University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The desire for presence: developments in theatrical biography during the long Eighteenth Century

(USC Thesis Other)

The desire for presence: developments in theatrical biography during the long Eighteenth Century

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

THE DESIRE FOR PRESENCE:
DEVELOPMENTS IN THEATRICAL BIOGRAPHY
DURING THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

by
Amanda Weldy Boyd

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)

August 2015

Weldy Boyd ii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements iii
Abstract vi
Introduction: Competition and Legitimacy 1
Colley Cibber’s Complaint as Generic Demand
Theatrical Biography as a Legitimate Concern
Chapter Outline
Postscript: Forestalling Objections about the Decidedly Masculine Face of the Biographer

Chapter One: “Davies’ Name…In Fame’s Brightest Page Shall on Garrick Attend”:
From Anonymous to Personalized Participation in the Life of David Garrick 16
I. Johnson and Davies
II. The Earlier Biographies of Garrick
III. The Main Attraction: Davies’ Life of Garrick (1780)
IV. Editorial and Readerly Interventions
V. Davies as an Enduring Figure of Theatrical Biography

Chapter Two: His Work, My Words: Anxiety and Competition in the Posthumous
Lives of Charles Macklin, Comedian 98
I. Establishing Expectations: The Biographer as Artist
II. Rising to the Biographical Occasion
III. First Fruits: Congreve’s Life of Macklin (1798)
IV. Lines of Competition Embellished: Kirkman’s Life of Macklin (1799)
V. An Impressionistic Life: Cooke’s “New Species” of Biography (1804)
VI. Macklin, Interrupted: Multiple Threats of Displacement
VII. Extending the Life: J.J. Cossart and the Act of Annotating

Chapter Three: Epistolary Resurrections: James Boaden and the Rise of the
Professional Thespian Biographer 164
I. James Boaden as “Goodman Delver”
II. Professional Approaches: Privileging Aural/Textual & Documented Sources
III. Letters and Collected Personal Archives
IV. Time’s Effects: Boaden between Davies and Campbell
V. James and John Boaden, Father and Son, Clash over Sister Arts

Epilogue: The Limits of Materially Bound Permanence 238
Bibliography 244

Weldy Boyd iii

Acknowledgements
Like almost any project worth doing, a dissertation is a group undertaking. It is, after all,
a training tool, designed to acclimate beginning scholars to the discipline required when
undertaking multi-year research projects. At the same time, it is an opportunity to learn how to
call on a vast network of resources, and to realize that the myth of the solitary scholar in an ivory
tower is just that—a myth. John Donne famously said, “No man is an island,” and the Beatles’
catchy tune “I get by with a little help from my friends” remains popular for its truth. When
taking on a dissertation project, I have found that there are plenty of friends willing to lend a
hand, and I wish to thank a number of them by name.
First, and most obviously, I salute my mentor, Emily Anderson, who has been a constant
model of academic rigor and intellectual joy. Emily first introduced me to the idea that
“Research is me-search,” which is true; Emily bears the palm for fantastic advice that has proved
accurate time and again. Thank you for making this dissertation process an exciting opportunity
for discovery even as I feel my research and writing skills being stretched under your purposeful
tutelage. I wish also to thank Joseph Dane for his clear-eyed insight, wisecracks, and wisdom, as
well as Leo Braudy, Heather James, and Thomas Habinek, all of whom have provided helpful
encouragement and criticism as part of my dissertation committee. My research skills have
greatly benefitted from courses with Bruce Smith, Rebecca Lemon, Anthony Kemp, and David
Román. My sincere appreciation goes to Flora Ruiz, who has fielded many of my procedural
questions, and to Jack Blum at the Writing Program for his mentorship and kindness.
Additionally, I wish to thank the English Department, which has funded research projects at the
Folger and at the Houghton, as well as numerous conference presentations.
Weldy Boyd iv

The Graduate School has also been a great network of support, providing two years of the
Provost’s Fellowship, as well as an invaluable professionalization certificate program run by
Jesse Watson at the Scholarly & Professional Development Institute. I wish also to thank Karin
Huebner at the USC Academy for Polymathic Study for her encouragement of interdisciplinary
approaches, and my fellow graduate students in the Graduate Association for Early Modern
Studies. I’d like to thank the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute for supporting my
research through an EMSI summer fellowship. I wish to thank my fellow graduate students in the
English department, especially Amanda Bloom, whose camaraderie has been a great source of
comfort and enjoyment.
I have a great debt to a number of excellent librarians at USC and the Huntington, the
Garrick Club, and the Folger, as well as numerous other library staff who have graciously given
their time and expertise to answer questions and track down material for this project.
Among my many debts, I would like also to acknowledge Helen Deutsch of UCLA, who
first introduced me to the joys of archival research when I was an undergraduate. I hope that you
will be pleased to see your influence in this work. I also wish to thank Christopher Baswell and
Karen Cunningham. I note my deep gratitude to Kendyl Palmer as a fellow early modernist and
treasured colleague, and to John Kaucher and Andrew Post for lending my project willing ears
and eyes. This list wouldn’t be complete without the nine ladies with whom I studied abroad in
London, whose witty commentary and continual support is cause for a toast.
For the past six years, my friends at First Presbyterian Church of Orange have cheered
me on, supporting me with a scholarship and continual encouragement. My thanks also to the
members of the Church of the Valley, as well as early teachers who helped me along the way,
especially Stephen Collins, Patrick Schlosser, Janice Dodge, Wendy Watt, Ann Hampton, and
Weldy Boyd v

Brenda Martin. Thanks also to Cora Alley, who always finds joy and meaning in scholarship and
teaching.
To Beth Grimm, fellow bibliophile, whose phone calls, encouragement, and perspective
always came at the right time, as it has for over two decades—it’s not everyone who gets to
enjoy such a friend. Also to Jennifer Carrillo, who has been a source of inspiration, motivation,
and character growth for many years, and to Shelby, whose constant, calming presence has made
the isolation of research less daunting.
To my family, and especially my parents, Jonathan and Lisa, for years and years of
encouraging me to ask questions, find answers, and pursue my interests, my gratitude abounds.
Finally, I thank Jonathan Boyd, my husband, for the immense grace and good humor by
which he has supported me every day of this dissertation, and whose example of industry,
inquiry, and creativity I hope to pay tribute to with this project.

Weldy Boyd vi

Abstract:
“The Desire for Presence:
Developments in Theatrical Biography during the Long Eighteenth Century”

Amanda Weldy Boyd
2015

This is a project about eighteenth-century biography’s role in revising the eighteenth-
century concept of competition as relevant to theatrical biographers, who come to view their
work as participating in the creation of art rather than simply recording art that already happened.
“The Desire for Presence: Developments in Theatrical Biography during the Long Eighteenth
Century” suggests a visible— but not impermeable— teleology from Thomas Davies as the first
significant biographer to throw off the shadows of anonymity and weld his own image to his
subject, David Garrick (Chapter One), to three biographers of Macklin dueling amongst
themselves for the right to tell Macklin’s story in the post-Davies competitive market (Chapter
Two), to the serial biographer James Boaden’s attempts to build a professional reputation for
himself as a biographer and prominent participatory character in the multiple Lives he tells
(Chapter Three). In each instance of producing a theatrical biography, the author is confronted
not only with his duty to represent the actor, but the need to do so in an original, compelling
manner that sets his account apart from other contenders and guarantees the permanency of his
account as a treasured artifact of the stage rather than a disposable commodity. The willful
encouragement of viewing literary materiality as an antidote to ephemeral stage-business leads in
turn to the absorption of prior biographical works and letters by authors, and reverberates in their
Weldy Boyd vii

readers’ quests to augment their copies of theatrical biographies through adding playbills,
marginal notes, etchings, paintings, newspaper clippings, and even funerary souvenirs that not
only testified to their interest in the stage, but secured their existence as well by evidence of
participation. Thus, the author at once guaranteed the thespian’s legacy would live on while
hitching his own likelihood of being remembered to the actor. The audience followed suit by
adding their own personal touches, forming a palimpsest of participants eager to secure a small
chunk of personal immortality.
This project provides an introduction to theatrical biography as an immensely popular
genre in the eighteenth century that deserves more scholarly attention. Currently, theatrical
biography is usually overlooked or encountered solely in excerpts offered to advance individual
research goals; the texts are perceived as repositories of facts or the odd opinion, more akin to a
reference work than anything innately artistic. My contribution is to read these biographies in
context, exploring their participation in a developing poetics of a new artistic subgenre, from the
content of the works and the concerns of its authors to the responses of its audience. Ultimately,
this dissertation argues that the anxieties of temporality faced by theatrical performers are
uniquely suited to be enhanced by biography, enabling the genre of theatrical biography to add
multiple layers to our understanding of dynamic performance through the echoes between actor
and biographer in the shared quest to freeze a particular moment in time as a means of extending
one’s reputation. The conscious resonance between actor and author, as claimed by the
biographer, ultimately suggests the artistic stakes of the genre: biography is an art, and
biographers are artists.
Weldy Boyd 1

Introduction: Competition and Legitimacy

Colley Cibber’s Complaint as Generic Demand
In 1735, Charles Macklin, a comedian, put out another actor’s eye with a cane in the
middle of the green room at Drury Lane, after he claimed that the lesser actor had stolen his prop
wig. The offending actor, Thomas Hallam, died shortly thereafter, much regretted by Macklin.
Incredibly, Macklin recovered from this scandal and enjoyed a lengthy career delighting the
British public. Possibly more incredible was the apocryphal claim that many potential witnesses
were unable to supply testimony about the skirmish because they had been too engrossed in
reading a draft of a riveting autobiography by a fellow actor, Colley Cibber (Kelly 91). Thus,
legend has it that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned, and actors read Cibber’s
autobiography while Macklin lay in the center of the green room, weeping over the broken body
of young Hallam.
Before the story goes too much further, it seems important to include that the source of
the above story was none other than Colley Cibber himself, who, along with his duties as actor,
stage manager, playwright, and poet laureate, also appeared to be his own best publicist. Yet the
popularity of Cibber’s Apology (published in 1740) was—and is—undeniable, having
outstripped all other accomplishments of a remarkably accomplished man. The anecdote
suggests the novelty of Cibber’s book: while small attempts at theatrical biography had existed in
the earlier half of the century, as Cheryl Wanko has showed in Roles of Authority: Thespian
Biography and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2003), those earliest biographies, dating
from the Life of Coppinger in 1695, were unremarkable from a technical standpoint, generally
pandering to the perception of actors as criminals or providing unsophisticated sketches of their
Weldy Boyd 2

subject rather than a sustained, book-length biography. Although it was technically an
autobiography rather than a biography, Cibber’s book was revolutionary within the nascent
genre, particularly because Cibber spent so much of the Apology functioning as a biographer of
other actors in order to fulfill his stated desire of providing, concurrently, a history of the stage
from the Restoration through 1740. As the bellwether of this new genre, Cibber attempted to
describe both the need for, and the limitations of, the biographical project as specifically applied
to thespian subjects:
Pity it is, that the momentary beauties flowing from an harmonious elocution cannot, like
those of poetry, be their own record; that the animated graces of the player can live no
longer than the instant breath and motion that represent them; or, at the least, can but
faintly glimmer through the memory and imperfect attestation of a few surviving
spectators. (60)
Evidently the impulse for those “surviving spectators” to commemorate, critique, and compile
was stronger than the fear of confronting the ephemera of performance.
1
Cibber’s concerns for
the obstacles represented in general by the impermanence of the theatre, and more specifically by
theatrical biography itself, were compounded as the genre matured.
2

Despite Cibber’s (dubiously sincere) call for approaching theatrical memoir with a sense
of futility, and its popularity with biographers and critics thereafter, I contend that shared
concerns about time can be captured by thespian biographies, both in terms of what the actor is
described as doing and what the biographer does when describing it. Biographers are subject to
concerns about temporality and non-permanence that might otherwise appear to be solved by the

1
Sarah Siddons’ second biographer, Thomas Campbell, writing in 1834, noted with sadness, “It is the misfortune of
histrionic genius, that the most vivid portraits of it convey but vague conceptions of its excellence…” (52).
2
Cibber’s implied requirement of first-hand spectatorship was not always feasible in situations where biographers of
actors who were active in the late eighteenth century felt compelled to offer a history of the stage from the
Restoration to the end of their subject’s life, thus covering a period of well over one hundred years.
Weldy Boyd 3

existence of a tangible textual artifact in contrast to a fleeting performance on stage. In other
words, it seems that the theatrical biographer, confronted with the difficult task of preserving a
thespian, became exquisitely aware of his own ephemeral relation to time, and sought the
assurance of his own reputation or legacy through his role as biographer.
Marvin Carlson, in The Haunted Stage (2001), explains that all performers must confront
the “ghosts” (or memories held by the audience and the performer himself) of the previous
persons who have played a role, of the previous roles the particular actor has assayed, and of
other conditions which overlap with prior performer or spectator memory (8). He notes that all
theatre is thus retrospective, because the audience evaluates the current performance based on
past experiences. By amplifying and recontextualizing the temporal concerns of actors, the act of
biographical writing becomes a performance more closely allied with theatre itself than with
other types of writing or representation. Because theatrical biographers, in the process of
completing their projects, are attuned to the actors’ temporal challenges as well as their own in
trying to contain the actor, the biography thus preserves two layers of artistic anxiety. Moreover,
the specific genre of theatrical biography constitutes a generally untapped resource for evaluating
our understanding of dynamic performance and the extent to which an artist might be able to
freeze a particular moment in time. These time-related concerns shared by actors and their
biographers manifest themselves in biography primarily through anxieties about originality and
competition: the biographer recognizes the need to be perceived as an artist, and with that, the
threat posed by other practitioners to an individual’s relevancy and artistic legacy.

