These were all players of note, who had acquitted themselves
with applause in the best plays of the time. Of certain older actors,
unable to bear arms for the king, Lowin turned innkeeper, and died, at
an advanced age, landlord of the Three Pigeons at Brentford. He had
been an actor of eminence in the reign of James I.; "and his poverty
was as great as his age," says one account of him. Taylor, who was
reputed to have been taught by Shakespeare himself the correct method
of interpreting the part of Hamlet, died and was buried at Richmond.
These two actors, as did others probably, sought to pick up a little
money by publishing copies of plays that had obtained favour in
performance, but had not before been printed. Thus, in 1652, Beaumont
and Fletcher's "Wild Goose Chase" was printed in folio, "for the
public use of all the ingenious, and the private benefit of John Lowin
and Joseph Taylor, servants to his late Majesty, and by them dedicated
to the honoured few lovers of dramatic poesy: wherein they modestly
intimate their wants, and that with sufficient cause, for whatever
they were before the wars, they were afterwards reduced to a
necessitous condition.
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