Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage

Long before Shakespeare became a household name, there was Richard Burbage. As the first actor to play Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear, Burbage helped define what it meant to be a Shakespearean actor.

A commanding performer, he became one of early modern England’s first celebrities—celebrated for his emotional power and versatility, as well as his entrepreneurial savvy as an early theater owner.

In her new book Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage: A ‘Delightful Proteus,’ scholar Siobhan Keenan explores the actor’s remarkable career and his pivotal partnership with Shakespeare. Together, they transformed the English stage.

Listen to Shakespeare Unlimited on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, or your favorite podcast platform.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published October 21, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Siobhan Keenan is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at De Montfort University, UK, and the author of several books on early modern theatre history and performance culture, including Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage: A ‘Delightful Proteus’ (2025), The Progresses, Processions and Royal Entries of King Charles I, 1625-1642 (2020), Acting Companies and their Plays in Shakespeare’s London (The Arden Shakespeare, 2014), and Travelling Players in Shakespeare’s England (2002).

Previous:
Harriet Walter: New Words for Shakespeare’s Women

FARAH KARIM-COOPER: From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Farah Karim-Cooper, the Folger director.

[Music fades]

Does the name Richard Burbage ring a bell for you? If so, you probably know him as a leading actor who played some of William Shakespeare’s most famous roles, like Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear.

But, when they were both alive, Richard Burbage would have been far better known than Shakespeare. Audiences swooned for his performances.

The theater as a mass entertainment was still relatively new. And Burbage was one of its first proto-celebrities.

Siobhan Keenan teaches Shakespeare at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. Keenan has written a biography of Burbage, called Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage: A ‘Delightful Proteus.’

Keenan’s biography takes into account Burbage’s popularity as an actor… and his acumen as an entrepreneur.

Burbage turned early modern England’s theater craze into a profitable business—one that lifted Burbage’s fortunes as well as Shakespeare’s.

Here’s Barbara Bogaev, in conversation with Siobhan Keenan.

_______________

BARBARA BOGAEV: Siobhan, welcome to the podcast. So nice to have you here.

SIOBHAN KEENAN: Delighted to be with you.

BOGAEV: Why a book about Richard Burbage now? Have there been new discoveries?

KEENAN: Well, partly now because nobody had done it and I thought it was about time somebody did. But also, yes, I did a lot of research in the archives looking at the world of which Richard Burbage was a part.

So, I had lots of fun reading parish registers and learning about, you know, births and burials and marriages and thinking about who the people were around him. It means we can have a much, much richer picture of the world in which Richard Burbage and his peers like Shakespeare were working. And it just felt really worth sharing because I think it does give new insights into understanding this fantastic golden age in English theater and the wonderful plays to enjoy from it.

BOGAEV: Yes, and you really bring that alive by looking at the communities that shaped Burbage. Why don’t you tell us about St Stephen’s parish in London where Burbage’s family lived and where he grew up?

KEENAN: It’s a small but very densely populated parish. We know that James Burbage, Richard’s father, ends up living there at some point in the 1550s. He gets married there to Richard’s mother, and at that point, James Burbage is a joiner. That’s his full-time job. But at some point, while he’s there, he seems to become inspired to think about acting.

By the time Richard and his siblings are coming along, you know, Richard’s father is basically, it seems, more or less, full-time acting. And so, you know, Richard’s going to enter into this very interesting world of people who are involved in the entertainment industry as well as perhaps being craftspeople by background.

And we also know, it seems to have been quite an interesting parish in religious terms. So, a place that was gradually becoming more Puritan in the period that they were first living there. And we sometimes wonder if that’s one of the reasons why James Burbage decides it’s time to go elsewhere when he knows that he wants to really go into theater full-time by building his own playhouse. He’ll end up taking the whole family off with him into St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, which is another of the London parishes.

BOGAEV: Right? So, he had this carpentry background. It makes sense he would fuse his two interests in acting and building, and he planned to build, as you say, this theater in Shoreditch. So, what was Shoreditch like in the mid-16th century? We talk a lot about it in relation to Shakespeare, and it just seemed like it was one brothel after the next.