Weldy Boyd 4

Theatrical Biography as a Legitimate Concern
A move to biography, and theatrical biography in particular, may seem peculiar in a way
that the decision to focus my study in the eighteenth century does not. Is theatrical biography
subject to a competitive spirit that is not encountered in literary biography or in fiction writing?
Many scholars have suggested that the competitive basis of originality can be seen in most
artistic genres, but I believe that the specific sub-genre of theatrical biography treats this
conceptual quandary in a special way, both by virtue of its historical conditions and its generic
goals. Generally, the novel would seem to be a good parallel for questions of originality, not the
least because of the literal demand for something new implied by the generic term “novel.”
However, the relationship of truth to the novel has been explored exhaustively by a number of
talented scholars, and the novel’s inclusion within the realm of creative art is certain. In contrast,
theatrical biography, which originated a few decades prior to the novel (if we grant the novel a
starting time in the 1740s) enjoys a very constricted popularity among present-day scholars, and
is a better means of elucidating the temporal aspects undergirding artistic competition.
My project takes its roots from my own challenges in finding criticism that dealt with
biography outside of “literary biography,” or the study of famous authors. In the rare instances
that the eighteenth-century biographer is afforded any attention as author of the work, the
investigation is either fleeting or focused on Boswell (as, for example, Adam Sisman’s relatively
recent 2000 book Boswell’s Presumptuous Task and John B. Radner’s 2013 Johnson and
Boswell: both texts have been described as biographies of Samuel Johnson’s biography—or more
appropriately, of Boswell’s art). A survey of the field clearly indicates that biographical studies
hold a tremendous bias towards literary biography, and within that, towards more modern
biographers. Nonetheless, even very modern literary biography cannot escape the suspicion of
Weldy Boyd 5

generic illegitimacy in the realm of original artistry. In 2000, critic Tom Paulin attacked
biographer Richard Holmes’ Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer, asking: “Is the
biographer an artist who can and should exist on equal terms with the dramatist, fiction writer
and poet? The short and robust answer is ‘certainly not’” (Paulin). Currently, many biographies
are treated as permanent (if frequently flawed) vessels conveying important knowledge about
their subjects rather than dynamic texts worthy of aesthetic study. Jean Marc Blanchard speaks to
this problem by assuming in his criticism that “autobiography is a literary genre, whereas
biography is not” (Marcus 243). Laura Marcus, in her text Auto/Biographical Discourses (1994),
comments on biography’s strange position between history and literature,
3
noting that while
autobiography is approached as a literary genre, biography “remains very largely untheorized”
(255). This division calls to attention the interplay between originality and truth, wherein
autobiography is seen as "original" because of its remarkable authenticity (even if it is not always
particularly authoritative regarding the truth). In fact, since a remarkable vogue for
autobiography in the 1970s, that genre has enjoyed a great deal of scholarly attention, to the
point that the majority of theoretical books preferentially focus on the author who writes of
herself rather than another.
My task, then, is at least partially attempting to examine theatrical biography as a proper
scholarly concern, to supplement the myriad accounts of autobiography and literary biography.
In attempting to account for how the theatrical biographer succeeds and fails at capturing his
subject, I hope to reconsider the biographer’s potential role as artist rather than rote recorder. In
effect, my project’s theoretical makeup combines Stillinger’s 1991 attack on the myth of the
Romantic author with Leon Edel’s call in his “Biography: A Manifesto” (1978), which claims a

3
James L. Clifford, author of Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism, 1560-1690 (1962) speculates that eighteenth-
century readers would have perceived biography as a “technique” of historical writing. He writes that biography was
contemplated as potentially a scientific genre, but “not widely recognized as a literary genre” (76).
Weldy Boyd 6

spot for the biographer as an artist whose self is recorded within his work. Edel’s work is hardly
done: in 2012, biographer Stacy Schiff wrote an article entitled “The Dual Lives of the
Biographer” in which she expressed the difficulty of comprehending the unstructured present
events in her own life while simultaneously attempting to recreate a seamless narrative of
another’s (finished) lived experience. That the biographer uses himself to fill in gaps in the
subject’s life, factual or interpretative, is understood: how the biographer might resonate through
the absent subject, rather than within pockets of the subject’s absence, is less considered.
Adding to Stillinger’s and Bate’s accounts of authorship in relation to precedent, and
pursuing Marvin Carlson’s theory of theatrical ghosting, Joseph Roach discusses the public
intimacy that arises with the concept of celebrity, including “the general circulation of their
images in the absence of their persons… a mental mélange of half-remembered public
appearances, painted or graphic portraits and bits of anecdotal gossip” (Actresses 67).
4
He
equates the acting process itself with the fans’ obsessive attempts to claim access to the
entertainer through material trappings vaguely associated with the artist: acting itself is an
endless process of auditioning surrogates for an inaccessible original (the character as written,
before the first interpretation in live performance). Both Roach and Carlson, by virtue of their
focus on performance studies, are highly attuned to the temporality of criticism and standards: in
assessing trends of “natural” acting through several decades of acting theory, Carlson notes a
repetitive practice wherein “the father’s ghost is passed over but only to summon the ghost of the
grandfather” (Haunted Stage 83). Reviving an old precedent can be an effective technique, as a

4
In Multiple Authorship and the Myth of the Solitary Genius (1991), Stillinger argues that no work is produced
without reference to earlier works and the participation of numerous influences; Bate, a biographer as well as a
scholar, argues in The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (1970) that the period from the Restoration to the
1830s—the “long eighteenth century,” was the first period to have enough recent literature (from the Renaissance,
initially) to feel a strong sense of competition with more “contemporary” or accessible authors (rather than solely
contending with the distant precedent of Greek and Roman literature). See also Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of
Influence (1973) for more about the relationship between proximity and competition.
Weldy Boyd 7

new performer can do something that has already been done— but has not been seen by the
present audience— under the guise of novelty.
Theatrical biography often sought novelty (and, ironically, distinction) from its
association with other forms of art, especially the novel and painting. The novel as a genre
achieves its ascendancy during the lifetime of my project (which spans from 1740-1833,
factoring in Cibber’s Apology and the approximate beginning of David Garrick and Charles
Macklin’s mainstream London careers). Both genres undergo a metaphorical bildungsroman
during the same period; the novel is heavily invested in mock-biography. Moreover, both genres
become interested in material artifacts, taking shape in the novel as epistolary correspondence,
moving through theatrical biography as sources of concrete proof, and transcending the bounds
of the book into material collections of letters and artifacts by fans intent on “expanding” the
reach or comprehensiveness of their copy of a favorite thespian biography.
Just as novels and theatrical biography seem to have a symbiotic relationship (see
especially Chapter One and Chapter Two of the present work), painting emerges as a key
facilitator and competitor to theatrical biography’s project of preserving the actor’s memory. The
relationship between the two genres was not just theoretical, but formal, based upon vocabulary.
Shearer West argues that the change in acting styles and acting expectations (a circuitous
relationship) was greatly affected by the establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768
and the subsequent development of a critical vocabulary by which to evaluate painting. This
vocabulary, and that of sculpture, was borrowed by those who wished to critique acting but
lacked field-specific terminology (Image 149). West’s argument extends to the possibility that
acting styles shifted partially because of the remodeling of the theatres during Kemble’s tenure (a
larger space meant more emphasis on sound rather than facial expression or gesture), but also
Weldy Boyd 8

because periodicals liked to spark competition between actors who might otherwise assay a role
very similarly, especially as a critical vocabulary for critiquing acting began to coalesce. It would
stand to reason, by extension, that turn-of-the-century biographers seem to get more competitive
as their subjects, the actors, sought innovation in their field, and as painters encroached ever
closer on biographical prerogative.
5
The fraught but often productive relationship between the
two genres will be touched on in Chapter One and explored at length in Chapter Three.
A third, and particularly advantageous, partnership arises between theatrical biography
and periodicals. Stuart Sherman, whose work on newspapers and their effects on eighteenth-
century perceptions of time, singles out periodicals as the place “where diurnality and
immortality converge” (“Garrick among Media” 971). Theatrical biography often started as
germs in newspapers, and returned to circulation as bite-sized reductions of a full-length work. It
is not coincidental that a surge in theatrical biography occurs in the 1780s, a time when the
newspaper obituary becomes a fad; conveniently, 1779 marked the year of David Garrick’s
death. He had carefully curated his own image in newspapers and other media, and the success of
his campaign for immortality became apparent. Sherman sees in the efforts of Garrick and other
thespians a quest to avoid obsolescence: “At stake is the question not only of what press and
player might do for each other tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow but also of whether the
not-altogether-poor player’s reputation might outlast, in any way and to any extent, his corporeal
hour upon the stage” (971). With the newspaper as Garrick’s perpetual motion machine, print
appears to have achieved a reputation as a safeguard of reputation, a testimony of having existed
and created art. Furthermore, while newspaper was often thrown away, and easily replaced (an

5
In her introduction to The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons (2011), Gill Perry convincingly argues that
painting undergirded theatrical biography directly, as in instances where Thomas Davies’s analysis of an actor’s
onstage antics was informed by an existing painting of a thespian; the biographer (possibly unwittingly) described
the scene as the painting depicted it rather than from his own memory. This upends the earlier assumption that a
painting could serve as an legitimate source corroborating what Davies described as being witnessed firsthand.
Weldy Boyd 9

asset for keeping new information circulating about an actor), full-length theatrical biography
increasingly became crafted and marketed as a collectible, permanent good, a fixed monument to
the actor.
The final sections of Chapters One and Two investigate readers’ responses to a particular
thespian biography as manifest in their participation in the work through annotations, extra-
illustrations, or scrapbooking. Scrapbooking, the most visually stunning and strange of the
textual modifications under consideration, entails the cutting and pasting of miscellanea, often
including playbills, signatures, portraits, and of course newspaper articles and cartoons, the latter
as a further indication of theatrical biography’s interrelation to newspapers. Extra-illustrating, an
often cleaner and more dignified operation, involves pasting pictures into a copy of a theatrical
biography (or other work), frequently at an interval in which the subject of the illustration is
directly discussed in the text. Finally, annotating is the act of making handwritten notes in the
margins of the text, adding a running or occasional commentary to supplement the text. Each of
these types of intervention allows a fuller or more focused composite to emerge, catered to this
newest “artist’s” interests. I argue that while these types of interchanges obviously indicate
investment with the text, they also mark the text as a permanent locus in which one could store
objects of value, a repository intended to be preserved (and, as we will see, in some cases
bequeathed to family members as part of a material legacy). This revision changes, or perhaps
opens up, the role of the biographer. Ultimately, I see the reader taking up the gauntlet thrown
down by the biographer: the reader sees the biographer achieve some fame in his role as recorder
and seizes some of that cultural authority and transcendent relevance for himself in becoming,
through unauthorized but often passively encouraged collaboration, a co-biographer.

Weldy Boyd 10

Chapter Outline
My first chapter centers on Thomas Davies as the first biographer to fully capitalize on
the precedent that Colley Cibber set in 1740 with his Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber.
Cibber’s precedents were both technical and theoretical: a theatrical Life should incorporate a
history of the stage, including miniaturized biographies of other actors and actresses, and—as
mentioned at the beginning of this introduction—it should seek to preserve the actor onstage.
The most far-reaching example set by Cibber was the potential to immortalize oneself through
theatrical biography. Of course, Cibber’s work was autobiography, and he was, by all
contemporary appearances, already assured a place in the historical record through his roles as
Poet Laureate, character actor (most famous for embodying a character called “Lord
Foppington”), and playwright before he took up the autobiographical pen.
6

Thomas Davies is the first successful theatrical biographer (rather than autobiographer) to
write under his own name and achieve fame on the basis of his biography, establishing the idea
that a biographer could wed his own fortune to his subject’s not just in the immediate realm of
money, but beyond his own lifetime. Davies was aided in this task by virtue of his subject, David
Garrick, who was almost universally heralded as the most popular and technically skilled actor
of the century, and also immensely invested in propelling his own reputation beyond his
immediate lifetime. It was novel to have the biographer considered as his subject’s equal—after
all, Davies preceded Boswell by thirteen years (and even Boswell’s reputation as Johnson’s
equal was not a contemporary phenomenon). My chapter thus investigates what set Davies apart
from other biographical attempts, showing the state of biographical accounts of Garrick prior to
Davies’ arrival, the contents of Davies’ account, contemporary reviews, and subsequent attempts

