Samuel Foote (1720–1777)

FOOTE, SAMUEL (1720–1777), actor and dramatist, second son of Samuel and Eleanor Foote, was born at a house in Truro long known as Johnson Vivian's, and was baptised at St. Mary's in that city 27 Jan. 1720. His father (1679-1754) was a commissioner of the prize office and fine contract, at one time member for Tiverton and mayor of Truro. His mother, Eleanor Goodere, through the death of her brother, Sir John Dinely Goodere, bt., murdered by another brother. Captain Samuel Goodere [q. v.], inherited a considerable fortune. Foote was educated at Worcester under Dr. Miles, and matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford, 1 July 1737. His college life, like his subsequent career, was marked by extravagance. Without taking a degree he proceeded to the Temple. A turn for mimicry had already displayed itself, and after wasting his entire fortune as a man of fashion at the Grecian, the Bedford, and other coffeehouses, he appeared at the Haymarket, 6 Feb. 1744, as 'a gentleman' in 'Othello,' playing with a company of novices collected and trained by Macklin, at that period excluded from Drury Lane. He repeated this impersonation three or four times, and gave it for a benefit at Drury Lane on 10 March. On 2 March, at the Haymarket, he played Lord Foppington in the 'Relapse,' and recited an epilogue, apparently of his own composition. He is also said to have played Pierre in 'Venice Preserved.' These ill-judged experiments were complete failures. Foote then proceeded to Dublin, where, according to Hitchcock (Irish Plays, i. 147), 'he brought a few crowded houses and was well received,' On 1 Nov. 1745 he appeared at Drury Lane as Sir Harry Wildair in the 'Constant Couple.' He afterwards appeared as Lord Foppington, Bayes, Sir Courtly Nice, and other parts played by Colley Cibber. He had meanwhile conceived the idea of turning to advantage his talent for mimicry, and on 22 April 1747 he opened the Haymarket with a concert, a farce extracted from the 'Old Bachelor,' called 'The Credulous Husband,' in which Foote was Fondlewife, and an entertainment by himself called 'The Diversions of the Morning.' In this, with the assistance of Shuter and other actors, he met with much success. His career was, however, stopped by the Westminster magistrates, and Foote then hit upon the device of summoning his friends, for 25 April at noon, to take with him a 'dish of chocolate,' for which was subsequently substituted a 'dish of tea.' Tickets for this were obtained at George's Coffee-house, Temple Bar. On the invitation appeared 'N.B. - Sir Dilbury Diddle will be there, and Lady Betty Frisk has absolutely promised.' According to a statement of Tate Wilkinson (Memoirs, i. 24 et seq.), which Genest says 'is not to be reconciled with the bills,' the entertainment was principally made up of satirical mimicry of actors, such as Quin, Delane, Ryan, Woodward, Mrs. Woffington, and of Garrick, upon whom he was especially severe. In November 1747 Foote, still at the Haymarket, gave 'Tea at 6.30 ;' in March 1748 he substituted for this 'Chocolate in Ireland,' and soon afterwards produced an entertainment similar in kind called 'An Auction of Pictures.' In 1748-9 this class of entertainment was continued until March or April, when Foote produced the two-act comedy, the 'Knights,' printed 1754, 8vo, in which he played Hartop. This piece ended with a feigned concert between two cats, in which Italian opera was ridiculed. Various persons of more or less importance had been libelled in these productions ; but the complaints and retorts of those injured only added to the piquancy of the production. A second fortune having been left him, Foote disappeared to Paris, whence, after some years' absence, he returned with 'Taste,' a two-act comedy produced unsuccessfully at Drury Lane 11 Jan. 1752, 8vo, 1753, with a prologue written and spoken by Garrick. The 'Englishman in Paris,' Covent Garden, 24 March 1753, 8vo, 1756, was more fortunate. Foote let Macklin have the piece for his benefit. Macklin played Buck, a character which Foote took when he transferred the play, 20 Oct. 1753, to Drury Lane stage. In the course of this season Foote played Fondlewife, Ben in 'Love for Love,' Brazen in the 'Recruiting Officer,' and gave his lastingly popular 'Tea.' The following two seasons he appeared at Covent Garden, where he played, 3 Feb. 1756, Buck in the 'Englishman Returned from Paris,' a piece in three acts, 8vo, 1756, the idea and incidents of which Foote took from Murphy, the dramatist, who indiscreetly confided them to him. On 1 March 1756 he played Sir Paul Plyant in the 'Double Dealer,' and 30 March Lady Pentweazel in 'Taste.' In 1756-7 he returned to Drury Lane, where, 5 Feb. 1757, he produced the 'Author,' 8vo, 1757, a two-act piece, in which, as Cadwallader, he mimicked a Mr. Aprice, a friend of his own, who had interest enough to obtain the suppression of the play. An additional scene, which he intended to introduce into it for his benefit, is given in the 'Monthly Mirror,' vii. 39-41. e also played Gomez in Dryden's 'Spanish Friar.' In December 1757, in company with Tate Wilkinson, Foote visited Dublin, where he had a favourable reception, socially and artistically, but played no new part. Wilkinson