Enter Burbage

An illuminating portrait of Shakespeare’s most influential muse: The star actor who inspired and shaped the Bard’s most important works.

We often imagine Shakespeare as a solitary genius. But the playwright’s dazzling imagination was enabled and inspired by the blazing charisma and unruly temper of his toweringly ambitious lead actor, Richard Burbage. Today, Burbage’s name is almost forgotten, but his presence haunts the history of theater and offers a new way to understand Shakespeare and his plays.

Burbage’s volatile, larger-than-life energy shaped some of the world’s most iconic characters—brooding hero-villains such as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and Richard III. These roles, each written especially for Burbage, are so dominant that they often account for more than a quarter of their scripts. With a life stalked by drama and dispute that made its way onto the stage, Burbage was the celebrity megastar of his day whose fame far eclipsed Shakespeare’s own during their lifetimes.