6
Cibber’s other main—or at this historical juncture, primary— source of fame is as the titular dunce in Pope’s
Dunciad: Cibber, as “Laureat,” displaced Lewis Theobald, “Tibbald,” in 1742, just two years after the Apology.
Weldy Boyd 11

by other authors either to unseat or amplify Davies’ fame. In other words, Davies, through the
Life of Garrick, sets up a model for claiming the right to another man’s story that subsequent
biographers take advantage of in forming their own conception of a biographer’s work and due.
The second chapter focuses on a unique turn of the century boom of biographies about
Charles Macklin, a comedian who arrived at the main London scene around the time of Garrick’s
first prominence, but who had been Garrick’s tutor and the rightful originator of the natural
school of acting often credited to Garrick. Macklin’s death in 1797 precipitated three biographies
in short succession: Francis Congreve’s (1798), James Kirkman’s (1799), and William Cooke’s
(1804). Congreve’s relatively slender biography nonetheless reveals an immoderate assessment
of the biographer’s own achievement; inspired by Cibber and Davies’s success in life-writing,
Kirkman and Cooke are involved in a competitive desire to claim the role of Macklin’s
biographer, evidently perceived as a singular spot. Appropriately central to the focus of this
dissertation, this middle chapter develops my contention that the specific task of a theatrical
biographer—preserving an actor’s ephemeral presence—heightens the biographer’s awareness of
his own mortality, especially as he is called to re-enact the thespian’s performance as a surrogate
indicating that absent presence. I also assess the extent to which Cibber’s task can actually be
accomplished, both in terms of practical limitations of the medium available to the biographer,
and how acting would have been assessed at the time of the biographers’ accounts. Certain
aspects of how eighteenth-century acting was evaluated lend themselves to being crystallized in
brief but specific descriptions that encouraged comparison between actors. The acting styles
indicative of success, while fluctuating, have in common several characteristics that allow
biography to be a suitable vessel for transmitting the essences of theatrical performance so
cherished by then-contemporary audiences. Finally, I investigate the ways in which these
Weldy Boyd 12

biographers modeled their works on other genres, including the novel and the newspaper, raising
further nodes of competition as biographers seek to legitimize the genre as a whole while
securing for himself the artistic laurels—and a share of Macklin’s immortality— by most
appropriately performing Macklin within the best version of the comedian’s story.
The final chapter in my project centers on James Boaden, as probably the most well-
known and prolific of early nineteenth-century theatrical biographers working on long-
eighteenth-century subjects. His subjects include John Philip Kemble (1825), Sarah Siddons
(1827), Dorothy Jordan (1831), and Elizabeth Inchbald (1833), alongside a prefatory biography
of David Garrick accompanying Boaden’s edited edition of the actor’s collected correspondence
(published from 1831-1832). Boaden was a playwright and critic, utterly preoccupied with
mortality, and thus a likely candidate to take up Cibber’s call and become, as Boaden refers to
himself, “Goodman Delver,” digging up and preserving memories of dead thespians. Boaden’s
relevance is not simply in his unprecedented fecundity, but in the ability to track the changes in
his approach over five biographies spanning almost a decade. Within that time period, his
subjects’ personal correspondence becomes more prominently featured, creating two distinct
phases in his biographical output and forcing Boaden to reflect—often quite self-consciously—
on the balance between this increase in material archive and his role as biographer. I argue that
Boaden’s early and late biographical periods not only have bearing on present-day perception of
gender, but also of the different status accorded to thespians working in comedy versus tragedy.
Most importantly, Boaden’s insistence on a material record as a hallmark of an increasingly
professional school of biography underlines the emphasis on materiality that forms the base
assumption of theatrical biography as a project: the translation of ephemera to finiteness, under
the watchful eye of an authoritative biographer. As a co-existing art interested in the tangibility
Weldy Boyd 13

of the actor, painting competes with theatrical biography in the final section of this chapter, with
Boaden’s son staking a claim for the supremacy of the paintbrush over the pen.
The epilogue brings the continued theme of materiality forward into the present day, with
a meditation on how the actual artifacts— theatrical biographies— are handled in today’s
libraries, particularly in relation to the separation of contents based on their assessed value to
scholars and to posterity. I propose that the librarian should be considered an ally alongside the
biographer and the scrapbooker in preserving the original thespian subject’s memory, while also
pointing out that for a biographer such as Davies or Boaden, or to a lesser extent, Kirkman, their
bids for immortality through authoring a theatrical life seem to have succeeded, as the
biographer’s art—not strictly that of their subject’s—lives on.

Postscript: Forestalling Objections about the Decidedly Masculine Face of the Biographer
Of the biographers whose work I discuss, James Boaden’s is the name likely to evoke
recognition among historians of the long eighteenth century. As a critic, his work surfaces most
frequently in the form of brief anecdotes, quotes, or facts taken from his biographies. Even
slightly sustained investigations into Boaden’s biographies often dismiss him as inaccurate,
biased, misogynistic, or tone-deaf. All of these charges have validity, but the fact remains that
Boaden’s accounts are still in circulation, at least in fragments, and though there is evidence that
even his initial audience perceived the problematic nature of his works, at least in part, his
representation of the stage undoubtedly affected later readers’ perceptions of the time period he
covers. In fact, my project aides, rather than detracts from, scholarly attempts to establish a more
accurate valuation of biographers like Boaden: generally, the goal is to see his voice less
prominently represented. In contrast, my work seeks to situate Boaden and his fellow
Weldy Boyd 14

biographers—especially Macklin’s, who are all but unheard of, excepting Cooke— in a deeper
context than a quoted anecdote or cited inaccuracy; additionally, I also emphasize the extent to
which theatrical biography, while theoretically a fact-based project, bears the permanent stamp
of its maker like so many other genres, and thus cannot be read as unbiased fact.
I freely admit that the present dissertation all but excludes female voices from primary
sources, but the omission is due, in part, to the relative scarcity of biographies about actresses.
7

The main accounts of female biography that come readily to mind in the eighteenth century are
those of Colley Cibber’s daughter, Charlotte Charke (1755), George Anne Bellamy (1785), and
of course Mary Robinson (1801)—but these are all autobiographies, and thus do not participate
in the same phenomenon of competition between subject and author. My project is primarily
invested in exploring the dynamics of using someone else’s name and life story as the basis for
an author’s reputation. It is possible that the scarcity of biographies about actresses suggests that
to a biographer, a female subject was a risky foundation upon which to build his own name.
(Boaden, then, is one of few exceptions, and he only takes on female biography after he has
clearly established his reputation through John Philip Kemble.)
Relatedly, I could find no example of a female writing a full-length theatrical biography
in the period: this may either be because women tended to write under pen names, or because the
women involved in the theatre felt that autobiography was a more permissible or valuable venue
for getting their voices heard.
8
This dichotomy of women participating in autobiographical

7
Please see Wanko for a smart analysis of the Life of Lavinia Beswick, alias Fenton, alias Polly Peachum (1728),
about a female actress who gained considerable popularity for playing Polly Peachum in the Beggar’s Opera.
8
A third hypothesis suggests that male biographers pre-empted potential female biographers, as with Thomas
Campbell, who was Siddon’s second biographer, and a rival aspirant, Siddons’ friend Anna Jameson. Jameson
would write Sketches of Miss Fanny Kemble in the Character of Juliet (1830) and Memoirs of Celebrated Female
Sovereigns (1831). In the letters, Campbell reacts to Jameson’s frustration at having intended to write the life, and a
“misunderstanding” between herself and Campbell, whose Siddons project was well underway. The correspondence
between Campbell and Jameson (held in manuscript form in the Letters to and from Fanny Kemble) is a worthy
scene of competition and gender politics that deserves further scholarly attention. In “Roles and Role Models:
Weldy Boyd 15

speech and biographical silence is explored in my third chapter, in which James Boaden acts as
biographer to Sarah Siddons, Dorothy Jordan, and Elizabeth Inchbald, mediating each actress’s
presence differently depending on the amount of autobiographical documentation available.
In the third chapter, I will briefly discuss Elizabeth Inchbald’s participation in writing
prefatory biographies, or a brief biographical life as the prelude to an edited edition of an
author’s works, but throughout this dissertation, I distinguish between prefatory biographies,
capsule biographies (works of one paragraph to perhaps five pages), pamphlets (under 70 pages
or so) and full-length, or book-length biographies (often appearing in multiple volumes). There
are many examples of capsule biographies or “group biographies”—collections of capsule
biographies forming a singular work—that represent many women who were denied full-length
treatment in their own time period. For our purposes, we will also encounter capsule biographies
of women within the greater biographical Life, as a feature frequently anticipated by readers who
wanted to get a sense of the main subject in his or her own world as populated by other actors
and actresses. In fact, a number of the biographers featured in this dissertation made a
conscientious effort to preserve female actresses, evidently aware of the disproportionate
coverage of actors over their fairer counterparts. While such capsule biographies often lack
nuance and treat women in stereotypical ways, these works not infrequently provide some of the
most concrete evidence of certain actresses who might otherwise have been lost to memory.
Thus, Boaden and his cohort have become almost required fare for scholars interested in
recovering minor female actresses: actress and biographer’s names are thus forever intertwined
in quoted material, preserving the actress at the cost of perpetuating the problematic but
inescapable fame of her (male) biographer.

Montagu, Siddons, Lady Macbeth” (2013), Shearer West discusses Jameson’s interpretations of Lady Macbeth—
Siddons’ most popular role—which emerged in discussion with the celebrated bluestocking, Elizabeth Montagu, and
Siddons herself.
Weldy Boyd 16

Chapter One: “Davies’ Name…In Fame’s Brightest Page Shall on Garrick Attend”:
From Anonymous to Personalized Participation in the Life of David Garrick

I. Johnson and Davies
In October 1780, a poetic review in the Town and Country Magazine reflecting on the
recently published and immediately popular Life of David Garrick declared:
As long as old Time on this globe shall remain,
My Shakespeare and Garrick unrival'd shall reign…
While Davies’s name as historian and friend,
In Fame's brightest page shall on Garrick attend. (494)
This poem added a new twist to the established story of Garrick as Shakespeare’s champion and
preserver; namely, it created a space for Thomas Davies, reifying the role of the biographer as an
artist who might be able to approach, and be worthy of, the fame of a Shakespeare or a Garrick.
Such a conception established the possibility that the biographer might appear in the annals of
time, as the life historian joined the pantheon of exalted British artists. Davies’s name thus
becomes a symbol of the fame to be won from biography. I argue that this leads directly to a
burgeoning politics of competition among biographers visualizing their work as self-advancing,
exclusive art rather than anonymous, collaborative record-keeping.
Davies’s Life began its life as the brainchild of Samuel Johnson, established arbiter of
criticism, poet, and compiler of the first English-language dictionary, who is thus indirectly
responsible not only for the first full-length biography of London’s leading eighteenth-century
thespian, but also for Davies’s ascent into “Fame’s brightest page.” The first sentence of the Life,
penned by Johnson himself, is typically Johnsonian in resonance, insisting on the exemplarity of
the subject even as it touts the necessity of the general biographical impulse: “All excellence has
Weldy Boyd 17

a right to be recorded: I shall therefore think it superfluous to apologize for writing the life of a
man who, by an uncommon assemblage of private virtues, adorned the highest eminence in a
public profession.”
9
The sentence carefully establishes dual poles of Garrick’s exemplarity: his
public life and his private virtue, proposing a relationship in which Garrick’s virtue grounded his
success, a worthy pre-condition for any biography that did not position itself as a cautionary
tale.
10
Along with suggesting an ethical element to the biographical enterprise itself,

the
statement bears an extra stamp of justification to the project: a Life of Garrick had been deemed
necessary by Samuel Johnson, who was perhaps the leading expert on biography in the period, a
seasoned practitioner and biographical theorist, who was in the process of becoming the most
famous subject of eighteenth-century biography himself. Thus, the Life of Garrick was conceived
with an exceptional pedigree.
Although he quite obviously believed not only in the general project of thespian
biography, but also in the specific need to document David Garrick’s life, Johnson did not write
the rest of the Life himself: rather, he hand-selected the very man to do the job—Thomas Davies,
an unassuming, generous-spirited bookseller. It was to be a grand project, inspired by a
renowned actor and urged on by a renowned author. Against probability, Davies’s account not
only answered Johnson’s demand, but held sway as the supreme biography of Garrick for well
over two hundred years, surviving a number of attempts by other authors to capsize Davies’s
claim to Garrick’s story. While many factors contributed to the success of Davies’s biography,
including a popular subject, the rise of cheaper printed materials, the subject’s interest in self-

9
James Boswell mentions in the Life of Johnson (1795) that Davies told him about Johnson’s assistance with the
first sentence, which provided “as it were, the key-note to the performance. It is, indeed, very characteristical of its
authour, beginning with a maxim, and proceeding to illustrate” (2:201).
10
The statement commends Garrick’s character, and by tradition, also the putative author’s, through deductive
reasoning performed thusly: Garrick was a gentleman; the biographer recognizes Garrick’s character; thus the
biographer is also a gentleman. As will become evident, this line of rhetoric frequently surrounds descriptions of
Davies, often framed as a gentleman despite his chosen trades of actor and author.
Weldy Boyd 18

promotion, and the choice of biographer, this chapter will follow Johnson’s lead in considering
the latter factor as of greatest importance.
Davies makes no secret of his obligation to Dr. Johnson, for a debt to Johnson was a
credit to its possessor. Our author's advertisement from a later edition of 1781 immediately
accords to Johnson any pleasure the reader might feel in perusing the Life of Garrick. He notes
Johnson's friendship and patronage, freely admitting that Johnson, as an early intimate of
Garrick, supplied notes on the early years of Garrick's life prior to his debut on the London stage.
Describing himself as "justly diffident" about his own abilities to do justice to the project at
hand, Davies also proposes that he is reasonably qualified to write Garrick's Life while
suggesting that any deficiency in his own approach should be less visible because of Johnson's
approval and participation. "To the same excellent friend I am indebted for several diverting
anecdotes in this narrative; and I heartily wish I could boast of farther assistance from one so
able to give it," writes Davies, still not having given any reason for why Johnson selected Davies
to father the current narrative (1:x).
Davies’s praise of Johnson threatens to eclipse his own authority: if Johnson had the idea,
supplied the first sentence, collected choice anecdotes, and played a significant role in Garrick's
earlier life, why did Johnson not write the book himself? Why should contemporary readers,
teased by the ghost of Johnson's authorship, settle for a book by a mere acolyte, this seeming
surrogate, Thomas Davies?
This chapter situates Davies in the center of a continuum of biographical installations
about David Garrick in order to show how Davies successfully mediated competing and
developing theories about what should be included in thespian biographies. Succinctly put,
Davies appeared to have learned valuable lessons from his predecessors: he reintroduces the
Weldy Boyd 19

“history of the stage” aspect that had brought Cibber great success but subsequently been ignored
by other biographers, presents specific moments of greatness in an actor’s onstage presentation,
thus better memorializing the thespian in question, and—most importantly— he attaches his
name and reputation to the project, changing the former understanding of a biographer’s relation
to his work. Davies’s innovations evoked numerous responses, many of which challenge the
earlier-established balance of agency between a biographer and his subject, and eventually, his
readers, who increasingly took Davies’s cue in personalizing the narrative.

