William Cartwright (actor)

William Cartwright (died 17 December 1686) was an English actor of the seventeenth century, whose career spanned the Caroline era to the Restoration. He is sometimes known as William Cartwright, Junior or William Cartwright the younger to distinguish him from his father, another William Cartwright (fl. 1598 – 1636), an actor of the previous generation.

William Cartwright the younger was about eighty years old when he died; he was therefore born around 1606 or 1607. Nothing is known of his early life; it is reasonable to assume that he began his stage career under his father's tutelage. He was included with his father on a 1635 list of actors; apparently they both belonged to the King's Revels Men at that time. James Wright's Historia Histrionica (1699) maintains that the younger Cartwright was associated with the Salisbury Court Theatre — which may refer to his time with his father's troupe, or may indicate that he was with Queen Henrietta's Men in the 1637–42 period.

The parish records of St. Giles in the Fields show that he married his first wife, Elisabeth Cooke, on 1 May 1633 — and his second wife, Andria Robins, just three years later, on 28 April 1636.

For the years 1642–1660, when the theatres were closed, evidence of the activities of the former actors is scanty. It is known, however, that Cartwright was one of those who tried to maintain clandestine dramatic activity in the later 1640s. He then became a stationer or bookseller; his shop was in Turnstile Alley in the neighborhood of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Other former actors, Andrew Pennycuicke and Alexander Gough, also shifted into the book business in the Commonwealth period.

In this era, booksellers also functioned as publishers; but evidence of only one publication by Cartwright is extant. In 1658 he issued a new edition of Thomas Heywood's An Apology for Actors (originally printed in 1612), under the title The Actor's Vindication. Cartwright made one major addition to Heywood's text: a passage in praise of Edward Alleyn, with whom his father had been associated.

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