On 5 May 1640 he was thrown into the Marshalsea Prison for a Beeston's Boys' play, acted the day before, that gave offence to Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels.
The play was most likely The Court Beggar by Richard Brome, which satirized several members of Queen Henrietta Maria's circle of favourites, including Sir John Suckling and Sir William Davenant[1] (though Brome's The Queen and Concubine has also been suggested as the offending play).
Davenant, though, was busy with other matters – politics and the coming revolution; Beeston was able to resume his position, sometime in the latter part of 1641 (only to face the closing of the theatres the next year, at the outbreak of the English Civil War).
Perhaps because of such difficulties, or his responses to them, William Beeston gained a reputation (justly or not) for unscrupulousness and shady dealing.
In 1650 he paid £200 for repairs to the Cockpit Theatre and then gathered a group of "prentices and covenant servants to instruct them in the quality of acting and fitting for the stage," as he would testify in a lawsuit a year later.