Abstract
Nathan Field, remembered in various seventeenth-century tracts, and subsequently, as one of the greatest players of Shakespeare’s age, is an intriguing figure. His theatrical career stretched from his childhood to his adulthood and encompassed a variety of duties as a performer, writer and manager.1 He was a leading player of the Children of the Queen’s Revels from their revival in 1600 to their dissolution in 1613. As a pupil of St Paul’s Grammar School prior to his impressment into this playing company in 1600, Field may have already been experienced in playing, which was regularly practised at English grammar schools. In 1613, at the age of 26, he became a leading player and sharer of the newly formed Lady Elizabeth’s Men, which was a combined version of the adult company of this name and the Queen’s Revels, and he functioned as their representative in court and legal documents.2 In 1615 or 1616 he progressed to the role of sharer and player of the King’s Men, and he remained with this company until his death at the age of 32 in 1619. Field was also a dramatist for all three companies. His first play, A Woman is a Weathercock, was written for and performed by the Queen’s Revels in c. 1610, and in c. 1611 his Amends for Ladies was also performed by this company.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
On Field’s biography, see G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941–68), II (1941), pp. 434–6
E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923) II, pp. 316–18
Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors and of Other Persons Associated with the Public Representation of Plays in England Before 1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929), pp. 135–41
M. E. Williams, ‘Field, Nathan (bap. 1587, d. 1619/20)’, H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9391.
Field represented the company in the agreement between them and Philip Henslowe and Jacob Meade in c. 1613 and was the payee for the company’s performance of Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair at court in 1615. See W. W. Greg, ed., Henslowe Papers: Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe’s Diary (London: A.H. Bullen, 1907), pp. 23–5
David Cook and E. P. Wilson, eds, Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, 1558–1642, Malone Society Collections, VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 60.
See, for example, G. E. Bentley, The Profession of Player in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590–1642 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. xiii.
See Giorgio Melchiori, ‘Introduction’, in The Insatiate Countess, ed. Giorgio Melchiori (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 1–49.
On William Barksted, see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), pp. 357–8
Mary Bly, Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 121–7; Chambers, II, p. 301; Nungezer, p. 28.
Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), p. 351; Chambers, II, p. 30
Mark Eccles, ‘Elizabethan Actors I: A-D’, Notes and Queries, 236.1 (1991), 38–49 (p. 39)
J. A. Riddell, ‘Some Actors in Ben Jonson’s Plays’, Shakespeare Studies, 5 (1969), 285–98 (pp. 295–6).
See Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), p. 352.
Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), p. 523; Chambers, II, p.332; Nungezer, pp. 271–2.
Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), pp. 381–2; Chambers, II, p. 303; Nungezer, pp. 50–1.
E. A. J. Honigmann, and Susan Brook, eds, Playhouse Wills, 1558–1642 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 230–1
Nungezer, pp. 230–1. On Underwood, see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), pp. 610–11
W. Reavley Gair, ed., Antonio and Mellida (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), p. 69, footnote 139.
John Marston, Antonio and Mellida, in ’The Malcontent’ and Other Plays, ed. Keith Sturgess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), ‘Induction’, 1. 125.
The National Archives (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) STAC 5/C46/39. On Chappell, see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, III (1956), p. 158; Chambers, II, p. 310; Nungezer, p. 90.
On Day, see Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), p. 422; Chambers, II, p. 313; Nungezer, p. 115
Peter Walls, Music in the English Courtly Masque, 1604–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 176.
Linda Phyllis Austern, Music in English Children’s Drama of the Later Renaissance (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1992), p. 20
Linda Phyllis Austern, ‘Thomas Ravenscroft: Musical Chronicler of an Elizabethan Theatre Company’, Journal of American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 238–63
W. Reavley Gair, The Children of Paul’s: The Story of A Theatre Company, 1553–1608 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 167–8
W. Reavley Gair, ‘Chorister Actors at Paul’s’, Notes and Queries, 25 (1978), 440–1
Shen Lin, ‘How Old were the Children of Paul’s?’, Theatre Notebook, 45 (1991), 121–31 (p. 124)
Thomas Ravenscroft, A Brief Discourse (London, 1614), sig. A2’-’.
For example, Anthony Caputi, John Marston, Satirist (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), p. 113
R. A. Foakes, ‘John Marston’s Fantastical Plays: Antonio and Mellida and Antonio’s Revenge’, Philological Quarterly, 41. 1 (1962), 229–39.
