Richard Baxter

Richard Baxter (c. 1593 – c. 1667), or Backster, was a seventeenth-century actor, who worked in some of the leading theatre companies of his era. His long career illustrates the conditions during the difficult years of transition from the period of English Renaissance theatre, through the English Civil War and the Interregnum, and into the Restoration era. Early years Baxter worked with Queen Anne's Men through most of that company's existence, from 1606 to 1623. He was paid 10 shillings a week as a hired man; he became a sharer (a partner in the company) in 1623, the year the company folded. Unfortunately, that company was in financial difficulties for much of its existence; its hired men were sometimes paid half their wages, or less, or nothing. "Baxter kept a record of these deficits, which he considered as arrears, but could never recover them from the company." (Baxter may have received his share in 1623 as compensation for the arrearages.) Baxter was with the King's Men in the years from 1628 to 1637; he appeared in their productions of Ford's The Lover's Melancholy (1628) and Massinger's Believe as You List (1631), and their revival of Fletcher's The Mad Lover, c. 1630. With Baxter as with many other actors of his time, some of the best evidence on his career comes from legal documents. In March 1622, a feltmaker complained that Baxter had wounded him during a performance, while the feltmaker had been seated at the side of the stage. Apparently, nothing came of the man's complaint. In the following year, 1623, Baxter gave testimony in a legal suit, the so-called Baskervile or Worth/Baskerville suit, that involved most of the members of his acting troupe. (Baxter's signatures on legal documents, in 1623 and in 1665, prove that the pre-1642 and post-1660 actors are the same man.)