A Brief Sketch of Mr. Davies, and His Motivations Considered
If, as I contend, the Life of Garrick (also called the Memoirs of Garrick) was particularly
successful due not just to what Davies actually produced, but the public perception of Davies, it
may be useful to consider Davies’s qualifications and the context in which the subject, time, and
author came together under the watchful prompting of Dr. Johnson.
Davies was born in Scotland, likely in 1712. He was an actor by trade, achieving some
recognition in London for his role as the original Wilmot in Lillo's The Fatal Curiosity in 1736.
He began dabbling in bookselling during the immediate aftermath of the Licensing Act of 1737,
having foreseen increasingly difficult working conditions for thespians. Davies maintained a
presence onstage, but according to Johnson (as reported by Boswell), he was driven from the
stage in 1762 based on a succinct but graphic critical appraisal by Charles Churchill in May
1761. Churchill’s satirical poem, The Rosciad, had featured a particularly unflattering description
of Davies’s performance in Cymbeline: “He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone” (Boswell
2:186).
11
Davies returned to being a bookseller, a trade which, like acting, was still in transition

11
The precise reason for Davies’s early retirement from the stage is not agreed upon by historical sources: Brack
records that in a private letter, “Davies himself blamed his leaving the stage on Garrick's ‘warmth of temper.’”
Weldy Boyd 20

as a less than gentlemanly profession, but which he must have viewed as a safe haven. It was at
his shop at 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden (conveniently located in the theatre district and
patronized by many of the leading actors and social figures of the day) that he had the pleasure of
introducing his friend Johnson to Boswell in 1763. As a bookseller, Davies maintained a high
reputation for his general sociability and quality products. He published and distributed a number
of notable works within the genres of classics, history, and memoir, including a collection of
Lillo's plays, Robinson Crusoe, Johnson’s Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces (this he did
without permission) and of course his own Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick. Writing to
editor John Nichols, Davies recalls that he authored “a silly pamphlet” in 1742 and subsequently
“was smit with the desire of turning author,” a task to which he did not really devote himself
until the 1770s (qtd. in Brack).
The Life of Garrick represents a break from Davies’s earlier authorial efforts, not only in
scope but in terms of publicity. He had shown interest in Garrick as early as 1776, when he wrote
a much-republished article on Garrick under the pseudonym “Leonato.” In 1777, Davies
anonymously wrote a pamphlet-like memoir of John Henderson, "the Bath Roscius," which sold
for a shilling and required two editions.
12
A shorter biography, the Life and Writings of Philip
Massinger appeared—also anonymously—in 1779. Thus, the Life of Garrick, published in early
1780, was the first work for which Davies formally claimed authorship. The first edition of this
two-volume theatrical biography, published barely a year after the great actor's death in January
1779, promises that in addition to Garrick's life it will supply a collection of interesting
anecdotes and no less than the history of the English stage for the past thirty-six years—a
remarkable undertaking that proved very successful.

12
A Genuine Narrative of the Life and Theatrical Transactions of Mr. John Henderson is just under 70 pages long;
by contrast, the Life of Garrick necessitated two volumes of over 400 pages each.
Weldy Boyd 21

Having emerged as an established and well-liked author based on the Memoirs of
Garrick, he wrote a final work, also under his own name: 1783-1734's Dramatic
Miscellanies, which appear to have been completed as a response to bankruptcy stemming from
overly indulgent business practices.
13

14
Davies died on May 5, 1785, having personally overseen
four editions of his Life of Garrick, a strong testimony to his success as a biographer.
15

From this capsule biography emerge some qualifications on the part of Davies, strengths
that the author himself does eventually iterate. Davies cites his own "long acquaintance with the
stage, and an earnest inclination to excel in the profession of acting...[which] afforded me an
opportunity to much of plays and theatrical history" (1:x). His earlier (anonymous) biographical
efforts, his shop's proximity to the Covent Garden theatre, and his own awareness as a bookseller
about the public's interests, he does not reference. Later readers have recognized Davies’s
vocational advantages: Cheryl Wanko states that “Davies was ideally positioned for accessing
printed material about Garrick, for knowing what readers wanted from biography, and for being
able to provide the commercial support his venture required” (191).
It is this relatively modest man, known as "honest Tom Davies," who steps in as the
'father' of theatrical biography, building on a heritage established by the genre's 'grandfather',
Colley Cibber. Cibber’s autobiographical Apology promised—and delivered—a history of the
stage from the Restoration until its publication date of 1740. A key feature of the comparatively

13
The advertisement for the subscription Miscellanies “by the Writer of Massinger’s Life” forms the penultimate
page of the Life of Massinger, thus retrospectively identifying Davies as Massinger’s biography. The use of an
advertisement such as this suggests that Davies’s authorship of the Life of Massinger was known to a certain circle,
who would have cared to subscribe to the proposed Miscellanies. At this point, Davies may have been considering a
fame directed towards posterity rather than one built on having one’s authorship known solely by word-of-mouth.
14
It is said that his love of high-quality volumes damaged his competitive edge; with continued references to the
honesty and kindness of Tom Davies, “gentleman,” it is also likely that he may have been lax about collecting
payment for his wares from customer-friends. Certainly, he was sensitive to criticism and eager to please.
15
Davies rather unscrupulously credited the publication of the Dramatic Miscellanies to the encouragement that four
editions of the Life of Garrick received—in fact, the references to the Life of Garrick were likely inserted to ensure
that people recognized his status as Garrick’s biographer, suggesting Davies’s increasing management of his
authorial image.
Weldy Boyd 22

high attraction of Garrick for thespian biographers is the way in which his narrative conveniently
maps onto Cibber’s timeline. Readers could take in the entirety of the London stage as mediated
through Cibber from 1660 to 1740 (Cibber arrived onstage in 1690), and immediately segue into
the next year, 1741, with Garrick’s debut at Goodman’s Fields Theatre, up through his death in
1779. Thus, the two works taken together represent over 100 years of British theatre history
clustered around two seminal figures.
16
Certainly a prospective biographer would be intrigued by
the obvious temporal tie-in with the beloved Apology, a chance to join his own book to Cibber’s
established masterpiece.
Wanko has commented on Garrick’s immense good timing in his arrival on the London
stage: he came at a moment when newspapers were becoming popular tools to negotiate an
actor’s relationship with his audience (188). In The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of
Acting (1985), Joseph Roach has also remarked on the status of acting when Garrick arrived as
compared to Thomas Betterton’s debut eighty years earlier. In the 1740s, Roach notes, people
were beginning to consider acting as a science, and Garrick’s sensibilities were particularly well-
suited to capitalize on the appetite for changing acting styles. Stuart Sherman argues that Garrick
in particular evoked “biographies of a length and substance no earlier actor had prompted,
theatrical memoirs by colleagues and critics, and scrapbooks” (977). These memorials were
popular because of Garrick’s unusual theatrical achievement, and made feasible by Garrick’s
relationship with the press. Certainly Johnson, if not Davies himself initially, recognized the
intersection of interest and accessibility that Garrick offered, capitalizing on the actor’s
popularity and intrigue when he died at the age of 61.

16
We will see Charles Macklin’s biographers more directly attempt to assert their biographies’ continuation of
Cibber, with a more effective claim for length covered, since Macklin arrived to the main London scene just months
before Garrick, but continued as an actor until he reached his 90s, passing away in 1797. Thus, his biographers could
legitimately claim to encompass sixty years onstage, rather than Garrick’s forty. However, the biographies of
Macklin were judged as technically inferior and their subject did not hold the same sustained fascination as Garrick.
Weldy Boyd 23

In the tradition of biographers being seen as “hack” writers who compiled huge unrelated
volumes of material about a recently deceased person for easy money, references to Davies’s
biography of Garrick frequently remark on the author’s pecuniary problems. Boswell cattily
recalls that Johnson gave Davies the idea of writing a Garrick memoir in order to secure the
financial stability that the well-intended bookseller could not seem to find in his trade, noting
that Johnson had looked down on Davies’s short-sighted decision to abandon his rather lucrative
acting career in 1762. While the Life of Garrick provided significant financial recourse for
Davies, he must have significantly mismanaged his windfall, for Johnson had to arrange a
subscription for Davies’s Dramatic Miscellanies only a few years later, and it seems to be
understood among the patrons of more than 400 copies that the proceeds from the work were
deeply in demand by an increasingly ill Davies in order to guarantee the security of his wife.
With as much charity as Johnson appears to have given Davies, the bookseller probably
felt significant pressure from his benefactor to write the suggested Life. In fact, charitable
impulses towards Davies might have explained why the good doctor did not himself take on
Garrick as a subject; one might—incorrectly— be tempted to imagine that Johnson may not have
felt that a solid reputation in literary biography would necessarily translate to the task of
theatrical biography. However, the truth is infinitely more intriguing, and does not require Dr.
Johnson to be unduly charitable or self-effacing: Gerald M. Berkowitz acknowledges that
Johnson was “the logical choice for Garrick’s first biographer,” but explains that “Mrs. Garrick
rejected him, so the job went to actor-bookseller Davies” (80). It is evident from Davies’s
comments that Johnson commissioned him to write the biography, but based on Mrs. Garrick’s
Weldy Boyd 24

attitude towards Johnson, the task would hardly be “easy money” for a potential biographer, even
with Johnson’s support.
17

If money was certainly a part of the equation, it cannot fully explain Davies’s motivation.
After all, Johnson had disapproved of Davies’s retirement from the stage, and yet the man
commenced bookseller anyway. Johnson’s influence was strong, but not compulsory—
particularly if one faces the prospect of a difficult-to-please widow in the process. There are less
mercenary rationales for why Davies chose to devote the energy to a biography of Garrick rather
than other potential subjects. In this, Wanko makes a crucial miscalculation when she asserts that
“it seems as though Davies had little choice” but to take on Garrick as a subject, as it implies
remarkably limited volition on the part of a man who, while in need of income, would still have a
choice of theatrical or literary subjects about whom to write (191).
Wanko seems to suggest that Davies’s (and indeed, any theatrical biographer’s)
motivation for writing about a chosen thespian is to absorb some of the subject’s cultural
authority. As David Garrick held the greatest amount of cultural authority among contemporary
thespians, Davies would thus stand to gain the maximum transferable allotment of that authority.
Theoretically, cultural authority would then be a means to one of two ends: riches— already
discussed, and to a certain extent, conceded to— or “immortality.” The applicability of this latter
goal can (and will later) be assessed based on the ways in which Davies does or does not allude
to future readership or his own intended reputation—especially in light of Davies’s use of a
pseudonym in an early Garrick biographical effort— but fame is a motivation to be seriously
pondered in the context of the much-publicized Life, since Garrick would, on the surface, be one
subject that would seem to practically guarantee long-lasting relevance.

17
Davies mentions in the preface to his Dramatic Miscellanies that Mrs. Garrick had disapproved of the Life, noting
that she refused Davies’s offer to work with him on a second volume that might have better pleased her.
Weldy Boyd 25

George Winchester Stone, Jr., who became Garrick’s fourteenth biographer (alongside
co-author George M. Kahrl) in 1979, identified another possible motive for Davies’s investment
in that specific actor in a 1976 paper in which he attempted to address the sustained interest in
versions of Garrick’s life story. Remarking on the contrast between Davies and Murphy [author
of Garrick’s second full-length biography], Stone notes, “Davies sought, but not very hard, to
counteract the impression, saddled upon the actor by contemporary detractors, that Garrick was
over-vain as an actor, avaricious and mean as a manager. Murphy destroyed the Davies
defense…” (4). Certainly, as will be discussed later, Murphy’s biography was written not only as
a monument to David Garrick (and the author himself) but also as a conscious rebuttal to Davies.
However, as we will see from contemporary responses to Davies’s biography, some readers felt
that the author was unnecessarily generous to Garrick to the point of denying character
weaknesses that were quite thoroughly documented by other sources. This last motivation, that
Davies was attempting to create a positive and lasting tribute to an admired actor, seems in
keeping with his generally well-tempered treatment of Garrick. A number of sources, including
Davies’ successor, Murphy, have pointed out that Davies was only an outer member of Garrick’s
circle, a professional colleague more than a true friend, and that he did not always get along with
his subject. Nonetheless, Davies worked alongside Garrick as actors and then as actor and actor-
manager, respectively; he had direct access to Garrick and intimate knowledge about his
professional decisions that would not have been available to other potential biographers. He was
capable of describing what Garrick did onstage not just from the vantage point of an audience
member, but as a trained colleague. Coupled with Wanko’s reminder that Davies, as a
bookseller, would have known how popular Garrick was as a subject and have had access to the
meager pamphlets that attempted to do him justice, Davies may have recognized in himself a
Weldy Boyd 26

superior cache of personal knowledge and access to etchings, playbills, and other materials that
made the approach of that particular subject easier or more preferable to other potential subjects.
Certainly, Davies proved his superior knowledge and understanding of generic expectations
when contrasted with the main biographical materials available about Garrick prior to 1780.

