e-book Edward Alleyn, English Actor

Alleyn, Edward (DNB00)

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The Life of Shakespearean Actor Edward Alleyn ( - )

The building had been already begun in Alleyn was never a member of his own foundation, but he continued to the close of his life to guide and control its affairs under powers reserved to himself in the letters patent.

His diary shows that he mixed much and intimately in the life of the college. Many of the jottings in that curious record of daily doings and incidents favour the inference that he was a genial, kind, amiable and religious man. His fondness for his old profession is indicated by the fact that he engaged the boys in occasional theatrical performances. At a festive gathering on the 6th of January "the boyes play'd a playe. Alleyn's first wife died in The same year he married Constance, daughter of John Donne, the poet and dean of St. Alleyn died in November and was buried in the chapel of the college which he had founded.

Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn

His gravestone fixes the day of his death as the 21st, but there are grounds for the belief that it was the 25th. A portrait of the actor is preserved at Dulwich. Alleyn was a member of the corporation of wardens at St. Saviour's, Southwark, in , and there is a memorial window to him in the cathedral. Purchase Books on British theatre.

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Back to British Actors Index. It was opposed by Lord Chancellor Bacon for reasons expressed, on 18 Aug. Bacon's objections were not personal to Alleyn, but were only consistent with what he had before urged to the king against the Charterhouse and all similar charitable foundations Spedding , Life , iv. On 21 June , the patent at length passed the great seal, and on 13 Sept.

Edward Alleyn

Alleyn read and signed the deed of foundation in the chapel, afterwards entertaining the company, among whom was Bacon himself, at a sumptuous banquet. During the five years covered by his diary, and possibly until his death, Alleyn personally managed the affairs of the college, his average yearly expenditure on all accounts amounting to 1, l. The position to which he had now attained was one of some consequence.

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Philip Henslowe (c. 1555-1616).
Edward Alleyn (1566-1626);

He was on visiting terms with members of the nobility, bishops, ambassadors, and other persons of note, and among his friends were the Earl of Arundel and Sir William Alexander, the poet, the latter of whom, like Ben Jonson, made him the subject of laudatory verse. He appears, too, as the patron of Thomas Dekker, John Taylor, the water poet, and other writers; and members of his own former profession were his constant guests.

Of the London theatres he seems to have had an interest in the Rose, the Hope, and the Red Bull, as well as in the Fortune; but the evidence adduced by Mr. Collier to show that he also possessed a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, purchased from Shakespeare, is of modern fabrication.

The Life of Shakespearean Actor Edward Alleyn ( - )

A new house, however, was in course of erection before 16 April , leases of some of the shares being signed on 20 May. On 28 June , Alleyn lost his wife Joan, with whom he had evidently lived on most affectionate terms. She was buried in the college chapel on 1 July, her epitaph stating that she was 52 years of age, and died without issue. Only five months later, on 3 Dec. John Donne, Dean of St. As he must have been nearly forty years her senior, the match was a strange one.

Its history is given by Alleyn himself in a curious letter addressed to Dr. Donne, with whom he had causes of difference, early in , and from it we learn that it was arranged as early as 31 Oct. Very little is known of Alleyn's life in the three years he survived this marriage.

In he bought a property in Simondstone in Aysgarth, and a journey, which he apparently made into Yorkshire to visit it in July, may have brought on his fatal illness. On the authority of his executor and first warden of the college he died on 25 Nov. So far as appears, he never had any children, and the nearest relative named in his will, dated 13 Nov.

In completion of a scheme, which he had begun in by building ten almshouses in Cripplegate, his executors were ordered to build ten others in each of the parishes of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, and St. Saviour, Southwark; and among other charitable bequests the college also received two leases in Southwark as an addition to its settled estates.

The statutes of the college, prepared no doubt long before, were signed by Alleyn on 29 Sept. A curious feature in these statutes is the extent to which they modified the original constitution of the charity, a process which, in our own time, has been more than once repeated under authority of parliament, with the uniform result of enlarging its sphere of usefulness.

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As depicted in the large collection of his own and Henslowe's papers at Dulwich, Alleyn's character was one of singular amiability, combined with great shrewdness and aptitude in business affairs; and his piety and benevolence are no less conspicuous in his early correspondence and in his diary than in his last will and in the noble foundation by which he is best remembered. That a man of so kindly a nature should have made profit from the cruelties of the Bear Garden is repugnant to modern ideas; but it was quite in character with the manners of his own time. Dramatic Poetry, , 2nd edit.

Henslowe, ; Blanch's Hist. Collier are pointed out. Dictionary of National Biography , Errata , p. Wikipedia article , Wikidata item.

Edward Alleyn, English Actor - A Short Biography

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Edward Alleyn

The Life of Shakespearean Actor Edward Alleyn ( - )

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