Theophilus Bird

Theophilus Bird, or Bourne, (1608 – 1663) was a seventeenth-century English actor. Bird began his stage career in the Stuart era of English Renaissance theatre, and ended it in the Restoration period; he was one of the relatively few actors who managed to resume their careers after the eighteen-year enforced hiatus (1642–60) when the theatres were closed during the English Civil War and the Interregnum.

Theophilus was the son of William Bird, an actor long associated with the theatrical enterprise of Philip Henslowe and active in the years 1597–1622. Theophilus was baptized on 7 December 1608. Both father William and son Theophilus alternatively spelled their family name as Bird or Bourne. The extensive Henslowe papers in the collection of Dulwich College contain many mentions of the elder Bird and members of his family. The younger Bird started out as a boy player acting female roles, as was customary at the time; he played Paulina in Massinger's The Renegado for Queen Henrietta's Men in 1625. He played Tota, the Queen of Fez, in Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West, Part 2 around 1630, when he was 21 years old.

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.

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