Category:Augustine Phillips

Augustine Phillips was a player associated with Strange's men in 1593. He is named in the company's license to travel dated 6 May 1593. Subsequently he joined the Chamberlain's (later King's) men where he remained until his death in 1605. He was cast as Sardanapalus in the playlet, "Sloth," in the Plot of "2 Seven Deadly Sins." He acquired a share in the Globe playhouse in 1599. When the company was called to account for having put on Richard II at the Globe in February 1601 in conjunction with the Essex uprising, Phillips was the company representative who testified that the performance had not been the company's idea. Of all the players who served with the Chamberlain's/King's, Phillips left the most detailed will in terms of bequests to fellows in the playhouse world.

Phillips had several residences in the parish of St. Saviour's Southwark: Bullhead Alley (1593), Horse-shoe Court (1593, 1595, 1604), Montague Close (1601), and Bradshaw's Rents (1602). He also lived for a time in St. Bodolph Aldgate (Hammond's Rents), where a daughter of his was buried in 1597. By the time he died, he had moved to Mortlake, Surrey. His will establishes his family connection with William Birde (Borne), a player with the Admiral's men; Birde was married to Phillips's sister, Margery. Another sister, Elizabeth, was married to the player Robert Goughe, who, like Phillips, is cast in the Plot of "2 Seven Deadly Sins."

For further information, see A Dictionary of Actors by Edwin Nungezer (1929; rpt. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968) and Mark Eccles, "Elizabethan Actors III: K-R," Notes and Queries, 237 (1992): 293-303.