and Foote were engaged by Garrick, and appeared at Drury Lane 17 Oct. 1758. For his benefit Foote appeared, 18 Dec. 1758, as Shylock, and was a failure. With 100l., which he borrowed from Garrick, he visited Scotland. According to the 'Courant' he reached Edinburgh 15 March 1759, and appeared on the 20th at the Canongate Concert Hall. He played many parts, and was made much of. He is said to have given the first afternoon entertainment in Edinburgh. He returned in May, and in the autumn went once more to Dublin, where, at the Crow Street Theatre, he produced, 28 Jan. 1760, his comedy the 'Minor,' originally in two acts, 8vo, 1760. In this he played Shift, a character designed to satirise his associate, Tate Wilkinson. Piece and excursion alike failed, and Foote, in want of funds, opened in the summer of 1760 the Haymarket, where, with a company hastily assembled, he produced the 'Minor,' now enlarged to three acts. In this, Foote's best comedy, his title to a portion of which has been disputed, he satirised Whitefield and the methodists. In its new shape it was a great success. Foote, who played at the Haymarket the characters of Shift, Smirke, and Mrs. Cole, is said to have sent the manuscript to the Archbishop of Canterbury, with a request that he would excise or alter whatever was objectionable. It was returned untouched, the archbishop shrewdly surmising that Foote wished to advertise it as 'corrected and prepared for the press by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.' Once more at Drury Lane he was the original Scotchman in the 'Register Office' of Joseph Reed, a piece from which he was accused by Reed of having stolen the character of Mrs. Cole in the 'Minor.' In partnership with Murphy, Foote leased Drury Lane for a summer season. On 15 June 1761 the management produced Murphy's 'All in the Wrong,' a version of Moliere's 'Cocu Imaginaire.' Foote wrote and spoke the prologue. The 'Citizen,' also by Murphy, was played 2 July 1769, Foote appearing as Young Philpot. The 'Old Maid' of Murphy was given for the first time the same night. 'Wishes, or Harlequin's Mouth Opened,' a comedy by Thomas Bentley, with a speaking harlequin, closed the season with a failure. Foote, who played in this Distress a poet, took over 300l. for his share of the entire venture, though he had broken his contract and supplied no novelty. In 1762, at the Haymarket, Foote produced the 'Orators,' 8vo, 1762, ridiculing, in Peter Paragraph, George Faulkner, the Dublin printer, who had lost a leg, and who brought an action against him. At Covent Garden, 12 Jan. 1762, he played Young Wilding in the 'Lyar,' 8vo, 1764, his adaptation of 'Le Menteur' of Corneille. From this period the original characters of Foote, with the exception of Ailwould in Bickerstaffe's 'Dr. Last in his Chariot,' Haymarket, 31 Aug. 1769, and Francisco in the 'Tailors,' Haymarket, 2 July 1767, were confined to the Haymarket and to his own comedies. Many of these were played in the afternoon. Their order is as follows : Major Sturgeon and Matthew Mug in the 'Mayor of Garratt,' two acts, 1763, 8vo, 1764 ; Sir Thomas Lofty and Sir Peter Pepperpot in the 'Patron,' three acts, 1764, 8vo, 1764 ; Zachary Fungus in the 'Commissary,' three acts, 1765, 8vo, 1765 ; Foote in 'An Occasional Prelude,' one act, printed in the 'Monthly Mirror,' vol. xvii. ; the Devil in the 'Devil upon Two Sticks,' three acts, 30 May 1768, 8vo, 1778 (by this piece Foote reaped between 3,000l. and 4,000l.; on his way to Ireland he lost 1,700l. at Bath to cardsharpers, and had to borrow 100l. to proceed on his journey) ; Sir Luke Limp in the 'Lame Lover,' 8vo, 1770, three acts, 27 Aug. 1770 ; Flint in the 'Maid of Bath,' three acts, 26 June 1771, 8vo, 1778; Sir Matthew Mite in the 'Nabob,' three acts, 29 June 1772, 8vo, 1778 ; Sir Robert Riscounter in the 'Bankrupt,' three acts, 21 July 1773, 8vo, 1776 (this season Foote gave an entertainment with puppets known as 'The Primitive Puppet Show,' and produced an unprinted entertainment entitled 'The Handsome Housemaid, or Piety in Pattens') ; Aircastle in the 'Cozeners,' 1774, 8vo, 1778, and O'Donnovan in the 'Capuchin,' three acts, 17 Aug. 1776, 8vo, 1778. This piece was an alteration of the famous 'Trip to Calais,' the performance of which was stopped by the censor. In 1766 Foote was visiting at Lord Mexborough's, where he met an aristocratic party, including the Duke of York. Playing on his vanity they mounted him on a high-mettled horse, which threw him and fractured his leg in two places. He accepted the accident with philosophy, and asked for the removal of the leg, which was accomplished. As a compensation for this loss the Duke of York obtained for Foote a patent to erect a theatre in the city and liberties of Westminster, with the privilege of exhibiting dramatic pieces there from 14 May to 14 Sept. during his natural life. This was a fortune. Foote purchased his old premises in the Haymarket, and erected a new theatre on the site, which he opened in May 1767 with the 'Prelude,' in which he referred to the loss of limb and to the gift of his patron, &c. In 1767 he engaged Spranger Barry [q. v.] and Mrs. Ann Dancer, subsequently Mrs. Spranger Barry [q. v.], and produced tragedy, announcing as the cause of such a