Category:Thomas Towne

Thomas Towne was a player with the Admiral's men at least from 1594. He appears frequently in Philip Henslowe's records as one of the players who routinely conducts company business at the Rose. He also acts as agent for the company, as in Henslowe's note that Towne and John Singer "went into the contrey" (Fol. 235) and his errand with Richard Alleyn went "to the dorte vpon ester euen" (Fol. 54v). Like so many of his fellows in the theatrical world, he lived in St. Saviour's parish, and he did not change residences when the Admiral's men moved to the Fortune playhouse in Middlesex, for he appears "in the Southwark token books during 1600-07" (Nungezer, p. 377). He was buried out of St. Saviour's in July 1612. His will, characteristically, itemizes the bequests to family members including not only immediate family (his brother, John and his wife, Ann) but also cousins; uncharacteristically, he also names his fellows—William Bird, Thomas Downton, Edward Juby, Samuel Rowley, Charles Massey, and Humphrey Jeffes— to whom he leaves £3 "to make them a supper when it shall please them to call for it" (Honigmann and Brock, p. 88).

In surviving plots, Towne is shown to have played Myron-hamec in "Frederick and Basilea," Stukeley in The Battle of Alcazar (revival), and Shah plus bit parts (an oracle, a Tartar) in "1 Tamar Cham".



Works Cited

Honigmann, E. A. J. and Susan Brock. Playhouse Wills 1558-1642. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.
Nungezer, Edwin. A Dictionary of Actors. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968 (orig. Yale University Press, 1929).




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