Andrew Cane

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Andrew Cane (fl. 1602–1650) — also Kayne, Kene, Keine, and other variants — was a comic actor in late Jacobean and Caroline era London. In his own generation he was a leading comedian and dancer, and one of the famous and popular performers of his time. [1]

Floruit, abbreviated fl., Latin for "he/she flourished", denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the word may also be used as a noun indicating the time when someone flourished.

Jacobean era period in English and Scottish culture corresponding to the reign of James VI and I

The Jacobean era refers to the period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James VI of Scotland (1567–1625), who also inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I. The Jacobean era succeeds the Elizabethan era and precedes the Caroline era, and is often used for the distinctive styles of Jacobean architecture, visual arts, decorative arts, and literature which characterized that period.

Caroline era

The Caroline or Carolean era refers to the era in English and Scottish history during the Stuart period (1603–1714) that coincided with the reign of Charles I (1625–1642), Carolus being Latin for Charles. The Caroline era followed the Jacobean era, the reign of Charles's father James I & VI (1603–1625); it was followed by the Wars of the three Kingdoms (1642–1651) and the English Interregnum (1651–1660).

Contents

Beginnings

A child with the surname "Keane" (no Christian name recorded) was baptized on 2 March 1589; this might have been the actor/goldsmith. [2] In 1602, Cane began a ten-year apprenticeship to his older brother Richard, who had finished his own apprenticeship and established himself as a goldsmith in 1600. The younger Cane won his "freedom" in the goldsmiths' guild in 1611. Cane married and began a family in 1612.

Jigging clown

Cane's stage career had begun by 1622, when he moved from Lady Elizabeth's Men (at the Cockpit) to the Palsgrave's Men (at the Fortune). After 1631 he was a "chiefe" member of the Prince Charles's Men (II) troupe, and received their payments for their performances at Court. [3]

The Lady Elizabeth's Men, or Princess Elizabeth's Men, was a company of actors in Jacobean London, formed under the patronage of King James I's daughter Princess Elizabeth. From 1618 on, the company was called The Queen of Bohemia's Men, after Elizabeth and her husband the Elector Palatine had their brief and disastrous flirtation with the crown of Bohemia.

Prince Charles's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in Jacobean and Caroline England.

One of his jobs was dancing the jig that concluded each performance, a traditional task that clowns from Richard Tarlton to John Shank had fulfilled. Like other clowns in this function, Cane used the opportunity of a solo turn on the stage to develop a satiric rapport with his audience. He excelled at the task, and was said to possess "the tongue of Mercury." [4] By the late 1630s, his political satire had grown so sharp that the Privy Council took notice; in 1639 the Council ordered the Attorney General to address the matter of Cane satirizing politicians from the stage of the Red Bull Theatre (though the surviving records do not specify the outcome of the matter). [5]

Richard Tarlton British actor and clown of the Elizabethan era

Richard Tarlton or Tarleton, was an English actor of the Elizabethan era. He was the most famous clown of his era, known for his extempore comic doggerel verse, which came to be known as "Tarltons". He helped to turn Elizabethan theatre into a form of mass entertainment paving the way for the Shakespearean stage. After his death many witticisms and pranks were attributed to him and were published as Tarlton's Jests.

John Shank was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a leading comedian in the King's Men during the 1620s and 1630s.

Mercury (mythology) Ancient Roman god of trade, merchants, and travel

Mercury is a major god in Roman religion and mythology, being one of the 12 Dii Consentes within the ancient Roman pantheon. He is the god of financial gain, commerce, eloquence, messages, communication, travelers, boundaries, luck, trickery and thieves; he also serves as the guide of souls to the underworld. He was considered the son of Maia, who was a daughter of the Titan Atlas, and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is possibly related to the Latin word merx, mercari, and merces (wages); another possible connection is the Proto-Indo-European root merĝ- for "boundary, border" and Greek οὖρος, as the "keeper of boundaries," referring to his role as bridge between the upper and lower worlds. In his earliest forms, he appears to have been related to the Etruscan deity Turms; both gods share characteristics with the Greek god Hermes. He is often depicted holding the caduceus in his left hand. Similar to his Greek equivalent Hermes, he was awarded the caduceus by Apollo who handed him a magic wand, which later turned into the caduceus.

Cane's stage career was not limited by the official scrutiny. His fame led to non-theatrical expressions: in 1641 a pamphlet titled The Stage Players Complaint was printed, which portrays Cane and another famous clown, Timothy Read, exchanging witticisms on the issues of the day, and talking up the worth and value of playacting. [6]

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1641.

