Lawrence Fletcher (died 1608) was a Jacobean actor. [1] [2]
Fletcher was named first on the royal patent of 19 May 1603 that transformed the Lord Chamberlain's Men into the King's Men. [3] William Shakespeare was second, and Richard Burbage third, and this order was significant, in the highly hierarchical world of the time. Yet Fletcher never appears on the other documents that give later generations our limited knowledge of the King's Men; he doesn't seem to have acted, in the leading acting company of the age. Unlike the eight men whose names follow on the patent, Fletcher was not, or not primarily, a London actor. He had been "comedian to His Majesty" before the Union of Crowns in 1603, when James VI and I was King of Scotland only.
The names of actors on the patent were Fletcher's, then "William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustyne Philipps, John Henings, Henrie Condel, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowly, and the rest of their associates". They are permitted "freely to use and exercise the Arte and Faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Enterludes, Morals, Pastoralls, Stageplaies, and such others". The patent specified they would play the Globe Theatre, and elsewhere, whenever the plague subsided. [4]
Fletcher's inclusion on the 1603 patent may have been diplomatic and bureaucratic, a way of easing and greasing the company's transition from the old regime to the new; or perhaps Fletcher intended to be an active member of the company (their comedian Thomas Pope died in 1603, and Fletcher could have been his replacement), but was prevented by declining health.
Augustine Phillips died in May 1605. He left 20 shillings to his "fellow" Fletcher. This is less than the 30 shillings he left to Shakespeare, Henry Condell, and Christopher Beeston, but the same sum he left to fellow King's Men Robert Armin, Alexander Cooke, Richard Cowley, and Nicholas Tooley. This seems to suggest that Fletcher was more than a mere name on a document to Phillips, though what more, precisely, is impossible to say, given the limits of the record.
Fletcher was buried on 12 September 1608, in St. Saviour's Church, Southwark.
Fletcher was mentioned by an English diplomat in Edinburgh, George Nicholson in March 1595. James VI was evidently fond of Fletcher, and he joked about the actor who might have been "hanged for his cause." [5]
Fletcher was in Edinburgh at the end of 1599, protected by James VI from sanction by the Kirk and town council. [6] He was helped by the courtier George Elphinstone who bought timber for the stage, and distributed reward money from the king. [7] They also played in Dundee and Aberdeen, where Fletcher, described as the king's servant, was made a freeman of the burgh. [8]
He may have been the Englishman prevented from staging a play in St Andrews in October 1598. [9]
Richard Burbage was an English stage actor, widely considered to have been one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to being a stage actor, he was also a theatre owner, entrepreneur, and painter. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama. Burbage was a business associate and friend to William Shakespeare.
The King's Men was the acting company to which William Shakespeare (1564–1616) belonged for most of his career. Formerly known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, they became the King's Men in 1603 when King James I ascended the throne and became the company's patron.
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a company of actors, or a "playing company", for which William Shakespeare wrote during most of his career. Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Formed at the end of a period of flux in the theatrical world of London, it had become, by 1603, one of the two leading companies of the city and was subsequently patronized by James I.
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs, and who from 1576 to 1584 staged plays in the vast hall of the former monastery. The second theatre dates from the purchase of the upper part of the priory and another building by James Burbage in 1596, which included the Parliament Chamber on the upper floor that was converted into the playhouse. The Children of the Chapel played in the theatre beginning in the autumn of 1600 until the King's Men took over in 1608. They successfully used it as their winter playhouse until all the theatres were closed in 1642 when the English Civil War began. In 1666, the entire area was destroyed in the Great Fire of London.
Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox and 1st Duke of Richmond, Lord of the Manor of Cobham, Kent, was a Scottish nobleman who through their paternal lines was a second cousin of King James VI of Scotland and I of England. He was involved in the Plantation of Ulster in Ireland and the colonization of Maine in New England. Richmond's Island and Cape Richmond as well as Richmond, Maine, are named after him. His magnificent monument with effigies survives in Westminster Abbey.
John Lowin was an English actor.
Augustine Phillips was an Elizabethan actor who performed in troupes with Edward Alleyn and William Shakespeare. He was one of the first generation of English actors to achieve wealth and a degree of social status by means of his trade.
The Children of the Chapel are the boys with unbroken voices, choristers, who form part of the Chapel Royal, the body of singers and priests serving the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they were called upon to do so. They were overseen by the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal.
Nicholas Tooley was a Renaissance actor in the King's Men, the acting company of William Shakespeare.
Joseph Taylor was a 17th-century English actor. As the successor of Richard Burbage as the leading actor with the King's Men, he was arguably the most important actor in the later Jacobean and the Caroline eras.
William Sly was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a colleague of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men.
Prince Charles's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in Jacobean and Caroline England.
John Shank was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a leading comedian in the King's Men during the 1620s and 1630s.
John Underwood was an early 17th-century actor, a member of the King's Men, the theatrics company of William Shakespeare.
Thomas Pollard was an actor in the King's Men – a prominent comedian in the acting troupe of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage.
King's Men personnel were the people who worked with and for the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men from 1594 to 1642. The company was the major theatrical enterprise of its era and featured some of the leading actors of their generation – Richard Burbage, John Lowin, and Joseph Taylor among other – and some leading clowns and comedians, like Will Kempe and Robert Armin. The company benefitted from the services of William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger as regular dramatists.
John Elphinstone of Selmes and Baberton (1553-1614) was a Scottish landowner and courtier.
The Masque of Indian and China Knights was performed at Hampton Court in Richmond, England on 1 January 1604. The masque was not published, and no text survives. It was described in a letter written by Dudley Carleton. The historian Leeds Barroll prefers the title, Masque of the Orient Knights.
Hilderston or Hilderstone in West Lothian, Scotland, was the site of the discovery of a vein of silver in 1606 and a mining operation that attracted international interest. King James used rumours of a silver bonanza to leverage a loan in the City of London. He took over the mine works, an act sometimes regarded as an example of nationalization. The enterprise may have inspired a satirical stage play. On 8 May 1608 work commenced under royal supervision. Miners from Cornwall and Germany were employed in the works.
Thomas Pott or Potts was a Scottish Master Huntsman serving James VI and I, and Keeper of Temple Newsam manor and park near Leeds.