"Cutting" Ball was a notorious criminal during the
Elizabethan Age
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...
. (His name came from a "cutpurse", a thief.)
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Nashe (baptised November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel ''The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including ''Pierce Penniless,'' a ...
mentions a ballad written about him, which does not survive. His sister, Em, or Emma, was a prostitute, "a sorry ragged quean", who according to various reports was the mistress of the clown
Richard Tarlton
Richard Tarlton (died September 1588), was an English actor of the Elizabethan era. He was the most famous clown of his era, known for his extempore comic doggerel verse, which came to be known as "Tarltons". He helped to turn Elizabethan theatre ...
and later of the writer
Robert Greene and cared for both on their death-beds. She is said to have had a son, Fortunatus (d. 1593), by Greene.
Greene, who wrote much about the London underworld, once hired Ball as a bodyguard.
Ball was hanged at
Tyburn
Tyburn was a manor (estate) in the county of Middlesex, one of two which were served by the parish of Marylebone.
The parish, probably therefore also the manor, was bounded by Roman roads to the west (modern Edgware Road) and south (modern Ox ...
.
The San Francisco experimental Cutting Ball Theatre was named after him.
About Cutting Ball Theatre
, Accessed July 12, 2012
Sources
16th-century English criminals
People executed at Tyburn
{{crime-stub