Betterton, Thomas

1635

1710

Born about August 1735 in Tothill (or Tuttle) Street, Westminster, Thomas Betterton was the son of Matthew Betterton and his second wife, Frances. Matthew styled himself a gentleman of Westminster and was apparently an under-cook to Charles I. Christened at St Margaret’s, Thomas was given what was then called a polite schooling, though his earliest biographer, Charles Gildon, said in 1710 that the lad did not receive ‘an Education in the learned Languages,’ – though he studied French and made use of it later. He was apprenticed to the bookseller John Holden, and it was presumably through his master that he made his early theatrical and literary contacts. By 1659-60, when, after 18 years of suppression, professional acting was again allowed, young Betterton was a member of a troupe led by John Rhodes, another bookseller. The prompter John Downes said Tom’s ‘Voice [was] then as Audibly strong, full and Articulate, as in the Prime of his Acting.’ That emphasis on his voice is significant, for Betterton lived in an age when people, as Hamlet says, go to ‘hear’ a play. Further, our hero, according to the actor Anthony Aston, ‘labour’d under an ill Figure, being clumsily made, having a great Head, a short thick Neck, stoop’d Shoulders, and had fat short Arms …’ His voice and his control of it must have more than made up for these deficiencies, however, for early on he was given important roles: the Bondman, Pericles, Deflores in “The Changeling” and Archas in “The Mad Lover”. On 24 August 1661 Betterton, just 26, appeared at the Duke’s Company’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre as Hamlet, which he acted to the end of his career to great applause. Downes said that the troupe’s manager, Sir William Davenant, ‘(having seen Mr. Taylor of the Blackfryars Company Act [Hamlet], who being Instructed by the Author Mr. Shakespear) taught Mr. Betterton in every Particle of it; which by his exact Performance of it, gain’d him Esteem and Reputation, Superlative to all other Plays.’ The diarist and playgoing addict Samuel Pepys found in Betterton his favourite actor, and Betterton’s Hamlet on 31 August 1668 was ‘the best part, I believe, that ever man acted.’ Many of Betterton’s 120 or more roles between 1662 and 1704 were in plays now forgotten, but we recognise some of them: Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet”, Bosola in “The Duchess of Malfi”, Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night”, the title role in “Henry VIII”, Macbeth, Dorimant in “The Man of Mode”, King Lear (in Tate’s adaptation), Brutus in “Julius Caesar”, Othello, Manly in “The Plain Dealer”, Valentine in “Love for Love”, Sir John Brute in “The Provok’d Wife”, Fainall in “The Way of the World” and Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. He was remarkably versatile and had, according to his contemporaries, a highly disciplined and commanding stage presence. Early in his career he became involved in theatre management and staging. He went on an official trip to Paris in 1662 to examine French and Italian staging practices. That was the first of at least three Paris trips Betterton made, and the growth of stage spectacle and operatic productions in the late Restoration period in England was largely stimulated by his efforts. After Davenant’s death in April 1668 Betterton and Henry Harris, the two leading actors in the Duke’s Company, served the widow Davenant as acting managers, and Betterton took over Sir William’s training of young performers, particularly new actresses (for which service he paid himself an extra twenty shillings a week). He was involved in the absorption of the King’s Company by the Duke’s in 1682, and in 1694 he led a player’s revolt from the United Company. During the joint troupe’s life from 1682 to 1694, Betterton was squeezed out of management by the crafty lawyer-manager Christopher Rich, but when London once again had two rival companies in 1695, Betterton renovated the old Lincoln’s Inn Field Theatre and with his leading ladies Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle ran