William Ingram, The Business of Playing: The Beginnings of Adult Professional Theatre in Elizabethan London (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 13.
Roslyn Knutson, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 10–47.
See Leslie Hotson, The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928), pp. 167–96.
G. E. Bentley, ‘The Theatres and the Actors’, in G. E. Bentley, Kathleen McLuskie and Lois Potter, eds, The Revels History of Drama in English, IV (London: Routledge, 1981), pp. 105–8.
W. L. Wiley, The Early Public Theatre in France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 93–4.
Nathan Field, Remonstrance to a Preacher in Southwark who has been Arraigning the Players of the Globe Theatre in 1616, ed. J. O. Halliwell (London, 1865), p. 10.
See Nora Johnson, The Actor as Playwright in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 59.
George Chapman, ‘To his Loved Sonne, Nat. Field, and his Weather-Cocke Woman’, in A Woman is a Weathercocke, by Nathan Field (London, 1612), sig. A3’. Further references are given in the text.
Nathan Field, ‘To the Worthiest Master Jonson’, in Ben Jonson, XI (1952), pp. 322–3 (11. 3–4). Further references are given in the text.
Nathan Field, ‘To my Lov’d Friend M. John Fletcher, on his Pastorali’, in The Faith full Shepheardesse, by John Fletcher (London, 1610), n. p. (11. 2–3). Further references are given in the text.
One of the payment receipts for this entertainment records money paid to ‘feld that satt up all night [writing] the speeches songes and inscriptions’. See Scott McMillin, ’Jonson’s Early Entertainments: New Information from Hatfield House’, Renaissance Drama, 1 (1968), 153–66 (p. 161)
James Knowles, ‘Jonson’s Entertainment at Britain’s Burse’, in Representing Ben Jonson, ed. Martin Butler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), pp. 114–51.
William Drummond, ‘Certain Informations and Maners of Ben Jonsons to W. Drumond’, in Ben Jonson, I (1925), p. 137.
Nathan Field, A Woman is a Weathercock, in The Plays of Nathan Field, ed. William Peery (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1950), 1.1.45, 1.2.342, 5.1.70.
Roberta Florence Brinkley, Nathan Field, the Actor-Playwright (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928), pp. 56–7, for a list of the allusions to plays and theatre in Field’s drama.
Ben Jonson, Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman, ed. Roger Holdsworth (London A and C Black, 1979, repr. 2005), 5.3.156, 5.3.158.
Francis Beaumont, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ed. Cyrus Hoy, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, gen. ed. Fredson Bowers, 11 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966–96), I (1966), pp. 1–110 (1.96–7). Further references are given in the text.
Michael Bristol, Big Time Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 35.
Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, in ’The Alchemist’ and Other Plays, ed. Gordon Campbell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 327–443 (5.3.46–7). Further references are given in the text.
T. W. Baldwin, The Organisation and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1927), pp. 204–5
Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), pp. 434–6.
Anne Barton, Ben Jonson, Dramatist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 228.
Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, in ’The Devil is an Ass’ and other Plays, ed. Margaret Jane Kidnie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 223–330 (2.8.64–70).
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Scornful Lady, ed. Cyrus Hoy, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, II (1941), pp. 449–566 (1.1.46–8).
On the relationship between the facts of a player’s life and the cultural legend, see Ingram, pp. 45–7; Peter Thomson, ‘The True Physiognomy of a Man: Richard Tarlton and his Legend’, in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries in Performance, ed. Edward Esche (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 191–210 (p. 203).
Richard Flecknoe, A Short History of the English Stage, Love’s Kingdom (London, 1664), p. 88. Further references are given in the text.
See Nicholas Brooke, ‘Introduction’, in George Chapman, Bussy D’Ambois, ed. N. S. Brooke (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 147–8.
See Stephen Orgel, Imagining Shakespeare: A History of Texts and Visions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 30–4.
Cited in Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, II (1941), p. 352.
John Davies, The Scourge of Folly (London, 1611), p. 91.
Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry and William Ingram, eds, English Professional Theatre, 1530–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 226.
James Wright, Historia Histrionica (London, 1699), p. 15–16.
Copyright information
© 2009 Edel Lamb
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lamb, E. (2009). Remembering Childhood: Nathan Field’s Theatrical Career. In: Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230594739_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230594739_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30069-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59473-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)