KEENAN: Well, it was known for having brothels and lots of inns and taverns. But I think part of its appeal for somebody like James Burbage, when he moves his family there and builds the theater, is it also had open space. You know, if you wanted to build within the city walls of London, that was very difficult. It was very densely built as you might expect, whereas out in St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, there’s space.

One of the things that they benefit from is the dissolution of the monasteries that Henry VIII oversaw and the fact that there’s suddenly what had been church land available for you to use for other purposes. The land on which James Burbage ends up building this theater, it’s partly what used to be, you know, an old religious complex. So, he’s making the most of the fact that there’s space to build as well as the fact that there seems to have been a kind of proto-entertainment industry already happening in St Leonard’s, again, partly probably because it’s outside the city walls and therefore beyond the immediate control of the city authorities, who tended to clamp down on things a bit more

BOGAEV: So, he’s a burgeoning impresario, I guess. What kind of businessman was he? Tough, bad, unethical? I mean, he seems to have spent a lot of time in court.

KEENAN: He did. And I was about to say it probably depends who you’re talking to. His reputation at the time certainly appears to have been a mixed one.

Some of the most colorful stories we have about him are those, you know, the things that end up in the court cases. It tends to involve him, you know, shouting abuse at people he sees as encroaching on his business or threatening his business, being a very robust defender of his family’s theatrical interest. So, that’s one of the dominant images of him: a bit of a law breaker, fast and loose with the truth, ready to do whatever he needed to do to make his way as an impresario.

He also must have had, you know, incredible charisma and an ability to win people over because at various points in his career, he does have powerful allies. People like the Lord Hundson, who becomes his patron in the 1580s. So, you know, he must have been good at courting people. And at various points, he does win people over to put money into his business and to work with him and so on. So, I think, you know, I’d love to have met him. He sounds a wonderfully colorful character. You know, hot tempered, but obviously a guy who can win people over.

BOGAEV: I was just going to say, I would’ve loved to hang out with him and have a beer. Did he come up with the idea to sell shares in a playhouse or was that already a common practice?

KEENAN: Well, it’s a good question, and we don’t completely know the answer—that would be the honest response.

But whether or not it had been done before, it does become an important model, particularly for his son, Richard, and the companies of which he’s a part. It’s going to be one of the things that helps Burbage and Shakespeare and their company go on to have this really long lasting career for an acting company because they’re going to be able to hold on to playing spaces where they can regularly perform in a way that many actors didn’t get to do. You know, they usually just have to rent a theater. These guys are going to end up co-owning them.

BOGAEV: Sure. So, is it safe to assume that the father trained the son, the star of your book and the podcast, Richard Burbage, in the family business of theater?

KEENAN: I think you have to assume that there was an element of training there and that he was learning from his father, both in terms of acting and in terms of the theater business. It’s very possible that Richard would’ve had the chance to go along and watch his father acting at the theater or at court or in various other places. He will have grown up with this all around him. So, I think inevitably he was learning from James.

But I think one of the things I was struck by when I was doing the research for the book is how both Richard and his brother Cuthbert seem at points to deliberately do things differently from their father once James is gone. So, I think there was some other kinds of learning going on there as well. There was learning about what not to do as well as what to do.

BOGAEV: Well, what do we know about how Richard Burbage first started acting?

KEENAN: What we do know is from his brother, Cuthbert. He talked about Richard having acted for roughly 35 years when he finally died in 1619. Working backwards we therefore know that he probably started acting around 1584 or 1585 when he was a teenager. But a bit like Shakespeare’s so-called lost years, we don’t know with whom he started acting. I guess the thing that we are probably fairly safe to assume is that he would’ve started his career as an apprentice player and that would mean usually playing female roles first. So, that’s probably what he will have been doing in those early years before graduating to taking on the male parts that he would become especially famous for later on.

