Edward Alleyn and Philip Henslowe

The career of Richard Burbage’s greatest rival Edward Alleyn was built on two crucial partnerships with the playwright Christopher Marlowe and the entrepreneur Philip Henslowe.

While it is Richard Burbage we remember now as the greatest Elizabethan actor, in his own time he always came second to his greatest rival, Edward Alleyn whose own career as the Elizabethan theatre’s most renowned…