John Lowin and the English Theatre, 1603–1647

Acting and Cultural Politics on the Jacobean and Caroline Stage

Barbara Wooding

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317110644
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Theater

Even for scholars who have devoted their careers to the early modern theatre, the name John Lowin may not instantly evoke recognition-until now, the actor's life and contribution to the theatre of the period has never been the subject of a full-length publication. In this study, Barbara Wooding provides a comprehensive overview of the life and times of Lowin, a leader of the King's Men's Company and one of the greatest actors of the seventeenth century. She examines his involvement in the Jacobean/Caroline world as performer, citizen and company manager, and contextualizes his life and career within the socio-economic and political framework of the period. Although references to him in the archives are patchy and sporadic, information about his activities within the King's Men's Company is well documented. In the course of analysing less familiar plays of the period and the characters Lowin played in them, Wooding supplements critical understanding of the scope and range of Caroline drama. Because Lowin's career burgeoned after Shakespeare's and Burbage's death, his life in Southwark and his career with the same company furnishes the opportunity for an examination of the changing status of actors, and the exercising of their skills within the drama of the later playhouse period.

Chapter 1
From Cripplegate to Bankside

The personal details of John Lowin’s life are as reticent as his expression. The date in the painting ties in with a christening at St Giles Cripplegate, on 9th December 1576, of John, son of Richard Lowin, a currier, or leather dresser. The family appears to have come to London from Hertford and the Enfield area of Middlesex, where there are records of many John Lowins, the surname variously spelt, and of a Rychard Lowin christened at Enfield in 1550, a date which fits in with his parentage of John. The ward of Cripplegate straddled the city boundary and the church of St Giles Without, as its name indicates, was outside the city walls, accessed via Fore Street. The church had been badly damaged in a fire in 1545 and largely rebuilt. John Stow describes the parish as home to 1,800 householders and more than 4,000 communicants. White Cross and Red Cross Streets were in this area, together with Golding Lane, in which there were tenements and almshouses for the poor, though Stow also notes streets with ‘beautifull houses of stone, brick & timber’.1 Two notable buildings were Garter House and Drury House, and water was supplied in ‘Conduit brought in pypes of leade from Highbery’ (Stow, I, p. 300). Two years before Lowin’s birth, James Burbage and his sons undertook the financial gamble of building a theatre in Shoreditch, also north of the city, which opened to the public in 1576. The following year it was joined by the nearby Curtain theatre and by one in Newington Butts, south of the river.

Goldsmith’s Row

Of John Lowin’s early years, nothing is known other than that, of necessity, they included an education, although when and where remains undiscovered. One of the basic requirements for an actor was the ability to be able to read the roll on which his part was written, and literacy was also a prerequisite for acceptance into the Goldsmiths’ Company in whose annals he next appears:

I Iohn Lowen the sonne of Richard Lowen of London curriar have put myself prentise to nicholas Rudyard for the terme of eight yeares begininge at Cristmas in Anno 1593 By me Iohn Lowen.2

The apprenticeship, then, would have ended late in 1601. Sons frequently, although not invariably, learned their fathers’ trade. Richard Burbage became a joiner like his father, and Lording Barry, a playwright and leader of a boys’ company, followed his father Nicholas into the Fishmongers’ Guild, though freemen were not then obliged to earn their living within that trade. Lowin’s decision to learn a different craft was probably due to a number of factors, one of which may well have been the difficulties experienced in the leather industry late in Elizabeth’s reign, especially in London. Leather workers had been impoverished for many years as a result of ill-framed legislation, which included the granting of a patent to Sir Edward Dyer, who used it for his own advantage rather than the general good. The plight of those within the industry was debated in Parliament leading to ‘a royal proclamation of 1601 [which] conceded that the leather patent had been one of several in which “there hath been abuse in the execution of them, to the hurt and prejudice of her [Elizabeth’s] loving subjects”.’3 In a profession involved with the dressing and colouring of leather, Lowin’s father would have suffered less privation than the tanners – hence his ability to have his son schooled, and apprenticed into one of the great guilds.

The Guild in which Lowin served his apprenticeship was prestigious and powerful, its corporation status having been granted by Edward IV, with the title ‘The Wardens and Commonalty of the Mystery of Goldsmiths of the City of London’. Among other privileges it was ‘capable in law to purchase, take, and hold in fee and perpetuity lands, tenements, rents and other possessions whatsoever’ and entitled to ‘perpetual succession and a common seal’. Company privileges included using its name to ‘implead and be impleaded’, to make ‘good and reasonable bye-laws […] for the better regulating of the said Mystery’, and ‘a right of trade search’.4 In the 20th year of his reign Henry VII extended the rights of the company, granting additional power to imprison or fine defaulters and to seize and break unlawful work, together with the right ‘to compel the trade “within three miles of the City, to bring their work to the Company’s commin Hall to be assayed and stamped”’. Subsequent monarchs confirmed and extended these rights. Under Edward VI, the company was allowed ‘rents & annual [payments] charged on property for superstitious uses’, an income confirmed to them by James I (Goldsmiths’ Records, p. xxii).

