Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Field, Nathaniel
FIELD, NATHANIEL (1587–1633), actor and dramatist, born in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, was the son of the Rev. John Field (buried 26 March 1587–8), author of ‘A Godly Exhortation by occasion of the late Iudgement of God shewed at Paris Garden 13 Jan. 1583,’ a violent attack upon theatrical entertainments. He was baptised 17 Oct. 1587, under the name Nathan, an elder brother, registered 13 June 1581 as Nathaniel Field, having died. Another brother was Theophilus Field [q. v.], bishop of Hereford. Nat. Field, as he was generally called, Sal. Pavy, Thomas Day, John Underwood, Robert Baxter, and John Frost were the six principal comedians of the Children of the Queen's Revels, as the children of the Chapel Royal were at one time called, by whom in 1600 Ben Jonson's ‘Cynthia's Revels’ was performed. Field acted in the following year in the ‘Poetaster’ of the same author. His first recorded part is Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois (published 1607). In 1609 he played in Jonson's ‘Epicene.’ In Jonson's ‘Bartholomew Fair’ (1614) (act v. sc. 3) Cokes asks, concerning the performers in a puppet-show, ‘Which is your best actor, your Field?’ and pays Field a still higher compliment in connecting him with Burbage. Richard Flecknoe, fifty years later, confirms this association, saying in the ‘Short Discourse of the English Stage,’ printed at the end of his ‘Love's Kingdom’ (1664): ‘In this time were poets and actors in their greatest flourish; Jonson and Shakespeare, with Beaumont and Fletcher, their poets, and Field and Burbage their actors.’ Malone, who doubts whether the actor and the dramatist are the same, says that Field played Bussy d'Ambois ‘when he became too manly to represent the characters of women’ (Supplement to Malone's Shakespeare), a supposition which Collier, with some show of reason, rebuts. At some period after 1614, Collier thinks 1616, Field, who seems to have been with the king's players in 1613, permanently joined them, playing with Burbage in ‘The Knight of Malta’ and other plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. His name appears for the first time in 1619 in a patent, and stands seventeenth on the list of twenty-six players, prefixed as ‘The Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes’ to the 1623 folio ‘Shakespeare.’
According to the registers of the parishes of St. Anne, Blackfriars, and St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, several children of Nathan Field and Anne Field, his wife, were christened from 1619 to 1627. The burial of Field himself, who is believed to have retired from the stage somewhere near 1623, appears in the same registers under the date 20 Feb. 1632–3. Field's married life seems to have been disturbed by jealousy. Among the Heber MSS. is an epigram, quoted in Collier's ‘Annals of the Stage,’ iii. 437, calling him the true ‘Othello’ for his jealousy of his wife.
Field's first appearance as a dramatist was made with his ‘A Woman is a Weather-cock,’ 4to, 1612, which, according to the title, was ‘acted before the king at Whitehall, and divers times privately at the Whitefriars by the children of Her Majesty's Revels.’ This was followed by ‘Amends for Ladies,’ 4to, 1618 and 1639. The performance of the latter play could not have been much later than 1610, since in 1611 an allusion to it is found in a work of Anthony Stafford (Collier, Annals of the Stage, iii. 104). It was acted at the Blackfriars theatre, ‘when it was employed by the actors of Prince Henry and of the Princess Elizabeth, as well as by the king's players’ (ib. iii. 429). That Field played in his own pieces is probable but uncertain. These plays, one of which, as a satire upon women, was dedicated ‘to any woman that hath been no weathercock,’ i.e. to nobody, while the second, as its title implies, was intended as a species of apology for the former, are included in Collier's and in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's editions of Dodsley's ‘Old Plays.’ They are excellent comedies in their class. The comic scenes are above the level of Massinger and Shirley, and the serious passages need not shame those poets. The relative shares of Field and Massinger in ‘The Fatal Dowry,’ 4to, 1632, published under their joint names, have not been conclusively established. That ‘A Woman's a Weathercock’ and ‘Amends for Ladies’ were written about the same time seems proved by Field's dedication of the earlier work, in which, after saying that he cares not for forty shillings—supposed to be the ordinary price for a dedication, words which have been held to establish that his finances were at that time flourishing—he urges his imaginary patroness to remain constant ‘till my next play be printed, wherein she shall see what amends I have made to her and all the sex.’ Field's share in a tripartite appeal, his partners in which were Massinger and Daborne, to Henslowe, preserved in Dulwich College, puts, however, a different aspect upon Field's financial position. It is an earnest appeal for five out of ten pounds said to be owing for a play, without which they ‘cannot be bayled.’ A second document, at Dulwich, shows Field ‘unluckily taken on an execution of 30l.’ and begging from his ‘Father Hinchlow,’ (Henslowe) for a loan of xl., which with xl. lent by a friend, will procure his discharge. At Dulwich are also a third letter to ‘Hinchlow’ concerning a play on which ‘Mr. Dawborne’ and himself ‘have spent a great deale of time in conference, some articles concerning a company of players,’ and a portrait of Field ‘in his shirt,’ a portion of the Cartwright bequest preserved in the master's house, and showing Field with a youthful and feminine face.
Under the initials N.F. in a later edition, filled out, Field contributed six stanzas in praise of Fletcher's ‘Faithful Shepherdess,’ prefixed to the first edition of that play. Before his own first play appear ten lines by George Chapman, addressed ‘To his loved son, Nat. Field, and his Weathercock Woman.’ A joke concerning ‘Master Field, the player,’ preserved in subsequent jest-books, appears in the ‘Wit and Mirth’ of Taylor, the Water Poet. A punning epigram entitled ‘Field, the Player, on his Mistress, the Lady May,’ is found in a manuscript in the Ashmolean Museum, and in other commonplace books of the reign of James I and Charles I (Collier, Annals of the Stage, iii. 434).
[The chief information concerning Field is derived from Payne Collier's researches in Dulwich College, embodied in his Life of Field, contained in his History of English Dramatic Poetry and Annals of the Stage, his prefaces to his reprints of Field's plays (Dodsley's Old Plays), his Memoirs of Alleyn, and his Alleyn Papers, contributed to the Shakspere Society. It is, of course, subject to the reservations always to be made in the case of his labours. For his conclusions concerning Field see Mr. Warner's Catalogue of Manuscripts &c. at Dulwich College, pp. 37, 241, and Joseph Hunter's Chorus Vatum Anglicanorum, Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 24490, f. 56. Other sources of information are Genest's Account of the English Stage; Baker, Reed, and Jones's Biographia Dramatica; Langbaine's English Dramatic Poets; Malone's Supplement; Cunningham's Handbook to London; Massinger, by Gifford, ed. 1813; Ben Jonson, by Gifford, 1816, &c.]