Edward Alleyn

English actor and entrepreneur. He and Richard Burbage were considered to be the finest actors in the Elizabethan-Jacobean theatre. He performed with The Admiral’s Men, created the roles of Tamburlaine, Faustus and Barabbas in plays by Marlowe, and Shakespeare’s Henry VI. He married twice and his fathers-in-law were Philip Henslowe and John Donne.

He went into business with Philip Henslowe, his father-in-law, and eventually became wealthy. He became part owner in Henslowe's ventures, and in the end sole proprietor of several profitable playhouses, bear-pits and brothels. Among these were the Rose Theatre at Bankside, the Paris Garden and the Fortune Theatre on Finsbury Fields. The Fortune was built for Alleyn and Henslowe in 1600, the year after the rival Globe Theatre was completed south of the river, by the same contractor Peter Street, but was square rather than round; it was occupied by the Admiral's Men, of which Alleyn was the head.

He filled, too, in conjunction with Henslowe, the post of "master of the king's games of bears, bulls and dogs." On some occasions he directed the sport in person, and John Stow in his Chronicles gives an account of how Alleyn baited a lion before James I at the Tower of London.

He was the founder of Dulwich College (1619) and died rich.