BOGAEV: And the apprentices also cleaned the theater and did everything an apprentice does. And is this where the broomstick episode fits into this story? What was that?

KEENAN: So, in fact, it’s the very first record that we have of him actually doing something besides being born. He’s caught up in a dispute between his father and the widow of his father’s old business partner, John Brayne—also, his aunt.

Margaret Brayne has turned up at the theater demanding her share of the profits of the theater which says she is owed because John Brayne, you know, co-owns it. And James Burbage in one of his typical displays of anger and resistance is not having a bit of it. But he’s not on his own. Richard and his mother also joined in to basically tell Margaret that she needs to leave the theater with her friends. And when one of those friends tries to intervene, to sort of, you know, remonstrate with him, Richard basically threatens him with his broom and says he is ready to, really, to kind of fight him outside if he wants to, which doesn’t happen.

But then, you know, later on we hear another person talking about turning up in the theater and asking about what’s happened and Richard is kind of laughing about it. So, there’s also a feeling that, “Well, maybe Richard was just putting on a bit of a performance.” Maybe this is an early example of the fact that this is a man who’s going to have a talent for performing, you know, whether that’s angry tyrannical leaders or tragic figures as he’ll do later on.

BOGAEV: Oh, I’m loving all of them right now. But how do you know about this?

KEENAN: Well, in that case, because it ends up in court. I mean poor old Margaret Brayne, she attempts multiple times to take the Burbages to court to try and get what she regards as her fair share of the takings of this playhouse that her husband helped build. She never seems to succeed, alas for her. But as a result, lots of people are invited to give witness statements about events that have taken place.

BOGAEV: All historians must just thank god every night for the litigiousness of people, right?

KEENAN: Oh, completely, completely. In this age, you know, court records are probably our main source of information about what’s going on in the theater world. We are not getting people writing us wonderful reviews of productions or, you know, really detailed accounts of what’s going on on the stage. But what we do get are lots of court cases where people are disputing about who owns this or who owns that, or who had a fight at the theater and why, and so on. And yeah, they are real treasure troves of information.

BOGAEV: So, when did Burbage first intersect with Shakespeare then?

KEENAN: Hard to be absolutely sure but where we definitely know that they intersect is in 1594. They are both recorded as members of an acting company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and in fact, the first time they’re associated with an acting company—both of them—is this. They turn up, their names, in a court record where the two of them are paid alongside a famous clown of the day called William Kemp for a couple of performances the Chamberlain’s Men had staged at court in Christmas 1594. So, that’s the first time we definitely know that they’re together.

But you know, it’s possible that they might have overlapped before in some of these earlier acting companies of which Burbage and Shakespeare are both likely to be members. So, you know, there’s a chance that they work together sooner, but they’re definitely working together from 1594.

BOGAEV: And in 1594, Burbage was 26 or so. And you just mentioned Will Kemp, the great star clown. So, when did Burbage become a star of the stage? Because he wasn’t at that point.

KEENAN: No, I mean, he’s an emerging figure just as Shakespeare is. And in fact, in many respects, their journey seems to have been quite a similar one and it’s going to take place, I’d say that that beginning of stardom, over the next six years.

But by the time we get to the turn of the century, both Shakespeare and Burbage have started to emerge as being recognized as stars—one for writing, one for acting.

Burbage, you know, it seems that one of his probably early famous roles is Richard III. That’s going to make a big splash and we know that he’s acting that by probably 1596, 1597. And by the turn of the century, you kind of know that he’s become a star because you start to get allusions in all kinds of sources outside the theater, including a wonderful university play called The Return from Parnassus which features Burbage and Will Kemp as characters. They come on partway through the play to audition a couple of students who are would-be actors and it includes Burbage saying, “Oh, do me a bit of Richard III.” And by this point, this is in academia. They expect people to know the names of Burbage and Kemp, you know? So, by that point you kind of get that sense that this is a guy who’s a celebrity in a way that we might think of today.

BOGAEV: Okay. Well, what made his Richard so popular? What made him stand out?