proceeding that they were dangerous neighbours. Upon his visit to Dublin in 1768 Foote found his 'Devil upon Two Sticks' once more a source of fortune. In 1770 he rented the Edinburgh Theatre for the winter season, and took over his company. The result was unsatisfactory, and he resigned his lease to West Digges [q. v.] The year previously Foote, whose treatment of Garrick consisted in alternately sponging upon him and ridiculing him, intended to caricature the famous procession in the jubilee, but by influence from without was induced to abandon the idea. A notion previously entertained of caricaturing Dr. Johnson was given up in consequence of Johnson sending word to Foote that, in case the threat was carried out, 'he would go from the boxes on the stage and correct him before the audience' (Monthly Review, lxxvi. 374). Few of Foote's plays had been produced without an acknowledged purpose of caricaturing some known individual. For a long time this practice succeeded. Foote was wise enough to withdraw when, as in the case of Johnson, he found his man too strong for him. When, after the production of the 'Nabob,' two members of the East India Company called upon him with the intention of castigating him, he had tact enough to keep them talking until he had disarmed their resentment and induced them to stay to dinner. The most he ordinarily had to fear was an interference of the censor, and a consequent diminution of profits. Those who winced most under his attacks held it prudent to hold their tongues. Garrick, who smarted more frequently than most, said that nobody in London thought it worth while to quarrel with him. So accustomed was Foote to this process that, when he heard his leg was to be cut off, he said, 'Now I shall take off old Faulkner to the life,' Faulkner having lost one of his legs. The privilege of the buffoon was at length to be denied him. In preparing the 'Trip to Calais ' he hit upon the celebrated Duchess of Kingston, and told his acquaintance, with customary garrulity and indiscretion, that she was to be shown in the character of Lady Crocodile. The influence of the duchess sufficed to secure the prohibition of the play. A correspondence undignified on both sides, though marvellously clever on that of Foote, took place between the author and the duchess, and resulted in Foote abandoning some hastily formed schemes of vengeance, and in the production of the 'Capuchin,' in which the satire was transferred from the duchess to Jackson, an Irish clergyman who was in her pay, and who ultimately committed suicide to avoid the penalty of death, to which he had been condemned for treason. This man, under the disguise, transparent to a large number of people, of Dr. Viper, Foote lashed in the 'Capuchin.' Jackson's answer was by insinuations conveyed in the paper of which he was editor, and copied into other periodicals, charging Foote with the most odious form of crime. For a time Foote, on the advice of his friends, kept silence. He opened the Haymarket on 20 May 1776 with his comedy, the 'Bankrupt.' An organised opposition upon the part of a portion of the audience drew Foote before the curtain to appeal for justice, and to say that he had taken steps in the court of king's bench to bring the charges to an issue. A further mine was, however, sprung beneath Foote, a discharged servant appearing (8 July 1776) to prefer a bill of indictment against the author for a criminal assault. Under these circumstances Foote received the full support of friends convinced of his innocence. Those whom he had libelled thronged to defend him. Evidence that the charge was due to Jackson was forthcoming, and on the trial in the court of king's bench the jury returned an unhesitating verdict of acquittal. Foote was, however, much shaken. On 16 Jan. 1777 he disposed of his patent to George Colman for 1,600l. a year and a specific sum for the right of acting Foote's unpublished pieces. Foote, who had undertaken to play at another house, appeared at the Haymarket in the 'Devil upon Two Sticks,' the 'Nabob,' the 'Minor,' and other pieces. A great falling off in power was, however, apparent. On 30 July, in the 'Maid of Bath,' his name appeared in the bills for the last time. Acting on medical advice he started for the South of France, and arrived at Dover 20 Oct. 1777 on his way to Calais. He was in good spirits, joking with the servants at the Ship Inn. At breakfast next morning he was seized with a shivering fit, a second followed, and on the same day, 21 Oct. 1777, he died. The body was removed to his house, Suffolk Street, Pall Mall East, by William Jewell, the treasurer to the Haymarket, who had been sent for, and on the Monday night following (3 Nov.) he was buried by torchlight in the west cloister in Westminster Abbey. The register of the abbey calls him Samuel Foote, esq., and gives his age as fifty-five (Chester, Registers of Westminster, p. 424). No monument is erected to him, though a tablet was put up by Jewell in St. Martin's Church, Dover. His will, dated 13 Aug. 1768, was proved the day after his death. It bequeathed his possessions in trust to his illegitimate sons, Francis Foote and George Foote, with remainder in case they should die in their minority to Jewell, to Foote's