Thomas Betterton

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Thomas Betterton

Thomas Patrick Betterton (ca. 1635 – 28 April 1710), English

England

Actor

An actor or actress is a person who acting in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio programming in that capacity....
, son of an under-cook to King Charles I

Charles I of England

Charles I was List of English monarchs, List of monarchs of Scotland and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his capital punishment on 30 January 1649....
, was born in London

London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
.

He was apprenticed to John Holden, Sir William Davenant

William Davenant

Sir William Davenant , also spelled D'Avenant, was an England poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Literature in English#Caroline and Cromwellian literature and Literature in English#Restoration literature eras, and who was a...
's publisher, and possibly later to a bookseller named John Rhodes

John Rhodes (17th century)

John Rhodes was a theatrical figure of the early and middle seventeenth century. He rose to a brief prominence in 1660 when the London theatres re-opened at the start of the English Restoration era....
, who had been wardrobe-keeper at the Blackfriars Theatre

Blackfriars Theatre

Blackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars, London district of the City of London during the English Renaissance theatre. The theatre began as a venue for boy player associated with the Elizabeth I of England chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and James I o...
.

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Thomas Patrick Betterton (ca. 1635 – 28 April 1710), English

England

Actor

Charles I of England

Charles I was List of English monarchs, List of monarchs of Scotland and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his capital punishment on 30 January 1649....
, was born in London

London

William Davenant

John Rhodes (17th century)

Blackfriars Theatre

Cockpit Theatre

The Cockpit was a theatre in London, operating from 1616 to around 1665. It was the first theatre to be located on Drury Lane. After damage in 1617, it was christened The Phoenix....
in Drury Lane

Drury Lane

Drury Lane is a street in the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of London Borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....
; 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

Lincoln's Inn Fields

Lincoln's Inn Fields is the List of city squares by size in London, England. It is thought to have been one of the inspirations of Central Park, New York City....
in 1661, Davenant, the patentee of the Duke's Company, engaged Betterton and all Rhodes's company to play in his Siege of Rhodes
Siege of Rhodes

The Siege of Rhodes was one of the most famous sieges of Antiquity, when Demetrius I of Macedon, son of Antigonus I Monophthalmus, besieged Rhodes in an attempt to break its alliance with Ptolemaic Egypt....
. Betterton, besides being a public favorite, was held in high esteem by Charles II

Charles II of England

Charles II was the Monarchy of Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland, and Kingdom of Ireland.His father Charles I of England Regicide#The regicide of Charles I of England at Palace of Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War....
, who sent him to Paris

Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
to examine stage improvements there.

In 1662 he had married the actress Mary Saunderson

Mary Saunderson

Mary Saunderson was an actress and singer in England during the 1660s and 1690s. She is considered one of the first England actresses.Her most notable accomplishments are her being the first female actress to portray several of Shakespeare's woman characters on the professional stage....
(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

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys, Fellow of the Royal Society was an English people Navy Board and Member of Parliament, who is now most famous for his diary. Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under James II of England....
, Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope is generally regarded as the greatest England poet of the eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer....
, Steele

Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele was an Ireland writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator ....
, and Cibber

Theophilus Cibber

Theophilus Cibber was an England actor, playwright, author, and son of the actor-manager Colley Cibber.Theophilus Cibber began acting in the Drury Lane Theatre in 1721....
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

William Davenant

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of English Restoration to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden....
, Shadwell

Thomas Shadwell

Thomas Shadwell was an England poet and playwright who was appointed poet laureate in 1689....
and Nahum Tate

Nahum Tate

Nahum Tate was an Irish poet, hymnist, and lyricist, who became England's poet laureate in 1692....
. He played Lear opposite Elizabeth Barry's

Elizabeth Barry

Elizabeth Barry was an England actor of the Restoration period.She worked in big, prestigious London theatre companies throughout her successful career: from 1675 in the Duke's Company, 1682 – 1695 in the monopoly United Company, and from 1695 onwards as a member of the actors' cooperative usually known as Thomas Betterton's Compan...
Cordelia in Tate's modified version of Shakespeare's King Lear

The History of King Lear

The History of King Lear is an adaptation by Nahum Tate of William Shakespeare's King Lear. It first appeared in 1681, some seventy-five years after Shakespeare's version, and is believed to have replaced Shakespeare's version on the English stage in whole or in part until 1838....
. 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

Duke's Company

The Duke's Company was one of the two theatre companies that were chartered by King Charles II of England at the start of the English Restoration era, when the London theatres re-opened after their eighteen-year closure during the English Civil War and the English Interregnum....
, 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

Restoration spectacular

The Restoration spectacular, or elaborately staged "machine play", hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century English Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable theatrical scenery, baroque illusionistic painting, gorgeous costumes, and special effects such as trapdoor tricks, "flying" actors, and...
and Restoration comedy

Restoration comedy

Restoration comedy refers to English Comedy written and performed in the English Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a rebirth of English drama....
), the top actors walked out in 1695 and set up a cooperative company in Lincoln's Inn Fields

Lincoln's Inn Fields

Lincoln's Inn Fields is the List of city squares by size in London, England. It is thought to have been one of the inspirations of Central Park, New York City....
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

Anne Bracegirdle

Anne Bracegirdle, , was an England actress.Little is known of Bracegirdle's early life. Her precise date of birth is a source of great dispute due to conflicting records of her life....
as Angelica. But in a few years the profits fell off; and Betterton, laboring under the infirmities of age and gout

Gout

Gout is a crystal deposition disease hallmarked by elevated levels of uric acid in the Circulatory system. In this condition, crystals of monosodium urate or uric acid are deposited on the articular cartilage of joints, tendons and surrounding tissues....
, determined to quit the stage. At his benefit performance, when the profits are said to have been over £

Pound sterling

----The pound sterling , subdivided into 100 pence , is the currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown dependency and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and British Antarctic Territory....
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
The Maid's Tragedy

The Maid's Tragedy is a play by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher . It was first published in 1619 in literature.The play was one of the earliest works in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators that was acted by the King's Men ; Fletcher would spend most of his career as that company's regular playwright....
. He died shortly afterwards, and was buried in Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, which is almost always referred to popularly and informally as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic architecture Church , in Westminster, London, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster....
.