FETHERSTON, WILLIAM. Of Danby, Yorks., unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).
FIDGE, WILLIAM. H. R. Plomer (3 Library, ix. 252) cites from a Canterbury record of 1571, 'William Fidge and Whetstone owe the said [Robert] Bettes [a painter] for their portions in buying of certen playebookes 35s. 4d.'
FIELD, NATHAN, was the son of John Field, preacher and castigator of the stage (cf. App. C, No. xxxi), and was baptized at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, on 17 October 1587 (Collier, iii. 425). His name is always spelt Nathan in formal contemporary documents, although he was familiarly known as Nat or Nid. But he appears in many reputable modern works of learning as Nathaniel. This error perhaps originated with the compilers of the 1679 Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, who in four out of the six actor-lists in which his name is found used the form Nathan and in two (Loyal Subject and Mad Lover) Nathanael. It was certainly encouraged by a muddle of Collier, who finding in the Cripplegate registers that another son of John Field had been baptized Nathaniel on 13 June 1581, and not realizing that a cranky theological father might quite well use the names as distinct, thought it necessary to assume that this Nathaniel had died before 1587. As a matter of fact, he survived, was apprenticed to a stationer at Michaelmas 1596, took up his freedom on 3 June 1611, and between 1624 and 1627 published some books, including two sermons by a third brother, Theophilus Field, Bishop of Llandaff (McKerrow, Dict. 101). I need hardly linger over the suggestion that Nathan Field lived a double life as actor and bookseller. At this time of the apprenticeship he was not yet nine years old, and he was still a scholar of St. Paul's Grammar School when, not earlier than 1600, he was impressed by Nathaniel Giles and his deputies to serve as one of the Children of the Chapel (Clifton v. Robinson in Fleay, 128). His education was not entirely interrupted, for he fell into the hands of Ben Jonson, who told Drummond in 1619 that 'Nid Field was his schollar, and he had read to him the Satyres of Horace, and some Epigrames of Martiall' (Laing, 11). Field remained a member of the Chapel and the Queen's Revels throughout the vicissitudes of the company from 1600 to 1613. He is in the actor-lists of Cynthia's Revels (1600), The Poetaster (1601), and Epicoene (1609), and presumably played Humfrey in K. B. P. (1607).[1] With his fellows he became absorbed into the Lady Elizabeth's in March 1613, contracted with Henslowe and Meade on behalf of this company (Henslowe Papers, 23), acted as their payee in 1615, and appears in the actor-lists of The Coxcomb, The Honest Man's Fortune, and Bartholomew Fair (1614), in the text of which Jonson compliments him (v. 3) as follows:
Cokes. Which is your Burbage now?
Lanterne. What meane you by that, Sir?
Cokes. Your best Actor. Your Field?
He seems to have been suspected by the company of taking bribes
from Henslowe to connive at transactions contrary to their interest
- ↑ K. B. P. i. 104, 'Were you neuer none of Mr. Monkesters schollars?'
