English actor, mentioned in the folio Shakespeare of 1623 as one of the twenty-six who took principal parts in all of these plays. There is a legend that he was trained by Shakespeare to play Hamlet, and that he succeeded Burbage in this and other parts. Certain it is that in many of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays he had a leading rôle, and he is one of the ten actors who signed the dedication of the first folio of these dramatists (1647).
