Names of the original Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare: From the Folio, 1623.
William Shakespeare.
Richard Burbadge.
John Hemmings.
Augustine Phillips.
William Kempe.
Thomas Poope.
George Bryan.
Henry Condell.
William Slye.
Richard Cowly.
John Lowine.
Samuel Crosse.
Alexander Cooke.
Samuel Gilburne.
Robert Armin* note.
William Ostler.
Nathan. Field† note.
John Underwood.
Nicholas Tooley.
William Ecclestone.
Joseph Taylor.
Robert Benfield.
Robert Goughe.
Richard Robinson.
John Shanke.
John Rice.
It may appear singular that the name of the celebrated
Alleyn (founder of Dulwich College) should not occur in this
list of performers. But Alleyn was master of the Fortune
playhouse, which he is said either to have built or re-built;
and therefore might have no connection with other theatres
where the plays of Shakespeare were exhibited. We learn
however from Langbaine, that he had been “an ornament
to Black Friers.” John Wilson, who appears to have acted
in our author's Much Ado about Nothing, is likewise excluded
from this catalogue; though Meres, in the Second Part
of his Wits' Common-wealth, 1598, praising several who were
“famous for extemporall verse,” says, “Of our Tarlton, doctor
Case that learned physitian thus speaketh in the seventh
book and seventeenth chapter of his Politikes; Aristoteles suum
Theodoretum laudavit, quendam peritum tragædiarum actorem;
Cicero suum Roscium; nos Angli Tarletonum, in cujus voce
& vultu omnes jocosi affectus, in cujus cerebroso capite lepidæ
facetiæ habitant. And so is our wittie Wilson, who, for
learning and extemporall witte in this facultie, is without
compare or compeere, &c.”
Steevens.
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Samuel Johnson [1778], The plays of William Shakspeare. In ten volumes. With the corrections and illustrations of various commentators; to which are added notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. The second edition, Revised and Augmented (Printed for C. Bathurst [and] W. Strahan [etc.], London) [word count] [S10901].