KEENAN: Well, it seems to have been, I think, the fact that he managed to combine all kinds of characters in one. And here he’s partly, obviously, you know, benefited by Shakespeare’s talent because Shakespeare creates a Richard who’s a very versatile figure.

It’s a part that calls for the actor to play many roles in one. So, you know, he’s going to be apparently a lover with Lady Anne. He’s going to be an apparently grieving brother with his brother King Edward and George, Duke of Clarence. He’s going to be an apparently loving uncle. He’s going to be witty at various points. So, the part invites somebody to show a lot of versatility. And we know from later praise of Richard Burbage that this is what people really admired.

You know, he’s often likened to Proteus later on. That idea of this shapeshifting god. Somebody who’s brilliant at changing between different persona and doing that really quickly and suddenly and convincingly.

BOGAEV: Just what you need to be an actor. But you also say he was known for his ability to convey strong emotions. How do we know this?

KEENAN: Well, again, you know, thankfully some people did write down what they thought about his acting and what they tend to praise is exactly that, you know. They talk about the versatility, but then they talk about convincing emotion. So, they praise his ability to have that really longing eye of a lover. To be convincingly driven with grief or madness. And, you know, that seems to be what people were struck by: the fact that he could embody these emotions so convincingly so that people really thought he was feeling them.

There’s poem written shortly after he dies where they talk about when it came to staging death how people watching Burbage were convinced he was dying. People thought he died in deed as opposed to simply in play. And how again, people watching him would be almost crying and sighing with him as he played some of these, you know, wonderful, tragic heroes that he would become so famous for.

BOGAEV: So, was he more natural than the actors who were declaiming? There was still this period where acting was more about standing still and speaking clearly to the audience. Just saying your lines. And so, was this the dawn of naturalism? Started in acting with Burbage?

KEENAN: It’s a really good question and there’s been a lot of debate about this because I think one age’s idea of what’s natural is not necessarily the same as another’s. But that does seem to be partly what people admired: that they thought of this as being lifelike playing.

People often turn to that moment in Hamlet where he’s describing, if you like, what an ideal actor is, you know, suiting the word to the action and so on. And it’s often been thought that what he’s describing there is precisely that kind of lifelike, naturalistic acting that Burbage embodied. And that certainly Shakespeare is saying that that was different from the kind of acting that had been fashionable before.

But actually, when you read the descriptions of it, it’s not subtle acting by the science of it. You know, that praise for those really powerful emotions that he embodies and those kind of sudden changes, quick changes between different persona, you know, it’s a very passionate kind of acting. It’s not necessarily restrained in the way that people would sometimes think of naturalistic acting today.

BOGAEV: Well, his Richard III was also known for something else: one of his gestures was keeping his hand on his dagger. That seems such a small thing, but this idea of a recurring gesture or motif, was that new at the time?

KEENAN: Well, we don’t have many accounts of it before, so I think that’s perhaps why it was memorable. We don’t really before this get many accounts of individual performers. But we also don’t get that sense of people having signature gestures or signature moves that they might use in a performance. So again, you know, he seems to have been doing something slightly new.

BOGAEV: Well, you’ve implied that Shakespeare was perhaps thinking of Burbage when he was writing that famous passage. The rant to the players about acting. What do we know about the relationship between the two? And did Shakespeare write to Burbage’s strengths or did Burbage influence how he wrote? And, I guess, likewise, did Shakespeare’s writing shape Burbage as an actor?

KEENAN: Well, most of the evidence we have is what we have in the plays, I’d say. I think you do get a real sense of it being a two-way.

So, there’s definitely a sense that Shakespeare seems to be writing for Burbage because he does create a number of characters that seem to include qualities for which Burbage was especially renowned. So, for instance, you know, he does a number of characters who go mad in kind of spectacular ways. Characters who were very good at playing jealousy. Characters who were good at doing, again, powerful emotions. In those early days at the Globe Theatre in the early 17th century, he creates this whole series of major, really large as in long, tragic hero parts. Most of those do seem to be written with Burbage’s talents in mind.

