Lowin, John

Lowin, John (1576–1653), English actor, and an important link between the Elizabethan and Restoration stages, since he was said to have passed on to Davenant the instructions he had received for the playing of Henry VIII from Shakespeare himself, Davenant passing them on to his chief actor under Charles II, Thomas Betterton. It is possible that Lowin, who is always referred to as a big, bluff man, may have been the first to play the part in 1613; he is also believed to have been much admired as Falstaff in revivals of Henry IV, and as the eponymous hero of Ben Jonson's Volpone (1606), though he may not have been its creator. He is first mentioned as an actor in 1602, and a year later joined the King's Men on their foundation, his name being found in the cast-lists of Jonson's Sejanus (1603) and Marston's The Malcontent (1604), probably as a player of small parts. He created the part of Melantius in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy (1611), and probably that of Bosola in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1614); he also appeared in several of Massinger's plays. He remained with the King's Men until the closing of the theatres in 1642, and was one of the actors caught and punished under the Commonwealth for playing surreptitiously at the Cockpit in 1649. In his old age he kept the Three Pigeons at Brentford.