William Knell (actor)

Last updated

William Knell
Bornunknown
DiedJune 13, 1587
NationalityEnglish
Occupationactor
Years active1583-1587
Spouse(s)
Rebecca Edwards
​
​
(m. 1586;died 1587)​

William Knell (died June 13, 1587) was an Elizabethan era actor who played lead roles for the Queen's Men in the 1580s. It has been speculated that his sudden death in a brawl with another actor, while on tour in Thame near Oxford, gave William Shakespeare an opening to become a professional actor.

Contents

Life

Knell joined the Queen's Men in 1583. [1] He seems to have quickly risen to play leading parts. He is known to have played the role of King Hevry V in the pre-Shakespeare play The Famous Victories of Henry V , opposite Richard Tarlton who played the clown role (Dericke) in the play. [2] A record of the event says that "Knel, then playing Henry the fift, hit Tarlton a sound boxe indeed, which made the people laugh the more". [3]

On 30 January 1586 he married the 15-year-old Rebecca Edwards (1561-1619).

On 13 June 1587, the Queen's Men were in Thame, at the beginning of a tour of the provinces, when he got into an argument with another actor called John Towne. Knell drew his sword and attacked Towne, who retreated to small ridge in a place called White Hound Close. As Knell approached Towne drew his own sword in self-defence and stabbed Knell in the neck. Knell was dead within half an hour. Towne was cleared at the subsequent inquest. [4] The report states that "William Knell continuing his attack as before, so maliciously and furiously, and Towne... to save his life drew his sword of iron (price five shillings) and held it in his right hand and thrust it into the neck of William Knell and made a mortal wound three inches deep and one inch wide." [5]

Aftermath

Rebecca Knell was granted the administration of her late husband’s estate in December 1587. She soon remarried, on 10 March 1588, to John Heminges, later to be one of Shakespeare's closest colleagues in the Chamberlain's Men and joint editor of the First Folio of his plays. By him she had several children during a marriage that lasted the thirty-one years until her death in 1619. [6]

The death of Knell has provided a convenient explanation for how Shakespeare came into the acting profession. As Samuel Schoenbaum puts it, "When the Queen's Men stopped in Stratford in 1587, they were short a man, William Knell having been lately killed in a brawl with a fellow actor. Maybe Shakespeare took Knell's place and thus found his way to London and stage-land." [7] Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, as High Bailiff of Stratford, was responsible for the acceptance and welfare of visiting theatrical troupes. [8] However there is no direct evidence of Shakespeare's membership of the Queen's Men, so it remains speculation.

Tributes

Knell may be commemorated in Edmund Spenser's 1591 cycle of poems The Teares of the Muses , [9] which includes the lines,

Our pleasant Willy, ah is dead of late:
With whom all joy and jolly merriment
Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.

Thomas Heywood mentions him with others in his Apology for Actors, as a modern Roscius whose fame outlived him. Though Heywood never saw him act, he says that those who saw him and the other actors he names believed their performances were so perfect ("absolute") that it would be a sin to "drown their worths in Lethe". [10] [11] He is also praised by Thomas Nashe in his book Pierce Penilesse (1592), in which Nashe jokingly says that he will write a book in Latin so that the achievements of Knell, Tarlton, Edward Alleyn, and John Bentley shall be recognised throughout Europe as surpassing those of famous ancient Roman actors.

Related Research Articles

Christopher Marlowe 16th-century English dramatist, poet and translator

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.

William Shakespeare English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616)

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

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 1558 and 1642.

William Kempe English comic actor and dancer (d1603)

William Kempe, commonly referred to as Will Kemp, was an English actor and dancer specialising in comic roles and best known for having been one of the original players in early dramas by William Shakespeare. Roles associated with his name may include the great comic creation, Falstaff, and his contemporaries considered him the successor to the great clown of the previous generation, Richard Tarlton.

Richard Burbage 16th/17th-century English actor and theatre owner

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.

Robert Armin Member of the Lord Chamberlains Men, a Shakespearean actor

Robert Armin was an English actor, and member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. He became the leading comedy actor with the troupe associated with William Shakespeare following the departure of Will Kempe around 1600. Also a popular comic author, he wrote a comedy, The History of the Two Maids of More-clacke, as well as Foole upon Foole, A Nest of Ninnies (1608) and The Italian Taylor and his Boy.

