John Underwood (died October 1624) was an early 17th-century actor, a member of the King's Men, the theatrics company of William Shakespeare.
Underwood began as a boy player with the Children of the Chapel, and was cast in that company's productions of Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (1600) and The Poetaster (1601).
When the brothers Richard and Cuthbert Burbage built The Globe Theatre in early 1599, they organized it as a shareholders' concern, keeping 50% of the business for themselves and dividing the other 50% among four of the Lord Chamberlain's Men – Shakespeare, Pope, Heminges, and Augustine Phillips.
It has been argued that the Burbages pursued this arrangement out of necessity: their financial problems involving The Theatre and the Blackfriars left them in need of outside investors.
[3] It is generally held that the Globe arrangement constituted the first case in which the standard sharers' partnership in a playing company was extended to theatre construction and ownership.