II. The Earlier Biographies of Garrick
Having surveyed Thomas Davies in brief, it may be useful to get a picture of the
biographical subject, David Garrick, both in terms of our retrospective knowledge of the actor
and of the publications circulating prior to Davies’s account, in order to see not only why
Garrick made an ideal candidate for those with a biographical impulse, but also why Davies’s
book—and Davies’s name— achieved such ascendancy within theatrical biography.
An enduring trope of theatrical biography, when dealing with an actor whose work may
not have been seen by the reading audience, is to compare him to a present-day actor.
18
It is safe
to say that there is presently no congruent turn-of-the-twenty-first century thespian, as, if
accounts are to be believed, he would need to have the facial elasticity of a mid-1990s Jim
Carrey with the credibility of a Philip Seymour Hoffman and the proprietary control over his
own career like a Ron Howard.
19
He would also have to be responsible for fostering the cult of a
well-liked but hardly sacred actor-author (as Garrick did for Shakespeare).
20
But other
accomplishments and attributes aside, most clearly stated, there is no immediate parallel to
David Garrick because of the almost universal acknowledgement of his contemporaries that he

18
Thus, we repeatedly see David Garrick contrasted with his predecessors, such as the Restoration-age Thomas
Betterton; veterans toward the end of their careers, such as James Quin; and his direct contemporaries Spranger
Barry and the currently much lesser-known Henry Mossop.
19
The futility of making comparisons in the present age because of the great number of thespians is not lost on the
present author, and the understanding that these comparisons will only become more obsolete with time may be part
of the charm and frustration of theatrical (or cinematic) biography as an enterprise.
20
See Gary Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare (1989) and Michael Dobson, The Making of a National Poet:
Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Authorship, 1660-1769 (1992).
Weldy Boyd 27

was the most popular and gifted actor to stand on the stage during his century. While a small
number of present-day thespians rise to the top of the profession, we can claim no such
consensus as the eighteenth century could about David Garrick.
Garrick was constantly yoked to the adjective “natural,” as his acting style represented a
“revolution” from the loudly artificial declamations of James Quin’s generation.
21
Not only was
Garrick the foremost actor, an innovator of acting theory, the manager of one of the two most
successful playhouses in England, and the author of a number of well-received plays and
adaptations, he was also one of the first “modern” celebrities to assiduously control his own
image, propagating an astonishing number of portraits and other “Garrickiana” (artifacts
including letters, pendants, statuettes, and the like) and working alongside the newspapers to
secure his reputation. Apparently remarkably friendly if understandably egotistical, he was
additionally noted to be very entertaining offstage. Kalman A. Burnim, offering a brief
introduction to David Garrick for viewers of the Folger Shakespeare Library online exhibit,
describes Garrick as “one of the most astonishing British personalities in a time and country
brimming with astonishing personalities.”
22

If comparisons to other actors was one lodestar by which eighteenth-century writers
described their thespian subjects, another was the anecdote, a brief and frequently representative
story that is designed to catch the essence of a character’s attitude (and, not infrequently,
movement). In the tradition of long-winded anecdote-tellers, “the reader surely won’t mind” if I
supply this delightfully telling anecdote about David Garrick:

21
Some scholars object to claims that Garrick invented the natural declamation style for which he was known: in
fact, he was the most gifted practitioner of a theory espoused by Charles Macklin, Garrick’s acting tutor, a famous
actor in his own right, and the subject of this dissertation’s second chapter.
22
The Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, D.C.) holds the largest collection of Garrickiana in the world.
Garrick is the most represented figure at the Folger, after Shakespeare himself, which should suggest Garrick’s
importance not only to folks in the eighteenth century but also to Shakespeare scholars. The Folger hosts a
permanent online exhibit on Garrick showing many of their most famous artifacts and featuring several edifying
essays about the man and the theatre of his day.
Weldy Boyd 28

The last time that Garrick was at Paris, Preville [considered to be the most accomplished
comedian in French theatre] invited him to his villa… Our Roscius being in a gay
humour, proposed to travel in one of the hired coaches that go to Versailles, on which
road the villa of Preville was situated. When they got in, he ordered the coachman to
drive on, who answered he would do so as soon as he got his complement of four
passengers. A droll whim immediately seized Garrick, and he determined to give his
brother player a specimen of his art. While the coachman, therefore, was attentively
plying for passengers, Garrick slipped out of the door, went round the coach, and by his
wonderful command of countenance, a power which he so happily displayed in [the role
of] Abel Drugger, palmed himself upon the coachman as another passenger. This he did
twice, and was admitted each time as a fresh passenger, to the astonishment and
admiration of Preville. He whipped out a third time, and addressing himself to the
coachman, was answered in a surly tone, “that he had already got his complement”—and
would have driven off without him, had not Preville called out, that as the stranger
appeared to be a very little man, they would, to accommodate the gentleman, contrive to
make room. (Repository of Wit 26)
In attempting to identify “who” David Garrick was through this anecdote, we can gather that
Garrick traveled extensively, rubbing shoulders with other renowned actors. He obviously had a
particular sense of humor, enjoyed showing off, and was extremely convincing in his ability to
take on and off different personae without a costume change or much in the way of a pause.
Physically, the anecdote notes, Garrick was “a very little man”; this detail is verified by a
number of sources who attempt to make amends for this literal shortcoming. Socially, we gather
that his friends appreciated Garrick’s company, as Preville could have chosen to leave Garrick
Weldy Boyd 29

behind once the show was over. There is also a sense that Garrick might not have known when to
stop a joke, so keen was he on the opportunity to outdo himself. These impressions seem
accurate in light of much more extended reading of biographies. Thus, the anecdote achieves its
goal of amusing and illustrating: we can imagine the slight Garrick “whipping” out of the coach
to ply his trade in pursuit of Preville’s approval. Moreover, even in such a brief snapshot, one
can see that Garrick must have been a figure of enormous interest to his audiences and
contemporaries. In fact, it was not too long into Garrick’s arrival on the London scene that he
began popping up in novels, slowly edging towards existing not just as a group of anecdotal
encounters or character sketches, but the subject of full-length biography.
23

While there were undoubtedly numerous accounts of Garrick’s life in the form of small
anecdotes in the newspapers and gossip around town, there are four particularly prominent
instances of life-writing about the famous actor that predate Davies’s biography and appear to
have been widely read: thus, they would have formed a core of examples, facts, and approaches
for Davies’s consideration as he wrote his biography. The earliest Garrick proto-biographical
attempt, The Juvenile Adventures of David Ranger, from 1756, is actually an initially anonymous
novel designed to be taken as a biography. This “biographical” novel not only confirms
Garrick’s popularity as a potential biographical subject, but also limns the struggle of theatrical
biography not to be subsumed by other genres. The second effort, upon the event of Garrick’s
retirement in 1776, is a newspaper article that enjoyed wide distribution. It is attributed to
“Leonato,” which, as mentioned earlier, was a pseudonym adapted by Davies solely in the
context of writing about Garrick; as such, this biographical writing serves as an outline for the
later full-length work and establishes Davies’s investment in writing about Garrick well before

23
For example, Garrick is satirized in Tobias Smollett’s the Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and Adventures
of Roderick Random (1748). Fielding describes Garrick onstage in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749).
Weldy Boyd 30

the traditional time that ushered in would-be biographers: the subject’s death. The third example,
published in the initial aftermath of Garrick’s passing in 1779, is a pamphlet Life written by
someone called the “Old Comedian”: here we see the stretching out of the shorter narratives into
a more sustained attempt at theatrical biography, and an obvious understanding of some of the
key features that biographies were expected to possess by audiences growing more familiar with
the genre (and demanding of its authors). The final example is a serialized newspaper piece on
Garrick that appeared around the same time as the Old Comedian’s pamphlet. This newspaper
“obituary-biography” appears to be one of the first sustained newspaper leave-taking of a
deceased celebrity, and it highlights the helpful, yet competitive relationship that both aided and
threatened the production of theatrical memoir books.
While tracing a teleology from the hint of a Garrick biography expressed by David
Ranger to the outline by Leonato, and then to the two more realized but nonetheless rather bare-
bones accounts offered by the Old Comedian and the London Magazine, efforts which would
eventually find a fuller iteration in Davies’s memorable Memoirs, a catalogue of these early
proto-biographies also reveals that each attempt was either anonymous or employed a
pseudonym, including the 1776 writings of Davies himself. Such an uncoupling of an author’s
person from his work would seem contrary to my earlier argument that theatrical biography was
not only a project in commemorating a favorite fallen thespian, but also securing a bit of the
limelight for oneself. In fact, a survey of thespian biographies that were written prior to 1780
reveals only a handful of biographies explicitly boasting an author.
24
From the 1701 anonymous
biography of the comedian Jo Haynes, one of the earliest examples of the genre (more akin to
pamphlets than “full-length” biographies at any rate, and unlisted in Bryan’s Bibliography and
Index to Theatrical Biographies), through the 1730s, when theatrical biography had its first

24
This survey does not include autobiographies, which generally place a great deal of stress on one’s own name.
Weldy Boyd 31

moderate wave of popularity, the majority of offerings employ pseudonyms or do not reference
an author. Theatre historian Benjamin Victor’s well-received 1733 Memoirs of the Life of Barton
Booth was published anonymously “by an Intimate Acquaintance of Mr. Booth, By Consent of
His Widow,” and a number of “named” biographies like Oldys’s Mrs. Oldfield (1731) or
O’Bryan’s Robert Wilkes (1733) turn out to be pen names. In an intermediary position is the
unscrupulous publisher Edmund Curll, who identified himself at various times as author,
compiler, or publisher of several theatrical biographies and pseudo-biographies in the 1730s, and
in at least one instance, used a pseudonym. Other exceptions to the rule include a 1729 biography
of James Spiller, described on the title page as the work of “George Akerby, Painter,” and an
unsuccessful biography of Booth in a volume of Lives by Theophilus Cibber “and other
Hands.”
25
Even the then relatively well-known 1710 biography by Charles Gildon on Thomas
Betterton was not formally attributed.
Not only did theatrical biography primarily occur under conditions of anonymity for its
authors, it also occupied a less legitimate generic position, as many of its practitioners, once
revealed, turned out to be “hack” writers (the idea being that the compiler “hacked” large chunks
of extant documents and facts into a barely-coherent whole, rather like the process of producing
a hot dog). With the liminal context of theatrical biography in mind, we can now consider the
first gesture at a theatrical biography of David Garrick.

Generic Conflation: Juvenile Adventures of David Ranger (1756)
The first example of Garrick proto-biography is actually a novel. Although not
technically a biography, the Adventures of David Ranger is crucial not just for seeing how

25
In this case, Akerby provides a Life “Interspers’d [with] Much of the Poetical History of His own Times,” an
unpopular predecessor to the Cibberean “history of the theatre of his own times.” Cibber’s son, Theophilus, was
likely mirroring his father in seeking fame through life writing.
Weldy Boyd 32

similar novels and theatrical biography might be, but for highlighting the surprising eighteenth-
century perception of the lesser-developed genre of theatrical biography’s supremacy over the
novel. This preference is surprising based on today’s popular perception of the supremacy of
fiction—especially novels— over fact—biography.
26
The permeability between novels and
biography not only suggests biography’s tendency to mirror or cull from other literary traditions
as it finds its own generic footing, but also, in this context, indicates a sustained interest in
Garrick as a subject through whatever literary means were available.
Long before the Memoirs of David Garrick by Davies, and a handful of potential
contenders to the title of first Garrick biography clustered around Garrick’s retirement and death,
an anonymous two-volume duodecimo appeared in 1756 entitled The Juvenile Adventures of
David Ranger. George B. Bryan’s Index of Theatrical Biography identifies this work to be the
first chronological full-length biography of our subject, obviously imagining “Ranger” to be a
code name for our thespian—Garrick had indeed played a character named “Ranger” onstage, so
the name would have been associated with the actor. Upon perusal, the work is a picaresque
novel playing into an understood public interest in information about David Garrick, who had
been the ornament of the London stage since 1741. This confusion is not surprising. One review
of the work is accompanied with a marginal note in pencil, perhaps made by a disappointed
scholar who had thought he had uncovered a new account of Garrick's pre-theatrical existence:
the note reads, succinct and weighty in its simplicity, "novel."
The novel was written by Edward Kimber, an established author of “ramble” novels in
the spirit of Henry Fielding; Kimber’s novels were always presented anonymously but rather
easily identifiable as his work. His anonymous approach allied himself with the conventions of

26
Indeed, the binary of fact/fiction will be challenged in Chapter Two, with the appearance of a wildly fictional
biography of Charles Macklin that is much more akin to a novel.
Weldy Boyd 33

theatrical biography at the time (though anonymity itself did not always signal that genre, as
many authors chose to operate thusly). By withholding his name and immediate association with
ramble novels, Kimber contributed to the potential illusion of the work as legitimate biography.
27

A reviewer from the Monthly Review acknowledges the duplicity of the piece's author in
hitching his novel to Garrick's coattails and periwig: "The title of this Novel seems to have been
contrived to prepossess the public with expectations of its containing anecdotes relating to the
celebrated Manager of one of our Theatres Royal; but this, to borrow a late fashionable phrase,
was all a Humbug" (“Article XV” 655). A second review of the Juvenile Adventures in
the Critical Review of November 1756 echoes the frustration of Kimber's bait-and-switch tactics,
which include, most obviously, the title of the piece. The reviewer proclaims Kimber’s technique
as “a mean artifice apparently made use of to mislead the reader into an opinion, that these are
the secret memoirs of our modern Roscius” (“Article XIX” 379). (Indeed, a secret memoir would
not be out of character: Garrick had a tendency to write his own reviews and criticisms
anonymously, including, most famously, a 1765 fable called “The Sick Monkey” in which he
grievously insults himself for his prolonged absences from the theatre before anyone else has the
opportunity to do so.) This reviewer begrudgingly acknowledges a few rather general similarities
between Garrick and Ranger: both are leading actors who become managers. An instance of
more specific homage sees Ranger marry a "Miss Tulip," surely in imitation of Garrick's bride,
"Miss Violetti." Beyond these unsubtle parallels, according to the reviewer,
the character hath not the least resemblance to the person so artfully squinted at in the
first page of it, being nothing but a heap of ridiculous adventures, and some bad poetry by
the author; with scraps of plays, ballads, &c. quoted to eke out a trifling and miserable

