Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

All we know of William Haughton's life comes from his will and from the ‘Diary’ of Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose Theatre. We do not know his dates of birth or death. Henslowe's first mention of Haughton is as ‘yonge horton’ on 5 November 1597. Other playwrights working for Henslowe at the same time and not referred to as ‘young’ are in their mid-twenties, so Haughton has been estimated to be about 20 years old at that time, thus born in the mid-1570s. Haughton's wit and apparent knowledge of languages have led scholars to speculate on his association with the universities, but no connection is definitive. His will reveals that at the time of his death he was in debt, and had a wife named Alice and children. We cannot find any other family members to be able to say something about his social standing or genealogical history. In March 1600 Henslowe bailed Haughton out of the South Bank prison the Clink, and around the same time there are notes in the ‘Diary’ that Haughton was borrowing small amounts of money (two shillings on two occasions) from Henslowe. This would suggest that, in spite of contributing to a significant number of plays in the preceding two years, Haughton was not financially stable. This is not an oddity: one of his early collaborators, the much better-known Thomas Dekker, also borrowed money from Henslowe and struggled to survive spells of imprisonment. Haughton ... log in or subscribe to read full text