Richard Baxter (actor)
Richard Baxter (c. 1593 – c. 1667), or Backster, was a seventeenth-century actor, who worked in some of the leading theatre companies of his era.Actors performed clandestinely when they could, though they were repeatedly harassed, arrested, imprisoned, and generally persecuted by the authorities.In December of that year, Baxter and nine other actors, most of them veterans of the company, signed a contract with an upholsterer named Robert Conway; Conway was to provide financial backing for the group in return for a portion of their income, and the ten would be the sharers or partners in the new version of the old company.This effort produced limited drama but enduring litigation: Conway's heirs sued the actors in 1661, claiming that the 1648 contract granted them a share in the profits of the newly formed King's Company.The documents in the case specify that during the years of the theatre closure the actors often could act only in private homes for relatively small sums; and even then they were sometimes arrested and jailed.