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 BEESTON, ROBERT. Anne's, 1604, 1609.

BEESTON. A player at Barnstaple in 1560-1 (Murray, ii. 198).

BELT, T. Strange's (?), 1590-1.

BENFIELD, ROBERT, is first named in the actor-lists of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Coxcomb and The Honest Man's Fortune, both of which probably represent performances by the Lady Elizabeth's men in 1613. Subsequently he joined the King's men, but at what date is uncertain. It may have been upon the death on 16 December 1614 of William Ostler, whom he succeeded in the part of Antonio in Webster's Duchess of Malfi. He is in the actor-list of The Knight of Malta (1616-19) and in the patent of 1619. He seems to have been a member of the company to the end, as he signed the dedication of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio in 1647. He is in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare's plays. Collier found some late records of his family (B. 181).

BENTLEY, JOHN. Queen's, 1583. He is named by Heywood as before his time, lauded by Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592) (Works, i. 215) with Tarlton, Alleyn, and Knell, coupled with Knell in the undated challenge to Alleyn (q.v.) to play one of their parts, and placed by Dekker in A Knight's Conjuring (1607) in the company of the poets, Watson, Kyd, and Achelow, 'tho he had ben a player molded out of their pennes, yet because he had been their louer and register to the muse, inimitable Bentley'. He may be the John Bentley whose poems are mentioned by Ritson, Bibliographia Poetica (1802), 129.

BIERDT, BURCHARD. Germany, 1612.

BILLINGESLY, JOHN. Payee for Westminster boys, 1572.

BIRCH, GEORGE. Interluders, 1538-59.

BIRCH, JOHN. Interluders, 1547-56.

BIRD, alias BORNE, WILLIAM. Chamberlain's (?), 1597; Pembroke's, 1597; Admiral's-Henry's-Palsgrave's, 1597-1622. Many personalia of his family and debts are recorded in Dulwich manuscripts and church registers (H. ii. 241; B. 204).

'BLACK DICK.' Admiral's, 1597.

BLACKWOOD, THOMAS. Worcester's, 1602-3; Germany, 1603-6(?). The conjecture of Fleay, i. 290, that an earlier German tour is referred to in How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (1602) is baseless (H. ii. 244).

BLANEY, JOHN. Revels, 1609; Anne's, 1616-19. He lived near the Red Bull in St. John's Street in 1623 (J. 347).

BLANK, WILLIAM ALEXANDER. A Scottish dancer in Germany, 1605.

BOONE, WILLIAM. A 'player' mentioned in books of St. Saviour's, c. 1600 (Rendle, Bankside, xxvi). Possibly an error for Borne.

BORNE, WILLIAM. Vide Birde.

BOWER, RICHARD. Master of Chapel, 1545-61, and possibly author of Apius and Virginia (1575); cf. ch. xxiv.

BOWRINGE, GREGORY. Paul's chorister, >1582.

BRADSHAW, RICHARD. Edward, Lord Dudley's (provincial),