Charlotte Butler
English actress and singer (1674-1693)

Charlotte Butler was an English stage actress and singer of the seventeenth century. She may have joined the Duke's Company in the 1670s, but her first definite recorded performance was in Aphra Behn's The Revenge (1680) The anonymous A Satyr on The Players (c. 1682) describes her,
Selected roles
Marinda in The Revenge by Aphra Behn (1680)
Charlotte in The City-Heiress by Aphra Behn (1682)
Philidel in King Arthur by John Dryden (1682)
Mrs Cleremont in Dame Dobson by Edward Ravenscroft (1683)
Sophia in The Fortune Hunters by James Carlile (1689)
Charles in Bury Fair by Thomas Shadwell (1689)
Night in Amphitryon by John Dryden (1690)
Floriante in Sir Anthony Love by Thomas Southerne (1690)
Statilia in The Treacherous Brothers by George Powell (1690)
Astella in The Mistakes by Joseph Harris (1690)
Airy in The English Frier by John Crowne (1690)
Betty Jiltall in Love for Money by Thomas d'Urfey (1691)
La Pupsey in The Marriage-Hater Matched by Thomas d'Urfey (1692)
References
Bibliography
Highfill, Philip H., Burnim, Kalman A. & Langhans, Edward A. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800: Cabanel to Cory. Southern Illinois University Press, 1975. ISBN 9780809306923
Van Lennep, W. The London Stage, 1660–1800: Volume One, 1660–1700. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Charlotte Butler” is english actress and singer (1674-1693). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Charlotte, Butler and English, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18875484. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1680, 1682, 1683 and 1689.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charlotte Butler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.