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Richard Burbage (6 January 1567 – 13 March 1619) was an English stage actor, widely considered to have been one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to being a stage actor, he was also a theatre owner, entrepreneur, and painter. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama. Burbage was a business associate and friend to William Shakespeare. He was the first actor to play the title role in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet.
He was the son of James Burbage, a joiner who became a theatrical impresario and entrepreneur, founding a theatre. Burbage was a popular actor by his early 20s. He excelled in tragedies. His early acting career is poorly documented. Like many young actors of his time, he may have played the part of women in productions before taking any of the roles for which he is known. As James Burbage acted for the Earl of Leicester's company, it has been suggested that his son, Richard, likely got his start with the company as well.
Burbage was described as being short and stout but was said to be an impressive figure, with numerous praises written of him in contemporary accounts. His power and scope as an actor is revealed in the sheer size of the roles he played. He was a great box office draw. Of the hundreds of plays and thousands of roles for actors that date from the 1580–1610 era, there are only twenty or so roles that are longer than 800 lines. Edward Alleyn was the first English actor to manage such roles, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta; but the majority of these star roles, thirteen of the twenty, were acted by Burbage. He was said to be quite rich because he was earning income from being the primary housekeeper of two playhouses, a sharer in the King's Men, a lead actor and a painter.
After the death of their father in February 1597, Richard and his brother Cuthbert stepped in to rescue the family's interests in two London theatres and found themselves tied up in lawsuits. They kept the Blackfriars Theatre, but leased it to lawyer and impresario Henry Evans, who used it for a troupe of child actors. The other, called simply ‘The Theatre’, was dismantled when they could not resolve terms for a new lease with Giles Allen, the landowner. Richard's father was influential in many parts of the acting industry at the time, as he owned one of the largest theatres at the time and directly worked with Shakespeare on his plays.
The beams, posts, and other remnants of ‘The Theatre’ were moved to a new location on the south side of the Thames River and reassembled into a new playhouse called the Globe Theatre in 1599.
The Burbage brothers kept half the shares in the new theatre and gave the remainder to Shakespeare and other members of the Chamberlain's Men. Income from the Blackfriars lease helped fund the move to the Globe. In 1608 the brothers ended the Blackfriars lease and moved the company to the new theatre. Burbage was performing there on 29 June 1613, when it caught fire and burned down. During the winter months, when it was not practical to use the open-air Globe, they used the Blackfriars. It was much smaller and seated about 700 people.
The Burbage brothers maintained a close working and personal relationship throughout their lives; they were neighbours on Halliwell Street in Shoreditch, near the Theatre.
Burbage married Winifred Turner on 2 October 1600 at St Mary's Rotherhithe. Burbage fathered at least eight children; after his death, his widow Winifred married another of the King's Men, Richard Robinson.
Burbage played a central role in the pageant London's Love to Prince Henry on 31 May 1610.Siobhan Keenan, "The King's Players and London's Civic Drama: Richard Burbage and London's Love to the Royal Prince Henry (1610)", Jennifer Linhart Wood and Amrita Sen, Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage (Bloomsbury, Arden Shakespeare, 2025), pp. 245–262. Unlike Alleyn or his fellow King's Man Shakespeare, Burbage never retired from the stage; he continued acting until his death, aged 52, in 1619. He was not such an astute businessman as either Alleyn or Shakespeare; at his death he was said to have left his widow "better than £300" in land—a respectable estate but far less than Alleyn's substantial wealth, and less than the net worth of Shakespeare at his death (also aged 52) in 1616.
He was buried in St Leonard's, Shoreditch, a church close to two theatres: "The Theatre" and "The Curtain Theatre". His gravestone was said to read "Exit Burbage." Although his gravestone is now lost, a memorial to him and his brothers was erected in a later century. An anonymous poet composed for him A Funerall Elegye on the Death of the famous Actor Richard Burbage who died on Saturday in Lent 13 March 1619, an excerpt of which reads:
Of the many elegies that followed his death, perhaps the most poignant is the brief epitaph:
London's National Portrait Gallery houses two portraits of Burbage.
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