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The Life, Career and Acting Qualities of an Elizabethan Player Bachelor’S Thesis Diploma

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The Life, Career and Acting Qualities of an Elizabethan Player Bachelor’S Thesis Diploma Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Kristýna Obermajerová Richard Burbage: The Life, Career and Acting Qualities of an Elizabethan Player Bachelor’s Thesis Diploma Supervisor: Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph. D. 2009 1 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature 2 I would like to thank Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D. for his immense dedication and valuable advice. I would also like to thank Ms. Karen Senior for her kind help in the search for the primary and secondary sources. 3 Table of Contents 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………..…..5 2 Richard Burbage: the Son, Brother, Husband, Father and Grandfather…..……..….8 3 Richard Burbage: the Businessman …………………………………………….....15 3.1 Social Standing of Early Modern Players…………………..………………15 3.2 The Family Inheritance and Richard‘s Involvement in It…………...….….16 3.3 The New System of Housekeepers………………………………….……...19 3.4 Richard Burbage and His Financial Matters………………………….….…20 3.5 Richard Burbage: the Painter…………………………………………….…23 4 Acting in the Early Modern Period……………………….…………….…………26 4.1 Availability of Sources………………………………………….……….…26 4.2 Acting and Rhetorical Terminology…………………………….………….26 4.3 Influences of Rhetoric on Acting………………….……………….…...….28 4.4 Excellent Acting…………………………………………………….……...37 4.5 Popularity of Early Modern Players………...…………..…….……....……38 5 Richard Burbage: the Player…………………………………………………….…42 5.1 Richard Burbage and His Engagement in Acting Companies……...………42 5.2 Richard Burbage and His Roles…………………………………………….43 5.3 Richard Burbage and His Success and Fame………………………………46 6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….…...54 7 Czech Resume……………………………………………………………….…….56 8 Works Cited and Consulted…………….…………………………………….……57 9 Appendices……………………………………………………………………..….63 4 1 Introduction This thesis deals with Richard Burbage, one of the most famous and most reputable English players of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, and the performer of the leading parts in Shakespeare‘s tragedies. Although much has been written about the playwrights of the time, particularly about William Shakespeare and his contribution to the dramatic world, not so much has been written about the performers who were giving life to the words and characters on the paper. It is regrettable how little is known about the players of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, their personal lives, their careers, the roles they played and their styles of acting. The situation is still more unfortunate when it is realized that some of the documents concerning this kind of information are actually either ill-founded or even forged and thus they cannot be considered to be reliable sources of information. Therefore the aim of this thesis is to summarize the basic well-founded facts about the life and career of Richard Burbage and to refute some groundless theories concerning his life. Finally, the implication of this thesis should be for any reader to realize that without the knowledge of the players and their acting styles, one will never be able to fully understand the Elizabethan and Jacobean apprehension of the plays themselves. There are many angles and perspectives from which the topic could be looked at: sociological, literalistic, comparative, economic, archeological, etc. For the aim of this thesis, the most suitable will be that approach in which I will keep to the records and I will avoid any speculation, deduction and evaluation unless indicated otherwise. And for maintenance of authenticity all the quotations will be adduced in the original spelling. As a reliable source of information and records I will consider any copy of an original letter, poem, document, judicial record and public notice, or any material referring to such a copy. The only exceptions will be the documents cited and referred 5 to in the works of John Payne Collier1, who was an English Shakespearean scholar but who is nowadays more famous – or rather infamous – for his forgery. And because some of Collier‘s documents concerning Richard Burbage have been discovered and seen only by Collier himself, I will not regard them as genuine unless some other author offers a reference to the same source as Collier. In all cases, however, these quotations taken from Collier‘s works will always be properly indicated. The content of this thesis is divided into four chapters, each of which treats one particular sphere of Burbage‘s life and career. The chapters are ordered in a way which roughly corresponds to the chronological ordering. The chapter called ―Richard Burbage: the Son, Brother, Husband, Father and Grandfather‖ focuses mainly on the numerous theories of date and place of Burbage‘s birth, his family relations and further on speculation about the date and cause of his