mother, who, however, was dead, and to his brother, Edward Goodere Foote. In addition to the plays mentioned Foote wrote 'A Treatise on the Passions so far as they regard the Stage ; with a Critical Enquiry into the Theatrical merit of Mr. G__k, Mr. Q__n, and Mr. Barry . . .' London, 8vo (no date), 1747 ; 'The Roman and English Comedy consider'd and compar'd. With remarks on the "Suspicious Husband." And an Examen into the merits of the Present Comic Actors,' London, 1747, 8vo ; 'A Letter from Mr. Foote to the Reverend Author of the Remarks, critical and Christian, on the Minor,' London, 1760, 8vo ; 'Apology for the "Minor," with a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Bain,' Edinburgh, 1771, 8vo and 12mo (same date). He is credited with the authorship of an account of the murder of his uncle, which is said to have been his first production. There is, however, reason for sparing him this ignominy. 'Wit for the Ton! the Convivial Jester, or Sam Foote's Last Budget opened,' &c., London (no date), 1777, contains some of his jokes, but is, of course, not by him. A long list of polemical works to which his pieces gave rise, many of them claiming to be by him, but ordinarily virulent attacks upon him, is given in Mr. Lowe's useful 'Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature,' 1888. Mr. Lowe believes that 'A Letter to the Licenser' (regarding the prohibition of the 'Trip to Calais') was published, but has never seen it catalogued. Its only appearance seems to have been in a daily newspaper for 3 Aug. 1775, whence it was copied into the 'Westminster Magazine,' August 1775. The 'Methodist, a comedy; being a Continuation and Completion of the plan of the "Minor," written by Mr. Foote,' &c., 3rd edit. London (no date), 1761, 8vo, is, according to the 'Biographia Dramatica,' 'a most impudent catchpenny job of Israel Pottinger.' Foote's prose tracts, like his letters, are forcibly, wittily, and logically written. It is, however, as a dramatist, a wit, and an actor that he has to be judged. all these qualities he is noteworthy. No complete collection of his plays has been made, more than one of his pieces, chiefly his early entertainments, having never been printed. From the dates given it will be seen that the plays were in many cases not printed until long after their appearance on the stage. What are called his dramatic works were issued in 4 vols. 8vo, 1778, and with life by John Bee, i.e. Badcock, in 3 vols. 12mo, 1830. Three dramatic trifles are given in 'The Memoirs of Samuel Foote, with a Collection of his Genuine Bon Mots, &c. By William Cooke,' London, 1805, 12mo, 3 vols. In the series edited by Cumberland, Mrs. Inchbald, Lacy, and in innumerable similar collections, various plays are to be found, and collections of the 8vo editions are in the British Museum and other libraries. In the 'Comic Theatre,' being a free translation of all the best French comedies by S. Foote and others, London, 1762, 5 vols. 12mo, one play only, the 'Young Hypocrite,' is said in the 'Biographia Dramatica' to be by Foote. A play of Foote's occasionally appears on the present stage. To the list already given may be added the 'Tryal of Samuel Foote, esq., for a Libel on Peter Paragraph,' acted in 1761 at the Haymarket, and the 'Diversions of the Morning,' compiled from his 'Taste' and other sources, and played at Drury Lane in 1758. These pieces, previously unprinted, Tate Wilkinson gives at the close of vol. iv. of his 'Wandering Patentee,' 12mo, 1795. 'Lindamira, or Tragedy à-la-mode,' a burlesque tragic bagatelle, by Foote, is included in 'Thespian Gleanings,' by T. Meadows, comedian, Ulverstone, 8vo, 1805. It is taken from 'Diversions of the Morning.' The 'Slanderer,' a comedy, is said to have been left in manuscript, and appears to be lost. As a rule the plays are invertebrate, and the manners they sketch are not to be recognised in the present day. Foote had, however, a keen eye to character, and on the strength of the brilliant sketches of contemporary manners which he afforded, and of the wit of the dialogue, they may be read with pleasure to this day. Foote's satire is direct and scathing. Much of it is directed against individuals, not seldom with no conceivable vindication, since Foote singled out those, such as Garrick, to whom he was under deepest obligations. During his lifetime and for some years subsequently Foote was known as the English Aristophanes. Without being deserved, the phrase is less of a misnomer than such terms ordinarily are. As an actor Foote seems to have attracted attention only in his own pieces. Tom Davies, who speaks with something not far from contempt of his general performances, praises his Bayes in the 'Rehearsal.' In this, however, Foote, like Garrick, used to introduce allusions to contemporary events. This, of course, was quite in Foote's line. The words of Davies are : 'Public transactions, the flying follies of the day, debates of grave assemblies, absurdities of play-writers, politicians, and players, all came under his cognisance, and all felt the force of his wit; in short, he laid hold of everything and everybody that would furnish merriment for the evening. Foote could have written a new "Rehearsal" equal to the old' (Dram. Misc. iii. 304-5). What is this