Actors - Richard Burbage

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	Actors - Richard Burbage

Sir Richard Burbage (c.1567 – March 13 1619) was an actor and theatre owner. Younger Brother of Cuthbert Burbage.

Burbage came from an acting family and was a popular performer by the age of 20. After the death of his father James Burbage around 1598, Richard and his brother Cuthbert stepped in to rescue the family's interests in two London theatres, then tied up in lawsuits. The Blackfriars Theatre they kept, the other, called simply The Theatre was dismantled when they could not resolve terms for a new lease with Giles Allen, the landowner. The beams, posts, and other remnants of The Theatre were moved to a new location on the south side of the Thames River and reassembled into a new playhouse called the Globe.

Burbage's acting career included a stint in the Earl of Leicester's company but most famously he was the star of William Shakespeare's theatre company, The Chamberlain's Men which mutated into the King's Men on the accession of James I in 1603. He played the title role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and King Lear. But he was in great demand and also appeared in the plays of many of the great contemporary writers, such as Ben Jonson. Some believe that the famous Chandos portrait actually depicts Burbage, rather than Shakespeare but he might also be its creator: he had a strong interest in painting. Dulwich College holds a painting of a female head in a roughly similar style that was generally regarded as his work until it was found out in 1987 that it was probably misattributed to him and that it is a work by a North Italian painter.

He is buried at St Leonard's, Shoreditch, close by The Theatre, under a gravestone that reads "Exit Burbage".

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