27
Additionally, Edward Kimber was an established editor and compiler. Originally trained as a bookseller’s
apprentice, Kimber shares some distinct similarities of background with Thomas Davies.
Weldy Boyd 34

performance; food for idle templars, raw prentices, and green girls, that support the
circulating libraries of this learned metropolis. (379)
The accusation of random documents compiled under the guise of relevance is not out of place
among actual theatrical biographies. However, a reader who sampled even the first few pages of
the novel (after the prolonged, hyperbolic invocation of the muses, no less) would have known it
was not a true biography, as some of the most basic facts of David Ranger’s beginnings did not
correspond with known facts of Garrick such as the year of his birth. Yet at times it would be
easy for a reader to lapse into considering what he read to be about Garrick, as Ranger occupied
the same space in the world as Garrick did. Filling in a potential fantasy about how David
Garrick was “discovered” before he was an established actor, Kimber offers an anecdote about
how David Ranger’s unique talent came to be onstage. A stage manager, overhearing Ranger
rehearse a few moving lines of a play in a coffee shop with his friends, “struck with hearing
him…broke into the coffee-room, with G—d—n me, gentlemen ,what have you got a Powel or a
Booth amongst you, or has Betterton once more revisited these earthly mansions?” (1:283).
28

Such a situation is believable based on the historical records about Garrick and the type of
content ideally to be found in a theatrical biography. However, while the verisimilitude is
intentional, it is not designed to foster any lasting confusion.
29
Even in its earliest points, David

28
Indeed, the mention of actual theatrical figures was characteristic of novels at the time as well. Garrick himself
appears in Fielding’s 1749 novel, Tom Jones, most notably receiving praise from Tom Jones’s description of the
actor’s portrayal as Hamlet encountering his father’s ghost; the pedant Partridge’s critique negative critique suggests
the brilliance of Garrick’s ability (313-317). If in fact part of the point of theatrical biography is to immortalize the
actor in motion, Tom Jones approaches that benchmark (though in fairness, we do not learn exactly what Garrick
does so effectively to convince Partridge that Garrick responding to an actual ghost, only that Partridge’s responses
mirror Garrick’s, thus suggesting that Garrick’s behavior is inseparable from one who believes that the ghost is real).
Certainly, theatrical biography is indebted to the novel for its inclusion of actors, plays, and playhouse antics, all of
which contributed to the appetite for supposedly “true” biographical accounts.
29
Characteristic of such fiction, at one point Ranger attends upon a betrothed couple, Leonora and Lothario, having
partaken in a vast network of deceptions and coincidences, all drawn in overwrought language by a heavily present
narrator: “Some of my more squeamish readers, I suppose now, will pity poor Lothario in having a lady impos’d on
him, who had before had a commerce with another. But let them consider… For their satisfaction I can assure
Weldy Boyd 35

Ranger repeatedly cues itself as a novel, its narrator describing laying down “at the feet of that
awful tribunal… the ensuing sheets,” hoping that the work would find “the same favour with
which they have smiled on my contemporaries, the universal Dr. —, the multiloquacious Henry
F—, or that poetical, critical, physical, political novelist Dr. —” (1:5).
An argument can—and should—be made that theatrical biography took many of its cues,
including its often overblown rhetorical style, from ramble novels and epistolary pseudo-
autobiographies. Nonetheless, it seems that magazine critics felt a significant threat from books
that professed to be of one genre and then unabashedly betrayed its stated intent, and books that
ranged over a series of genres to become a miscellaneous collection while purporting to have
unity. We get the impression, too, that biography was seen as superior to the novel at the time,
with the reviewer from the Monthly Critic reflecting a rather unstrained admiration for the
intelligence of the author's generic ploy, which interested the reviewer initially and led him to
discover a tolerable story-line despite the absence of the biographical Garrick:
...The work is by no means the most contemptible of the kind we have lately been obliged
to peruse: It abounds with adventures, and is not altogether ill-written; the Author for
being so much of a Scholar, as to understand Latin, which is more than the generality of
our modern Authors, in that branch of Literature, especially, can boast. (“Article XV”
655-656)
This reviewer singles out David Ranger's author as being unexpectedly learned for the "branch
of literature" his work occupied, and our second reviewer denigrates the Ranger novel, at least,
as suitable only for the most unsophisticated readers.
30

them… Ranger vow’d never more to desire a repetition of the blessings he had enjoy’d; but ever, from that time, to
behave only as a sincere friend, and a man of honour…” (119-120).
30
Actually, he reviewer seems at odds with public assessment of David Ranger—Simon Dickie declares
that at 3s each, “these ‘ramble’ novels, as we might call them, were clearly written for an educated urban audience
Weldy Boyd 36

Besides the feeling of defensiveness that arises from the uncomfortable proximity of
biography to novels, the other significant conclusion to be drawn from these reviews is the
evident desire for biographical material about David Garrick, an attraction that consistently
painted as diametrically opposed to the (mistakenly perceived) low-brow desire for poorly
written novelistic entertainment. The purity of the generic expectations underlying the reviews is
undercut by the first reviewer's thwarted desire for anecdote, rather than a true narrative, and the
second reviewer's obvious fascination with a "secret diary" of David Garrick, the reality of which
would constitute a brutal exposure of the parts of the thespian's life specifically coded as private
by many of the “gentlemanly” biographers. It is notable, also, that David Ranger appeared so far
in advance of Garrick’s death (twenty-three years later), since another generally observed
understanding up to that point was that biographies were most appropriately issued shortly after a
subject’s decease. Even if Ranger was not a true biography, it did perhaps put into the mind that
biographical treatments need not always be reserved for the dead; moreover, its critical response
also supported a hierarchy that, for a time, ranked biography as superior to the novel. With the
importance of technical theatrical biography growing, the next notable effort to co-opt a piece of
Garrick’s fame would be a timid effort by Davies himself.

Testing the Waters: Leonato/Davies’s Biographical Outline (1776)
The indignant clamor for a sustained biography of Garrick would not be answered for
some time, but its future author capitalized on a surge of interest above the usual appetite for all
things Garrick when the actor announced his retirement. In July 1776, a three-page article, "A
Eulogium on Mr. Garrick's Leaving the Stage,” appeared in the St. James's Evening Post, and

with considerable disposable income,” appealing to both men and women. Kimber’s Life and Adventures of Joe
Thompson (1750) was “one of the great unacknowledged best-sellers of eighteenth-century fiction” (285)
Weldy Boyd 37

shortly thereafter appeared five more times— two occasions in the Gentleman's Magazine, and
once each in the Lottery Magazine, Hibernian Magazine, and the Scots Magazine— in identical
or slightly altered forms under the same title of "Eulogium," simply "Garrick," or "A Review of
the Theatrical Career of the English Roscius."
31
The author, in all instances, signed his work with
the pseudonym “Leonato.”
Leonato's brief biography of Garrick is significant not only in the volume of replication
or the number of magazines in which it appeared, but also because, as mentioned earlier, it was
the work of Thomas Davies. Gerald M. Berkowitz and I both confidently identify Leonato and
Davies as the same man (69). While Berkowitz does not extend a rationale for why he believes
Davies to be Leonato, the shared writing style is evident even during a superficial read. A more
comparative exercise between the book-length Life of 1780 and the July 1776 article shows
definitive proof that the article served as an outline for the later Life, contributing not just
opinions and talking points, but also specific phrases and entire paragraphs that can be seen
having a second life in the famous biography. As a short article, the “Eulogium” attempts to
include the basic narrative of Garrick's career arc and his character as actor, author, and manager,
a capsule biography indeed. Its purpose is forthrightly announced: "How he [Garrick] acquired
and preserved the applause, love, and admiration of the people, we shall here endeavor to
recollect." The narrative begins in what will be Chapter Three of the Life, explaining the state of
the theatre as Garrick found it. "The only correct speaker our playhouses could boast of, was
Quin, but he was utterly unfit for the great and animated characters of tragedy," Leonato asserts
(304). Davies later says that Quin, who "understood propriety in speaking better than any other
actor of the time... was utterly unqualified for the striking and vigorous characters of tragedy; he

31
The “Review of Theatrical Character from Hibernian Magazine” (Aug. 1776) is identical to the “Eulogium,” with
the exception of a few slightly altered phrases and formatting changes; the Eulogium that appears in the Gentleman's
Magazine straightforwardly mentions in its extended title that it is reprinted from St. James's Evening Post.
Weldy Boyd 38

could neither express the tender nor violent emotions of the heart" (1.28). The last two phrases
appear verbatim from Leonato's account. Leonato and Davies describe Garrick's rapid
ascendency identically: "The coaches of the nobility filled up the spaces from Temple-Bar to
Goodman's-Fields. Not to admire Garrick, would have argued not only want of taste, but the
grossest stupidity" (304; 1.42). Garrick's ability to transition through emotion is painted as his
highest virtue by both authors (305; 2.79); that "his first care was to restore Nature" by reviving
Shakespeare appears in both writings, similarly phrased (305, 1.113). The latter half of Leonato's
work shows the budding of a conciliatory, sometimes defensive, attitude towards Garrick's
perceived faults, and while the opinions are the same as in the character sketch and body of the
Life, Davies seems to have broadened his analysis with examples to the point that close
paraphrase or direct quotation from the compressed “Eulogium” were not functional choices.
Nonetheless, a reader can certainly see a distilled version of the categorization of Garrick's life
and opinions thereof that would be "writ large" in the later, less spatially restricted, Life.
While the chance to see an outline of the Life in the four years' younger “Eulogium” is
interesting in and of itself, especially in terms of those details that Davies felt were worth the
space in the remarkably compact article, the evidence of sustained interest in Garrick's life is
significant. It is quite possible that Davies had already, at this point, begun to give thought to a
Life of Garrick. Perhaps he started small, writing a sample-sized eulogium under a pseudonym to
see whether interest was generated before he launched the full biography. Of course, Davies
ultimately relegated Leonato to the 1770s, boldly proclaiming his authorship with the first
edition of the Life in 1780 and eventually advertising his status as Garrick's biographer on the
title pages of other works. The relationship between Davies’s named and anonymous works
Weldy Boyd 39

suggests a very conscious decision about when to associate a work with his own name, and a
burgeoning understanding of how Davies could build his own fame through his works.
As to why Davies chose the name Leonato, it was a good Shakespearean name, featuring
in Much Ado About Nothing. To frame oneself as a Shakespearean character seems appropriate
for a narrator talking about Garrick, who was credited with "reviving" Shakespeare. But why not
Leontes, from the Winter's Tale, or Leonatus, from Cymbeline? The latter name was mistakenly
transcribed by biographical critic Stone: as Davies had played Leonatus to Garrick's Cymbeline,
that name, in the context of a writing about Garrick, could have served as a cipher for Davies’s
identity (29). “Leonato,” the name he selected, links with Garrick’s portrayal of Benedick in
Much Ado About Nothing, most notably in his first performance after marrying Eva Marie Veigel
in 1749—is Davies suggesting that he is playing Leonato to Garrick’s Benedick? Perhaps the
role of Leonato was chosen not to suggest Davies’s relationship with Garrick, but Davies’s
relationship with the narrative of Garrick's life, or his biographical craft. Leonato is a character in
the margins, but not a marginal character, since he is center-stage even in times of absentia: his
presence permeates the play, and indeed, the connections between people and progression of
events are centered around him (Blasingame). As the weaver of the narrative of Garrick's life,
Davies may have been using Leonato to allude to the power of a biographer to shape perceptions
by fostering connections and promoting a teleology. However, Leonato’s work is firmly proto-
biography, both in terms of its limited comprehensiveness and its reliance on anonymity.

