Maturity
Like most boy actors, Bird moved on the adult roles, like Masinissa in the company's 1635 production of Thomas Nabbes's Hannibal and Scipio.
Bird married Anne Beeston, the eldest daughter of Christopher Beeston, the leading theatrical impresario of his generation; through this familial connection, Bird helped Beeston run his theatrical enterprise. In the large-scale disruption of the theatrical profession in 1636–37, when the London theatres were closed due to bubonic plague and Queen Henrietta's Men left Beeston's Cockpit Theatre for the rival Salisbury Court Theatre, Bird remained with his father-in-law and helped him to establish and run the new company known as Beeston's Boys. Once Beeston died in 1638, his enterprise was taken over by his son William Beeston — but the younger Beeston was unable to maintain his father's level of success.
Bird moved to the King's Men for the 1640–42 years, along with five other of the troupe's actors. yet there was no lasting personal break between the younger Beeston and his brother-in-law, since Bird was acting as William Beeston's agent in 1652, when Beeston was still trying, despite Puritan opposition, to pursue theatrical activities in London. On March 25 of that year, Bird paid £480 of Beeston's money to obtain a lease on the remains of the Salisbury Court. (The lease mentions that Bird was living in the parish of St Giles in the Fields at the time. The records of that parish list the burials of two of Bird's children in 1638 and 1642.)
Bird was made a Groom of the Chamber on January 22, 1641, along with five other members of the company. Bird's status as a King's Man meant that he was one of the ten members of that troupe who signed the dedication of the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647 (though he had not been one of the actors who had played in the company's productions of Fletcher's plays during the previous three decades).
Bird was also active, at least in a marginal way, in the world of authorship, letters, and publishing. He wrote or co-wrote prefaces or dedications to dramatic works published in his era — the first editions of The Lady's Trial (1639), The Sun's Darling (1656), and The Witch of Edmonton (1658), works of John Ford and collaborators.
Read more about this topic: Theophilus Bird
Famous quotes containing the word maturity:
“The time passes so quickly during these full and active middle years that most people arrive at the end of middle age and the beginning of later maturity with surprise and a sense of having finished the journey while they were still preparing to commence it.”
—Robert Havighurst (20th century)
“To see self-sufficiency as the hallmark of maturity conveys a view of adult life that is at odds with the human condition, a view that cannot sustain the kinds of long-term commitments and involvements with other people that are necessary for raising and educating a child or for citizenship in a democratic society.”
—Carol Gilligan (20th century)
“Adolescence is society’s permission slip for combining physical maturity with psychological irresponsibility.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)