Robert Benfield
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Benfield (fl. 1613 – 1647) was a Jacobean era actor, noted for his longterm membership in the King's Men in the years and decades after William Shakespeare's retirement and death.
Nothing is known of Benfield's life apart from his activity on the stage. He was most likely with the Lady Elizabeth's Men in 1613, and acted in their productions of Fletcher's The Coxcomb and the Fletcher/Massinger play The Honest Man's Fortune in that year. Benfield joined the King's Men to replace William Ostler, who died unexpectedly in December 1614. He acted in the company's production of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi c. 1621.
He was a shareholder in the company by 1619, when he is listed in the renewed patent for the King's Men issued in that year. Benfield also eventually became a sharer in both the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, but only after a conflict: in 1635 he was one of three King's Men (the others were Thomas Pollard and Eliard Swanston) who petitioned the Lord Chamberlain, Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, for the right to buy shares from fellow King's Man John Shank.
Benfield was one of the ten King's Men who signed the dedication of the first Beaumont and Fletcher flio of 1647. In the 25 cast lists added to the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679, Benfield is mentioned 18 times:
Benfield's total equals those of Joseph Taylor and John Underwood, and is second only to John Lowin's 21.
The twentieth-century scholar T. W. Baldwin developed a hypothesis that the King's Men assigned specific actors to specific stock roles: Taylor played "hero" parts, Lowin played "tyrant" parts, etc. In Baldwin's schema (which has been treated skeptically by many other commentators), Benfield's specialty lay in "dignitary" roles.
[edit] References
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