death. The chapter called ―Richard Burbage: the Businessman‖ provides an insight into Burbage‘s economic situation, his social standing in comparison with the social standing of other players of his time; his sources of income; and the estimated value of his shares in the Globe and the Blackfriars. This chapter will also inquire into another profession for which Burbage was praised and which represented an additional source of earning money, i.e. painting. ―General Introduction to Early Modern Acting‖ is a chapter which aims to make the reader acquainted with the acting style of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Due to the lack of reliable documents and information concerning the acting style of the early modern era, the art of acting will be compared and contrasted to another performing art, the art of oratory, which will, however, reveal much about the acting style at the theatres. This choice is an intentional one since these two kinds of performing arts 1 John Payne Collier (1789-1883) 6 influenced each other very much. Moreover, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries oratory was a common practice at schools and it had a considerable effect on the style of acting and on theatre in general. Further on, the chapter will summarise the general image of what was considered to be excellent acting and primarily all qualities any successful player had to have in order to meet the requirements of that period. In the last part it will be shown how unstable the fame of actors was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and how the popular style developed until Richard Burbage achieved his greatest fame. The last chapter consists of three subchapters dealing with the sphere of life for which Richard Burbage is most valued and praised, i.e. acting. The first of these subchapters summarises Burbage‘s engagement in various acting troupes. The second subchapter presents a complete summary of the roles Burbage played and it also provides some of the Alexander Leggatt‘s2 finding of the textual analysis of these roles, through which one can learn more about Burbage‘s style of acting. In the last subchapter, I will consider all materials written during or relatively shortly after Burbage‘s death. These are valuable as sources of information which can reveal some new and amend the already ascertained facts about the acting qualities of Richard Burbage as well as about his personal life, success and fame he enjoyed during his life. They will thus provide a complex summary of the most important facts concerning Richard Burbage and his career. 2 Alexander Leggatt (publishing since 1973) 7 2 Richard Burbage: the Son, Brother, Husband, Father and Grandfather There are not many things about the personal life of Richard Burbage which are known with certainty. First of all, it is the date and place of his birth the historians are not sure of. And the inconsistency in spelling names makes any research even more complicated. It is not unusual to find the surname, Burbage, spelled in two different ways within one record, as in: ―1608. Juliet Burbege, the daughter of Richard Burbidge, was buryed the 12 of Spetember‖ (qtd. in Collier and Shakespeare Society 33).3 Collier mentions that in his research he came across these varieties: Burbage, Burbege, Burbadge, Burbidge, Burbedge, and Burbadg (Collier and Shakespeare Society 2). The National Archives mentions other, older, varieties of the place name ‗Burebage‘ too: Burebach, Borebach, Buberge, and Burbach. In history, there were many theories of when and where Richard Burbage was born and there were also numerous suggestions of how to ascertain these data. Some of them tried to state the date and place according to various vague hints in letters and documents from Burbage‘s life or the period immediately following his death. Others even tried to tell Richard‘s age by stating that Richard‘s characters must have been approximately at the same age as Burbage himself. This assumption is, however, based on a wrong presupposition that in the early modern era the theatre endeavored after realistic cast and theatre.4 As for the theories concerning the place of Burbage‘s birth, the suggested locations included such towns and cities as Stratford-upon-Avon and Hertfordshire. None of the theories, however, led to a decisive conclusion. Relatively recently, a new discovery was made and it says that ―Cuthbert and Richard Burbage were baptized at St. Stephen Coleman Street [London] on 15 June 1565 and 7 July 3 Quoted form Malone‘s Shakespeare by Boswell, iii, 183. 4 More about the realistic theatre in chapter 4.2. 8 1568‖ (relatively) (Schoenbaum5, Elizabethan 31). These dates seem to confirm the assumptions made in the older theories. None the less it still cannot be concluded that this discovery makes the problem resolved once and for all. The main reason for the lack of certainty is the fact that the entries in the record ―sometimes appear as ‗Bridges,‘ ‗Brigges,‘ and variants,‖ which was a name of a family living in the parish for quite a long time (Schoenbaum, Elizabethan 31).
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