Nicholas Rudyard, Lowin’s master, experienced this power in 1594. On 2nd November he appeared together with other goldsmiths before the company’s court, having received a ‘friendly’ admonishment from one of the master wardens for faulty workmanship. The offenders agreed to amend their ways and submitted themselves to the court, which ordered their plate to be defaced. The order was carried out on 5th November, Rudyard’s pieces being six bell salts. He received a fine of 23s, 4d, and all those charged were bound in £20 as well as being required to alter their marks.

London goldsmiths were centred around Cheapside near old St Paul’s, in Old Change, St Martin’s-le-Grand and eastward to Lombard Street, with ‘Cheapside their principal place of residence, south from Bread Street to the Cross’ (Goldsmiths’ Records, p. xviii). It was this influential company which Lowin chose to leave, apparently just as he had reached the position of becoming a full member, to join a company of players, regarded by many as little better than vagabonds. At the time players could only secure protection from vagrancy charges by entering service with a patronal Lord. City law forbade them to perform within the city proper, although there were occasional performances in inn yards, and they survived times of enforced closure by touring the country.

A factor influencing Lowin’s decision, in addition to the lure of the theatre, may have been his experiences as an apprentice goldsmith, because Rudyard’s brush with the company’s regulatory body was not an isolated incident. Rudyard had bound his first apprentice, John More, on Lady Day 1585 for a term of 10 years, and a second, Walter Borrowes, in 1590. From that time on Rudyard maintained at least two apprentices, usually more. When Lowin joined them, he would have been junior to two established apprentices. As apprentices often did not set up on their own immediately their term ended, his position would not change materially until 1600, when Michael Gardner joined the Rudyard ménage.

There were possibly exceptions to the rule that all goldsmith apprentices must be literate, because the books reveal several memoranda signed with a mark, but Lowin and his fellows wrote and signed their own entries, Lowin completing his in a neat secretary hand. After binding themselves, apprentices were presented to the company, they or their master paying 2s, 6d for the privilege, and Lowin made his appearance, together with two others, six months after signing his indenture, on 28th June 1594. His entry reads: re [ ] of nich~as Ryddyarde for the p~sentinge of John Lowen iis vid (N–O, p. 41). Two months after presenting his latest assistant Rudyard petitioned for money from the legacy of a Mr Lawrence, which willed £100 to the Goldsmiths to be disbursed to young men of the company, and on 24th January 1594(5) he was ‘appoyntyd to have the benefyte of the Lawrence money’ together with seven others (N–O, pp. 56–7). In August 1597, Rudyard was in court again, agreeing to make restitution to Robert Brooke of Lombard Street for latten found in two pots which bore his mark, ‘which he dyd not denye but he was ygnorant in the puttyng in of yt but as he beleved yt was done by Alex Marshall who was the same time his prentys’ (N–O, p. 121). Alex Marshall is not in fact listed among Rudyard’s apprentices but was declared ‘late of Nicholas Rudyard’ in 1594. Either the case was several years coming before the goldsmiths’ court or Rudyard did not have a ready sale for his wares. On 6th June 1600, he had 12 faulty bell salts broken and was fined 2s, 4d, but later that year he was in serious trouble.

On 10th October, a year or so before Lowin would be eligible to become free, Rudyard appeared before the court where ‘Robert Gybons had a salt broken of Nicholas Rudyard’s making wch was deceitfully wrought […] in consideration whereof and of his Comen fault of misworkinge he was dysmissed of assay and touch’ (O, p. 146). Somehow he managed to escape this proscription from continuing in his trade. On 13th October, the court announced ‘yt is now agreed that his plate alreadie made shall for this time onlie receave the touch’. By Friday 17th, one week after refusing Rudyard assay and touch indefinitely, the court relented. The wardens imposed a fine of 10s, and having received his promise to amend his ways, agreed to ‘remitt ther purposed exemplarie course’ (O, p. 147 and 149).

