Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/35

 .’ The translation is an important example of Elizabethan prose, remarkable for rhythm and poetic vigour. Warton points out that it opened out a new field of romance, and claims that it influenced and partly suggested Sir Philip Sidney's ‘Arcadia.’ Abraham Fraunce in ‘The Countess of Pembroke's Yvy Church,’ 1591, turned the beginning into six pages of clumsy hexameters. Underdown's Greek scholarship was slight and his Latin faulty. His version follows the Latin of the Pole, Stanislao Warschewiczki, published at Basle, 1551. Underdown's translation (edit. 1587) was reprinted in 1895 as vol. v. of the ‘Tudor Translations,’ edited by Mr. W. E. Henley, with an introduction by Mr. Charles Whibley.

Underdown's other works were:
 * 1) ‘The excellent historye of Theseus and Ariadne,’ London, 1566, 8vo. In the ‘Stationers' Register’ (, i. 304, v. 57) this is entered to Richard Jones on 18 Jan. 1566.
 * 2) ‘Ovid his invective against Ibis. Translated into English meeter, whereunto is added by the Translator a short draught of all the stories and tales contayned therein, very pleasant to be read,’ London, 1569, b.l. 8vo; 2nd edit. 1577. The epistle dedicated to Sir Thomas Sackvile, lord Buckhurst, contains some autobiographical details. The poem is in fourteen-syllable verse. The prose appendix is a clear and simple collection of classical stories which proved useful to dramatists and poets.

 UNDERHILL, CAVE (1634–1710?), actor, the son of Nicholas Underhill, clothworker, was born in St. Andrew's parish, Holborn, on 17 March 1634, and was admitted to Merchant Taylors' school in January 1644–1645. He became a member of the company which was collected by Rhodes [see ], and was afterwards sworn by the lord chamberlain to serve (under Sir [q. v.]) the Duke of York at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1663 a true bill was found against him, in conjunction with Betterton and or Nokes [q. v.], for having riotously assaulted Edward Thomas, and he was fined 3s. 4d. In the following year, on 17 Nov., he married at St. James's, Clerkenwell, Elizabeth Robinson, widow of Thomas Robinson, a vintner in Cheapside; she died in October 1673, at which time the actor seems to have been living in Salisbury Court (, Obituary, Camden Soc. p. 100). On 15 June 1673 Underhill is described ‘of St. Bride's, gent.,’ and appears on a list of communicants at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West.

The first character to which Underhill's name appears is Sir Morglay Thwack in D'Avenant's comedy, ‘The Wits,’ previously acted at the court by the ‘king's men’ on 28 Jan. 1634, and revived, with alterations, at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 15 Aug. 1661. In Cowley's ‘Cutter of Coleman Street’ he was the same season the original Cutter, or swaggerer, and he also played the first Gravedigger in ‘Hamlet,’ a part he retained over forty years, and Gregory in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ So successful was he in these and other characters that D'Avenant publicly styled him the ‘truest comedian’ at that time upon his stage. In 1662 he played before the king and queen at Whitehall the part of Ignoramus in a translation of Ruggles's Latin comedy of that name. In 1663 he was the clown in ‘Twelfth Night;’ was between 5 and 12 Jan. the original Diego in Tuke's ‘Adventures of Five Hours;’ on 28 May the first Peralta in the ‘Slighted Maid,’ by Sir R. Stapleton; and subsequently the first Tetrick in the ‘Stepmother’ of the same writer. In 1664 he ‘created’ the parts of the Duke of Bedford in Lord Orrery's ‘Henry V,’ Palmer in Etherege's ‘Comical Revenge,’ Cunopes in the ‘Rivals’ (D'Avenant's alteration of ‘Two Noble Kinsmen’), and he played Gardiner in ‘Henry VIII.’ After the theatre had been closed for eighteen months through the plague and the fire, he was the first Moody in Dryden's ‘Sir Martin Marrall’ on 16 Aug. 1667, second performance; and on 7 Nov. Trincalo in the ‘Tempest,’ as altered by Dryden and D'Avenant. On 26 March 1668 he was the first Jodelet in D'Avenant's ‘Man's the Master,’ and in 1669 the first Timothy in Caryl's ‘Sir Solomon.’

On the opening in 1671 of the new theatre in Dorset Gardens, Underhill was the original Sir Simon Softhead in Ravenscroft's ‘Citizen turned Gentleman’ (‘Monsieur de Pourceaugnac’), and Pedagog in Lord Orrery's ‘Mr. Anthony.’ The year 1672 saw Underhill as the first Justice Clodpate in Shadwell's ‘Epsom Wells,’ and Tutor in Arrowsmith's ‘Reformation,’ and in 1673 he was Fullam in Nevil Payne's ‘Morning Ramble.’ He was, presumably, in 1676, the first Jacomo in Shadwell's ‘Libertine’ (‘Don Juan’), and