John Shank (also spelled Shanke or Shanks) (died January 1636) was an actor in
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1558 and 1642.
This is the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson ...
, a leading comedian in the
King's Men during the 1620s and 1630s.
Early career
By his own testimony, Shank began his stage career with
Pembroke's Men
The Earl of Pembroke's Men was an Elizabethan era playing company, or troupe of actors, in English Renaissance theatre. They functioned under the patronage of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Early and equivocal mentions of a Pembroke's compan ...
and
Queen Elizabeth's Men
Queen Elizabeth's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in English Renaissance theatre. Formed in 1583 at the express command of Queen Elizabeth, it was the dominant acting company for the rest of the 1580s, as the Admiral's Men and the ...
. "Presumably the Pembroke's company in question was that of 1597–1600, and the Queen Elizabeth's Men the travelling company of the latter years of the reign" – that is to say, the later years of
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is ...
.
Shank was with
Prince Henry's Men by 1610, and was a sharer in the company (that is, a partner who shared in the profits rather than a hired man) by 1613. Shank seems to have fulfilled the function that clowns had filled at least since the time of
Richard Tarleton: he was a "jigging clown" who sang and danced the jig that concluded each performance.
In the controversy surrounding the Prince's Men's production of ''
The Roaring Girl'' in 1611, Shank seems to have temporarily lost his jigging function when "lewd jigs, songs and dances" were suppressed by the
Middlesex
Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbour ...
justices in 1612.
Maturity
Sometime between 1613 and 1619, Shank joined the King's Men; he is listed as a sharer in the company in 1619, and is present in the records of that company till his death. He was noted for playing the Curate in their 1624 revival of
Beaumont and Fletcher
Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I (1603–25).
They became known as a team early in their association, so much so that their joi ...
's ''
The Scornful Lady
''The Scornful Lady'' is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, and first published in 1616, the year of Beaumont's death. It was one of the pair's most popular, often revived, and frequently reprint ...
.'' His role as Hilario in the King's Men's 1629 production of
Massinger's ''
The Picture'' shows that Shank played comic "thin-man" roles for the company – what his own era called the "lean fool."
This was a standard part of the King's Men's style of theatre; in the previous generation of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
and
Burbage, hired man
John Sinkler played thin-man roles like Pinch in ''
The Comedy of Errors
''The Comedy of Errors'' is one of William Shakespeare's early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. ...
'' and Shadow in ''
Henry IV, Part 2.'' Shank seems to have been cast in the same dramatic function within the company as Sinkler. Shank may have joined the
King's Men as early as 1613; the company was licensed to perform something called ''Shank's Ordinary,'' probably a jig, on 16 March 1614.
Shank played the clown role in
John Clavell's ''
The Soddered Citizen
''The Soddered Citizen'' is a Caroline era stage play, a city comedy now attributed to John Clavell. The play was lost for three centuries; the sole surviving manuscript was rediscovered and published in the twentieth century.
History
''The ...
'' in
1630
Events
January–March
* January 2 – A shoemaker in Turin is found to have the first case of bubonic plague there as the plague of 1630 begins spreading through Italy.
* January 5 – A team of Portuguese military advisers ...
, and the servant Petella in the
1632
Events
January–March
* January – The Holland's Leaguer (brothel), Holland's Leguer, a brothel in London, is closed after having been besieged for a month.
* February 22 – Galileo Galilei, Galileo's ''Dialogue Conce ...
revival of
John Fletcher's ''
The Wild Goose Chase
''The Wild Goose Chase'' is a late Jacobean stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher, first performed in 1621. It is often classed among Fletcher's most effective and best-constructed plays; Edmund Gosse called it "one of the brightest a ...
''.
Training boy actors
Shank also played an important role in training the company's apprentices, the
boy actors who played the female roles in plays prior to the advent of stage actresses in the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
era. Shank trained
Thomas Pollard,
Thomas Holcomb,
John Honyman
John Honyman (1613 – April 1636), also Honeyman, Honiman, Honnyman, or other variants, was an English actor of the Caroline era. He was a member of the King's Men, the most prominent playing company of its era, best known as the company o ...
,
Nicholas Burt, and
John Thompson, who were significant members of the company in the late Jacobean and Caroline eras. (Later, Shank would claim that he spent £40 on Thompson, and £200 on his apprentices overall.) Shank is known to have played at least one female role himself in these years, the minor part of the servant Petella in the company's 1632 revival of
Fletcher's ''
The Wild Goose Chase
''The Wild Goose Chase'' is a late Jacobean stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher, first performed in 1621. It is often classed among Fletcher's most effective and best-constructed plays; Edmund Gosse called it "one of the brightest a ...
.'' This suggests that Shank taught boys and young men to play stage females based at least in part on his own experience.
Controversy
When veteran King's Man
John Heminges
John Heminges (bapt. 25 November 1566 – 10 October 1630) was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. Along with Henry Condell, he was an editor of the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare ...
died in 1630, his shares in the company's two theatres, the
Globe
A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...
and the
Blackfriars, passed to his son
William Heminges
William Heminges (1602 – c. 1653?), also Hemminges, Heminge, and other variants, was a playwright and theatrical figure of the Caroline period. He was the ninth child and third son of John Heminges, the actor and colleague of William Shakespear ...
