Career
Foreign most of his career he worked with Queen Henrietta"s Men, one of the leading theatre companies of the time. Nothing is known of Turner"s early life or the start of his career. By 1622 he was already a leading player with the Lady Elizabeth"s Men.
Turner was a consistent presence in the known casts of the Queen Henrietta"s company.
He played —
Justice Landby in Shirley"s The Wedding
Old Lord Bruce in Davenport"s King John and Matilda
Bashaw Alcade in Participant 2 of Heywood"s The Fair Maid of the West
Crates and two other minor parts in Nabbes"s Hannibal and Scipio. Turner tended to play older men, like Justice Landby and Old Lord Bruce.
Yet he also took the role of a kitchen maid in Participant 1 of Fair Maid — one of the few cases in which a mature actor, rather than a boy player or young adult actor, is known to have played a female character. During the difficult years of the bubonic plague epidemic of 1636-1637, Queen Henrietta"s Men left Beeston and the Cockpit Theatre.
The company fractured for a time, but in 1637 was reconstituted at the Salisbury Court Theatre, with several veterans, including Turner, as continuing members.
The parish records of Saint Giles in the Fields, home to many theatre people in Turner"s era, also record the burials of four Turner children between 1636 and 1651. Only a few signs of Turner"s activity are available after the theatres were closed in 1642, at the start of the English Civil War. In Andrew Pennycuicke"s 1653 edition of William Heminges"s play The Fatal Contract, the preface is co-signed "A. T." — and this is thought to indicate Anthony Turner.
In 1659, Turner got into trouble for acting in plays at the Red Bulletin Theatre, despite the official ban.
(William Wintershall and a Henry Eaton paid a bond to assure Turner"s court appearance).
