William Cartwright (died 17 December 1686) was an English actor of the seventeenth century, whose career spanned the Caroline era to the Restoration. He is sometimes known as William Cartwright, Junior or William Cartwright the younger to distinguish him from his father, another William Cartwright (fl. 1598 – 1636), an actor of the previous generation. [1]
William Cartwright the younger was about eighty years old when he died; he was therefore born around 1606 or 1607. Nothing is known of his early life; it is reasonable to assume that he began his stage career under his father's tutelage. He was included with his father on a 1635 list of actors; apparently they both belonged to the King's Revels Men at that time. James Wright's Historia Histrionica (1699) maintains that the younger Cartwright was associated with the Salisbury Court Theatre — which may refer to his time with his father's troupe, or may indicate that he was with Queen Henrietta's Men in the 1637–42 period.
The parish records of St. Giles in the Fields show that he married his first wife, Elisabeth Cooke, on 1 May 1633 — and his second wife, Andria Robins, just three years later, on 28 April 1636. [2]
For the years 1642–1660, when the theatres were closed, evidence of the activities of the former actors is scanty. It is known, however, that Cartwright was one of those who tried to maintain clandestine dramatic activity in the later 1640s. [3] He then became a stationer or bookseller; his shop was in Turnstile Alley in the neighborhood of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Other former actors, Andrew Pennycuicke and Alexander Gough, also shifted into the book business in the Commonwealth period.
In this era, booksellers also functioned as publishers; but evidence of only one publication by Cartwright is extant. In 1658 he issued a new edition of Thomas Heywood's An Apology for Actors (originally printed in 1612), under the title The Actor's Vindication. Cartwright made one major addition to Heywood's text: a passage in praise of Edward Alleyn, with whom his father had been associated.
Cartwright's second wife Andria was buried on 12 May 1652. He married Jane Hodgson, his third wife, on 19 November 1654.
Cartwright's stage career revived with the re-opening of the theatres in 1660. He was one of the thirteen actors who were the original "sharers" (partners) in the King's Company when Thomas Killigrew organized that troupe. Cartwright remained with the company until it was absorbed into the United Company in 1682.
Cartwright performed a range of roles with the King's Company, [4] including:
Cartwright received a minor mention in the anti-Dryden satire The Rehearsal , in which he supposedly plays "Thunder." When the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane burned down in 1672, Cartwright invested £150 in its replacement. [5]
Cartwright remained with the United Company after 1682, until the end of his acting career. He was active even at an advanced age; with the United Company he played Cacafogo in Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife .
Cartwright was a collector as well as an actor and bookseller. At his death he willed his collection to Dulwich College. The collection comprised 239 portraits, plus drawings, prints, books, and manuscripts; Cartwright also willed the College money (£400 of "broad old gold") and even personal effects ("two silver tankards, damask linen, an Indian quilt, and a Turkey carpet"). [6] The portrait collection included public figures like Sir Thomas Gresham, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Mary, Queen of Scots; Richard Burbage and Richard Perkins among other actors; and personal items — pictures of Cartwright, his father, and his first and third wives.
Disputes over Cartwright's last will and testament, between his servants and the College, generated an extensive legal record. [7] Cartwright's will mentions that he was childless; if he and any of his three wives had offspring, they did not survive him.
Given his connection with Dulwich, Cartwright was likely also responsible for donating MS. Egerton 1994, a collection of play manuscripts, to the College. [8]
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.
Philip Henslowe was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London.
Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London, which opened to the public in 1817. It was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination. Dulwich is the oldest public art gallery in England and was made an independent charitable trust in 1994. Until this time the gallery was part of Edward Alleyn's College of God's Gift, a charitable foundation established by the actor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Edward Alleyn in the early-17th century. The acquisition of artworks by its founders and bequests from its many patrons resulted in Dulwich Picture Gallery housing one of the country's finest collections of Old Masters, especially rich in French, Italian, and Spanish Baroque paintings, and in British portraits from Tudor times to the 19th century.
Edward "Ned" Alleyn was an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of the College of God's Gift in Dulwich.
Thomas Killigrew was an English dramatist and theatre manager. He was a witty, dissolute figure at the court of King Charles II of England.
Michael Mohun was a leading English actor both before and after the 1642–60 closing of the theatres.
Charles Hart was a prominent British Restoration actor.
Nicholas Tooley was a Renaissance actor in the King's Men, the acting company of William Shakespeare.
William Hart was an English actor during the reign of Charles I and purportedly the father of the Restoration actor Charles Hart.
Queen Henrietta's Men was an important playing company or troupe of actors in Caroline era in London. At their peak of popularity, Queen Henrietta's Men were the second leading troupe of the day, after only the King's Men.
The Seven Deadly Sins was a two-part play written c. 1585, attributed to Richard Tarlton, and most likely premiered by his company, Queen Elizabeth's Men. The play drew upon the medieval tradition of the morality play; though it was very popular in its time, no copy of either part has survived.
The King's Revels Men or King's Revels Company was a playing company or troupe of actors in seventeenth-century England. In the confusing theatre nomenclature of that era, it is sometimes called the second King's Revels Company, to distinguish it from an earlier troupe with the same title that was active in the 1607-9 period. Since the earlier group was a company of boy actors, they are alternatively referred to as the King's Revels Children, while the later troupe is termed the King's Revels Men.
Theophilus Bird, or Bourne, was a seventeenth-century English actor. Bird began his stage career in the Stuart era of English Renaissance theatre, and ended it in the Restoration period; he was one of the relatively few actors who managed to resume their careers after the eighteen-year enforced hiatus (1642–60) when the theatres were closed during the English Civil War and the Interregnum.
Claricilla is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Thomas Killigrew. The drama was acted c. 1636 by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre, and first published in 1641. The play was an early success that helped to confirm Killigrew's choice of artistic career.
Hugh Clark was a prominent English actor of the Caroline era. He worked in both of the main theatre companies of his time, Queen Henrietta's Men and the King's Men.
William Allen was a prominent English actor in the Caroline era. He belonged to both of the most important theatre companies of his generation, Queen Henrietta's Men and the King's Men.
Nicholas Burt, or Birt or Burght among other variants, was a prominent English actor of the seventeenth century. In a long career, he was perhaps best known as the first actor to play the role of Othello in the Restoration era.
Robert Shatterell was an English actor of the seventeenth century. He was one of the limited group of actors who began their careers in the final period of English Renaissance theatre, and resumed stage work in the Restoration, after the long theatre closure of the English Civil War and the Interregnum, 1642–1660. [See: Richard Baxter; Nicholas Burt; Walter Clun; Charles Hart; Michael Mohun; William Wintershall.]
Robert Browne was an English actor of the Elizabethan era, and the owner and manager of the Boar's Head Theatre. He was also part of an enduring confusion in the study of English Renaissance theatre.
Dick of Devonshire is an anonymous Jacobean era stage play, based on the autobiography of the real-life English sailor Dicke of Devonshire. Written in 1626, it survived as part of MS Egerton 1994; a manuscript collection prepared by the actor William Cartwright around 1642, and later presented by him to Dulwich College. The play was first published by A.H. Bullen in his Old English Plays series in 1885.
 | Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about Cartwright, William (d.1687) . |
