"Cutting" Ball was a notorious criminal during the

Elizabethan Age The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The Roman symbol of Britannia (a female per ...

. (His name came from a "cutpurse", a thief.)

Thomas Nashe Thomas Nashe (also Nash; baptised 30 November 1567 – c. 1601) was an English Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel '' The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including '' Pierce P ...

mentions a ballad written about him, which does not survive. His sister, Em, or Emma, was a prostitute, "a sorry ragged quean", who according to various reports was the mistress of the clown

Richard Tarlton Richard Tarlton (died 5 September 1588) was an English actor of the Elizabethan era. He was the most famous clown of his era, known for his extempore comic doggerel verse, which came to be known as "Tarltons". He helped to turn Elizabethan theat ...

and later of the writer Robert Greene and cared for both on their death-beds. She is said to have had a son, Fortunatus (d. 1593), by Greene. Greene, who wrote much about the London underworld, once hired Ball as a bodyguard. Ball was hanged at

Tyburn Tyburn was a Manorialism, manor (estate) in London, Middlesex, England, one of two which were served by the parish of Marylebone. Tyburn took its name from the Tyburn Brook, a tributary of the River Westbourne. The name Tyburn, from Teo Bourne ...

. The San Francisco experimental Cutting Ball Theatre was named after him.About Cutting Ball Theatre
, Accessed July 12, 2012

Sources

16th-century English criminals People executed at Tyburn {{crime-stub