John Bentley (c. 1553–1585)

Aged 30 when he joined the new Queen’s company in 1583.
A letter (undated) to Edward Alleyn from a W.P at Dulwich mentions a wager made among gentlemen as to whether Alleyn could overgo Bentley and Knell in one of their parts, implying that Bentley, like Knell, excelled in tragic or heroic roles. The letter is transcribed in Collier’s Memoirs of Edward Alleyn along with accompanying verse (Collier 12). Collier’s tendency to contaminate (and fabricate) sources may put its authenticity into question.
In an incident outside the Red Lion Inn in Norwich during the company’s first summer tour (June 1583), Bentley may have dealt the wound that killed a local man named George. Bentley had been onstage, wearing a players berd in the role of a Duke when a citizen named Wynsdon refused—apparently with beligerence—to pay the admission fee. Tarlton is said to have tried and failed to intercede as Bentley struck at this Wynsdon with his sword hilt. Bentley and his fellow, John Singer, pursued the man, who fled alongside another man, George, who wore a blew cote, evidently in Wynsdon’s service. The actors caught up with George who threw a stone to defend himself against Bentley’s rapier attack. It is said to have broke his head. George was several times pricked with weapons and bled to death in a nearby house. Bentley and Singer were briefly imprisoned after the killing (Galloway 66–76, 378–381, 394–395).
Bentley was himself deceased by 1585, the register of St. Peter’s Cornhill giving his age as yers 32 (Nungezar 44). Nashe recalled his ability in Pierce Penniless (1592) and Heywood remembers him in Apology for Actors (1612) as an important early English actor.
His will records his landlord in Shoreditch as Robert Scott, perhaps indicating that he shared a residence with, or was neighbor to, Simon Jewell, whose will refers to the same landlord in the same parish (Honigmann and Brock 56, 59).

Prosopography

Andrew Griffin

Andrew Griffin is an associate professor in the department of English and an affiliate professor in the department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is general editor (text) of Queen’s Men Editions. He studies early modern drama and early modern historiography while serving as the lead editor at the EMC Imprint. He has co-edited with Helen Ostovich and Holger Schott Syme Locating the Queen’s Men (2009) and has co-edited The Making of a Broadside Ballad (2016) with Patricia Fumerton and Carl Stahmer. His monograph, Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama: Biography, History, Catastrophe, was published with the University of Toronto Press in 2019. He is editor of the anonymous The Chronicle History of King Leir (Queen’s Men Editions, 2011). He can be contacted at griffin@english.ucsb.edu.

Navarra Houldin

Project manager 2022-present. Textual remediator 2021-present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.

Peter Cockett

Peter Cockett is an associate professor in the Theatre and Film Studies at McMaster University. He is the general editor (performance), and technical co-ordinating editor of Queen’s Men Editions. He was the stage director for the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM), directing King Leir, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006) and he is the performance editor for our editions of those plays. The process behind those productions is documented in depth on his website Performing the Queen’s Men. Also featured on this site are his PAR productions of Clyomon and Clamydes (2009) and Three Ladies of London (2014). For the PLS, the University of Toronto’s Medieval and Renaissance Players, he has directed the Digby Mary Magdalene (2003) and the double bill of George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale and the Chester Antichrist (2004). He also directed An Experiment in Elizabethan Comedy (2005) for the SQM project and Inside Out: The Persistence of Allegory (2008) in collaboration with Alan Dessen. Peter is a professional actor and director with numerous stage and screen credits. He can be contacted at cockett@mcmaster.ca.

Bibliography

Collier, John Payne. Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, Founder of Dulwich College: Including Some New Particulars Respecting Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Marston, Dekker, &c. London: The Shakespeare Society, 1841.
Galloway, David, ed. Records of Early English Drama: Norwich, 1540–1642. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Heywood, Thomas. Apology for Actors. London: Nicholas Okes, 1612. STC 13309. ESTC S106113.
Honigmann, E.A.J. and Susan Brock. Playhouse Wills, 1558–1642. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.
Nashe, Thomas. Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil. London: Abel Jeffes, 1592.
Nungezar, Edwin. A Dictionary of Actors. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata

Authority title John Bentley (c. 1553–1585)
Type of text About
Short title Bentley
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Queenʼs Men Editions
Source
Content written by Andrew Griffin for Performing the Queenʼs Men. Encoded by the LEMDO Team for publication in the QME 2.0 anthology on the LEMDO platform.
Editorial declaration n/a
Edition Released with Queenʼs Men Editions 2.0
Sponsor(s)

Queenʼs Men Editions

The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); and Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text).
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published
Licence/availability This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author, Queen’s Men Editions, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of Queen’s Men Editions, the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the critical paratexts in the classroom. Production photographs and videos on this site may not be downloaded. They appear freely on this site with the permission of the actors and the ACTRA union. They may be used within the context of university courses, within the classroom, and for reference within research contexts, including conferences, when credit is given to the producing company and to the actors. Commercial use of videos and photographs is forbidden.