The Beautiful and Effeminate Third Earl of Southampton

Once again one of our company of players checks in with a bit of character work. For your reading pleasure, Mr. Brent Stansell.

I thought I would share with you loyal blog readers a little about the character I’m playing, Henry Wriothesley (pronounced Rot-sley), the beautiful and effeminate Third Earl of Southampton. Scholars believe that most likely Shakespeare’s sonnets were dedicated to young Wriothesley. He became an Earl of the Court at the young age of 8 and quickly became favored by Queen Elizabeth. He was a patron of the arts and received lots of attention from poets of the time. In Amy Freed’s crazy comedic concoction, Wriothesley is also the male lover of the Earl of Oxford, doting, lovable, and very very gay.

This is my favorite picture of young Wriothesley. He had his portrait captured with his cat Trixie. When Wriothesley ends up in the Tower of London (for a very brief period!), he smuggles Trixie in with him. Notice also the richly adorned attire, the slight limp wrists, the bracelet and pinky ring. I hope to do this fabulous character justice. And I have a lot of work to do: nailing my high-pitched British dialect, figuring out just the right way to prance into a room, deciding which annoying habits I have to bother my Oxford with.

So I head off to work, but I’ll leave you actors, artists, and blog readers with a piece of advice once told to me by a well-known DC director: Never put your pussy in the picture. But if you do, I hope you do it as fabulously as Henry Wriothesley.

Thanks for checking out the blog.
Brent