Thomas Betterton (August 1635 – 28 April 1710) was the leading male actor and
theatre manager during Restoration England. He was the son of an under-cook to
King Charles I and was born in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
.
Apprentice and actor
Betterton was born in August 1635 in Tothill Street, Westminster. He was apprenticed to John Holden,
Sir William Davenant's publisher, and possibly later to a bookseller named
John Rhodes, who had been wardrobe-keeper at the
Blackfriars Theatre. In 1659, Rhodes obtained a license to set up a company of players at the
Cockpit Theatre in
Drury Lane
Drury Lane is a street on the boundary between the Covent Garden and Holborn areas of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of London Borough of Camden, Camden and the southern part in the City o ...
; and on the reopening of this theatre in 1660, Betterton made his first appearance on the stage.
Betterton's talents at once brought him into prominence, and he was given leading parts. On the opening of the new theatre in
Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1661, Davenant, the patentee of the
Duke's Company
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During that period, theatres ...
, engaged Betterton and all Rhodes's company to play in his ''
The Siege of Rhodes''. Also in 1661 he played Prince Alvaro in Davenant's ''
Love and Honour''. Betterton, besides being a public favourite, was held in high esteem by
Charles II, who sent him to
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
to examine stage improvements there. According to Cibber, after his return to England, it was the first time that the shifting scenes replaced tapestry in an English theatre.
In 1662 he married the actress
Mary Saunderson (died 1712). She started her professional career playing some major female roles in Shakespeare's plays. She and her husband Thomas Betterton shared the stage in a production of ''Hamlet'', in which she played Ophelia, opposite to Betterton's Hamlet.
They also played Bosola and The Duchess in Webster's ''The Duchess of Malfi'' in the early 1660s. In the meantime, she was also her husband's consultant and business partner. In an age when the profession of acting was often thought as notorious and indecent, and actors, both male and female were unfairly criticized as whores, the Bettertons were still regarded as respectable. They were invited to teach the children from noble and royal families to perform John Crowne's ''Calisto'', 1675, in the last Stuart court Masque.
In appearance he was athletic, slightly above middle height, with a tendency to stoutness; his voice was strong rather than melodious, but in recitation it was used with the greatest dexterity.
Pepys,
Pope
The pope is the bishop of Rome and the Head of the Church#Catholic Church, visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the po ...
,
Steele, and
Cibber all bestow lavish praise on his acting. His repertory included a large number of
Shakespearian roles, many of them presented in the versions adapted by
Davenant,
Dryden,
Shadwell and
Nahum Tate. Even though those adapted versions did not receive critical acclaim, they did not harm or shadow Betterton's acting either. Still, his performances were largely praised.
Gary Taylor credits Betterton's performance in ''
Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' for the addition of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
's play to the theatrical repertoire in the mid-seventeenth century.
He played Lear opposite
Elizabeth Barry's Cordelia in Tate's
modified version of Shakespeare's ''King Lear''. Betterton was himself author of several adaptations which were popular in their day.
Actor and manager
From Davenant's death in 1668, Betterton was the de facto manager and director of the
Duke's Company
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During that period, theatres ...
, and from the merger of London's two theatre companies in 1682, he continued to fulfill these functions in the new United Company. Enduring progressively worse conditions and terms in this money-grubbing monopoly (see
Restoration spectacular and
Restoration comedy), the top actors walked out in 1695 and set up a cooperative company in
Lincoln's Inn Fields under Betterton's leadership. The new company opened with the premiere of
Congreve's ''
Love for Love'' with an all-star cast including Betterton as Valentine and
Anne Bracegirdle as Angelica. But in a few years the profits fell off; and Betterton, laboring under the infirmities of age and
gout
Gout ( ) is a form of inflammatory arthritis characterized by recurrent attacks of pain in a red, tender, hot, and Joint effusion, swollen joint, caused by the deposition of needle-like crystals of uric acid known as monosodium urate crysta ...
, determined to quit the stage. At his benefit performance, when the profits are said to have been over
£500, he played Valentine in ''Love for Love''.
Betterton's career not only spans the period of Restoration theatre, it also marks its high point.
There was a period of time when the size of theatre audience started to reduce, in order to revive people's interest in theatre, he invented new stage machines at
Dorset Garden Theatre, transposed ''The Prophetess'' into an opera, and introduced French singers and dancers to the Restoration stage.
He also built the first permanent theatre fully equipped with Italianate machinery. Additionally, he invested in remodeling the tennis court in the Lincoln's Inn Fields and built a new theatre there, therefore in addition to his salary, he also received a small amount of "rent" fees for each performance done there.
Betterton worked with all of the most significant playwrights of his age and the first generation of English actresses.
During his time, with the exception of
William Mountfort, who gained a versatility in terms of portraying roles, most of Betterton's contemporary actors deliberately restricted themselves to certain popular character-types. However Betterton had more than 120 different roles from the genres such as heroic drama, Jonsonian comedy, comedies of manners, tragicomedies by Beaumont and Fletcher, and tragedies, comedies and histories by Shakespeare.
At the age of seventy-five, he claimed, "He was yet learning to be an actor."
The first acting guide published in English was ''The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton'', which was mainly a pastiche from French rhetoric manuals with passages borrowed from English plays.
Betterson's innovation in scenery and theatre management, and his contributions to theatre making shaped the culture of English theatre.
Betterton performed to within fifteen days of his death.
Three days before his death at seventy-five,
he made his last appearance on the stage in 1710, as Melantius in ''
The Maid's Tragedy''. He died shortly afterwards, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. From his debut as an actor in 1659 to his last appearance in 1710, his fifty-year career stretched nearly to the end of Stuart Dynasty. Thomas Betterton's death marks the end of a generation.
In popular culture
Betterton is portrayed by
Tom Wilkinson in the 2004 film ''
Stage Beauty''. Wilkinson was in his mid 50s at the time, yet the film is set around 1662, when Betterton would have been younger than 30.
Selected roles
* Prince Alvaro in
Love and Honour (1661)
* Hamlet (1661)
* Welford in
Squire Oldsapp (1678)
* King Lear in Nahum Tate's King Lear (1681)
* Jaffeir in
Venice Preserv’d (1682)
* Valentine in Love for Love (1695)
* ''
Tamerlane
Timur, also known as Tamerlane (1320s17/18 February 1405), was a Turco-Mongol tradition, Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, becoming the first ruler of the Timuri ...
'' by
Nicholas Rowe (1701)
* Melantius in
The Maid's Tragedy (1710)
Notes
References
*
*
*Robert William Lowe, ''Thomas Betterton'' (1891)
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Betterton, Thomas
1630s births
1710 deaths
English male stage actors
English male Shakespearean actors
17th-century English male actors
18th-century English male actors
Male actors from London
Actor-managers
17th-century theatre managers