Charles Hart (17th-century actor)

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Charles Hart (1625 – August 18, 1683) was a British Restoration actor. The date of his birth is conjectural, based on assertions that he acted women's parts as a boy before the Commonwealth closing of the theatres 1642—1660.

Hart began his career as a boy player with the King's Men; he was an apprentice of Richard Robinson, longtime member of that company. Hart established his reputation by playing the role of the Duchess in The Cardinal, the tragedy by James Shirley, in 1641.^[1] In 1648 he and Walter Clun, a fellow former boy player, were involved in an attmpt to re-start the King's Men company in the middle of the Puritan Interregnum, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not succeed. [See: King's Men.]

The well-known story that Hart was the illegitimate grandson of Shakespeare's sister Joan is largely discredited. During the Commonwealth, Hart was a soldier, and also did some clandestine acting, for which he was harassed and on occasion imprisoned. Just before the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, acting resumed on a larger scale, and Hart seems to have been then a member of a company performing at the Cockpit playhouse, led by Michael Mohun. As soon as the King's Company was formed in 1660, Hart became its leading man, specializing in playing the male half of witty, bantering couples. This type of dialogue in Restoration comedy was largely influenced by the talents and personalities of Hart and Nell Gwyn, who was his mistress before she became Charles II's. Hart's natural dignity in playing royal roles was also often commented on by contemporaries, and in the heroic play he "was celebrated for superman roles, notably the arrogant, bloodthirsty Almanzor in John Dryden's Conquest of Granada" (Dixon). He was also noted for Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone.

When Hart played in Euterpe Restored in 1672, Richard Flecknoe composed the following lines:

Beauty to the eye, and music to the ear,

Such even the nicest critics must allow

Burbage was once and such Charles Hart is now.^[2]

[edit] Note

1. ^ Alois M. Nagler, A Source Book in Theatrical History, Courier Dover, 1959; p. 160.
2. ^ Andrew Gurr, The Shakespeare Company, p. 229.

[edit] Sources

• Dixon, Peter (1996). William Wycherley: The Country Wife and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gurr, Andrew. (2004). The Shakespeare Company, 1594-1642. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

• Highfill, Philip Jr, Burnim, Kalman A., and Langhans, Edward (1973–93). Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800. 16 volumes. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.