in Search of the Picturesque,” they had attained a fifth edition by 1813, and were followed in 1820 by “Dr Syntax in Search of Consolation,” and in 1821 by the “Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of a Wife.” The same Collaboration of designer, author and publisher appeared in the English “Dance of Death,” issued in 1814–16, one of the most admirable of Rowlandson’s series, and in the “Dance of Life,” 1822. Rowlandson also illustrated Smollett, Goldsmith and Sterne, and his designs will be found in The Spirit of the Public Journals (1825), The English Spy (1825), and The Humourist (1831). He died in London, after a prolonged illness, on the 22nd of April 1827.
Rowlandson’s designs were usually executed in outline with the reed-pen, and delicately washed with colour. They were then etched by the artist on the copper, and afterwards aqua-tinted usually by a professional engraver, the impressions being finally coloured by hand. As a designer he was characterized by the utmost facility and ease of draughtsmanship, and the quality of his art suffered from this haste and over-production. He was a true if not a very refined humorist, dealing less frequently than his fierce contemporary Gillray with politics, but commonly touching, in a rather gentle spirit, the various aspects and incidents of social life. His most artistic work is to be found among the more careful drawings of his earlier period; but even among the exaggerated caricature of his later time we find hints that this master of the humorous might have attained to the beautiful had he so willed.
See J. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, a Selection from his Works, &c. (2 vols., 1880).
ROWLEY, WILLIAM (c. 1585–c. 1642), English actor and
dramatist, collaborator with several of the dramatists of the
Elizabethan period, especially with Thomas Middleton. He
is not to be identified with “Master Rowley, once a rare scholar
of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge,” whom Francis Meres
described in his Palladis Tamia as one of the “best for comedy.”
The only Rowley at Pembroke Hall at the period was Ralph
Rowley, afterwards rector of Chelmsford. William Rowley
is described as the chief comedian in the Prince of Wales’s
company, and it was doubtless during the two years’ union
(1614–16) of these players with the Lady Elizabeth’s company
that he was brought into contact with Middleton. Rowley
joined the King’s Servants in 1623, and retired from the stage
about four years later. The fact of his marriage is recorded
in 1637, and he is supposed to have died about 1642. Four
plays attributed to his sole authorship are extant: A new
Wonder, A Woman never Vext (printed, 1632); A Match at
Midnight (1633); A Tragedie called Alls Lost by Lust (1633);
and a Shoomaker a Gentleman with the Life and Death of the
Cripple that stole the Weathercock at Paules (1638). They are
distinguished by effectiveness of situation and ingenuity of
plot, so that we may conjecture Why he was in such request
as an associate in play-making, and he had further an experimental
knowledge of the coarse comedy likely to please the pit.
It is recorded by Langbaine that he “was beloved of those great men Shakespeare, Fletcher and Jonson.” The plays he wrote with Middleton are dealt with under that heading. With George Wilkins and John Day he wrote The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607); with Thomas Heywood he produced the romantic comedy of Fortune by Land and Sea (printed, 1655); he was associated with Thomas Dekker and John Ford in The Witch of Edmonton[1] (printed, 1658); A Cure for a Cuckold (printed, 1661) and The Thracian Wonder (printed, 1661) are assigned to the joint authorship of Webster and Rowley; while Shakespeare’s name was unjustifiably
coupled with his on the title-page of The Birth of Merlin: or, the Childe hath found his Father (1662). Rowley also wrote an elegy on Hugh Attwell, the actor, and a satirical pamphlet describing contemporary London, entitled A Search for Money (1609).
The dramatist Samuel Rowley, described without apparent reason by J. P. Collier as William Rowley’s brother, was employed by Henslowe as a reader of plays. He wrote some scriptural plays now lost, with William Borne (or Bird, or Boyle)[2] and Edward Juby. His only extant pieces are: When you see me, You know me. Or the famous Chronicle Historie of King Henry the eight, with the birth and vertuous life of Edward Prince of Wales (1605), of interest because of its possible connexion with the Shakespearian play of Henry VIII., and The Noble Souldier. Or, A Contract Broken. justly re’veng’d (1634), which was entered, however, in the Stationers’ Register as the work of Thomas Dekker, to whom the major share is probably assignable.
