Sir Thomas Benger

Master of the Revels The Master of the Revels was the holder of a position within the English, and later the British, royal household, heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels". The Master of the Revels was an executive officer under the Lord Chamberlain. ...

(ca. 1520? – 1572) succeeded Sir

Thomas Cawarden Sir Thomas Cawarden (died 25 August 1559) of Bletchingley, Nonsuch Park and East Horsley (Surrey) was Master of the Revels to Henry VIII of England, Edward VI, and Mary I. Background Thomas was the son of William Cawarden, a cloth-fuller and ci ...

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

on 18 January 1560. He served until 1572 when it appears Sir

Thomas Blagrave Thomas Blagrave (died 18 June 1590) was Acting Master of the Revels (1573–79) and Surveyor of the Queen's Works (1578–90) under Queen Elizabeth I of England. Thomas came from Uttoxeter in Staffordshire and had at least three siblings, Willi ...

stepped in. Benger was considered to be an ineffectual master of the revels, purely on account that a charter for his successor hadn't been drawn up at his death. Benger had been a loyal member of the Princess Elizabeth's household at Hatfield during the several imprisonments she had suffered under her sister,

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. On 5 June 1555, he had been examined by Secretary Bourne, the

Master of the Rolls The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Court of Appeal (England and Wales)#Civil Division, Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales a ...

, Sir

Francis Englefield Sir Francis Englefield (c. 1522 – 1596) was an English courtier and Roman Catholic exile. Family Francis Englefield, born about 1522, was the eldest son of Thomas Englefield (1488–1537) of Englefield, Berkshire, Justice of the Common P ...

, Sir

Richard Read Richard Read (born 1957) is a freelance reporter based in Seattle, where he was a national reporter and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times from 2019 to 2021. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he was a senior writer and foreign correspondent for ...

and Doctor Hughes, "upon such points as they shall gather out of their former confessions, touching their lewd & vain practises of calculating or conjuring, presently sent unto them with the said letters." In 1559, he was elected to Parliament for Lancaster. Benger produced forty-six plays and masques that dealt with the factional intrigues surrounding the Queen's marriage negotiations between 1560 and 1572. Only eleven of his plays were performed by adult acting troupes, notably the Grey's Inn Men, and it is thought to be his group of child actors to which

William 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 nation ...

refers in ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

'' act ii, scene ii, "an aery of children, little eyases that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for it: these are now the fashion; and so berattle the common stages that many wearing

rapiers A rapier () or is a type of sword with a slender and sharply-pointed two-edged blade that was popular in Western Europe, both for civilian use ( dueling and self-defense) and as a military side arm, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Im ...

are afraid to goose quills and dare scarce come hither." Benger's use of boy actors from

Children of Paul's The Children of Paul's was the name of a troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan 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 a ...

, realistic three-dimensional scenery, and stage effects, were to define the courtly entertainments of Elizabeth's reign and set the standard required from the noble lords the Queen visited on her regular summer progressions. Benger found the financial burden of the office too much for his family to bear and he made a special plea to the Queen as 'one of the last of the poor flock of Hatfield' to pay off his debts when he died as 'the charges for making of masks cam never to so little a sum as they do this year.' Benger died in 1572, though his will was not finally proved until 1577.BENGER, Sir Thomas (d.1572), of Milton, Oxon
''History of Parliament''. Accessed 28 December 2022.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Benger, Thomas 1520s births 1572 deaths 16th-century English people English knights