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William Kempe
William Kempe (c. 1560 – c. 1603), commonly referred to as Will Kemp, was an English actor and dancer who specialised in comic roles. He was best known as one of the original stage actors in early dramas by William Shakespeare, and roles associated with his name may have included the comic creation Falstaff. His contemporaries considered him to be a successor to the great clown of the previous generation, Richard Tarlton.
Kempe's success and influence was such that in December 1598 he was one of a core of five actor-shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, alongside Shakespeare and Richard Burbage. He left the company shortly afterwards, and despite his fame as a performer and his intention to continue his career, he appears to have died unregarded and in poverty circa 1603.
Kempe is usually given an approximate birth year of 1560. He first entered the historical record as a performer with Leicester's Men at Leicester House in May 1585 and continued in this service after Leicester's departure for the Low Countries to take part in the Eighty Years' War. Leicester's nephew, Philip Sidney, sent letters home by way of a man he called "Will, my Lord of Lester's jesting player" and it is now generally accepted this was Kempe. Sidney complained in a letter to Francis Walsingham that "Will" had delivered the letters to Lady Leicester rather than Sidney's wife, Frances Walsingham. After a brief return to England, Kempe accompanied two other future Lord Chamberlain's Men, George Bryan and Thomas Pope, to Elsinore where he entertained Frederick II of Denmark in 1586.[citation needed]
Kempe's whereabouts in the later 1580s are not known. His growing fame as a performer during this period is indicated by Thomas Nashe's An Almond for a Parrot (1590), which Nashe dedicated to Kempe, calling him "vicegerent general to the ghost of Dick Tarlton." The title-page of the quarto of A Knack to Know a Knave advertises Kempe's "merriments". Title-pages were a means to draw attention to a book, and the mention of Kempe suggests that he had become an attraction. Critics have generally viewed the scene in which Kempe performs as rather flat (Collier, 97), and it is assumed that the scene provided a framework within which Kempe could improvise. Entries in the Stationers' Register indicate that three jigs (short comic plays) possibly written by Kempe were published between 1591 and 1595. Two of these have survived.[citation needed]
By 1592 Kempe was one of Lord Strange's Men. He was listed in the Privy Council authorisation for that troupe to play seven miles out of London. In 1594, upon the dissolution of Strange's Men, Kempe, along with Burbage and Shakespeare, joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men and remained with them until early 1599, when events which are still unclear caused him to depart. Kemp had shared in the plans to construct the Globe Theatre but he appeared in no productions in the Globe, which was open by mid-1599. Evidence from Shakespeare's Henry V, in which there is no promised continuation of a role for Falstaff, and from Hamlet, with its complaint about improvised clowning (Act 3, Scene 2), may suggest the circumstances in which Kempe was dropped. He played his last role for Shakespeare in 1598.
In a 1615 lawsuit brought by Thomasina (née Heminges) Ostler, widow of William Ostler, against her father, John Heminges, the recently deceased actor William Kempe was referred to as a gentleman (Willelmo Kempe nuper de Londonia generoso defuncto). It has been suggested that either he was a member of the Kempe family of Olantigh, a property 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Wye in Kent, or pretended a connection.
Kemp's parentage is unknown, though it has been conjectured that, despite his plebeian performance persona, he was linked in some way to the Kempes of Ollantighe, near Ashford in Kent, who were a wealthy Catholic dynasty. Sir Thomas Kempe (1517–1591) did indeed have a son named William; however, the claim that this William Kempe was the actor cannot be correct, since he was buried at Wye church on 27 March 1597 (Honneyman, 125–9; Bannerman, 3; private information, A. Findlay) . Nonetheless, this putative connection might help explain the otherwise surprising story—dramatized in the play The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by Day, Rowley, and Wilkins—that when William Kemp the actor was in Italy in 1601 he had an encounter with the celebrated traveller Sir Anthony Shirley: for Sir Anthony and his two equally famous brothers were related to the Ollantighe Kempes through their mother, who was Sir Thomas Kempe's daughter. Possibly, then, the actor had some tie of kinship to Ollantighe, at an outlying point on the family tree; or perhaps in recommending himself to Shirley he was just opportunistically taking advantage of the name he shared with Shirley's mother.
After his departure from the Chamberlain's Men in early 1599, Kempe continued to pursue his career as a performer. In February and March 1600, he undertook an ordeal in which he morris danced from London to Norwich, a distance of about 110 miles or 177 km, a journey which took him nine days (spread over several weeks), often amid cheering crowds. Later that year he published a description of the event, Kempes Nine Daies Wonder, to prove to doubters that it was true. His later activities are obscure. On evidence from The Travels of the Three English Brothers, he is assumed to have made another European tour, perhaps reaching Italy, but by 1601 he was borrowing money from Philip Henslowe and had joined Worcester's Men. The last undoubted mention of him occurs in Henslowe's diary in late 1602.