ROWLEY REGIS, an urban district in the Kingswinford parliamentary division of Staffordshire, England, on the Stourbridge branch of the Great Western railway, 7 m. W. of Birmingham, Pop. (1901) 34,670. It lies in a hilly district rich in coal and iron, while a hard basaltic intrusion known as Rowley rag is largely quarried. The town is a modern growth out of a village surrounding the church of St Giles, which dates from the 13th century, though rebuilt in 1840. Iron manufactures are extensive; there are also brick and tile works and breweries.
ROWLOCK (pronounced rullock or rollock), a device on the gunwale of a boat in or on which an oar rests, forming a fulcrum for the oar in rowing. The word is a corruption due to “row” of the earlier “oar-lock,” O.E. ārlōc, a lock or enclosed place for an oar. The simplest form of rowlock is a notch, square or rounded, on the gunwale, in which the oar rests; other kinds are formed by two pins or pegs, “thole pins” (thole being ultimately the same word as Norw. toll, a young fir-tree), and by a swivel with two horns of metals, pivoted in the gunwale or on an outrigger (see Oar).
ROWTON, MONTAGUE WILLIAM LOWRY-CORRY, Baron (1838–1903), second son of the Right Hon. Henry Corry by his wife Harriet, daughter of the 6th earl of Shaftesbury, was born in London on the 8th of October 1838, educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and called to the bar in 1863. His father, a son of the 2nd earl of Belmore, represented County Tyrone in parliament continuously for forty seven years (1826–73), and was a member of Lord Derby’s cabinet (1866–68) as vice-president of the council and afterwards as first lord of the Admiralty. Montague Corry was thus brought up in closing touch with Conservative party politics; but it is said to have been his winning personality and social accomplishments rather than his political connexions that recommended him to the favourable notice of Disraeli, who in 1866 made Corry his private secretary. From this time till the statesman’s death in 1881 Corry maintained his connexion with Disraeli, the relations between the two men being more intimate and confidential than usually subsist between a private secretary and his political chief. When Disraeli resigned office in 1868 Corry declined various offers of public employment in order to be free to continue his services, now given gratuitously, to the Conservative leader; and when the latter returned to power in 1874, Corry resumed his position as official private secretary to the prime minister. He accompanied Disraeli (then earl of Beaconsfield) to the congress of Berlin in 1878, where he acted as one of the secretaries of the special embassy of Great Britain. On the defeat of the Conservatives in 1880, Corry was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Rowton, of Rowton Castle, Shropshire. He had rendered service of an exceptional order to his chief, and after Beaconsfield’s removal to the House of Lords his private secretary became invaluable in keeping him in touch with the rank and file of his party. Lord Rowton was in Algiers when Beaconsfield was stricken with his last illness in the spring of 1881; but returning post-haste across Europe, he was present at the death-bed of his old chief. Beaconsfield (q.v.) bequeathed to Rowton all his correspondence and other papers.
Lord Rowton will long be remembered as the originator of the scheme known as the Rowton Houses. Consulted by Sir
- ↑ It is usual to minimize Rowley’s share in this play. Mr Seccombe (Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. Rowley) says: “Dekker appears to have had the chief share, but Rowley supplied some acceptable buffoonery." J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps (Dict. of Old English Plays), however, defined it as a tragi-comedy by William Rowley, adding that he had help from the other two.
- ↑ William Borne or Bird engaged to play with the Admiral’s Men for three years from 1597. In 1600 he borrowed 30s. from Henslowe to pay for a new play, Jugurth, by W. Boyle (probably another name for himself). He helped S. Rowley in Joshua (1601), and in additions (1602) to Marlowe’s Dr Faustus. His connexion with the theatre ceased about 1621.
