARLETT, RICHARD. A ‘player’, buried on 23 April 1609 at St. Giles’s, where his daughter Susan had been baptized on 11 February 1607 and his wife Marie buried on 12 February 1607. Several Scarletts were royal trumpeters—Edward, William, and William the younger in 1483, John in 1509, Arthur in 1559–1603, John in 1677–9 (Bodl.; Chamber Accounts; Lafontaine, 1, 3, 325, 341).

SCOTT, JOHN. Interluders, 1503–28.

SEBECK, HENRY. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1617.

SEHAIS, JEHAN. France, 1598. Possibly the John Shaa, who witnessed an Admiral’s payment to Dekker, 24 November 1599 (H. i. 114). ‘John’ appears for ‘Robert’ Shaw, probably by an error, in a play warrant of 1600 as given in the P. C. Acts (cf. App. B).

SHAKESPEARE, EDMOND. The burials at St. Saviour’s include, on 31 December 1607, ‘Edmond Shakespeare, a player: in the church,’ which is expanded in a fee-book as ‘Edmund Shakespeare, a player, buried in the church, with a forenoone knell of the great bell, 20s. (Collier, Actors, xiv). Presumably this is the brother of William.

SHAKESPEARE, EDWARD. The baptisms at St. Giles’s include, on 12 August 1607, ‘Edward, sonne of Edward Schackspeere, Player: base borne’ (Collier, Actors, xv; J. Hunter in Addl. MS. 24589, f. 24).

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM. Strange’s, 1592; Pembroke’s (?), 1593; Sussex’s (?), 1594; Chamberlain’s-King’s, 1594–1616; and dramatist.

SHAKSHAFTE, WILLIAM. Player (?) to Alexander Houghton, 1581 (cf. ch. ix, p. 280).

SHANBROOKE, JOHN. A ‘player’ buried on 17 Sept. 1618 at St. Giles’s, where his children appear in the registers from 10 June 1610 to 4 June 1618 (Bodl.).

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 8s. to be paid for at the rate of 1s. weekly.[998] But apparently he never paid more than 6s. 6d. An inventory of garments belonging to the Admiral’s men on 13 March 1598 includes ‘Perowes sewt, which Wm 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 ‘Qd 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. Cv). 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, F1 has the s. d. ‘Tawyer with a Trumpet before them’. The St. Saviour’s burials give in June 1625, ‘William Tawier, Mr 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 ‘Mr 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 Mr 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 5s. 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]