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William Kempe
William Kempe (c. 1560 – c. 1603), commonly referred to as Will Kemp, was an English actor and dancer who specialised in comic roles. He was best known as one of the original stage actors in early dramas by William Shakespeare, and roles associated with his name may have included the comic creation Falstaff. His contemporaries considered him to be a successor to the great clown of the previous generation, Richard Tarlton.
Kempe's success and influence was such that in December 1598 he was one of a core of five actor-shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, alongside Shakespeare and Richard Burbage. He left the company shortly afterwards, and despite his fame as a performer and his intention to continue his career, he appears to have died unregarded and in poverty circa 1603.
Kempe is usually given an approximate birth year of 1560. He first entered the historical record as a performer with Leicester's Men at Leicester House in May 1585 and continued in this service after Leicester's departure for the Low Countries to take part in the Eighty Years' War. Leicester's nephew, Philip Sidney, sent letters home by way of a man he called "Will, my Lord of Lester's jesting player" and it is now generally accepted this was Kempe. Sidney complained in a letter to Francis Walsingham that "Will" had delivered the letters to Lady Leicester rather than Sidney's wife, Frances Walsingham. After a brief return to England, Kempe accompanied two other future Lord Chamberlain's Men, George Bryan and Thomas Pope, to Elsinore where he entertained Frederick II of Denmark in 1586.[citation needed]
Kempe's whereabouts in the later 1580s are not known. His growing fame as a performer during this period is indicated by Thomas Nashe's An Almond for a Parrot (1590), which Nashe dedicated to Kempe, calling him "vicegerent general to the ghost of Dick Tarlton." The title-page of the quarto of A Knack to Know a Knave advertises Kempe's "merriments". Title-pages were a means to draw attention to a book, and the mention of Kempe suggests that he had become an attraction. Critics have generally viewed the scene in which Kempe performs as rather flat (Collier, 97), and it is assumed that the scene provided a framework within which Kempe could improvise. Entries in the Stationers' Register indicate that three jigs (short comic plays) possibly written by Kempe were published between 1591 and 1595. Two of these have survived.[citation needed]
By 1592 Kempe was one of Lord Strange's Men. He was listed in the Privy Council authorisation for that troupe to play seven miles out of London. In 1594, upon the dissolution of Strange's Men, Kempe, along with Burbage and Shakespeare, joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men and remained with them until early 1599, when events which are still unclear caused him to depart. Kemp had shared in the plans to construct the Globe Theatre but he appeared in no productions in the Globe, which was open by mid-1599. Evidence from Shakespeare's Henry V, in which there is no promised continuation of a role for Falstaff, and from Hamlet, with its complaint about improvised clowning (Act 3, Scene 2), may suggest the circumstances in which Kempe was dropped. He played his last role for Shakespeare in 1598.
In a 1615 lawsuit brought by Thomasina (née Heminges) Ostler, widow of William Ostler, against her father, John Heminges, the recently deceased actor William Kempe was referred to as a gentleman (Willelmo Kempe nuper de Londonia generoso defuncto). It has been suggested that either he was a member of the Kempe family of Olantigh, a property 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Wye in Kent, or pretended a connection.
Kemp's parentage is unknown, though it has been conjectured that, despite his plebeian performance persona, he was linked in some way to the Kempes of Ollantighe, near Ashford in Kent, who were a wealthy Catholic dynasty. Sir Thomas Kempe (1517–1591) did indeed have a son named William; however, the claim that this William Kempe was the actor cannot be correct, since he was buried at Wye church on 27 March 1597 (Honneyman, 125–9; Bannerman, 3; private information, A. Findlay) . Nonetheless, this putative connection might help explain the otherwise surprising story—dramatized in the play The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by Day, Rowley, and Wilkins—that when William Kemp the actor was in Italy in 1601 he had an encounter with the celebrated traveller Sir Anthony Shirley: for Sir Anthony and his two equally famous brothers were related to the Ollantighe Kempes through their mother, who was Sir Thomas Kempe's daughter. Possibly, then, the actor had some tie of kinship to Ollantighe, at an outlying point on the family tree; or perhaps in recommending himself to Shirley he was just opportunistically taking advantage of the name he shared with Shirley's mother.
After his departure from the Chamberlain's Men in early 1599, Kempe continued to pursue his career as a performer. In February and March 1600, he undertook an ordeal in which he morris danced from London to Norwich, a distance of about 110 miles or 177 km, a journey which took him nine days (spread over several weeks), often amid cheering crowds. Later that year he published a description of the event, Kempes Nine Daies Wonder, to prove to doubters that it was true. His later activities are obscure. On evidence from The Travels of the Three English Brothers, he is assumed to have made another European tour, perhaps reaching Italy, but by 1601 he was borrowing money from Philip Henslowe and had joined Worcester's Men. The last undoubted mention of him occurs in Henslowe's diary in late 1602.
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