Defining Moments in Genre: Garrick by “Old Comedian” (1779)
By the time that David Garrick died in January 1779, the conception of what should be
included as part of theatrical biography appears to have been manifestly clearer: there should be
Weldy Boyd 40

a primarily chronological narrative, in which anecdotes feature heavily, followed by a character
sketch. Most importantly, there should be some sustained effort to describe how the actor worked
his magic in particular scenes—something that earlier biographers tended not to attempt, but
which the “Old Comedian” (the pen name of our third representation of biographical
Garrickiana) strives to do in two shining sustained examples that seem to have resonated with
Davies when he went forward to extend his biographical sketch of Garrick into a book-length
work. The work of the Old Comedian shows a struggle towards a yet-unrealized unity between
the expected components of a theatrical biography.
The Life and Death of David Garrick Esq. the Celebrated English Roscius by "the Old
Comedian," offers in addition to the life, a number of documents related to Garrick, as well as
"Anecdotes, Bon Mots, &c." of many theatrical performers, along with the Life of Edward Alleyn
as a sort of B-side feature as the Roscius of Shakespeare's time, now supplanted by Garrick as
our present-day Roscius. Alas, the Old Comedian, assuming the title of Editor, more closely
approaches what Wanko calls “the familiar Curllian compilation method” rather than what I will
term Daviesian synthesis, where the same basic features are more consistently and proportionally
blended together (189). The Old Comedian's biography is a motley assortment of primary
sources, the actual narrative of the biography spanning nine pages, two of which are a transcript
of Garrick's speech as he retired from the stage, and four of which focus on Garrick's great
moment of Bardolitry, the Stratford Jubilee, a multi-day festival held in Shakespeare’s
hometown that both celebrated the Bard and, as Matt Toothill claims, highlighted Garrick’s
status as his closest living embodiment (11).
32
While the Jubilee was a significant milestone in

32
Toothill points out that the very phrase “living embodiment” dictates that the mantle of authority be surrendered
upon death (16). The Jubilee itself, structured to preserve the memory of a dead actor-author, undoubtedly was self-
serving for Garrick, who probably had a didactic intent in showing the people how to keep a fallen thespian “alive”
to future generations.
Weldy Boyd 41

Garrick's life and public perception, the Old Comedian greatly overemphasizes mundane details
of the proceedings, such as "Mrs. Garrick danced a minuet in a most graceful manner, and joined
in the country dances" (9). More intriguingly, the Old Comedian figuratively dissects the
deceased actor, with brief sections devoted to his figure (short), face (expressive), voice (clear,
resonant), and education (cultivated). Garrick was able to separate his characters, says the
Comedian, and his passions were such that "If he was angry, so was you; if he was distressed, so
was you; if he was terrified, so was you; if he was merry, so was you; if he was mad, so was you.
He was an enchanter and led you where he pleased” (13).
This miniature biography shows the strengths and weaknesses endemic in the genre. The
dissected character sketches provide moments of vivid description, while the narrative tends to
get bogged down by some "necessary" digression. But the Old Comedian shows a glimmer of
inspiration in assessing what made each character of Garrick's stand out, even singling out a
particular line in Hamlet: “In that picturesque display in Hamlet, of the poor parade of
vestimental mourning, compared to the general grief of an affected heart, who could hear him
without sympathy repeat. ‘But I have that within which passeth shew’” (14-15). This attempt to
isolate how Garrick worked onstage is a matter of no small struggle to good theatrical
biographers, a difficulty remarked on in detail in the second chapter of this dissertation.
Intriguingly, the Comedian also cites a particular point of weakness in Garrick's delivery, "a way
of resting in the middle of a line, where the sense is continued":
We have a striking instance of it in King Richard, where, in the heat of his fury, he calls
out to his archers, ‘Draw, archers, draw, your arrows to the head.’ This line ought to be
spoken with rapidity, and the whole force of the voice reserved for the last word; instead
of this Mr. Garrick bestowed so much breath on the three first, that he was forced to
Weldy Boyd 42

pause to get in more to speak the rest with, and accordingly he always pronounced the
line with an unnatural gap in the middle, ‘Draw, archers, draw---- your arrows to the
head.’ (16)
The Old Comedian additionally comments on Garrick's occasional stiff prolixity, and courtship
of laughter "where the author never intended it” (17).
The Old Comedian’s contribution to the body of knowledge about Garrick and strategies
of presentation and organization seems principally to be in his analysis of how Garrick actually
spoke and moved in a specific scene. As I have suggested, the two key features which seem to
mark Davies’s biography as superior to prior attempts are the synthesis of materials into a cogent
narrative and the treatment of actors’ onstage antics—the Comedian provides a cautionary tale of
the importance of the former, and a fleeting example of excellence in the latter. Apparently the
Old Comedian’s efforts were not sufficient for an audience that was developing a more keenly
delineated appreciation for—and expectation of—the genre. An entry in the Westminster
Magazine in April 1779 features an unusually succinct verdict: "It would not be worth anyone's
while to have lived or died, to be so biographised" (196). It seems that audiences wanted a
comprehensiveness that both did not lose focus of its main character, but also included a whole
host of extras; readers also expected a narrative arc that made room for capacious flights of fancy
that nonetheless did not overwhelm the main through-line. In short, Davies’s task was to enter an
underdeveloped field populated with rather flimsy models and contradictory expectations.

Serialized Anonymous “Anecdotal” Life of Garrick (1779)
A novel early in his career, a eulogium upon his retirement, and a short biography at his
death showed audience’s interest in Garrick throughout his days on the English stage. Lacking a
Weldy Boyd 43

true full-length biography of the intriguing actor, readers looking for anecdotal reports of Garrick
would have found plenty of reports in the newspapers. To the pleasure of Garrick, these accounts
were forthcoming even during his lifetime, not occupying the same level of intrusion on a
subject’s life that led to the tacit understanding that the subject should be dead beforehand, but
still incrementally memorializing the actor in anticipation of his eventual absence. As Stuart
Sherman has pointed out in his article on the brilliance of Garrick’s media manipulation,
newspapers were one of Garrick’s preferred sources of propagating his own reputation, and he
envisioned for himself immortality through periodical coverage. Thus, it should be unsurprising
that a third and entirely different generic contender for the title of the “first full-length biography
of Garrick” should appear as a serialized biography-obituary, billed as an “anecdotal life.”
33

What might be surprising is the extent to which the “anecdotal” life followed the narrative
through-line of Garrick rather than providing a boisterous cameo of the subject in the midst of a
whole cast of characters. As we will see in Chapter Two, later “anecdotal” biographies tended to
be loosely related anecdotes about friends and colleagues rather than an actual biography of the
titular character, but as newspaper obituaries were just coming into being, these “anecdotes”
cleave to a more traditional understanding of brief newspaper biographies.
The “Biographical Anecdotes of the Late Mr. Garrick” appeared, starting in March 1779,
in four installments (March through June) of several pages. Ian Kelly, Samuel Foote’s most
recent biographer, identifies this publication from the London Magazine as the first “full-length”
biography of Garrick. (The installments also appear in the Gentleman’s Magazine,
simultaneously; the two papers appear to have had a strong editorial symbiosis). N.D. Norman’s

33
The “Anecdotal Life” does not appear on Stone or Bryan’s lists of legitimate Garrick biography, which may be
interpreted as a neglect of newspaper biographies or a comment on the comparatively meager length of the
“Anecdotal Life.” Alternatively, the “Anecdotal Life” may have been overlooked as one of hundreds of fragmentary
anecdotal accounts that were wildly popular in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Weldy Boyd 44

study of the rise of biography-obituaries in London newspapers cites the London Magazine as the
originating entity. John Nichols assumed editorship in 1778 and almost immediately decided to
magnify the regularly occurring obituaries which had begun to run in the Gentleman’s Magazine
in the 1770s into “full-scale memoirs” when the deceased was considered extraordinary.
34
This
line of thought challenges current understandings of how “full-length” biographies might have
been classified by eighteenth-century readers, and points to the importance of Garrick in
cementing this trend, as his death in 1779 made him one of the first London figures to receive
such treatment at the hands of Nichols in the London Magazine (Norman 17).
The “Anecdotes” represent an important development in theatrical biography, not just
because of their vanguard position in newspaper-obituary, but because of the words
“Biographical Anecdotes” replacing the traditional “Memoirs of” or “Life of” form. The tagline
of anecdotes increasingly referred to a series of often tangentially related bon mots featuring a
“gathering” or main character and his interactions with other people in society: several examples
of this construction will be seen in Chapter Two. Although Nichols’ piece on Garrick gestures
towards this divergent development in biography, the “Anecdotes” actually present a unified
narrative life, including several anecdotes about Garrick within the teleology of his life. For
example, the May installment records the story of Dr. Hill, who once wrote a pamphlet accusing
Garrick of frequently mispronouncing the letter “I” “as furm for firm, vurtue for virtue, and
others.” Garrick responded with a witty epigram which “deserves to be preserved” in which the
actor wishes that each letter “both have their due/And that I may never be mistaken for U” (227).
However, the majority of the anecdotes are about other people, heavily skewed towards the first

34
Please see N.D. Norman’s study of the rise of celebrity obituary in the popular press, a trend that he locates as
emanating from the London Magazine, under the auspices of the “editor” Sylvanus Urban. His theory is that
obituary-biographies became more subjective and moralistic as the number of solicited pieces outweighed those
written by an editor more faithful to the voice of the paper.
Weldy Boyd 45

installment, and almost entirely in the form of footnotes. In the March installation, over half of
the first page, and a fourth of the second page, both in the main narrative, are taken up with
anecdotes about Gilbert Walmsley and Samuel Johnson, fixtures of Garrick’s early life (117-
118). The only truly novel piece of insight about Garrick in that month’s section is that he lost
his voice during an early play and was restored by the juice of a Seville orange (118).
As the installments develop, we can see the newspaper attempting to work out a system
of incorporating anecdotes without overwhelming the text, evidently having perceived the ratio
of actual Garrick to other people’s antics as needing adjustment. Although the biography was
limited by spatial constraints, the work is useful in considering the contents of theatrical
biography and the distribution of those contents over the space allotted, and how the medium of
any biographical work might lend itself more readily to some aspects of theatrical biography than
others. We will see some striking differences between book-length and newspaper-length
biography with Davies’s memoirs, which, after appearing in full form, were then compressed
into two installments for the newspaper and presented as “anecdotal.” In that instance, Davies’s
lively social narrative is stripped of the exciting or witty insertions of the supporting cast of
characters, the same cast of characters that had threatened to overwhelm the biography-obituary
discussed above. It appears that theatrical biography as a mode including sustained narrative and
cameos from the theatrical world around the subject demanded a book-length production so that
neither feature was ignored or eclipsed.
Works like that of the Old Comedian and the London Magazine represented the strongest
biographical efforts of Garrick existing on the market up to the point when Davies launched his
biography. The comparative weakness of the Old Comedian’s spotty account and the London
Magazine’s lopsided relation between narrative and anecdote, not to mention the disappointment
Weldy Boyd 46

and intrigue stoked by the fictionalized pseudo-Garrick of the David Ranger story, may help to
explain why Davies’s obviously flawed tour-de-force biography attained supremacy (but don’t
provide evidence for the work’s continued success when forced to contend with later substantial
accounts such as Murphy’s 1801 Life). Having laid the foundation of Garrick biographies and
pseudo-biographies prior to Davies’s full-length Life, it is now time to investigate the work that
so thoroughly cornered the market on the remarkable actor, author, and manager.

III. The Main Attraction: Davies’ Life of Garrick (1780)
This section considers what made Davies’s Life of Garrick exemplary: specifically, how
he reacted to the conventions of the genre, the actual content of the Life, and initial critical
evaluations in relation to established precedents. Davies’s biography personalizes the genre,
shifting its boundaries to allow the biographer to play an increasingly more significant role as an
authority supporting, and sometimes competing with, the titular subject for the public’s attention.
I argue that because of the comparatively pronounced “absent presence” of the actor, the fully
present non-anonymous biographer slips into the void, changing the balance of agency within the
narrative Life. Such focus means that Davies’s own person is critiqued simultaneously, or even in
place of, the work that he wrote. As time goes by, this “absent presence” will be more directly
filled by biographers such as James Boaden who introduce themselves as participatory characters
in the text, an inheritance from Cibberean autobiography but also from Davies’s precedence of
theatrical biography as innately tied to the person and reputation of its named author.
Glancing back at the four precedents of Garrick biography before Memoirs of Garrick,
Davies’s main contributions to thespian biography included making a “history of the stage” part
of the expected fare, which allowed him to include, in the main text rather than in footnotes,
Weldy Boyd 47

anecdotes not only of Garrick but of his contemporaries. This solved some of the shortcomings
of the Old Comedian and of the newspaper biography-obituary. Looking at earlier full-length
biographies, Cibber, in his autobiography, Curll’s sham pseudo-autobiography of Betterton less
than a year after Cibber’s work, and the anonymous 1766 Life of Quin (which brackets a much
smaller historical scope coinciding with Quin’s theatrical career) had formulated and adapted the
same tactic of a theatre history, but Davies appears to have popularized this approach in
biography.
35
He also benefitted from the subject and time of his work, because of Garrick’s
interest in media as legacy management, and the much vaster information networks from which
to glean fact and anecdote. In addition to normalizing an anecdotal history of the protagonist’s
social circle, which had obviously been part of the expectation but unevenly realized in some of
Garrick’s proto-biographies, Davies also attended to the matter of how actors achieved their craft
onstage—and this was, in large part, why Davies’s specific account, rather than just the
structure, has persevered. Finally, Davies’s success seems to have been brokered by his own
reputation as a gentleman. As one of the first thespian biographers to claim authorship of his
Life, Davies ushered in not only a new era of personalization on the part of the biographer, but
also the beginning move towards the professionalism of the genre and, eventually, the cult of the
biographer.
Davies is almost universally referred to as Garrick’s “first biographer” or “first historian”
(the terms were interchangeable in this context for an eighteenth-century audience). Although the
previous section has identified four prior attempts (or gestures) toward a biography of Garrick,
not only do I wish to claim that Davies was Garrick's first major historian, but also that he was

35
Curll openly admitted his “editorship” of The History of the English Stage, from the Restauration[sic] to the
Present Time, Including the Lives, Characters, and Amours, of the Most Eminent Actors and Actresses. With
Instructions for Public Speaking…by Mr. Thomas Betterton.” Another “hack” job, Betterton did not write the work
any more than he participated in the “dialogue” with Gildon that makes up his 1710 “biography.” In both cases,
Betterton’s name as subject (and author) is little more than a trick to sell books.
Weldy Boyd 48

the father of mature thespian biography. Certainly, theatrical biography had existed as a concept
since the 1695. As mentioned earlier, Wanko cites the Life of Matthew Coppinger, an actor, as
the first example of English theatrical biography (unsurprisingly, anonymous). She also
recognizes a distinction between that style of actor-criminal narrative and one with an interest in
the actor as a figure of interest sans the attraction of crime—she cites Charles Gildon’s Life of
Betterton, 1710, as its first occurrence (although it bears noting not only that, as a precursor to
the bait-and-switch tactic of Kimber’s David Ranger, Gildon’s Life has very little to do with the
life of Betterton, per se, and is instead a dialogue about good acting; but also, that Gildon did not
formally claim authorship of the work).
I do not think it overstatement to say that the next theatrical biography to make a
legitimate universal claim to fame and interest is Davies’s—in many ways, Cibber is the
grandfather, Davies the father of the great works in the theatrical biography tradition. While
there are indisputably large works of thespian biography prior to 1780, none seems to have
staked such a strong claim alongside Cibber’s as Davies’s, not only in the proud unfurling of a
real name and reputation underwriting the text, but also on the level of synthesizing a remarkable
depth and breadth of material. As mentioned earlier, along with the theatre historian and one-
time theatrical biographer Victor, both authors and texts are repeatedly cited in succeeding
theatrical biography and in scholarly commentary on thespians even to the present day.
36
Wanko,
writing in 2003, describes Davies’s biography as “the longest, most thorough, and most balanced
biography of an actor to this date” (191). She also points out that this biography, undoubtedly

