Beginnings
Nothing is known of Jolly's early life. He began his acting career c. 1640, at the crisis point of Caroline era theatre and society, when the English Civil War was about to start. The Puritan authorities suppressed the London theatres in September 1642; Jolly, like most actors, playwrights, and poets, was a royalist supporter, and served Prince Charles, then Prince of Wales, in Paris until 1646. Jolly eventually organized a company of fourteen actors, his English Comedian Players, and led them around Europe from 1648 to 1659. They began in Germany, and were in Poland and Sweden in 1649 and 1650. They regularly performed in Vienna and Frankfurt, and may have performed before the future King Charles II in Frankfurt in September 1655. The company came to include German as well as English actors over time, and apparently adapted its personnel to the countries in which it operated. Jolly also brought woman actors onto the stage in Germany in 1654, anticipating the greatest innovation of the Restoration theatre in England by several years. At Krachbein in Germany, Jolly used a tennis court as a theatre, another technique that would be followed later in London, at Lisle's Tennis Court and Gibbon's Tennis Court.
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