Notes from Etchings from Works of R. Wilson; Cunningham's Lives, ed. Heaton; Edwards's Anecdotes; Smith's Nollekens and his Times; Redgraves' Century; Redgrave's Dict.; Leslie and Taylor's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds; Heaton's Concise History of Painting, ed. Monkhouse; Catalogues of the Society of Artists, Royal Academy, and British Institution.]
WILSON, ROBERT, the elder (d. 1600), actor and playwright, was one of the players who joined the Earl of Leicester's company on its establishment in 1574. He at once gained a reputation as a comic actor almost equal to that of Richard Tarlton [q. v.] Gabriel Harvey wrote in 1579 to the poet Spenser, complaining that his friends were (figuratively speaking) thrusting him ‘on the stage to make tryall of his extemporall faculty and to play Wylson's or Tarleton's parte’ (Harvey, Works, ed. Grosart, i. 125). In 1583 Wilson was chosen to be one of twelve actors who were formed into the Queen Elizabeth's company. With the queen's company he was connected till 1588. Stow remarked that among the twelve players of the queen's original company the most efficient were the ‘two rare men’ Wilson and Tarlton. Stow credited Wilson (to whom he erroneously gave the christian name of Thomas) with a ‘quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit’ (Stow, Chronicle, ed. Howes, London, 1631, p. 698, sub anno 1583). After 1588 Wilson seems to have transferred his services to Lord Strange's company of actors, which subsequently passed to the patronage of the lord chamberlain, and was joined by Shakespeare. Wilson maintained his reputation for extemporising until the end of the century. In 1598 Francis Meres, after recalling the triumphs of Tarlton, who died in 1588, noted that his place had since been filled by ‘our witty Wilson, who for learning and extemporal wit in this faculty is without compare or compeer; as to his great and eternal commendations, he manifested in his challenge at the Swan, on the Bank Side.’ No other reference is known to Wilson's ‘challenge’ at the Swan Theatre. Meres also mentions ‘Wilson’ among ‘the best poets for comedy,’ but there he probably refers to a younger Robert Wilson (see below). Thomas Heywood, in his ‘Apologie for Actors,’ 1612, numbers the elder ‘Wilson’ among English players of distinction who flourished conspicuously ‘before his time.’
Wilson also made a reputation as a writer of plays. In 1580 Thomas Lodge replied in a ‘Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays’ to Stephen Gosson's ‘Schoole of Abuse.’ Lodge incidentally charged Gosson with plagiarism in a lost play on the subject of ‘Catilines Conspiracy,’ and declared that he preferred to Gosson's effort ‘Wilson's shorte and sweete [drama on the identical topic], a peece surely worthy prayse, the practise of a good scholler’ (Hunterian Club edition, 1879, p. 43). No play by Wilson dealing with Catiline is extant, but on 21 Aug. 1598 the theatrical manager Philip Henslowe advanced to ‘Robert Wilson’ ten shillings on security of his play of ‘Catiline,’ which he was writing in conjunction with Henry Chettle (Henslowe, Diary, p. 132). This piece, like its forerunners, is lost, but it was possibly a version of Wilson's earlier play, revised by the younger Robert, who regularly worked for Henslowe.
The four extant plays which may be assigned to the comic actor with some confidence are loosely constructed moralities in which personified vices and virtues play the leading parts. The characters are very numerous. There is hardly any plot. The metre employed is various, and includes ballad doggerel, short rhyming lines, rhyming heroics and blank verse, besides occasional passages in prose. The earliest of the extant pieces for which Wilson may be held responsible bears the title, ‘A right excellent and famous Comedy called the Three Ladies of London. Wherein is Notablie declared and set foorth, how by the meanes of Lucar, Loue and Conscience is so corrupted, that the one is married to Dissimulation, the other fraught with all abhomination. A Perfect Patterne for all Estates to looke into, and a worke right worthie to be marked. Written by R. W., as it hath been publiquely played. At London [by Roger Warde],’ 1584, black letter, 4to. A second edition, with some variations, followed in 1592. Of the 1584 edition copies are in the British Museum, the Bodleian, and the Pepysian (Magdalene College, Cambridge) libraries. Of the second edition a perfect copy is at Bridgwater House, and an imperfect copy at the British Museum. At the end of both impressions appear the words, ‘Finis Paul Bucke.’ Bucke was probably the copyist employed by the acting company which first produced the piece; he seems to have been himself an actor. ‘The Three Ladies’ of the play are Lucre, Love, and Conscience. Love and Conscience are perverted by the machinations of Lucre and Dissimulation. A few concrete personages appear with the allegorical abstractions. One episode deals with the effort of a Jewish creditor, Gerontus, to recover a debt from an Italian mer-