Thomas Nashe 16th-century English pamphleteer and poet

Thomas Nashe was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel The Unfortunate Traveller, his pamphlets including Pierce Penniless, and his numerous defences of the Church of England.

Edward Alleyn 16th/17th-century actor and founder of schools

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.

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.

<i>Sir John Oldcastle</i> 17th-century play sometimes attributed to William Shakespeare

Sir John Oldcastle is an Elizabethan play about John Oldcastle, a controversial 14th-/15th-century rebel and Lollard who was seen by some of Shakespeare's contemporaries as a proto-Protestant martyr.

Nathan Field 16th/17th-century English actor and dramatist

Nathan Field was an English dramatist. He was an actor.

Richard Tarlton

Richard Tarlton, 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.

Life of William Shakespeare Overview of the life of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children. He died in his home town of Stratford on 23 April 1616, aged 52. Though more is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive, which is unsurprising in the light of his social status as a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held, and the general lack of interest of the time in the personal lives of writers. Information about his life derives from public rather than private documents: vital records, real estate and tax records, lawsuits, records of payments, and references to Shakespeare and his works in printed and hand-written texts. Nevertheless, hundreds of biographies have been written and more continue to be, most of which rely on inferences and the historical context of the 70 or so hard facts recorded about Shakespeare the man, a technique that sometimes leads to embellishment or unwarranted interpretation of the documented record.

Christopher Beeston was a successful actor and a powerful theatrical impresario in early 17th century London. He was associated with a number of playwrights, particularly Thomas Heywood.

Queen Elizabeth's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in English Renaissance theatre. Formed in 1583 at the express command of Queen Elizabeth, it was the dominant acting company for the rest of the 1580s, as the Admiral's Men and the Lord Chamberlain's Men would be in the decade that followed.

Edmund Shakespeare was a 16th- and 17th-century English actor, and the brother of William Shakespeare.

Jig (theatre)

In theatres, beginning in Elizabethan London, a jig was a short comic drama that immediately followed a full-length play. This phenomenon added an additional comic or light-hearted offering at the end of a performance. A jig might include songs sung to popular tunes of the day, and it might feature dance, stage fighting, cross-dressing, disguisings, asides, masks, and elements of pantomime.

<i>The Famous Victories of Henry V</i> Anonymous 1580s English play

The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth: Containing the Honourable Battel of Agin-court: As it was plaide by the Queenes Maiesties Players, is an anonymous Elizabethan play, which is generally thought to be a source for Shakespeare's Henriad. It was entered by printer Thomas Creede in the Stationers' Register in 1594, but the earliest known edition is from 1598. A second quarto was published in 1617.

Shakespeare authorship question Fringe theory that Shakespeares works were written by someone else

The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective term for adherents of the various alternative-authorship theories—believe that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason—usually social rank, state security, or gender—did not want or could not accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory, and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims.

Gabriel Spenser 16th-century English actor

Gabriel Spenser, also spelt Spencer, was an Elizabethan actor. He is best known for episodes of violence culminating in his death in a duel at the hands of the playwright Ben Jonson.

References

  1. ↑ Roslyn Lander Knutson, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p.28.
  2. ↑ Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life, Cengage, 2001. pp.29-30.
  3. ↑ Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors and of Other Persons Associated with the Public Representation of Plays in England before 1642, Yale University Press, 1929, p.228.
  4. ↑ Peter Thomson, On Actors and Acting University of Exeter Press, 2000, p.42.
  5. ↑ Michael Wood, In Search of Shakespeare, Random House, 2005, p.113
  6. ↑ Kathman, David (2004). "Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in the Elizabethan Theater". Shakespeare Quarterly 55. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 1–49.
  7. ↑ S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare, the Globe & the World, Oxford University Press, 1979, p.43.
  8. ↑ Pierce, Patricia, "Shakespeare and the Forgotten Heroes", History Today, Volume: 56. Issue: 7, July 2006, p.3.
  9. ↑ Scott McCrea, The Case for Shakespeare, Praeger, 2004, p.173
  10. ↑ Doring, Tobias, "Writing Performance: How to Elegise Elizabethan Actors", Shakespeare Survey, vol 58, p.62
  11. ↑ Herbert Berry, English Professional Theatre, 1530-1660, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.176-7.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.