Nicholas Tooley
Encyclopedia
Nicholas Tooley was a Renaissance
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...

 actor in the King's Men
King's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...

, the acting company of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

.

Recent research has shown that Tooley was born in late 1582 or early 1583; his birth name was not Tooley but Wilkinson. (In 1623 he signed a codicil to his last will and testament "Nicholas Wilkinson, alias Tooley.") He has been associated with the "Nick" in the surviving "plot" of The Seven Deadly Sins
The Seven Deadly Sins (play)
The Seven Deadly Sins was a two-part play written c. 1585, attributed to Richard Tarlton, and most likely premiered by his company, Queen Elizabeth's Men...

, dated c. 1591. The association, if accurate, indicates that he began as a boy player
Boy player
Boy player is a common term for the adolescent males employed by Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for the mainstream companies and performed the female roles, as women did not perform on the English stage in this period...

. He was apprenticed to Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage was an English actor and theatre owner. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama....

, and may have followed that actor to the Lord Chamberlain's Men when that company re-formed in 1594
1594 in literature
-Events:*The London theatres re-open in the spring, after two years of general inactivity due to the bubonic plague epidemic of 1592–94. Many of the actors who used to be Lord Strange's Men form a new organization, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, under the patronage of Henry Carey, 1st Baron...

. Tooley is mentioned in a letter of Joan Alleyn, Edward Alleyn
Edward Alleyn
Edward Alleyn was an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of Dulwich College and Alleyn's School.-Early life:...

's wife, in 1603, and he received a 20-shilling bequest in Augustine Phillips
Augustine Phillips
Augustine Phillips was an Elizabethan actor who performed in troupes with Edward Alleyn and William Shakespeare. He was one of the first generation of English actors to achieve wealth and a degree of social status by means of his trade....

's 1605 will. He became a sharer in the King's Men in 1605, replacing the short-lived Samuel Crosse.

Little is known about Tooley's specific roles for the company. He appears in speech prefixes in the First Folio
First Folio
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....

 text of The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...

, and in the cast lists for Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

's The Alchemist
The Alchemist (play)
The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. First performed in 1610 by the King's Men, it is generally considered Jonson's best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature...

(1610
1610 in literature
The year 1610 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Thomas Bodley makes an agreement with the Stationers' Company of London to put a copy of every book registered with them into his new Bodleian.-New books:...

), Sejanus
Sejanus (play)
Sejanus His Fall, a 1603 play by Ben Jonson, is a tragedy about Lucius Aelius Seianus, the favorite of the Roman emperor Tiberius. It was possibly an allegory of James I and his corrupt court....

(the 1610 revival), and Catiline (1611
1611 in literature
The year 1611 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - Oberon, the Faery Prince, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace....

). In the revival of John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...

's The Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–13. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then before a more general audience at The Globe, in 1613-14...

staged shortly before his death, he played Forobosco and a madman. In the 25 cast lists added to the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio
Beaumont and Fletcher folios
The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.-The first folio, 1647:The 1647...

 of 1679
1679 in literature
This article lists some of the most significant events of the year 1679 in literature.-Events:*John Locke returns to England from France.*Étienne Baluze becomes almoner to King Louis XIV of France....

, Tooley is mentioned in 14, those for:
  • Bonduca
    Bonduca
    Bonduca is a Jacobean tragi-comedy in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon, generally judged by scholars to be the work of John Fletcher alone. It was acted by the King's Men c. 1613, and published in 1647 in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio....

  • The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country (1647 play)
    The Custom of the Country is a Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, originally published in 1647 in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio.-Date and sources:The play is usually dated to c. 1619–23...

  • The Double Marriage
    The Double Marriage
    The Double Marriage is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, and initially printed in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Date and performance:...

  • The False One
    The False One
    The False One is a late Jacobean era stage play, written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. Generally categorized as a "classical history," the play tells part of the story of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra....

  • The Laws of Candy
    The Laws of Candy
    The Laws of Candy is a Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy that is significant principally because of the question of its authorship.-Date:...

  • The Little French Lawyer
    The Little French Lawyer
    The Little French Lawyer is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Date:...

  • The Loyal Subject
    The Loyal Subject
    The Loyal Subject is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy by John Fletcher that was originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Performance:...