. Between 1633 and 1635, the younger Heminges sold the three shares that he owned in the Globe (the theatre was divided into sixteen shares total), and his two shares in the Blackfriars (out of a total of eight), to Shank, who paid Heminges £506. The sales may have been clandestine, since ownership of the theatre shares was a sensitive subject within the company. When the shareholder system was established for the Globe (1599) and the Blackfriars (1608), most of the shareholders were the company's actors. With the passage of time, a majority of those shares passed to the widows and heirs of the original actors; younger members of the company were left out of the profitable system.
In 1635,
Eliard Swanston,
Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield (died July 1649) was a seventeenth-century actor, noted for his longtime membership in the King's Men in the years and decades after William Shakespeare's retirement and death.
Nothing is known of Benfield's early life. He was mo ...
, and
Thomas Pollard, three actors in the
King's Men who were sharers in the company but not "householders" or shareholders in the theatres, petitioned the
Lord Chamberlain
The Lord Chamberlain of the Household is the most senior officer of the Royal Household of the United Kingdom, supervising the departments which support and provide advice to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom while also acting as the main c ...
– then
Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke – for the right to purchase shares in the theatres. Pembroke ordered Shank and the Burbage family to sell shares to the three actors; but Shank and
Cuthbert Burbage
Cuthbert Burbage (c. 15 June 1565 – 15 September 1636) was an English theatrical figure, son of James Burbage, builder of the Theatre in Shoreditch and elder brother of the actor Richard Burbage. From 1589 he was the owner of the ground le ...
both protested the ruling. The dispute generated a back-and-forth documentation, sometimes called the "sharers' papers," that has provided subsequent generations of scholars and researchers with important data on the theatre business of the age. Shank complained that he and the three actors could not reach acceptable terms for a sale, and that they prevented him from performing with the company. The dispute seems to have injected a significant degree of bitterness into the last year of Shank's life.
Death
Local records in London show that for many years, Shank and his family lived in Golden Lane in the parish of
St. Giles, Cripplegate (the same parish as Cuthbert Burbage and King's Man
Nicholas Tooley
Nicholas Tooley (c. 1583 – June 1623) was a Renaissance actor in the King's Men, the acting company of William Shakespeare.
Recent research has shown that Tooley was born in late 1582 or early 1583; his birth name was not Tooley but Wilkin ...
). Records of the baptisms and burials of several of his children exist between the years 1610 and 1629. The exact date of Shank's death in unknown, though his funeral was held on 27 January 1636.
Shank's 1635 last will and testament required the company to pay his widow £50 as his share of the value of their costumes and plays. The will identifies Shank as a "citizen and weaver of London" as well as "one of his Majesty's servants the players." Professional actors sometimes maintained formal membership in one of the city's guilds so that they could lawfully bind apprentices to contracts – something that actors, as retainers in noble households, could not do under the prevailing legal system. John Heminges, for example, was a member of the grocers' guild throughout his life;
James Burbage was a member of the carpenters' guild, while
John Lowin
John Lowin (baptized 9 December 1576 – buried – 24 August 1653) was an English actor.
Early life
Born in St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London, Lowin was the son of a tanner. Like Robert Armin, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. Whil ...
and
Robert Armin
Robert Armin (c. 1568 – 1615) was an English actor, and member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. He became the leading comedy actor with the troupe associated with William Shakespeare following the departure of Will Kempe around 1600. Also a p ...
were goldsmiths' guild members.
[ Andrew Gurr, ''The Shakespearean Playing Companies'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996; p. 100.]
Given Shank's role in training boy players for the company, he likely pursued a similar arrangement. Yet the will (one commentator has called it "a masterpiece of acrimony") also specified that the company owed him £16 20''s.'' for two gowns; Shank may have had some role in providing the
costumes
Costume is the distinctive style of dress or cosmetic of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch. In short costume is a cultural visual of the people.
The term also was tradition ...
of the troupe.
On the modern stage
In an April 2000 production at the
Albery Theatre Albery is a name. It may refer to:
;People by given name
*Albery Allson Whitman (1851−1901), African American poet, minister and orator
;People by surname:
*A. S. Albery, British politician
*Bronson Albery (1881−1971), English theatre director ...
, Shank was played by
Michael Gambon in
Nicholas Wright's comedy ''
Cressida
Cressida (; also Criseida, Cresseid or Criseyde) is a character who appears in many Medieval and Renaissance retellings of the story of the Trojan War. She is a Trojan woman, the daughter of Calchas, a Greek seer. She falls in love with Troilus, ...
''. Set in 1635, near the end of the era in which female roles were played by boys, Wright's play shows Shank coaching a boy actor in the role of Cressida while giving the company a masterclass in acting as a craft.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shank, John
English male stage actors
17th-century English male actors
1636 deaths
Year of birth unknown