Richard Burbage

Richard Burbage emerged from one of the families that helped make London’s public theatre a durable business. His father, James Burbage, was an actor, theatrical entrepreneur, and builder of the Theatre in Shoreditch; his brother Cuthbert later shared responsibility for the family’s theatrical property.¹ Richard was probably born around 1568 and was active professionally by the early 1590s, when acting companies were becoming more organized and commercially powerful.

His career was therefore shaped by both performance and ownership. The Burbages held interests in playhouses and in the companies that used them, giving Richard an unusual position: he was not merely an employee of a troupe but part of the institutional structure that presented plays. This connection also linked him to the development of London’s purpose-built theatres and to the repertory system on which Shakespeare’s stage depended.²

Burbage was the principal tragedian of Shakespeare’s company and the original performer most closely associated with its great tragic roles. He played the title character in Richard III and is traditionally identified with the first Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, as well as other leading parts in the repertory.¹

His importance lay in the sustained range of this work rather than in a single celebrated performance. The company’s actors had to move rapidly among plays, and Burbage’s status indicates that he could carry both psychologically complex tragedy and the heightened rhetoric of earlier history plays. Shakespeare’s references to acting and players are sometimes read alongside Burbage’s career, but firm attribution should be reserved for roles supported by theatrical records, contemporary testimony, or strong scholarly consensus.³

Burbage’s career unfolded through the two major playhouses associated with Shakespeare’s company: the Globe and the indoor Blackfriars Theatre. After the Theatre’s lease became problematic, members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men dismantled its timbers and used them in the Globe, which opened in 1599 on Bankside; Burbage was among the company’s shareholders.²

In 1603 the accession of James I brought royal patronage, and the company became the King’s Men. The acquisition of access to Blackfriars gave the troupe an indoor venue as well as the large open-air Globe, allowing performances in different seasons and before different audiences.⁴ Burbage’s theatre interests thus connected the economics of property, repertory, and royal licensing.

Burbage’s fame rests on roles that survive in printed plays, but the surviving record also reveals the precarious conditions of an actor’s life. Company shares, leases, repertory obligations, censorship, plague closures, and changing royal permissions all affected the work of performers and theatre owners.²

His career also illustrates how little direct evidence survives for individual Elizabethan performances. No complete acting script or reliable contemporary description preserves exactly how Burbage delivered Hamlet or Lear; later tradition supplies much of the image of his style. He died in 1619 and was buried at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, near the theatrical world in which his family had established itself.¹ The famous “Chandos portrait” has sometimes been connected with Shakespeare and, more speculatively, with Burbage, but the identification remains uncertain and is not secure evidence for his appearance.

Lord Chamberlain’s Men

The London playing company with which Burbage was a leading actor before it became the King’s Men in 1603.

King’s Men

The royal-patronized company formed from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men after the accession of James I.

Globe Theatre

The open-air playhouse on Bankside associated with Shakespeare’s company and rebuilt from materials taken from the Theatre.

Blackfriars Theatre

An indoor London playhouse used by the King’s Men, offering a different setting from the open-air Globe.