Richard Burbage

Unknown artist: Portrait Richard Burbage , Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Richard Burbage (* around 1567; † March 13, 1619 ) or Burbadge was an English actor and theater owner in the Elizabethan era .

Life

He came from a family of actors and was a well-known actor at the age of 20. His father James Burbage (around 1531–1597) had been a member of the Leicester's Men drama troupe since 1572 and, under the auspices of the Earl of Leicester , built the first public commercial theater in England with his brother-in-law John Brayne, The Theater , where the Leicester's Men played , and from 1582 formed the Lord Hunsdon Company ( Queen Elizabeth's Men ), which worked with the Admiral's Men from 1586 . Little is known about his early years; Much of the following is speculative and not entirely secured. He probably played roles with the Admiral's Men around 1590, the Lord Strange's Men in 1592, and the Earl of Pembroke's Men in 1593 .

He became leading as the star of the theater company Lord Chamberlain's Men , which also included William Shakespeare , which was renamed King's Men in 1603 after the enthronement of James I. Although the Admiral's Men and Strange's Men performed joint events at court in 1590/91, it is believed that they otherwise remained independent of each other, with the Admiral's Men having the theater and the Strange's Men having the Curtain Theater at their disposal. Burbage must have had influence on both houses, however, as he played independently for both companies.

After their father's death in 1597, he and his brother Cuthbert Burbage took over the family's two theaters, the Blackfriars Theater and The Theater , which was later relocated to another location on the south side ( Bankside ) of the Thames and in 1599 as a new house, the Globe Theater , arose. From 1608/09 they rented and played in the more comfortable, because covered, Blackfriars Theater , which gradually replaced the Globe Theater as their headquarters. The Burbage brothers, who lived near the Globe Theater (Halliwell Street in Shoreditch ), worked closely together throughout their lives.

He was the father of at least eight children and did not cease to actively work as an actor until his death in 1619. After his death, his widow married Winifred Richard Robinson, a member of the King's Men (successor to Lord Chamberlain's) who controlled 3½ of the sixteen shares in the Globe Theater that they had inherited. Some experts believe that the so-called Chandos portrait does not depict William Shakespeare but Richard Burbage, others believe that he was the creator of the picture. In addition to acting, he also appeared as a painter. Until 1987, a woman was in the picture gallery of London's Dulwich College as his work; however, it was later identified as the painting by an anonymous northern Italian painter. The Dulwich College painting collection also contains a portrait of Burbage by an unknown hand.

He wasn't as “enterprising” as B. the then famous Edward Alleyn or William Shakespeare . He is said to have left his widow about £ 300, significantly less than Alleyn's estate or Shakespeare's legacy when he died in 1616. He was buried in St Leonard's Church, Shoreditch, near The Theater . His grave no longer exists. Later, a memorial was built for him and his brother. An unknown poet wrote him an A Funerall Elegye on the Death of the famous Actor Richard Burbedg who died on Saturday in Lent the 16 of March 1619 .

meaning

Burbage was the leading actor of his time, playing the title role in the premieres of many of the famous Shakespearean dramas such as Hamlet , Othello , Richard III. and King Lear . He has also appeared in pieces by other contemporary authors, such as those by Ben Jonson (title role in Volpone and Subtle in The Alchemist ), John Marston ( The Malcontent ), John Webster ( The Duchess of Malfi ), Beaumont & Fletcher ( The Maid's Tragedy ) and Christopher Marlowe .

Burbage's charisma and impact as an actor is expressed in the enormous number of his roles in hundreds of plays from his time from 1580 to 1610. His greatest acting counterpart was the gigantic Edward Alleyn , who before Shakespeare played the major roles in the successful productions of Marlowe's Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta (Barabas).

Shakespeare's Estate (Testament and First Folio)

William Shakespeare's will, probably written in January 1616, which was rewritten in part (page 1) by March 1616 and subsequently added to the other parts, takes into account the actors Heminges and Condell as well as his colleague Richard Burbage, who dealt with the Money should buy a ring. Shakespeare and Burbage appear in the First Folio at the top of the list of 26 “principal actors”, of which at least 24 (probably all 26) became “sharers”. The following five Heminges, Phillips, William Kempe, Thomas Pope and George Bryan belonged to Alleyn's theater group at the time.

swell

• Herbert Berry (Ed.): The first public playhouse. The theater in Shoreditch, 1576–1698. McGill-Quenn's University Press, Montreal 1979, ISBN 0-7735-0340-4 .
• Martin Holmes: Shakespeare and Burbage. The sound of Shakespeare as devised to suit the voice and talents of his principal player. Rowman and Littlefield et al., Totowa NJ et al. 1978, ISBN 0-85033-306-7 .
• Ivor Brown: Shakespeare and the Actors . Coward-McCann, New York NY 1970.
• EK Chambers : The Elizabethan Stage. 4 volumes. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1923.
• Joseph Quincy Adams: The Housekeepers of the Globe. In: Modern Philology. 17, 1, 1919, ISSN  0026-8232 , pp. 1-8 (also special reprint).

Web links

• Richard Burbage: A Dictionary of the Drama. W. Davenport Adams, JB Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1904.

References and notes

1. ^ FE Halliday: A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Revised edition. Penguin, Harmondsworth et al. 1964, p. 77.
2. ^ Andrew Gurr : The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642. 3. Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 1992, ISBN 0-521-41005-3 , p. 91.
3. ^ Scott McMillin: The Elizabethan Theater and "The Book of Sir Thomas More". Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY 1987, ISBN 0-8014-2008-3 .