but an account of Foote's own entertainments? Such success as he obtained as an actor in early life was due to an imitation, conscientious at first, but subsequently degenerating into buffoonery, of Colley Gibber. Even as a mimic Johnson disputed his capacity, saying, 'His imitations are not like. ... He goes out of himself without going into any other people.' As a conversationalist and wit he stood alone. Many of the jokes fathered upon him by his biographer Cooke are to be found in early collections, such as Taylor the Water Poet's 'Wit and Mirth.' More anecdotes concerning Foote are to be found among theatrical and than are told of any half-dozen of his contemporaries or successors. The opinions expressed with regard to him by those who lived in his society or under his influence show a curious mixture of fear and admiration. Garrick was distinctly afraid of him, and, in spite of being his equal in wit and his superior in scholarship, sought at almost any cost to cajole him. His favourable utterances are accordingly to be taken with allowances. Johnson, who despised without fearing him, says : 'The first time I was in company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow I was resolved not to be pleased, and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him. But the dog was so very comical that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back upon my chair, and fairly laugh it out No, sir, he was irresistible' (Boswell, Johnson, ed. Hill, iii. 69, 70) . Fox told Rogers that, meeting Foote at Lord William Bentinck's, ie anticipated that the actor would prove a bore, and continued : 'We were mistaken ; whatever we talked about, whether fox-hunting, the turf, or any other subject, Foote instantly took the lead and delighted us all' (Rogers, Table Talk, ed. Dyce, pp. 101-2). Sir Joshua Reynolds is credited with having said that 'by Foote's buffoonery and broad-faced merriment, private friendship, public decency, and everything estimable among men were trod under foot' (Clark Russell, Representative Actors, p. 137). Tate Wilkinson declared that 'if any man possessed the gift of pleasing more than another Mr. Foote was the man,' and Colman the younger says Foote always made him laugh. Testimony of the kind may be indefinitely extended. He was short, fat, and flabby in appearance, his face intelligent, and his eye bright. He was a gourmand, an egotist, and a thoroughly selfish man, with a few redeeming traits, which the contrast with his general character gave almost the appearance of virtues. A portrait of Foote by Sir Joshua Reynolds is in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club. Another portrait by Zoffany in a scene from 'The Commissary' was given by the actor to Fitzherbert, and is now in the collection of the Earl of Carlisle. Zoffany also painted Foote as Sturgeon in the 'Mayor of Garratt,' and in other characters.

J. K.

FOOTE, SAMUEL (1720–1777), English dramatist and actor, was baptized at Truro on the 27th of January 1720. Of his attachment to his native Cornwall he gives no better proofs as an author than by making the country booby Timothy (in The Knights) sound the praises of that county and of its manly pastimes; but towards his family he showed a loyal and enduring affection. His father was a man of good family and position. His mother, Eleanor Goodere, whom he is said in person as well as in disposition to have strongly resembled, he liberally supported in the days of his prosperity, and after her death indignantly vindicated her character from the imputations recklessly cast upon it by the revengeful spite of the duchess of Kingston. About the time when Foote came of age, he inherited his first fortune through the murder of his uncle, Sir John Dinely Goodere, Bart., by his brother, Captain Samuel Goodere. Foote was educated at the collegiate school at Worcester, and at Worcester College, Oxford, distinguishing himself in both places by mimicry and audacious pleasantries of all kinds, and, although he left Oxford without taking his degree, acquiring a classical training which afterwards enabled him neatly to turn a classical quotation or allusion, and helped to give to his prose style a certain fluency and elegance.

Foote was “designed” for the law, but certainly not by nature. In his chambers at the Temple, and in the Grecian Coffee-house hard by, he learned to know something of lawyers if not of law, and was afterwards able to jest at the jargon and to mimic the mannerisms of the bar, and to satirize the Latitats of the other branch of the profession with particular success. The famous argument in Hobson v. Nobson, in The Lame Lovers, is almost as good of its kind as that in Bardell v. Pickwick. But a stronger attraction drew him to the Bedford Coffee-house in Covent Garden, and to the theatrical world of which it was the social centre. After he had run through two fortunes (the second of which he appears to have inherited at his father’s death), and had then passed through severe straits, he made his first appearance on the actual stage in 1744. It is said that he had married a young lady in Worcestershire; but the traces of his wife (he affirmed himself that he was married to his washer-woman) are mysterious, and probably apocryphal.

