Robert Daborne

Who was Robert Daborne?

Robert Daborne was an English dramatist of the Jacobean era.

His father was also Robert Daborne, heir to family property in Guildford, Surrey and other places, including London, and a wealthy haberdasher by trade. He is now thought to have been a "sizar"—an undergraduate exempt from fees—at King's College, Cambridge in 1598. His marriage record suggests that he was a Gent. and member of the Inner Temple. Daborne was married to Anne Younger in 1602 at St Mary's Church South Walsham by the local cleric, who was nephew to Anne's father, Robert Younger, the owner of Old Hall, South Burlingham; they had at least one child, a daughter, but his wife Anne died in childbirth. He was living with his father-in-law in Shoreditch by 1609, but his father-in-law died and there was a bitter dispute among the family members subsequently regarding the inheritance. A 1608 document show that Daborne owed £50 to Robert Keysar, one of the managers of the Children of the Queen's Revels. In January 1610 Daborne is listed as one of the patentees of the Queen's Revels Children when Philip Rosseter re-organized that troupe of boy actors.