1613 – 1637) was the prompter (then called the "book-keeper" or "book-holder") of the King's Men, the acting company that performed the plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, and other playwrights of Jacobean and Caroline drama.
In English Renaissance theatre, the prompter managed the company's performances, ensuring that they went according to plan; he also supervised and maintained the troupe's dramatic manuscripts, its "playbooks."
)[2] Knight prepared the company's play texts for production, adding stage directions, cues for offstage sounds, and other necessary information to turn an author's or scribe's manuscript into a promptbook.
)[3] Knight's job of annotating manuscripts for use as promptbooks throws light on practical aspects of the stagecraft of the era, and also the censorship problems that plagued the dramatists and actors.
(In the Believe as You List MS., Knight marked the actors' entrances three of four lines prior to their first speaking; they needed the time to traverse the large stage of the Globe Theatre.