Foote’s first appearance as an actor was made little more than two years after that of Garrick, as to whose merits the critics, including Foote himself, were now fiercely at war. His own first venture, as Othello, was a failure; and though he was fairly successful in genteel comedy parts, and was, after a favourable reception at Dublin, enrolled as one of the regular company at Drury Lane in the winter of 1745–1746, he had not as yet made any palpable hit. Finding that his talent lay neither in tragedy nor in genteel comedy, he had begun to wonder “where the devil it did lie,” when his successful performance of the part of Bayes in The Rehearsal at last suggested to him the true outlet for his extraordinary gift of mimicry. Following the example of Garrick, he had introduced into this famous part imitations of actors, and had added a variety of other satirical comment in the way of “gag.” Engaging a small company of actors, he now boldly announced for the 22nd of April 1747, at the theatre in the Haymarket “gratis,” “a new entertainment called the Diversions of the Morning,” to which were to be added a farce adapted from Congreve, and an epilogue “spoken by the B-d-d Coffee-house.” Foote’s success in these Diversions obtained for him the name of “the English Aristophanes,” an absurd compliment, declined by Foote himself (see his letter in The Minor). The Diversions consisted of a series of imitations of actors and other well-known persons, whose various peculiarities of voice, gesture, manner or dress were brought directly before the spectators, while the epilogue introduced the wits of the Bedford engaged in ludicrous disputation, and specially “took off” an eminent physician (probably the munificent Sir William Browne, whom he afterwards caricatured in The Devil on Two Sticks), and a notorious quack oculist of the day. The actors ridiculed in this entertainment having at once procured the aid of the constables for preventing its repetition, Foote immediately advertised an invitation to his friends to drink a dish of tea with him at the Haymarket on the following day at noon—“and ’tis hoped there will be a great deal of comedy and some joyous spirits; he will endeavour to make the morning as diverting as possible. Tickets for this entertainment to be had at St George’s coffee-house, Temple-Bar, without which no person will be admitted. N.B.—Sir Dilbury Diddle will be there, and Lady Betty Frisk has absolutely promised.” The device succeeded to perfection; further resistance was abandoned as futile by the actors, whom Foote mercilessly ridiculed in the “instructions to his pupils” which the entertainer pretended to impart (typifying them under characters embodying their several chief peculiarities or defects—the massive and sonorous James Quin as a watchman, the shrill-voiced Lacy Ryan as a razor-grinder, the charming Peg Woffington, whose tones had an occasional squeak in them, as an orange-woman crying her wares and the bill of the play); and Mr Foote’s Chocolate, which was afterwards converted into an evening Tea, became an established favourite with the town.

In spite of this success, he seems to have contrived to spend a third fortune, and to have found it necessary to eke out his means by a speculation in small-beer, as is recorded in an amusing anecdote told of him by Johnson. But he could now command a considerable income; and when money came he seems to have freely expended it in both hospitality and charity. During his engagements at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane, of which he was joint-manager, and in professional trips to Scotland, and more especially to Ireland, he appeared both in comedies of other authors and more especially in his own. He played Hartop in his Knights (1749, printed 1754). Taste (1752), in which parts of the Diversions were incorporated, was followed by some eighteen pieces, the majority of which were produced at the Haymarket, the favourite home of Foote’s entertainments. In 1760 he succeeded in obtaining for this theatre a licence from the lord chamberlain, afterwards (in 1766) converted into a licence for summer performances for life. The entertainments were a succession of variations on the original idea of the Diversions and the Tea. Now, it was an Auction of Pictures (1748), of part of which an idea may be formed from the second act of the comedy Taste; now, a lecture on Orators (1754), suggested by some bombastic discourses given by Macklin in his old age at the Piazza coffee-house in Covent Garden, where Foote had amused the audience and confounded the speaker by interposing his humorous comments. The Orators is preserved in the shape of a hybrid piece, which begins with a mock lecture on the art of oratory and its representatives in England, and ends with a diverting scene of a pot-house forum debate, to which Holberg’s Politician-Tinman can hardly have been a stranger. At a later date (1773) a new device was introduced in a Puppet-show. The piece (unprinted) played in this by the puppets was called Piety in Pattens, and professed to show “by the moral how maidens of low degree might become rich from the mere effects of morality and virtue, and by the literature how thoughts of the most commonplace might be concealed under cover of words the most high flown.” In other words, it was an attack upon sentimental comedy, which was still not altogether extinguished. An attack upon Garrick in connexion with the notorious Shakespeare jubilee was finally left out from the Puppet-show, and thus was avoided a recurrence of the quarrel which many years before had led to an interchange of epistolary thrusts, and an imitation by Woodward of the imitative Foote.

On the whole, the relations between the two public favourites became very friendly, and on Foote’s part unmistakably affectionate, and they have not been always generously represented by Garrick’s biographers. A comparison between the two as actors is of course out of the question; but, though Foote was a buffoon, and his tongue a scurrilous tongue, there is no authentic ground for the suggestion that his character was one of malicious heartlessness. Of Samuel Johnson’s opinions of him many records remain in Boswell; when Johnson had at last found his way into Foote’s company (he afterwards found it to Foote’s own table) he was unable to “resist” him, and, on hearing of Foote’s death, he thought the career just closed worthy of a lasting biographical record.

