Stephen Hammerton

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Stephen Hammerton (fl. 1629–47) was a boy player or child actor in English Renaissance theatre, one of the young performers who specialized in female roles in the period before women appeared on the stage. His case illuminates the conditions of boy actors in this era.

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".

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.

English Renaissance theatre theatre of England between 1562 and 1642

English Renaissance theatre—also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre—refers to the theatre of England between 1562 and 1642.

Contents

Beginnings

Stephen Hammerton was the son of a Richard Hammerton of Hellifield, Yorkshire. In his youth he was apprenticed to a London merchant tailor, William Waverly, of the Strand. At the time, veteran actors Richard Gunnell and William Blagrave, founders of the Salisbury Court Theatre, were struggling to form a new company of child actors, similar to the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's of thirty years before. [1] Those troupes, famous in their own time, had been highly effective at training young actors and funnelling them into the adult companies that needed their talent; but the troupes of boy players had been defunct for nearly fifteen years when Blagrave and Gunnell started their Children of the Revels troupe in 1629. The relevant documents indicate clearly that part of the project's rationale was the training of young actors for the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre.

Yorkshire historic county of Northern England

Yorkshire, formally known as the County of York, is a historic county of Northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Due to its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform. Throughout these changes, Yorkshire has continued to be recognised as a geographical territory and cultural region. The name is familiar and well understood across the United Kingdom and is in common use in the media and the military, and also features in the titles of current areas of civil administration such as North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire.

Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors livery company of the City of London

The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors is one of the 110 livery companies of the City of London.

Strand, London major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster, London, England

Strand is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster, Central London. It runs just over 3⁄4 mile (1,200 m) from Trafalgar Square eastwards to Temple Bar, where the road becomes Fleet Street inside the City of London, and is part of the A4, a main road running west from inner London.

Blagrave had encountered the young Hammerton and decided that the Children of the Revels needed him. Blagrave purchased the remaining nine years of Hammerton's apprenticeship contract from Waverly in October 1629. (Hammerton allegedly agreed to this change; it happened "by and with his own liking.") This was not a unique transaction; there are other instances on record in which actors and theatre managers effectively bought the services of boys for their troupes. [2]

King's Men

Unfortunately, the new boys' company failed to attain success, because of a long closure of the theatres due to bubonic plague at the time. According to one report, the boys were left without adequate food and clothing; fourteen boys had seven shirts among them, and one of the fourteen died of neglect. Hammerton fared better, though; sometime in 1632 he jumped to, or was recruited into, the King's Men. His transition was not without controversy; manager Blagrave was involved in a lawsuit over control of the apprentice actor. [3] In November 1632, Blagrave joined with William Beeston in a petition to the Lord Chamberlain to recover custody of Hammerton. Beeston's involvement in the matter is cryptic, and the Blagrave/Beeston suit was unsuccessful; [4] Hammerton remained with the King's Men and acted for them for the next ten years, till the theatres were closed in September 1642 at the start of the English Civil War.

Bubonic plague Human and animal disease

Bubonic plague is one of three types of plague caused by bacterium Yersinia pestis. One to seven days after exposure to the bacteria, flu-like symptoms develop. These symptoms include fever, headaches, and vomiting. Swollen and painful lymph nodes occur in the area closest to where the bacteria entered the skin. Occasionally, the swollen lymph nodes may break open.

William Beeston was a 17th-century actor and theatre manager, the son and successor to the more famous Christopher Beeston.

The Lord Chamberlain or Lord Chamberlain of the Household is the most senior officer of the Royal Household of the United Kingdom, supervising the departments which support and provide advice to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom while also acting as the main channel of communication between the Sovereign and the House of Lords. The office organises all ceremonial activity such as garden parties, state visits, royal weddings, and the State Opening of Parliament. They also handle the Royal Mews and Royal Travel, as well as the ceremony around the awarding of honours.

Female to male

Hammerton started out by playing female roles, as would be expected; in 1632 he played Oriana, the heroine in John Fletcher's The Wild Goose Chase . In 1633, when William Prynne published Histriomastix, the Players' Scourge , his famous attack on the theatre and the players, he singled out Hammerton as "a most noted and beautiful woman-actor." By the late 1630s Hammerton transitioned from female to male roles. He played in Sir John Suckling's The Goblins, James Shirley's The Doubtful Heir, and Thomas Killigrew's The Parson's Wedding. [5] Amyntor in the Beaumont and Fletcher play The Maid's Tragedy was the type of "juvenile lead" part for which he became famous. He acquired a reputation as a sort of 17th-century matinee idol, especially favored by the young women in the audience. The Epilogue to The Goblins comments on Hammerton's popularity:

John Fletcher (playwright) English Jacobean playwright

John Fletcher (1579–1625) was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's. Though his reputation has been far eclipsed since, Fletcher remains an important transitional figure between the Elizabethan popular tradition and the popular drama of the Restoration.

The Wild Goose Chase is a late Jacobean stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher, first performed in 1621. It is often classed among Fletcher's most effective and best-constructed plays; Edmund Gosse called it "one of the brightest and most coherent of Fletcher's comedies, a play which it is impossible to read and not be in a good humour." The drama's wit, sparkle, and urbanity anticipated and influenced the Restoration comedy of the later decades of the seventeenth century. The term "wild-goose chase" is first documented when used by Shakespeare in the early 1590s, but appears as a term with which his audience would be familiar, as there is no attempt to define its meaning.

William Prynne English lawyer, author, polemicist, and political figure

William Prynne was an English lawyer, author, polemicist, and political figure. He was a prominent Puritan opponent of the church policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Although his views on church polity were presbyterian, he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for overall state control of religious matters. A prolific writer, he published over 200 books and pamphlets.

The women — Oh if Stephen should be killed,
Or miss the lady, how the plot is spilled?

Killigrew makes the same point at the end of The Parson's Wedding: if "Stephen misses the Wench...that alone is enough to spoil the Play." (Hammerton's celebrity was such that he was identifiable by his first name alone — much like celebrities of later centuries.)

Hammerton was made a Groom of the Chamber on 22 January 1641, along with five other King's Men. After the theatres closed in 1642, Hammerton's fortunes, like those of the other King's Men, were eclipsed and obscured. He was one of the ten King's Men who signed the dedication to the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio in 1647.

Groom of the Chamber and Groom of the Privy Chamber were positions in the Royal Household of the English monarchy, the latter considerably more elevated. Other Ancien Régime royal establishments in Europe had comparable officers, often with similar titles. In France, the Duchy of Burgundy, and in England while French was still the language of the court, the title was varlet or valet de chambre. In German, Danish and Russian the term was "Kammerjunker" and in Swedish the similar "Kammarjunkare".

In September 1642 the Long Parliament ordered a closure of the London theatres. The order cited the current "times of humiliation" and their incompatibility with "public stage-plays", representative of "lascivious Mirth and Levity". The ban, which was not completely effective, was reinforced by an Act of 11 February 1648. It provided for the treatment of actors as rogues, the demolition of theatre seating, and fines for spectators.

The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.

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References

  1. ↑ Peter Thomson et al., eds., The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004; Vol. 1, p. 149.
  2. ↑ Viviana Comensoli and Anne Russell, Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage, Champaigne, University of Illinois Press, 1999; p. 184.
  3. ↑ G. E. Bentley, "The Salisbury Court Theater and Its Boy Players," Huntington Library Quarterly Vol. 40 No. 2 (February 1977), pp. 129-49.
  4. ↑ Bentley, pp. 143-4, 148-9.
  5. ↑ Andrew Gurr, The Shakespeare Company 1594–1642, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004; p. 229.
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