Christopher Beeston
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Christopher Beeston (c. 1579 – c. October 15, 1638) was a successful actor and powerful impresario in early 17th century London. He was associated with a number of playwrights, particularly Thomas Heywood.
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[edit] Early life
Little is known of Beeston's early life. In early records, he is known alternately as Beeston and Hutchison. He has not so far been decisively connected with the William Beeston mentioned by Thomas Nashe in Strange News; however, such a connection is possible. In the past, Beeston was conjecturally associated with the "Kit" in the surviving plot of Richard Tarlton's Seven Deadly Sins; this association is not universally accepted. Nevertheless, it seems likely that he begin in theater as a child actor. The will of Augustine Phillips, in which Phillips bequeaths "his servant" thirty shillings, indicates that Beeston had been that actor's apprentice with the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Beeston is listed in Ben Jonson's folio as an actor in Every Man in His Humour. Thus it would seem that Beeston started as a boy player but had graduated to adult roles after the turn of the century.
In 1602 Beeston was involved in a serious scandal involving a charge of rape. The evidence is recorded in the Minute Books of Bridewell prison. A woman named Margaret White, the widow of a cloth worker, accused him of raping her on Midsummer night and leaving her pregnant. Beeston denied the charge, in a riotous hearing attended by his fellow actors who "much abused the place." The hearing recommended that Beeston be prosecuted, but no records of a trial survive; it appears that the case did not follow through, perhaps for lack of evidence.[1]
[edit] Maturity
Beeston left the Lord Chamberlain's Men and moved on to Worcester's Men in August 1602, a month after the rape accusation; perhaps he was forced out. He stayed with Worcester's Men through its transformation into Queen Anne's Men, eventually becoming its manager. In this capacity, he worked closely with Thomas Heywood, producing most of that prolific writer's plays at the Red Bull Theatre. Surviving court documents suggest that Beeston's business practices were not above reproach; he was sued in 1623 by the widow of a former sharer in Anne's, who had been trying to get payment on her husband's share for over a decade. The hearing revealed that Beeston had treated company funds as his own, charging the company for properties he had purchased with its money. The company, already in difficult straits, limped along until the death of Queen Anne in 1619. For a brief time, the remnants of the company toured the countryside, but they soon disappeared.
Beeston, meantime, had brought the new Prince Henry's Men to the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane. Beeston's interest in this theater dates to 1616, when Beeston bought a cockfight ring, possibly employing Inigo Jones to convert it to a theatre. The new establishment, still called the Cockpit Theatre after its former function, opened in 1616. On Shrove Tuesday 1617, a mob of apprentices ransacked and torched the theater; patrons of the Red Bull, they appear to have been angry that their favorite plays had been moved to the more-exclusive indoor theaters. When Beeston rebuilt the theater, he named it the Phoenix, but it was still frequently called the Cockpit.
[edit] Later life
From 1619 until his death in 1638, Beeston ran both theaters with a regularly changing succession of companies, ranging from Prince Charles' Men to the last group of child actors, commonly called Beeston's Boys. The actors in this group were significantly older than Elizabethan boy players; a number were in their early twenties. Beeston's enterprises during these years prospered. The Cockpit offered credible competition to the King's Men at Blackfriars Theatre for the wealthier set of playgoers; Beeston employed fashionable playwrights such as Ford and Shirley to attract these audiences. After the temporary demise and ultimate eclipse of the Fortune Theatre in 1621, the Red Bull was the main attraction in Middlesex for citizens and apprentices.
Beeston died in 1638, leaving his theatrical interests in the hands of his son William Beeston.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Duncan Salkeld, Literary Traces in Bridewell and Bethlem, 1602-1624, Review of English Studies, Vol. 56 No. 225, pp. 379-85.
[edit] References
- Adams, J. Q. Shakespearean Playhouses: A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1917.
- Bawcutt, N. W. The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, 1623-1673. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
- Collier, J. P.. Lives of the Original Actors in Shakespeare's Plays. London: Shakespeare Society, 1853.
- Nunzeger, Edwin. A Dictionary of Actors and of Other Persons Associated With the Public Presentation of Plays in England Before 1642. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929.