  • The Pilgrim
    The Pilgrim (play)
    The Pilgrim is a late Jacobean era stage play, a comedy by John Fletcher that was originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.The play was acted by the King's Men; they performed it at Court in 1621 Christmas season...

  • The Prophetess
    The Prophetess (play)
    The Prophetess is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Date and performance:...

  • The Queen of Corinth
    The Queen of Corinth
    The Queen of Corinth is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Date:...

  • The Sea Voyage
    The Sea Voyage
    The Sea Voyage is a late Jacobean comedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. The play is notable for its imitation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.-Performance and publication:...

  • The Spanish Curate
    The Spanish Curate
    The Spanish Curate is a late Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It premiered on the stage in 1622, and was first published in 1647.-Date and source:...

  • A Wife for a Month
    A Wife for a Month
    A Wife for a Month is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647....

  • Women Pleased
    Women Pleased
    Women Pleased is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy by John Fletcher that was originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Date and performance:...


His total is lower than those of company stars like Joseph Taylor
Joseph Taylor (17th-century actor)
Joseph Taylor was a 17th-century actor. As the successor of Richard Burbage with the King's Men, he was arguably the most important actor in the later Jacobean and the Caroline eras....

 and John Lowin
John Lowin
John Lowin was an English actor born in the St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London, the son of a tanner. Like Robert Armin, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. While he is not recorded as a free citizen of this company, he did perform as a goldsmith, Leofstane, in a 1611 city pageant written by...

, but greater than those for most of the King's men's supporting players; Tooley was clearly a significant member of the company.

(The manuscript of the 1619
1619 in literature
The year 1619 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Richard Burbage dies in March; his place as the star of the King's Men is filled by Joseph Taylor.*René Descartes has a dream that helps him develop his ideas on analytical geometry....

 play Sir John van Olden Barnavelt
Sir John van Olden Barnavelt
The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt was a Jacobean play written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger in 1619, and produced in the same year by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre...

indiactes that Barnavelt's wife was played by an actor called "Nick." Early critics tended to identify this "Nick" as Tooley, though it may have been Nick Underwood or another unknown player. The question impinges upon the long-debated issue of whether women's roles in English Renaissance drama were filled exclusively by boys, or sometimes by adult actors like Tooley.)

Tooley witnessed Richard Burbage's will in 1619. In his own will of 3 June 1623, Tooley names Henry Condell
Henry Condell
Henry Condell was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare, published in 1623....

 and Cuthbert Burbage
Cuthbert Burbage
Cuthbert Burbage was an English theatrical figure, son of impresario James Burbage and elder brother of famous actor Richard Burbage...

 as his executors and residuary legatees. The bequests in Tooley's will are interesting for the light they throw on the actors of the King's Men, and the close relationship Tooley shared with the Burbage family. Those bequests include:
  • £10 to Cuthbert Burbage's wife, in whose house in St. Giles, Cripplegate
    Cripplegate
    Cripplegate was a city gate in the London Wall and a name for the region of the City of London outside the gate. The area was almost entirely destroyed by bombing in World War II and today is the site of the Barbican Estate and Barbican Centre...

     he lodged at the time of his death;
  • £10 to her daughter;
  • another £10 to Alice Walker, a sister of Richard and Cuthbert Burbage;
  • £29 13s. to Richard Burbage's daughter Sara, an amount owed to Tooley by fellow King's Man Richard Robinson
    Richard Robinson (17th-century actor)
    Richard Robinson was an actor in English Renaissance theatre and a member of Shakespeare's company the King's Men.Robinson started out as a boy player with the company; in 1611 he played the Lady in their production of The Second Maiden's Tragedy. He was cast in their production of Ben Jonson's...

    ;
  • £5 to Henry Condell's wife;
  • another £10 to their daughter; and
  • £10 to fellow King's Man Joseph Taylor.


Tooley forgives the debts owed to him by William Ecclestone
William Ecclestone
William Ecclestone or Egglestone was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a member of Shakespeare's company the King's Men.Nothing is known with certainty about Ecclestone's early life...

 and John Underwood
John Underwood (actor)
John Underwood was an early 17th century actor, a member of the King's Men, the company of William Shakespeare.-Career:Underwood began as a boy player with the Children of the Chapel, and was cast in that company's productions of Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels and The Poetaster...

, two more members of the King's Men company. He was buried at St. Giles Church, Cripplegate, on 5 June 1623.
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