is the less explicable, as Betterton appears to have been communicative and to have found contemporaries willing to collect and give to the world information concerning him. Their statements, however, are conflicting. In the 'Life of Betterton' in the 'Biographia Britannica' an attempt is made upon the strength of new information from Southerne to disprove the previously accepted assertions of Gildon and others. On the appearance of the first volume of the 'Biographia Britannica' (1747) Southerne had been dead a year. He was eighty-six years of age at the time of his death, and there is no reason for supposing that his memories concerning his conversations with Betterton thirty-six years previously were more trustworthy than those of Gildon, who was in direct personal communication with Betterton, in whose lifetime he wrote, or than those of Downes, who also had constant access to the actor, and whose 'Roscius Anglicanus' was published in 1708, two years before Betterton's death. Gildon, who speaks of Betterton as being seventy-five years of age at his death, supports the view that his birth took place in 1635. Downes speaks of Betterton as about twenty-two years of age in 1659, and Curll, in a 'History of the English Stage from the Restauration to the Present Time' (1741), which he fathered upon Betterton, gives the date of his birth as 1637. Curll says that Betterton was present as a soldier at the battle of Edgehill in 1643, when, if Curll's date of his birth be correct, he was only five years old, and, upon any date suggested, he was not more than seven. This ridiculous assertion is, however, copied by Messrs. Maidment and Logan in the Life of Davenant prefixed to the reprint of his works (Edinburgh, Paterson). Betterton, who received a good education, displayed some taste for reading. According to the 'Biographia Britannica,' presumably following Southerne, the intention of bringing him up to a learned profession was abandoned, owing to the 'violence and confusion of the times putting this out of the power of his family. That the lad elected to be apprenticed to a bookseller is acknowledged by all authorities. he was, according to the 'Biographia Britannica,' bound to Mr. John Holden, who, as the publisher of 'Gondibert,' was much in the confidence of Sir William Davenant. A way to the stage, it has been suggested, was thus at once opened out. The authority advanced for this is Richardson's 'Life of Milton' (p. 90), in which it is affirmed that Betterton told Pope that he was bound to Holden. The 'Biographia Britannica' then assumes it to be 'highly probable' that Betterton 'began to act under the direction of Sir William Davenant in 1656 or 1657 at the Opera House in Charter House Yard.' Gildon (supported by Downes) says: 'His father bound him apprentice to one Mr. Rhodes, a bookseller, at the Bible at Charing Cross, and he had for his underprentice Mr. Kynaston. But that which prepar'd Mr. Betterton and his fellow-prentice for the stage was that his master, Rhodes, having formerly been wardrobe-keeper to the king's company of comedians in the Blackfryars, on General Monck's march to London in 1659 with his army, got a licence from the powers then in being to set up a company of players in the Cockpit in Drury Lane and soon made his company compleat, his apprentices, Mr. Betterton for men's parts, and Mr. Kynaston for women's parts, being at the head of them' (Life of Betterton, p. 5). Downes gives the company with which Rhodes started at the Cockpit, the chief names, in addition to Betterton and Kynaston, being Underhill, Nokes (Robert and William), and William Betterton, assumed to be a brother of Thomas. The story told by Gildon has been accepted by the authors of the 'Biographia Dramatica,' by Genest (with the assumption that Salisbury Court should be substituted for Cockpit), by Galt in his 'Lives of the Players' (1881), and Bellchambers in his edition of Colley Cibber's 'Apology,' 1822. Davies, in his 'Dramatic Miscellanies,' attaches value to Southerne's recollections, but points out errors and inconsistencies in them. R. S. (?Shiels), who contributed the account of Betterton to the 'Lives of the Poets' of Theophilus Cibber, 1753, adheres closely to the views of the 'Biographia Britannica.'
The first plays in which Betterton made a public appearance are said to have been the 'Loyal Subject,' the 'Wild Goose Chase,' and the 'Spanish Curate' of Beaumont and Fletcher. He played also while a member of Rhodes's company in the 'Maid in the Mill,' 'Mad Lover,' 'Pericles,' 'Wife for a Month,' 'Rule a Wife and have a Wife,' 'Woman's Prize,' 'Aglaura,' 'Changeling,' 'Bondman,' &c. His chief success appears to have been obtained in 'Pericles,' the 'Mad Lover,' the ' Loyal Subject,' the 'Bondman,' and as Deflores in the 'Changeling.' His voice, according to Downes, who was the prompter at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was even at this time 'as strong, full, and articulate as in the meridian of his acting.' When, accordingly, he joined in 1661 the company formed by Sir William Davenant at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, he was an actor of some experience. To distinguish it from the company of Thomas Killigrew, formed like itself under a patent from Charles II, and known
