ABYNGDON, HENRY. Master of Chapel, 1455–78.
ADAMS, JOHN. Sussex’s, 1576; Queen’s, 1583, 1588. He possibly played the clown Adam in A Looking Glass and Oberon in James IV.. It would hardly be justifiable to conjecture that he lived to join Hunsdon’s and play Adam in A. Y. L.
ALDERSON, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509–13.
ALLEYN, EDWARD, was born on 1 September 1566 in the parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate.[916] His father was Edward Alleyn of Willen, Bucks, Innholder and porter to the Queen, who died in 1570; his mother, Margaret Townley, for whom he claimed a descent from the Townleys of Lancashire which modern genealogists hesitate to credit, re-married with one John Browne, a haberdasher, between whom and other Brownes who appear in theatrical annals no connexion can be proved. Edward Alleyn is said by Fuller in his Worthies to have been ‘bred a stage player’. In formal deeds he is generally described as ‘yeoman’ or ‘gentleman’, and once, in 1595, as ‘musician’.[917] In January 1583 he was one of Worcester’s players; at some later date he joined the Admiral’s men, and had as ‘fellow’ his brother John, with whom during 1589–91 he was associated in purchases of apparel. On 22 October 1592 he married Joan Woodward, step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, with whom he appears ever after in the closest business relations. A Dulwich tradition that he was already a widower probably rests on a mention of ‘Mistris Allene’ in an undated letter about a German tour by Richard Jones, which is commonly assigned to February 1592, but is more probably of later date.[918] Alleyn is specifically described as the Admiral’s servant in the Privy Council letter of assistance to Strange’s men (q.v.), with whom he travelled during the plague of 1593. Some of the letters passing between him and his wife and father-in-law during this tour are preserved at Dulwich, and are full of interesting domestic details about his white waistcoat and his orange tawny woollen stockings, the pasturing of his horse, his spinach bed, and the furnishing of his house.[919] His ‘tenants’ are mentioned and his ‘sister Phillipes & her husband’. He had by this time a high reputation as an actor, as witnessed by Nashe in his Pierce Penilesse of 1592, where he classes him with Tarlton, Knell, and Bentley, and says, ‘Not Roscius nor Aesope, those admyred tragedians that haue liued euer since before Christ was borne, could euer performe more in action than famous Ned Allen’; and in his Strange Newes of the same year, where he says of Edmund Spenser that ‘his very name (as that of Ned Allen on the common stage) was able to make an ill matter good’.[920] An undated letter at Dulwich, written to him by an admirer who signs himself W. P., offers a wager in which ‘Peele’s credit’ was also in some way concerned, and in which Alleyn was to have the choice of any one of Bentley’s or Knell’s plays, and promises that, even if he loses, ‘we must and will saie Ned Allen still’.[921] In 1594 The Knack to know a Knave is ascribed, quite exceptionally, on its title-page, not to the servants of a particular lord, but to ‘Ed. Allen and his Companie’. From 1594 to 1597 Alleyn was one of the Admiral’s men (q.v.) at the Rose. He then ‘leafte playnge’, but resumed at the request of the Queen, although apparently without becoming a full sharer of the company, when the Fortune (q.v.), which he had built for them, was opened in the autumn of 1600. He became a servant of Prince Henry with the rest of his fellows in 1604, and at the coronation procession on 15 March appeared as the Genius of the City and delivered a ‘gratulatory speech’ to James ‘with excellent action and a well-tun’de, audible voyce’.[922] Further testimonies to his talent are rendered by John Weever;[923] by Ben Jonson, Epigram lxxxix (1616), who equals him to Aesop and Roscius, and himself to Cicero, who praised them; by Heywood, who says, ‘Among so many dead let me not forget one yet alive, in his time the most worthy, famous Maister Edward Allen’;[924] and by Fuller, who says, ‘He was the Roscius of our age, so acting to the life that he made any part (especially a majestic one) to become him.’