Meanwhile most of poor Foote’s friendships in high life were probably those that are sworn across the table, and require “t’other bottle” to keep them up. It is not a pleasant picture—of Lord Mexborough and his royal guest the duke of York, and their companions, bantering Foote on his ignorance of horsemanship, and after he had weakly protested his skill, taking him out to hounds on a dangerous animal. He was thrown and broke his leg, which had to be amputated, the “patientee” (in which character he said he was now making his first appearance) consoling himself with the reflection that he would now be able to take off “old Faulkner” (a pompous Dublin alderman with a wooden leg, whom he had brought on the stage as Peter Paragraph in The Orators) “to the life.” The duke of York made him the best reparation in his power by promising him a life-patent for the theatre in the Haymarket (1766); and Foote not only resumed his profession, as if, like Sir Luke Limp, he considered the leg he had lost “a redundancy, a mere nothing at all,” but ingeniously turned his misfortune to account in two of his later pieces, The Lame Lover and The Devil on Two Sticks, while, with the true instinct of a public favourite, making constant reference to it in plays and prologues. Though the characters played by him in several of his later plays are comparatively short and light, he continued to retain his hold over the public, and about the year 1774 was beginning to think of withdrawing, at least for a time, to the continent, when he became involved in what proved a fatal personal quarrel. Neither in his entertainments nor in his comedies had he hitherto (except in Garrick’s case, and it is said in Johnson’s) put any visible restraint upon personal satire. The Author, in which, under the infinitely humorous character of Cadwallader, he had brought a Welsh gentleman of the name of Ap-Rice on the stage, had, indeed, been ultimately suppressed. But in general he had pursued his hazardous course, mercilessly exposing to public ridicule and contempt not only fribbles and pedants, quacks or supposed quacks in medicine (as in The Devil on Two Sticks), enthusiasts in religion, such as Dr Dodd (in The Cozeners) and George Whitefield and his connexion (in The Minor). He had not only dared the wrath of the whole Society of Antiquaries (in The Nabob), and been rewarded by the withdrawal, from among the pundits who rationalized away Whittington’s Cat, of Horace Walpole and other eminent members of the body, but had in the same play attacked a well-known representative of a very influential though detested element in English society,—the “Nabobs” themselves. But there was one species of cracked porcelain which he was not to try to hold up to contempt with impunity. The rumour of his intention to bring upon the stage, in the character of Lady Kitty Crocodile in The Trip to Calais, the notorious duchess of Kingston, whose trial for bigamy was then (1775) impending, roused his intended victim to the utmost fury; and the means and influence she had at her disposal enabled her, not only to prevail upon the lord chamberlain to prohibit the performance of the piece (in which there is no hint as to the charge of bigamy itself), but to hire agents to vilify Foote’s character in every way that hatred and malice could suggest. After he had withdrawn the piece, and letters had been exchanged between the duchess and him equally characteristic of their respective writers, Foote took his revenge upon the chief of the duchess’s instruments, a “Reverend Doctor” Jackson, who belonged to the “reptile” society of the journalists of the day, so admirably satirized by Foote in his comedy of The Bankrupt. This man he gibbeted in the character of Viper in The Capuchin, under which name the altered Trip to Calais was performed in 1776. But the resources of his enemies were not yet at an end; and a discharged servant of Foote’s was suborned by Jackson to bring a charge of assault and apply for a warrant against him. Though the attempt utterly broke down, and Foote’s character was thus completely cleared, his health and spirits had given way in the struggle—as to which, though he seems to have had the firm support of the better part of the public, including such men as Burke and Reynolds, the very audiences of his own theatre had been, or had seemed to be, divided in opinion. He thus resolved to withdraw, at least for a time, from the effects of the storm, let his theatre to Colman, and after making his last appearance there in May 1777, set forth in October on a journey to France. But at Dover he fell sick on the day after his arrival there, and after a few hours died (October 21st). His epitaph in St Mary’s church at Dover (written by his faithful treasurer William Jewell) records that he had a hand “open as day for melting charity.” His resting-place in Westminster Abbey is without any memorial.

Foote’s chief power as an actor lay in his extraordinary gift of mimicry, which extended to the mental and moral, as well as the mere outward and physical peculiarities of the personages whose likeness he assumed. He must have possessed a wonderful flexibility of voice, though his tones are said to have been harsh when his voice was not disguised, and an incomparable readiness for rapidly assuming characters, both in his entertainments and in his comedies, where he occasionally “doubled” parts. The excellent “patter” of some of his plays, such as The Liar and The Cozeners, must have greatly depended for its effect upon rapidity of delivery. In person he was rather short and stout, and coarse-featured; but his overflowing humour is said to have found full expression in the irresistible sparkle of his eyes.

