Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/370

 (1590), and the 'Robert Wilson, Gent.' of The Cobbler's Prophecy (1594). The 'Gent.' is hardly an insuperable obstacle to identifying him with the 'Robert Wilson, yoman (a player)', who was buried at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, on 20 November 1600 (Collier, Actors, xviii). A Wilson is in the suspected Admiral's cast of c. January 1600. But now comes the real difficulty. Meres, also in the Palladis Tamia and without any indication that he has another man in mind, includes 'Wilson' in a group of 'the best for comedy amongst vs', which is composed of the principal writers for the Admiral's in 1598, and amongst these writers, as shown by Henslowe's papers, was a Robert Wilson, who collaborated in eleven plays during 1598, and in three more during 1599 and 1600. He is last mentioned in a letter of 14 June 1600. This is generally taken to be a younger man than the Queen's player, possibly a Robert Wilson who was baptized at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, on 22 September 1579, and married Mary Eaton there on 24 June 1606, possibly the Robert Wilson (not described as 'a player and the younger' as Collier suggests in Bodl.) whose son Robert was baptized at St. Leonard's on 15 January 1601 (Stopes, Burbage, 141), possibly the Robert Wilson whose burial is recorded at St. Bartholomew's the Less on 21 October 1610. On the whole, I am inclined to think that, in view of the character of Meres' references, of the use of Catiline as a play-*theme both about 1580 and in 1598 (cf. ch. xxiii), and of the sudden disappearance of Wilson from Henslowe's diary in the year of the 'player's' death, the balance of evidence is in favour of one playwright rather than two. The undefined share of the Admiral's man in the extant 1 Sir John Oldcastle does not really afford a basis for stylistic comparison with the more old-fashioned manners of the 1584-94 plays. There is nothing to show that the Bishopsgate man had any connexion with the stage, still less that he was a son of the Queen's player, as has been suggested.

WINTER, RICHARD. Possibly an actor at Canterbury, c. 1571 (3 Library, ix. 253).

WODERAM, RICHARD. Oxford's, 1586-7 (?).

WOODFORD, THOMAS. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, 1621.

WOODS, JOHN. Holland, 1604.

WORTH, ELLIS. Anne's, 1615-19; for his later career, cf. Murray, i. 198, 218. He is described as 'gentleman' in the register of St. Giles's at the baptism of his daughter Jane on 19 July 1613, and as 'player' at that of his son Elizeus on 12 March 1629 (Bodl.).

WYLKYNSON, JOHN. A London 'coriour', who maintained players in his house in 1549 (cf. App. D, No. ii).

YOUNG, JOHN. Queen Jane's, >1537; Interluders, 1539-53 (?). He seems to have been still alive in 1569-70.