[925] Of his parts are recorded Faustus,[926] Tamburlaine, Barabas in The Jew of Malta,[927] and Cutlack in a play of that name revived by the Admiral’s men in 1594 and now lost,[928] while that of Orlando in Greene’s Orlando Furioso is amongst the papers at Dulwich.[929] Heywood, writing about 1608, speaks of Alleyn’s playing in the past. He probably retired finally soon after the beginning of the new reign. In 1605 he valued his ‘share of aparell’ at £100; but his name is not in the patent to the Prince’s men of 30 April 1606, although as late as 1611 he still retained his personal rank as servant to the prince. It is difficult to give much credit to the legend that his withdrawal was due to remorse, or, as one version has it, to an apparition of the devil when he was playing Faustus.[930] Certainly he continued to hold an interest in the Fortune, and conceivably in the Red Bull (q.v.) also. And certainly remorse did not prevent him from continuing to exercise the functions of Master of the Game of Paris Garden, a post which he acquired jointly with Henslowe in 1604, having already been interested in the Bear-garden itself since 1594. At this after it became the Hope (q.v.) he was still about 1617 entertaining players. But the time of his retirement synchronizes with the first beginnings of his foundation of a school and hospital by the name of the College of God’s Gift at Dulwich. By 1605 he was a wealthy man, with income from substantial investments in leasehold property as well as the profits from his enterprises, and on 25 October he took the first step in the purchase of the manor of Dulwich, which was completed by 1614 at a total cost of nearly £10,000. Here about 1613 he made his residence, moving from Southwark, where he had been churchwarden of St. Saviour’s in 1610. In 1613 also he began the building of the college, which was opened in 1617. Alleyn himself acted as manager and was in a position to spend upon the college and his own household some £1,700 a year. The endowment of the college included, besides house property in London, the freehold of the Fortune. Henslowe had died in January 1616 and his widow in the following year, and his papers passed to Alleyn and remain at Dulwich. Here, too, is Alleyn’s own diary for 1617–22, and this and his correspondence show him as a friend of persons of honour, and the patron of writers and the members of his own former profession. Alleyn’s wife Joan died on 28 June 1623 and on the following 3 December he married Constance, daughter of John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s, settling on her £1,500. A letter of 23 July 1624 indicates that he was then desirous of obtaining ‘sum further dignetie’. He died on 25 November 1626.
ALLEYN, JOHN. Admiral’s, 1589–91. Edward Alleyn had an elder brother John, who was born in 1556–7, and is described as servant to Lord Sheffield and an Innholder in 1580, and as servant to the Lord Admiral in 1589. He died about May 1596, being then of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and left a widow Margaret and son John. Presumably he was the Admiral’s player. But there was also an Allen family of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, one of whom, John, was a player. Here a John was baptized on 17 October 1570, a Lowin, son of John, baptized on 15 December 1588, a Joan buried on 13 May 1593, and a John on 18 May 1593. On 26 July 1596 is this curious baptismal entry: ‘Bennett, reputed daughter of Jno Allen, which Jno went with Sr Fr. Drake to the Indians in which time the child was got by a stage-player.’ Finally, on 18 October 1597, ‘Jone uxor Johis Allen player was buried with a still born child’ (H. ii. 239; Bodl.)
ALLEYN, RICHARD. Queen’s, (?) 1594; Admiral’s, 1597–1600. His daughters Anna and Elizabeth were baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 13 May 1599 and 17 May 1601 respectively. Here he is traceable in the token-books during 1583–1601, and was buried on 18 November 1601, leaving a widow (Rendle, Bankside, xxvi; H. ii. 239; Bodl.).
ALLEYN (ALLEN), RICHARD. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1613.
ANDREWE, HENRY. Chapel, 1509.
ANDREWES, RICHARD. Worcester’s, 1583.
ANDROWES, GEORGE. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.