The Actor George Bentley at Rotterdam in 1646

Abstract

Of the host of mid-seventeenth century performers who are known to have tried their fortunes on the continent, George Bentley is perhaps the one who has been most disregarded in recent accounts of the English travelling players. This may seem surprising, given that the evidence relating to Bentley’s movements across Germany and Poland between 1652 and 1674, meticulously pieced together by nineteenth-century German scholars, demonstrates that his acting career in its international scope and noble associations proved just as prestigious, if not more so, than that of his more famous peers. As early as 1861, Moritz Fürstenau noted that Bentley was appointed in 1652 as a dancer at the Dresden court of Johan George I, Elector of Saxony (1585–1656), with a considerable annual salary of 600 Thaler.1 Styled ‘chamberlain and dancing master’ to the Elector’s successor Johann Georg II (1613–1680), Bentley on 3 February 1665 presented the court with a ballet in ten scenes in praise of Diana’s betrothed and of the ‘sacred kingdom’ of the hunt. Bentley was dismissed in the same year but in 1674 he was to have himself re-appointed as the Electress’s chamberlain, and dancing and ballet master.2 In January 1669 Bentley moved his operations from Dresden to Leipzig, and later on prided himself on also having performed at Cracow, on the occasion of the crowning of Michael Wiśniowiecki (1640–1673), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, in September 1669. From August through October 1670, leading a company of sixteen described as ‘hochteutsche Comoedianten’, Bentley was at Danzig, where he claimed to have staged no fewer than twenty comedies in the Fencing School theatre, and asked for permission from the council to do more acting in the riding school.3 Perhaps, as Bolte pointed out, his was the troupe that also performed at Königsberg in 1670.4