But, actually, I think it probably goes the other way as well. I think to some extent we see Burbage emerging as a star and honing those talents—that ability to be versatile, to be lifelike, to convey powerful emotions—growing out of his work with Shakespeare, that it’s Shakespeare pushing him to see what he can achieve for him.

BOGAEV: And I suppose you really must see that in Hamlet, which was another one of Burbage’s signature roles. Is Burbage why Hamlet was fat and scant of breath—that line that no one can understand?

KEENAN: Well, it’s possible. I mean, you know, if you’ve seen the one portrait we’ve got of Burbage, which he does look like, he might have been a stocky chap by that point, you know, whatever he was earlier in life. But this is a really interesting example of where it does look like Shakespeare took a play that probably already existed and revised it—and probably revised it more than once.

BOGAEV: Right. “What are we going to do about Burbage? He’s gained so much weight. He can’t be a skinny university student.”

KEENAN: No, and suddenly, you know, you change some of his youth in the play to suddenly you’ve got the slightly, an older figure.

But again, you know, it does look like Shakespeare’s very much thinking about Burbage because in the revised version of Hamlet that we have preserved in the second quarto, it looks like he’s basically expanded some of those scenes where Burbage gets to show off his ability to do madness. So, we get more scope given for his kind of being the witty clown, the antic figure. And for doing those kind of, you know, erratic speech and behavior that Hamlet is kind of famous for.

So again, yeah, I think that’s very much a sign of Shakespeare coming back to a play, having worked with Burbage and thinking, “Oh, you know, we could do more with this, with you and for you.”

BOGAEV: So, I want to come back to Will Kemp because he left. He was a shareholder and he left the company a year after they moved to the Globe in 1599. I’m curious what impact that loss had on Burbage’s career?

KEENAN: Well, you know, it’s an interesting question. Some people think it might have been a sign that there were tensions in the company and that Will Kempe was very much associated with an older, more improvisatory style of acting and that maybe Shakespeare and Burbage and other members of the company were wanting to go in a slightly different direction. Is this about parting for artistic differences? If that’s the case, then it might have been a relief for Kemp to be gone.

On the other hand, you know, Kemp was a big star. So, there was also a challenge in terms of what you were going to do to replace him and to sustain this reputation that the company had grown by the time that Kemp leaves. For Burbage, it does seem to have ended up being a bit of an opportunity in that, you know, he was already emerging as a kind of new star, I think, before Kemp leaves. But with Kemp gone, he pretty much becomes the dominant star in the company, you know, the most influential figure. It’s probably no coincidence that it’s shortly after this that we start to see Shakespeare writing these incredibly large roles for Burbage—you know, he may have felt there was an upside to Kemp’s departure.

BOGAEV: Sure, this was a new era. But while we’re talking about this period, what new insights did you uncover about the role Burbage and his brother played in this infamous dismantling of the Burbage Theatre and the moving of it to the Bankside?

KEENAN: They’ve decided they need take the timbers of the Theatre and get them elsewhere because the landlord back at the theaters is threatening to seize the property. They decide to go for a bold move. They’re going to literally deconstruct it, ship it across the Thames, and rebuild it on a new piece of land that they found.

The owner at that time is Cuthbert, the older brother. But Richard is right in the thick of it. You know, the accounts that we get afterwards in the court records tell us that he’s there with the various carpenters literally dismantling the theater, just after Christmas. So, you know, he’s hands on in terms of taking that building and taking it elsewhere.

It was interesting they were going to have to give their playhouse a new name. And it’s a very interesting choice of name, The Globe. You know, when their father called their theater, The Theater, it was maybe harking back to Roman days. And the notion of, kind of, you know, performance venues.

But they opted for something which suggests that they had aspirations to, in some way, capture life. You know, that that’s what the feeling you get with the name of the Globe is, “We are here trying to represent the world.” So, you know, it’s an ambitious name as well.