As a dramatic author he can only be assigned a subordinate rank. He regarded comedy as “an exact representation of the peculiar manners of that people among whom it happens to be performed; a faithful imitation of singular absurdities, particular follies, which are openly produced, as criminals are publicly punished, for the correction of individuals and as an example to the whole community.” This he regarded as the utile, or useful purpose, of comedy; the dulce he conceived to be “the fable, the construction, machinery, conduct, plot, and incidents of the piece.” For part at least of this view (advanced by him in the spirited and scholarly “Letter” in which he replied, “to the Reverend Author of the ‘Remarks, Critical and Christian,’ on The Minor”), he rather loftily appealed to classical authority. But he overlooked the indispensableness of the dulce to the comic drama under its primary aspect as a species of art. His comic genius was particularly happy in discovering and reproducing characters deserving of ridicule; and the fact that he not only took them from real life, but closely modelled them on well-known living men and women, was not in himself an artistic sin. Nor indeed was the novelty of this process absolute, though probably no other comic dramatist has ever gone so far in this course, or has pursued it so persistently. The public delighted in his “d——d fine originals,” because it recognized them as copies; and he was himself proud that he had taken them from real persons, instead of their being “vamped from antiquated plays, pilfered from the French farces, or the baseless beings of the poet’s brain.” But the real excellence of many of Foote’s comic characters lies in the fact that, besides being incomparably ludicrous types of manners, they remain admirable comic types of general human nature. Sir Gregory Gazette, and his imbecile appetite for news; Lady Pentweazel, and her preposterous vanity in her superannuated charms; Mr Cadwallader, and his view of the advantages of public schools (where children may “make acquaintances that may hereafter be useful to them; for between you and I, as to what they learn there, does not signify twopence”); Major Sturgeon and Jerry Sneak; Sir Thomas Lofty, Sir Luke Limp, Mrs Mechlin, and a score or two of other characters, are excellent comic figures in themselves, whatever their origin; and many of the vices and weaknesses exposed by Foote’s vigorous satire will remain the perennial subject of comic treatment so long as a stage exists. The real defect of his plays lies in the abnormal weakness of their construction, in the absolute contempt which the great majority of them show for the invention or conduct of a plot, and in the unwarrantable subordination of the interest of the action to the exhibition of particular characters. His characters are ready-made, and the action is only incidental to them. With the exception of The Liar (which Foote pretended to have taken from Lope de Vega, but which was really founded on Steele’s adaptation of Corneille’s Le Menteur), and perhaps of The Bankrupt, there is hardly one of Foote’s “comedies” in which the conception and conduct of the action rise above the exigencies of the merest farce. Not that sentimental scenes and even sentimental characters are wanting, but these familiar ingredients are as incapable of exciting real interest as an ordinary farcical action is in itself unable to produce more than transitory amusement. In his earlier plays Foote constantly resorts to the most hackneyed device of farce—a disguise. Of course Foote must have been well aware of the shortcomings of his rapidly manufactured productions; he knew that if he might sneer at “genteel comedy” as suited to the dramatists of the servants’ hall, and pronounce the arts of the drama at the great houses to be “directed by the genius of insipidity,” he, like the little theatre where he held sway, was looked upon as “an eccentric, a mere summer fly.”

At the same time, he was inexhaustible in the devising of comic scenes of genuine farce. An oration of “old masters,” an election of a suburban mayor, an examination at the College of Physicians, a newspaper conclave where paragraphs are concocted and reputations massacred—all these and other equally happy situations are brought before the mere reader with unfailing vividness. And everywhere the comic dialogue is instinct with spirit and vigour, and the comic characters are true to themselves with a buoyancy which at once raises them above the level of mere theatrical conventionalism. Foote professed to despise the mere caricaturing of national peculiarities as such, and generally used dialect as a mere additional colouring; he was, however, too wide awake to the demands of his public not to treat France and Frenchmen as fair game, and coarsely to appeal to national prejudice. His satire against those everlasting victims of English comedy and farce, the Englishman in Paris and the Englishman returned from Paris, was doubtless well warranted; while at the same time he made fun of the fact that Englishmen are nowhere more addicted to the society of their countrymen than abroad. In general, the purposes of Foote’s social satire are excellent, and the abuses against which it is directed are those which it required courage to attack. The tone of his morality is healthy, and his language, though not aiming at refinement, is remarkably free from intentional grossness. He made occasional mistakes; but he was on the right side in the warfare against the pretentiousness of Cant and the effrontery of Vice, the two master evils of the age and the society in which he lived.

The following is a list of Foote’s farces or “comedies” as he calls them, mostly in three, some in two acts, which remain in print. The date of production, and the character originally performed by Foote, are added to the title of each:

The Knights (1748: Hartop, who assumes the character of Sir Penurious Trifle); Taste (1752), in which part of the Diversions is incorporated; The Englishman in Paris (1753: Young Buck); The Englishman returned from Paris (1756: Sir Charles Buck); The Author (1757: Cadwallader); The Minor (1760: Smirk and Mrs Cole); The Liar (1762); The Orators (1762: Lecturer); The Mayor of Garratt (1763: Major Sturgeon and Matthew Mug); The Patron (1764: Sir Thomas Lofty and Sir Peter Peppercorn); The Commissary (1765: Mr Zac. Fungus); The Devil upon Two Sticks (1768: Devil,—alias Dr Hercules Hellebore); The Lame Lover (1770: Sir Luke Limp); The Maid of Bath (1771: Mr Flint); The Nabob (1772: Sir Matthew Mite); The Bankrupt (1773: Sir Robert Riscounter); The Cozeners (1774: Mr Aircastle); The Capuchin, a second version of The Trip to Calais, forbidden by the censor (1776: O’Donovan). His dramatic works were collected in 1763–1768.