Timothy Read was a comic actor of the Caroline era, and one of the most famous and popular performers of his generation.

Goldsmith

A number of figures in English Renaissance drama maintained formal membership in the guilds of London; this allowed them to bind apprentices to contracts, something that actors, as retainers in noble households, could not legally do under the system of the time. Most of these men kept only a formal guild membership: John Heminges maintained his membership in the grocers' guild, but didn't peddle groceries; Ben Jonson kept his membership in the bricklayers' guild, but didn't lay bricks. Andrew Cane, however, was one of a number of actors who pursued a career beyond the stage; he was a member of the goldsmiths' guild and an active goldsmith. [7] He crossed his two careers without hesitation, turning his goldsmithing apprentices into boy actors. The 14-year-old Arthur Savill was apprenticed to Cane the goldsmith on 5 August 1631 — and before the end of the year he was playing Quartilla, one of the female roles in Shackerley Marmion's Holland's Leaguer. The same production featured, in the role of Millicent, the 17-year-old John Wright, who'd become a Cane apprentice in 1629.

John Heminges was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. Along with Henry Condell, he was an editor of the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare, published in 1623. He was also the financial manager for the King's Men.

Ben Jonson 16th/17th-century English playwright, poet, and actor

Benjamin Jonson was an English playwright, poet, actor, and literary critic, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Fox, The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) and for his lyric and epigrammatic poetry; he is generally regarded as the second most important English playwright during the reign of James VI and I after William Shakespeare.

Boy player Adolescent males employed by renaissance theater companies

Boy player refers to children who performed in Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for the adult companies and performed the female roles as women did not perform on the English stage in this period. Others worked for children's companies in which all roles, not just the female ones, were played by boys.

(Other theatre figures of the time — actors Robert Armin and John Lowin and manager Robert Keysar — came from or maintained membership in the goldsmiths' guild. [8] Evidence of their activity as goldsmiths, however, is lacking.)

The records of the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate (which was near the Fortune Playhouse and the home of many theatre people) state that a foundling child called Hester, "her parents unknown," was christened on 18 April 1628; she is noted as having been "taken up" at Andrew Cane's "stall," his place of business. [9]

Aftermath

After the theatres were closed in 1642 at the start of the English Civil War, Cane was an active supporter of the Royalist cause. By 1644, goldsmith Cane was coining the Royalists' debased coinage; he may have had to spend time in prison as a result. [10] Cane did not abandon acting permanently, however. On 22 January 1650, he was one of eight performers arrested at the Red Bull Theatre, for play-acting against the regulations of the Commonwealth regime.

In 1654 Cane became involved in a lawsuit with actor William Wintershall and his wife, over a thirty-year-old debt of £40. The debt stemmed from a 1624 agreement between theater manager Richard Gunnell and a group of actors, one of whom was Cane. Wintershall had married Gunnell's daughter Magraret in the early 1640s, and so was drawn into the matter. The outcome of the suit in not known.

The date of Cane's death is also unknown. His son Edward and grandson Andrew continued Cane's trade — not as actors, but goldsmiths.

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References

  1. ↑ John H. Astington, "The Career of Andrew Cane, Citizen, Goldsmith, and Player," in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Vol. 16, John Pitcher, ed., Madison, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003; pp. 130-42.
  2. ↑ Astington, p. 132.
  3. ↑ G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, vol. ii, pp.398-401.
  4. ↑ S. P. Cerasano, "Must the Devil Appear?: Audiences, Actors, Stage Business," in: A Companion to Renaissance Drama, Arthur Kinney, ed., London, Blackwell, 2002; p. 199.
  5. ↑ Jane Milling, "The development of a professional theatre, 1540–1660," in: The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol. 1, Jane Milling and Peter Thomson, eds., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004; p. 150-1.
  6. ↑ Darryll Grantley, Wit's Pilgrimage: Drama and the Social Impact of Education in Early Modern England, London, Ashgate, 2000; p. 103.
  7. ↑ David Kathman, "Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in the Elizabethan Theater," Shakespeare Quarterly Vol. 55 No. 1 (Spring 2004), pp. 1-49.
  8. ↑ Alexander Leggatt, Jacobean Public Theatre, London, Routledge, 1992; p. 31.
  9. ↑ G. E. Bentley, "Records of Players in the Parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate," Papers of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 44 No. 3 (September 1929), pp. 789-826; see p. 797.
  10. ↑ Milling, p. 151.
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