BOGAEV: Yeah, it’s a whole new day.

KEENAN: Yes, and I think it’s sign of how confident they were at this point.

BOGAEV: So that was 1599. And by 1609 Burbage and the Kingsmen had two playhouses at their disposal in London: the open air Globe and the indoor theater, Blackfriars. So, in what way did this bounty of performing spaces influence their playing or their performance styles or their choice of material?

KEENAN: Well, I mean, I guess one of the big impacts of having a second playhouse meant that they were in a superior position to just about every other acting company at the time.

With the acquisition of the Blackfriars, they get a very different kind of space. This is a space where you can perform when the weather’s bad in the winter. You can keep going all the way through. And it’s a playhouse that was known for traditionally having higher charges to get in and a slightly more elite audience.

One of the things that scholars have often kind of pondered about is whether that starts to change the way that they act their plays and the kind of plays that they perform. So, you know, they seem to incorporate more music into the plays once they’ve got the Blackfriars, partly because the Blackfriars traditionally had a musical concert there.

But again, interestingly, then they try to mimic it at the Globe. They start building a music room at the Globe. So, there’s this interesting kind of two-way traffic in terms of, you know, there are things you could do at the indoor theater that were harder to do at the outdoor theater, and therefore, you are going to adapt them into your plays. But equally they had to, it seems, be very adaptable because presumably performing on the Globe stage in the open air you were having to project a lot more as a performer versus how you might have performed when you were in the enclosed space of the Blackfriars.

I’m sure they were helped by the fact that they grew out of this tradition of theater where actually being adaptable was key to it, you know, from the days where you would be regularly going on tour, you had to be able to perform for different audiences. You had to be able to perform in different spaces because you never knew where you were going to be.

BOGAEV: Right. Well, so they had all this stability, but still the King’s Men and Burbage faced so much litigation. What was the deal?

KEENAN: Oh my gosh, well, I imagine it’s partly a sign of how profitable theater had become that people knew there was money in it, and therefore, people start vying to get their share of it.

So, some of the people who’d previously rented the Blackfriars Playhouse start trying to say, “Oh, we should be getting a share of the take-ins because the person who had the lease before you, he didn’t get our permission to sell it back to you,” and all these sorts of things. I think it just tells you that people knew this was hot property, and so, you know, all kinds of people come forward trying to argue that they’ve got a share in this or a share in that.

But the Burbages actually managed to see them all off. So, I think one of the lessons they did learn from their father—well, maybe by negative example rather than positive example—is, you know, go through the law, do things properly because in the end it protects you when people come for you.

BOGAEV: Well, what effect did Shakespeare’s death in 1616 have on Burbage and the King’s Men?

KEENAN: Well, it, it must have been a real wrench, you know. Shakespeare had been at the heart of the company. He’d been the resident playwright essentially from 1594. So, you know, more than, well, nearly 20 years he’d been at the heart of what they were doing.

So, I think that there was the personal loss. And I’m sure for Burbage as somebody who’d worked so closely with him for so long that that will have been very difficult.

But there was also the professional challenge of what do you do. How do you replace? I think they were lucky that they’d already started doing that. So, even though Shakespeare was their resident writer, they’d already started a regular process of bringing in other kinds of young, talented writers to produce plays for the company, including, you know, bringing people in to collaborate with Shakespeare. So, a couple of Shakespeare’s late plays are written with John Fletcher. He’s one of the people that they’re going to turn to to step into the breach.

But in another sense, Shakespeare very much stays with them after he’s gone in the form of those plays, you know. His plays continue to be a core part of their repertory and certainly for Burbage, you know, he continues to act those roles all the way up until his death. For instance, we know that there’s a play performance a couple of months after Burbage dies of Pericles. You know, clearly Burbage was expected to be playing that role.

BOGAEV: He died suddenly, right? Only three years after Shakespeare.

KEENAN: Yes.