Whether it was due to his master’s apparently sharp practice or for some other reason, Lowin must have quitted his career as a goldsmith almost immediately upon completing his apprenticeship. If he had been apprenticed in his father’s occupation, he could have claimed freedom by patrimony. There is no record of his becoming free of the Goldsmiths, but he became nevertheless a freeman and citizen, as reference to him as ‘brother of this company’ in connection with the 1611 Goldsmiths’ pageant confirms. In addition he bound three apprentices in the 1610s, to be trained as players rather than apprentice goldsmiths.5 Apprentices notoriously provided an identifiable section among play goers. Given his rapid change of profession upon gaining his freedom, it is reasonable to assume that Lowin evinced an interest in the theatre during his apprentice years, perhaps experiencing a facility for remembering lines and quoting them to effect.

Following the removal of the Globe theatre to the immediate vicinity of his Rose playhouse, Henslowe had embarked on the building of another theatre north of the river, the Fortune, in Lowin’s home parish of St Giles. It opened in 1600, featuring Alleyn’s return to the stage after an absence of some years, and it would be surprising if Lowin had not been among the apprentices who crowded into the pit of the new theatre to watch and hear the famous tragedian.

The Dramatic Career Move

Lowin made his theatrical debut, however, not with Alleyn’s company, The Admiral’s Men, but with those of the Earl of Worcester, lately merged with the Earl of Oxford’s players. Worcester’s was granted legal status on 31st March of that year, when a letter sent by members of the Privy Council, including the Earls of Worcester and of Oxford, required the Lord Mayor to allow the company to play at the ‘Bores head’, an inn playhouse situated north of the Tower of London in the area of Shoreditch. This order brought the number of permitted companies to three, and Worcester’s played at Henslowe’s Rose Theatre, the Curtain and the Red Bull, as well as the Boar’s Head. Worcester’s company features in Henslowe’s Diary from August 1602 through to the plague closure of 1603. It records their players and writers, among them John Duke, Thomas Blackwood, John Thare, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle, and provides a glimpse of their repertoire with its attendant requirements in properties and costumes.

Lowin’s first entry is dated 12th November 1602, when he received 10 shillings for Smyth and three for Chettle. Other entries which document his involvement are:

Lent vnto John Lewen & catternes the 24 of Janewary 1602 to by a sytyzen cotte & sleves for the playe of the vnfortunat Jenerall the some of ls.

Lent vnto John Lewen vpon John duckes noote of his hande the 29 of Janewarye 1602 to geue in earneste of the second pt of the boocke called the blacke dooge the some of iiijli.

Pd at the a poyntment of John Lowine the 12 of marche 1602 vnto mr smythe in fulle payment for his tragedie called the etallyan tragedie the some of iiij li.

His final appearance in Henslowe’s diary occurs in 1602(3):

Lent unto John lowyn the 12 of marche 1602 when he went into the contrey wth the company to playe in Redy mony the some of v s.6

One of the company’s last London performances was on 3rd January 1602(03), when they appeared at court. Less than two months later, playing was suspended because of the queen’s failing health. Lowin’s need to borrow money from Henslowe in March in order to travel underlines the fact that his new career was not necessarily conducive to prosperity.

In her research into Thomas Heywood and the repertory of Worcester’s Men, Clare Smout has noted correlations between A Woman Killed with Kindness and the later Measure for Measure. Significantly, she suggests a performance of the Heywood play ‘during the four week period between the reopening of the theatres after Easter in April 1603 and their closure for approximately 10 months due to the plague’.7 Lowin, therefore, may have appeared with Worcester’s Men in the first performance of A Woman Killed with Kindness, before the long plague closure and before he joined the King’s Men. His inclusion in the Diary entries among the shareholders of Worcester’s company argues in favour of Lowin having worked with Worcester’s from their inception demonstrating the trustworthiness, purpose and the rare talent, which would take him to the top of the profession. Smout observes that Lowin was in the position of authorizing payments on behalf of Worcester’s. The formula ‘paid at the appointment of John Lowin’ precedes some of Henslowe’s entries for him, as it does for Duke and Heywood among others, indicating that Lowin enjoyed an executive position analogous to the sharers in the then Chamberlain’s Men.8

1603 was a momentous year for England and for the players. In March Queen Elizabeth died, and after years of anxious political manoeuvre, plot and counter-plot, James – VI of Scotland and I of England – assumed the succession quietly and without undue fuss. The smooth transition from the Tudor to the Stuart dynast...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations for Frequently-Cited Works
• Spelling Conventions
• Introduction
• 1 From Cripplegate to Bankside
• 2 Pamphlets, Plays, Pageants and ’Prentices
• 3 ‘Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang’
• 4 Parish and Playhouse
• 5 ‘We now touch the height of humane glorie’
• 6 ‘A Protean actor varijnge everie shape with the occasion’
• 7 Theatre, Citizens and Court
• 8 The Soddered Citizen: An Investigation
• 9 John Lowin: An Actor for All Seasons
• Bibliography
• Index