William Beeston

William Beeston (1606? – 1682) was a 17th-century actor and theatre manager, the son and successor to the more famous Christopher Beeston.

William was brought up in the theatrical world of his father; he became an actor, and also his father's assistant in managing the Cockpit and Red Bull theatres and their associated companies of actors, including the company of younger players colloquially known as Beeston's Boys.

Upon his father's death in 1638, William Beeston inherited their theatrical enterprise — though he managed it with much less success than his father had. On 5 May 1640 he was thrown into the Marshalsea Prison for a Beeston's Boys' play, acted the day before, that gave offence to Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels. The play was most likely The Court Beggar by Richard Brome, which satirized several members of Queen Henrietta Maria's circle of favourites, including Sir John Suckling and Sir William Davenant (though Brome's The Queen and Concubine has also been suggested as the offending play). Control of Beeston's theatres and actors was given to Davenant (in a royal warrant dated 27 June 1640). Davenant, though, was busy with other matters — politics and the coming revolution; Beeston was able to resume his position, sometime in the latter part of 1641 (only to face the closing of the theatres the next year, at the outbreak of the English Civil War).

Perhaps because of such difficulties, or his responses to them, William Beeston gained a reputation (justly or not) for unscrupulousness and shady dealing. His use of the alias "Hutchinson" is verified by several sources. (His father had used the Hutchinson name too; perhaps Hutchinson was the original family name, and Beeston a pseudonym, a stage name.) The records of St. Giles in the Fields, the London parish where the Cockpit was located, record Beeston's marriages, one under the "Hutchinson" name. Beeston married Margaret Howson on 28 October 1633; "William Hutchinson alias Beeston" married Alice Bowen on 15 July 1642. The parish records also note the christenings and burials of eight Beeston infants from 1637 to 1647.

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