BOGAEV: Well, we’ve had a number of people point out on the podcast how amazingly big the public reaction was to Burbage’s death, just this outpouring of mourning that it seemed to even exceed the mourning for Queen Anne who died around that time.

KEENAN: It was remarkable. There’s much more of an outpouring of grief about Burbage’s death than there is about any other performer in this period. You know, there’s nothing of the same kind when Shakespeare dies. It’s more effusive than what happened when the Queen died which was clearly a bit of a shock for some contemporaries.

BOGAEV: It reminds me of, you know, Princess Diana, the outpouring, or Elizabeth Taylor. So, you make the argument that Burbage was, if not the first, one of the first kind of proto-celebrities.

KEENAN: Yes, I would say that he is and it’s partly because of that way that his fame transcends the individual roles that he plays. So, you know, he becomes famous as Burbage. And you know, when you’re looking at later allusions, he’s one of those people that are still being talked about, you know, 20 years after his death. He’s being recalled by people who’d seen him act.

We are very used to the idea, I think, of celebrities now and actors being individually or personally famous beyond their roles. But this was very new at the point that it happens to Burbage. You know, he’s not the only one. People like Will Kemp were also kind of famous, and Edward Allen. But he’s definitely one of the first stars—and I guess from our point of view, probably one of the first Shakespearean stars, so especially famous for his performance of Shakespearean roles in the way that, you know, somebody today, like Judi Dench or Ian McKellen, you know, they’re famous actors generally, but they’re also particularly famous for Shakespeare.

BOGAEV: Well, your book also drives home that, that he was one of the first multihyphenate celebrities—like Reese Witherspoon or someone—that he was so involved in the business of theater as well, given his background from his father

KEENAN: Yeah, completely. I think, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to write about him is because I wanted to tell that whole story.

I think there’s been a lot of attention to his father as the builder of The Theatre, and that often being seen as one of the first playhouses. And, you know, Burbage has been known as this kind of famous actor of Shakespearean parts but there’s—I’m not sure why—but there’s been a reluctance to recognize that he was both this incredibly talented theatrical artist, but also very much a theater businessman. Because, you know, right, as you’ve said, right from the start of his career, he’s in the heart of the business. And once his father dies, you know, he and his brother, they take those playhouses over together and he’s running those theaters right up again until the moment that he dies.

You know, he is a landlord, an owner of a theater, as well as an artist, an actor, and I think that’s one of the things that’s so fascinating about him is that he not only has this incredible impact on Shakespeare and theater acting in the period but he also has this contribution to play in the professionalization of theater as a business. You know, again, he’s not alone, but he’s one of those people who helps to make theater something that can be a profession as opposed to something you just do part time, and, you know, the careers that builds for a whole host of people beyond himself.

BOGAEV: Well, thank you so much for bringing this man’s period to life. If not exactly who he was, which we can never know, but you gave us so much to think about. Thank you.

KEENAN: It was great to talk to you about it. I do keep thinking, “Oh, if you could only find that diary or the batch of letters where suddenly you get, you know, this wonderful insight into Burbage the man.” Or indeed Shakespeare the man. It would be so fantastic.

BOGAEV: I hope that for you. I hope someone finds it under a rake somewhere in a gardening shed.

KEENAN: It would be great, wouldn’t it?
_______________

KARIM-COOPER: That was Siobhan Keenan, interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage: A Delightful Proteus is out now from The Arden Shakespeare.

This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had technical help from Helen Lennard in Leicester, UK, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Our web producer is Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

If you’re a fan of Shakespeare Unlimited, please spread the word. Tell a friend about why you love the podcast!

Shakespeare Unlimited comes to you from the Folger Shakespeare Library. Home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the Folger is dedicated to advancing knowledge and the arts.

If you’re in Washington, DC, come visit the Folger on Capitol Hill. Come face to face with a Shakespeare First Folio in our exhibition halls or take in a play in our theater or enjoy our Quill & Crumb cafe. We’d love to see you. For more information visit our website, folger dot edu.

Until next time, thanks for listening!