James Burbage, or Burbadge (1531 – 1597) was an English actor, theatre impresario, and theatre builder in the English Renaissance theatre. He built The Theatre, the facility famous as the first permanent dedicated theatre built in England since Roman times. Burbage seems also to have been involved in the erection of the Curtain Theatre, and, later, the Blackfriars Theatre, built in 1596 near the old Dominican friary.
Edmund Malone was the first p...
more
James Burbage, or Burbadge (1531 – 1597) was an English actor, theatre impresario, and theatre builder in the English Renaissance theatre. He built The Theatre, the facility famous as the first permanent dedicated theatre built in England since Roman times. Burbage seems also to have been involved in the erection of the Curtain Theatre, and, later, the Blackfriars Theatre, built in 1596 near the old Dominican friary.
Edmund Malone was the first person to suggest that James Burbage was connected with the Burbage family of Warwickshire: a forged letter of the nineteenth century maintained that Burbage and William Shakespeare were from the same county and were "almost of one town" — though there is in fact no valid evidence of this. Trained as a joiner, Burbage took up acting and was a member of Leicester's Men by 1572; he appears to have been a leader of that company by 1574. In 1576, Burbage partnered with his brother-in-law John Brayne (Burbage was married to Brayne's sister Ellen) to...
less
