William Rowley  William Rowley (c.1585 – February 1626) was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626 in the graveyard of St James's, Clerkenwell in north London. (An unambiguous record of Rowley's death was discovered in 1928, but some authorities persist in listing his death-date as 1642.) Rowley was an actor-playwright who specialized in playing clown characters (that is, characters whose function is to provide low comedy). He must also have been a large man, since his forte lay specifically in fat-clown roles. He played the Fat Bishop in Thomas Middleton's "A Game at Chess", and Plumporridge in the same author's "Inner Temple Masque". He also wrote fat-clown parts for himself to play: Jaques in "All's Lost by Lust" (a role "personated by the Poet," the 1633 quarto states), and Bustopha in "The Maid in the Mill", his collaboration with John Fletcher. He certainly played Simplicity in "The World Tossed at Tennis", and probably Chough in "A Fair Quarrel" — and since these are Middleton/Rowley collaborations, they qualify as two more parts that Rowley wrote for himself. (Internal evidence shows that in collaborations, Rowley normally handled the comic subplot — though he was not restricted solely to comic material: in "The Changeling", "A Fair Quarrel", and "The Maid in the Mill", he wrote substantial portions of the main plots as well.) The part of the otherwise-unnamed Clown in "The Birth of Merlin" shows signs of being another role that Rowley the playwright wrote with Rowley the actor in mind. As a writer, Rowley was almost exclusively a dramatist; the pamphlet "A Search for Money" (1609) is his only sustained work of non-dramatic prose. Two plays are generally accepted as Rowley's solo works: "A Shoemaker a Gentleman" (c. 1607-9) and "All's Lost by Lust" (1619). Three other works that might have been Rowley solo plays have not survived: "Hymen's Holidays or Cupid's Vagaries" (1612), "A Knave in Print" (1613), and "The Fool Without Book" (also 1613).