Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com
Wikipedia
Thomas Patrick Betterton (ca. 1635–April 28, 1710), English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.
He was apprenticed to John Holden, Sir William Davenant's publisher, and possibly later to a bookseller named John Rhodes, who had been wardrobe-keeper at the Blackfriars Theatre. In 1659, Rhodes obtained a licence to set up a company of players at the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane; and on the reopening of this theatre in 1660, Betterton made his first appearance on the stage.
Betterton's talents at once brought him into prominence, and he was given leading parts. On the opening of the new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1661, Davenant, the patentee of the Duke's Company, engaged Betterton and all Rhodes's company to play in his Siege of Rhodes. Betterton, besides being a public favorite, was held in high esteem by Charles II, who sent him to Paris to examine stage improvements there.
In 1662 he had married the actress Mary Saunderson (d. 1712).
In appearance he was athletic, slightly above middle height, with a tendency to stoutness; his voice was strong rather than melodious, but in recitation it was used with the greatest dexterity. Pepys, Pope, Steele, and Cibber all bestow lavish praise on his acting. His repertory included a large number of Shakespearian roles, many of them presented in the versions adapted by Davenant, Dryden, Shadwell and Nahum Tate. He played Lear opposite Elizabeth Barry's Cordelia in Tate's modified version of Shakespeare's King Lear. Betterton was himself author of several adaptations which were popular in their day.
From Davenant's death in 1668, Betterton was the de facto manager and director of the Duke's Company, and from the merger of London's two theatre companies in 1682, he continued to fulfill these functions in the new United Company. Enduring progressively worse conditions and terms in this money-grubbing monopoly (see Restoration spectacular and Restoration comedy), the top actors walked out in 1695 and set up a cooperative company in Lincoln's Inn Fields under Betterton's leadership. The new company opened with the premiere of Congreve's Love for Love with an all-star cast including Betterton as Valentine and Anne Bracegirdle as Angelica. But in a few years the profits fell off; and Betterton, laboring under the infirmities of age and gout, determined to quit the stage. At his benefit performance, when the profits are said to have been over £500, he played Valentine in Love for Love.
He made his last appearance on the stage in 1710, as Melantius in The Maid's Tragedy. He died shortly afterwards, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "Thomas Betterton", a publication now in the public domain.
- Howe, Thomas Betterton (1891); The Life and Times of Thomas Betterton (1886).
Annotations
-
Pepys’s favorite actor, and generally held to be the best of the entire Restoration period. Sam will call him “the best actor in the world” in not too long (4 Nov. 1661).
Betterton is most famous for his voice, particularly for his dramatic intonation:
http://www.geocities.com/scriblerus_uk/Betterton.html -
Betterton made his debut in 1660: Visage , detail from an engraving
http://wwwa.search.eb.com/shakespeare/micro/66/89.html
Brownlow Street was re-named Betterton Street in 1877 in honour of the seventeenth-century Shakespearean actor Thomas Betterton who lived and died in nearby Russell Street.
http://www.coventgarden.uk.com/betterton.html
-
Thomas Betterton, born c. 1635, was the son of an under-cook to Charles I, and first appeared on the stage at the Cockpit in Drurylane in 1659. He died in 1710 and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey
-
A short biography from the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica is here: http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/betterton001.html
-
from L&M Companion
Betterton, Thomas and Mary. Thomas (1635-1710) was perhaps the greatest figure in the contemporary theatre. In a career spanning fifty years he played a remarkable variety of part and earned the reputation, with most of his contemporaries as well as with Pepys, of being far and away the finest actor of his time. In addition he was a manager and trainer of actors, and himself wrote plays (mostly adaptations). He was a member and shareholder of the Duke’s Company from 1661, becoming its joint-manager with Harris on Davenant’s death in 1668, and had a controlling interest in the United Company formed by the merger of the Duke’s and King’s Companies in 1682. From 1695 he ran a troupe of actors who had left the United Company. After 1685 he was increasingly concerned with the production of opera, and put on the first performances of Purcell’s “King Arthur and Fairy Queen”.His wife Mary (b. Saunderson, ?1637-1712, m. 1662) was also a member of the Duke’s Company from 1661. Pepys calls her ‘Ianthe’ after her part in Davenant’s “Siege of Rhodes”. She had an important share in her husband’s work of training young performers. Among their pupils Anne Bracegirdle (d. 1748) was the most eminent.
-
It was Betterton who went into Warwickshire in quest of information about William Shakespeare on behalf of Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare’s first serious biographer. Betterton is apparently the source for the deer-poaching, horse-holding and
-
Thomas Betterton
One of the earliest celebrity actors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Betterton