William Knell (actor)

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William Knell († June 13, 1587 in Thame , England ) was an English actor of the Elizabethan theater , who was one of the leading actors of the theater company Queen Elizabeth's Men in the 1580s . Speculation suggests that his sudden death in a duel with a fellow actor made it possible for the young William Shakespeare to become an actor.

Life

Knell joined the Queen Elizabeth's Men in 1583. It seems that he soon took on leading roles. It is known that he played King Henry V in the play The Famous Victories of Henry V ; together with Richard Tarlton , who took on the comic role of Dericke in the play . A recording of this performance says: "Knel, then playing Henry the fift, hit Tarlton a sound boxe indeed, which made the people laugh the more".

On January 30, 1586, Knell married 15-year-old Rebecca Edwards (baptized December 23, 1571).

On June 13, 1587, the Queen's Men started their tour of the provinces of England in Thame ( Oxfordshire ) when Knell got into a dispute with his colleague John Towne. Knell drew his sword and attacked Towne, who took refuge on a small hill called the White Hound Close . When Knell approached Towne, he drew his own sword in self-defense and stabbed Knell in the neck with it. The actor died of this within half an hour. Towne was acquitted of all guilt upon investigation. The investigation report states that "William Knell continued his attack as before, so vicious and angry, and Towne ... to save his life, drew his sword (price five shillings) and held it in his right hand and thrust it in the neck of William Knell and made a fatal wound three inches deep and one inch wide. "

aftermath

Rebecca Knell was awarded her husband's inheritance in December 1587. She married John Heminges on March 10, 1588 , later one of Shakespeare's closest colleagues to the Lord Chamberlain's Men and co-editor of the First Folio of his plays. With him, Rebecca had 14 children in their 31-year marriage before she died in the summer of 1619. The eldest son, William, gained recognition as a playwright and poet.

Knell's brutal departure from the traveling theater company may explain how Shakespeare came to the acting profession. So speculates Samuel Schoenbaum : "When the Queen's Men stopped in Stratford in 1587, theywere 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. ”(“ When the Queen's Men stopped at Stratford, they lost a man, William Knell was recently killed in a scuffle by a fellow actor. Perhaps Shakespeare took over Knells Place and found the way to London and [its] stage landscape. ”) Shakespeare's father John Shakespeare , as High Bailiff (Mayor) of Stratford, was responsible for the permits and accommodation of traveling theater groups. However, there is no direct evidence of Shakespeare's involvement with the Queen Elizabeth's Men, so this continues to be considered pure speculation.

Later mentions

In Edmund Spenser's series of poems The Teares of the Muses , published in 1591, the following lines could contain a reference to William Knell

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

Thomas Heywood , along with others, mentions him in his Apology for Actors as a modern day Roscius whose fame outlived him. Heywood never saw him play, but he believed those who saw him and the other actors that their performances were so perfect ("absolute") that it would be a sin to " drown their words in Lethe ," that is, to doubt. He was also lauded in Thomas Nashes' 1592 book Pierce Penilesse , 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 across Europe, even beyond those of the famous ancient Roman actors.

Individual evidence

  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. Pages 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, S. 228th
  4. ^ A b Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, Jo Eldridge Carney (eds.): A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen… 1500–1650 . Routledge. London, 2016, ISBN 978-1-315-44070-5 , pp. 630 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  5. ^ Peter Thomson, On Actors and Acting University of Exeter Press, 2000, p. 42.
  6. ^ Michael Wood, In Search of Shakespeare , Random House, 2005, p. 113
  7. ↑ Kathman, David: Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in the Elizabethan Theater Shakespeare Quarterly 55. Johns Hopkins University Press 2004. Pages 1-49.
  8. ^ S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare, the Globe & the World , Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 43.
  9. ↑ Patricia Pierce: Shakespeare and the Forgotten Heroes. In: History Today. Volume: 56th edition: July 7, 2006, p. 3.
  10. ^ Scott McCrea, The Case for Shakespeare , Praeger, 2004, p. 173
  11. ^ Doring, Tobias, "Writing Performance: How to Elegise Elizabethan Actors," Shakespeare Survey , Volume 58, p. 62
  12. ^ Herbert Berry, English Professional Theater, 1530-1660, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 176-7.
personal data
SURNAME Knell, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English actor of the Elizabethan Theater
DATE OF BIRTH 16th Century
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1587
Place of death Thame , England