WILLIAM ROWLEY (?-1625 <).
Of Rowley's origin and birth nothing is known. He first appears as collaborator in a play of Queen Anne's men in 1607, and, although he may have also acted with this company, there is no evidence of the fact. His name is in the patent of 30 March 1610 for the Duke of York's men with that of Thomas Hobbes, to whom his pamphlet
A Search for Money (1609, Percy Soc. ii) is dedicated. He acted as their payee from 1610 to 1615, and they played his Hymen's Holiday or Cupid's Vagaries, now lost, in 1612. A Knave in Print and The Fool without Book, entered as his on 9 Sept. 1653 (Eyre, i. 428), might be their anonymous two-part Knaves of 1613. He contributed an epitaph on Thomas Greene of the Queen's to Cooke's Greene's Tu Quoque (1614). From 1615 to March 1616 the Prince's men seem to have been merged in the Princess Elizabeth's. They then resumed their identity at the Hope, and with them Rowley is traceable as an actor to 1619 and as a writer, in collaboration with Thomas Middleton (q.v.), Thomas Ford, and Thomas Heywood, until 1621. In 1621 he wrote an epitaph upon one of their members, Hugh Attwell, apparently as his 'fellow'. It was still as a Prince's man that he received mourning for James on 17 March 1625. But in 1621 and 1622 he was writing, with Middleton and alone, for the Lady Elizabeth's at the Cockpit, and in 1623 both writing and acting in The Maid of the Mill for the King's men, and prefixing verses to Webster's Duchess of Malfi, which belonged to the same company. He had definitely joined the King's by 24 June 1625 when his name appears in their new patent, and for them his latest play-writing was done. In addition to what was published under his name, he is generally credited with some share in the miscellaneous collection of the Beaumont and Fletcher Ff. His name is not in an official list of King's men in 1629, but the date of his death is unknown. A William Rowley married Isabel Tooley at Cripplegate in 1637, but the date hardly justifies the assumption that it was the dramatist. Dissertations: P. G. Wiggin, An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Middleton-Rowley Plays (1897, Radcliffe College Monographs, ix); C. W. Stork, William Rowley (1910, Pennsylvania Univ. Publ. xiii, with texts of All's Lost for Lust and A Shoemaker a Gentleman).
A Shoemaker a Gentleman, c. 1608
S. R. 1637, Nov. 28 (Weekes). 'A Comedie called A Shoomaker is a gentleman with the life and death of the Criple that stole the weather cocke of Pauls, by William Rowley.' John Okes (Arber, iv. 400).
1638. A Merrie and Pleasant Comedy: Never before Printed, called A Shoo-maker a Gentleman. As it hath beene sundry Times Acted at the Red Bull and other Theatres, with a general and good Applause. Written by W. R. Gentleman. I. Okes, sold by Iohn Cooper. [Epistle by Printer to Gentlemen of the Gentle Craft.]