36
Cibber, Davies, and the English poet-historian Benjamin Victor are staples of theatrical biography, their names
and material peppering many theatrical biographies that otherwise pretend to have sprung, fully formed and un-
researched, from the mind of the author. Victor was a barber from London, later the manager of the Theatre Royal of
Dublin. Like Cibber in England (1730-his death in 1757), Victor was the 1755 Poet Laureate in Ireland. As
mentioned earlier, Victor wrote the Memoirs of Barton Booth anonymously in 1733, and his magnum opus The
History of the Theatres of London in three volumes from 1761-1771. This latter work is repeatedly cited by
theatrical biographers. Victor also wrote a biography of himself prefacing his own Dramatic Works (1774).
Weldy Boyd 49

with the help of its immensely popular subject, helped assimilate actors as subjects of mainline
biographies (rather than a decidedly lesser sub-genre).
Although any number of anonymous biographers gesture towards the responsibility of the
biographer, one of the distinguishing marks of Davies is the sustained act of considering his task
as a biographer, paying careful attention to pre-existing generic requirements and to readerly
preferences in order to improve upon, and not just meet, the expected conventions. In his
remarks on the failures of Mr. Ralph, a historian, we can get some insight into what Davies
would consider a successful biography (keeping in mind that biography was, at the time, also
referred to as a history of someone, and the terms biographer and historian both were used to
describe Davies in the context of the present Life enterprise). He writes:
But the author has taken effectual care to defeat the end he proposed, of making his work
universally read. It is a book in two large volumes, which contains almost as many words
as Thuanus's History. It is, indeed, a noble magazine for a future historian to consult; but
to the general reader it is intolerably tedious and disgusting: the narrative is almost
continually interrupted by a commentary three times as large as the text; and the margin
is loaded with extracts from a thousand pamphlets. (1:276)
37

Here, Davies seems to suggest that the ideal history would be one that is read by a mass
audience, and his approach reflects that belief. Although Davies’s Life is in two volumes
exceeding 800 pages total, his textual apparatus is quite light, and his references to supporting
documentation are minimal, as in one instance where he simply says that he has the receipts for
the proceedings of Garrick's debut as Richard III and refers to several key figures rather than

37
This insight will prove useful in illuminating the shortcomings of Davies’s immediate successor-historian, Arthur
Murphy, as well as explaining the light-handed technique of Davies’s future editor, Stephen Jones.
Weldy Boyd 50

copiously reproducing the document in its entirety, as many later biographers would either in a
bid for authenticity or for increased volume.
Davies’s remarks suggest that a biography should be widely applicable, easy to read, and
focused on a compelling narrative comprehensiveness rather than the other connotation of
"comprehensiveness," which might lead to the inclusion of every potentially or passably relevant
document or insight. As we shall see, some of Davies’s reviewers believe that he relaxed his
standards by including some less immediately applicable anecdotes, but Davies generally
demonstrates a keen awareness of his aims throughout the Life, aims which address the
shortcomings he cited in Mr. Ralph. The goal of universality explains both his desire to make the
text a “history of the stage” rather than merely a Life, and also his commitment to bringing
anecdotes up from the footnotes into the narrative.
38
He plans to “confine what I have to say…to
one chapter, [so] I was unwilling to interrupt the narrative by keeping too closely with the
chronology” (2:137). Similarly, he displays some restraint in including anecdotes, which he
understands are expected and enjoyed by his readers, but which also might overtake the
underlying narrative if not controlled. In each instance, he relays one anecdote that he considers
to be exemplary (which is, after all, the original point of an anecdote); as evidence of Garrick’s
kindness, Davies relates that the actor interceded to secure a favorite clergyman a stipend from
one of Garrick’s wealthy connections (1:72; 2:381).
Just as Davies mediated the balance of anecdote and plot summary, showing his
awareness of audience expectations, he also carefully observes what he has decided is a rule
about when to insert capsule biographies (brief snapshots of a paragraph to several pages in

38
The latter is a delicate balancing act: Davies refers twice to a "plan" for the work, both times in context of
justifying plot summaries of much-admired plays, which might seem--to the reader--inconsistent with that "plan" but
which do not ultimately conflict (2.305-6; 2.341). Section Four demonstrates that a later biographer, Arthur Murphy,
did not balance the ratio of plot summary to actual life nearly so well.
Weldy Boyd 51

length) of secondary characters: "It will perhaps be expected, after having written so largely on
their theatrical abilities, that should speak of Powell and Holland as members of society"
(2:94). Such agreeable but ultimately proscriptive language cements capsule biography as an
inalienable feature of thespian biography; Davies’s standard here is around six pages, which
seems reasonable if on the longer side. Holland’s description illustrates the turns of phrase that
made Davies’s biography endure the onslaught of other, less particular, biographies:
Powell often sunk into insipid civility, and the spirit of Holland degenerated into
vulgarity…[Holland’s] two admired patrons, Foote and Garrick, were men justly
celebrated for genius; but when he retailed their bon mots, he made wild work; he
rendered that pert vivacity, which was originally sterling wit. But though Holland was by
nature denied that shining talent which he aimed at, he had something to boast of which
was more valuable; he had a mind exempt from all meanness, and was ever disposed to
do acts of kindness. (2:95-96)
Davies had a knack for weighing a man, describing his faults in an easily relatable instance, and
yet making almost everyone but Samuel Foote, mean-hearted trickster, into a good person.
Davies’s facility with brief, several-paragraphs-length biographies undoubtedly aided the
transmission of his work into later thespian biographies: Macklin’s third biographer, Cooke,
quotes Davies’s treatment of the actors in the Beggar’s Opera at length, noting that “Davies,
(Garrick’s historian,)…knew Walker personally,” suggesting that one reason for Davies’s
supremacy is the supposed truthfulness of his observations, since he was not recycling
descriptions taken from someone with greater access to the stage (33). And indeed, Davies
benefitted from the perceived authenticity of a “known” author in a sea of anonymous hacks.
Weldy Boyd 52

Paradoxically, Davies’s biography has proved its universal appeal through minute details.
It resonates through the echoes of time most prominently in the moments during which the
biographer isolated a specific line or lines from a play and then described the minute action and
expression of the actor in the role. Cooke, writing in 1804, frequently summons up Davies as a
guide to great thespian biography, and as a result, he among Macklin biographers quotes lines
and pinpoints precise moments of descriptions rather than supplying unmoored general
observations on a specific actor’s onstage persona (though calling upon Davies’ Miscellanies and
Life of Garrick without discriminating between them, as though the Miscellanies were an
appendix to the biography). For example, returning to Cooke’s citation of Davies’s first-hand
knowledge of Walker, Davies describes the moment in which Falconbridge responds to
Salisbury’s taunt:
‘You had better gall the Devil, Salisbury.
If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,
Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,
I’ll strike thee dead.’
Davies follows the line with his description: “Walker uttered these words with singular
propriety: he drew his sword, threw himself into a noble attitude, sternly knit his black brows,
and gave a loud stamp with his foot.” The “Player’s commanding look and vehement action”
resulted in applause which “confirmed the energy of his conceptions” (33-34; Miscellanies 1:8).
We may recall that the Old Comedian’s proto-biography featured one such moment of isolation
and explanation; particularly if one merges the Dramatic Miscellanies with the Life, Davies
sustains the excellence hinted at by the Old Comedian.
39

39
A key criticism of Davies’s Life of Garrick was his tendency to save—and allude to— good material in
anticipation of the later published Dramatic Miscellanies, which he had begun planning prior to the Life.
Weldy Boyd 53

Although there are moments evidently aimed for posterity as well as an approving
audience that can confirm the validity of his observations, Davies’s book has moments of raw
immediacy in service of training present-day actors and audiences. Describing the comedian
Parsons, he says, “If he would be more simple and chaste in drawing Old Foresight’s character,
and not imitate the action of a sailor pulling up his trowsers[sic] so often, he would not perhaps
gain such loud applause, but he would find more judicious approvers” (2:336). Davies excels at
painting a figure in brief. His decision to give acting advice directly to a yet-living actor adds
vitality to the narrative centering on a man now dead. Furthermore, his criticisms of actors are
often specific rather than general: he shows the repetitive gestures upon which Parsons over-
relied, rather than simply noting that Parsons courted applause at the expense of nuanced acting.
As much as Davies liked to give instruction to future artists and biographers, he practiced
what he preached, showing evidence of learning from past models. He expressed open enmity
against biographers who simply stitch together what had already been said but was also willing
to acknowledge at least one or two authors from whom he had borrowed a relatively small
amount. He quotes other sources infrequently, notably references to Victor's Theatre History,
which had been printed for sale in Davies’ shop (but not Victor’s anonymous Life of Booth,
printed for John Watts). Voices of the age—theatrical and literary—inhabit the book, but only
one voice connected to theatrical biography can be heard: Colley Cibber's.
Cibber's Apology is still readily recalled by Davies, who appropriates Cibber's description
of Nokes to describe Kitty Clive (2:192); though paraphrased, and only forming a portion of
Davies’s treatment of Mrs. Clive, the borrowing of Cibber's sentiment stands out because Davies
rarely appears to find recourse in others' ideas. Davies’s estimation of Cibber can be intuited by
the predictable though infrequent invocation of his name, precedent, or opinion. Towards the end
Weldy Boyd 54

of the work, Davies places Cibber in a line of English actors able to contend with Garrick's
primacy (alongside the more expected Betterton and Booth): his point in including Cibber is to
rank that Cibber—earlier referenced as author of that "excellent Apology" (2:363) as the better
dramatic author, Garrick the better actor (2:366). Earlier still, Davies has tipped his hat
outspokenly towards Cibber as an author:
All lovers of genius and friends of learning will pay homage to the criticisms of Mr.
Gray; but will his remains, though embalmed by his friend, the elegant Mason; be longer
admired than some of the comedies of Colley Cibber? The Apology of the same author
for his Life is one of those original performances that scarcely ever was excelled, and will
last as long as our language. (2:207)
Such a strong endorsement not only marks Cibber as an obvious role model for Davies, but also
indicates that Davies has inherited Cibber's interest in permanency and can see theatrical
biography as a means to that immortality. Recalling Wanko's observation that Garrick's
biographer would have an advantage over other biographers based on the timing of his subject's
zenith (as Garrick arrived to the British stage during a comparative drought of talent), that same
biographer also had the potential to frame his book as a species of sequel to Cibber's book, which
advantageously ended only a year before Garrick came onstage. Thus, the combined account
would span from the Restoration to 1780 and would explain why, unlike many other authors,
Davies touched comparatively lightly on the Restoration and did not borrow any of Cibber's text
to do so.
Davies’s approach to posterity, or the extent to which he expected his account to be read
in the future, is not straightforward. On one hand, he certainly seems to be writing with an eye
towards continuing relevance, and indeed explicitly justifies a long digression on the actor
Weldy Boyd 55

Havard as useful for the education of future actors (2:215). On the other hand, he directly
addresses the then-performing comedian Moody with advice on how to improve Moody's
portrayal of Sir Sampson Legend so that "he would not perhaps gain such loud applause, but he
would find more judicious approvers" (2:336). Even as he acknowledges the difficulty of the
passage of time, Davies also falls into the trap of cognitive egocentricity, advising his readers to
summon an impression of Weston to stand surrogate to Johnson, a bygone actor without
considering how irrelevant such an implied rather than explicit description would be within a few
generations (1:30). Nonetheless, that he looks so consistently to Cibber as a precedent ultimately
suggests Davies’s focus, while possibly directed slightly more towards actors rather than all
readers, is to the horizon. Davies was writing for posterity, and the chronic references to Cibber
would tend to suggest that he envisioned his biography as joining Cibber’s in a new tradition of
non-disposable theatrical biographies.
There is evidence to suggest, outside of the Life of Garrick, that Davies was interested in
crafting some literary immortality for himself. In the same newspaper where the final narrative
segment of Garrick’s “Anecdotes” biography played out just one year earlier—The Gentleman’s
Magazine, a review of Thomas Davies’s Life of Massinger (1779) appears, in which the
commentator, in the persona of Sylvanus Urban, declares the identity of the then-anonymous
author:
From the name subscribed to a short inscription of this Life to Dr. Samuel Johnson….we
learn that the writer is Mr. Thomas Davies, who, as we remember, for his very generous
treatment of the late Mr. Granger, Dr. Campbell said was ‘not a bookseller, but a
gentleman dealing in books.’ (88)
Weldy Boyd 56

We see a rather consistent portrait of Davies as gentlemanly, elevating his tradesman’s
profession, wielding an appropriately genteel pen in his biographical endeavors. Again, we also
witness his strong devotion to Johnson, and may wish to make something of the fact that he
revealed his identity only in the context of the letter to Johnson, rather than on the cover of the
work, a slow unfurling of his identity. The discreet revelation of authorship in Massinger meets
with the reviewer’s encouragement:
To this uncommon character we are glad to find that he has now added that of author, and
has also delivered proposals for ‘Miscellaneous Notes and Observations on several Plays
of Shakespeare, with a critical review of his characters, and those of many eminent
dramatic poets, as represented on the stage by Mr. Garrick and other celebrated
comedians; with anecdotes of authors, actors, &c.’ (88)
Thus, we discover that as early as 1779, Davies has begun contemplation of his Miscellanies, and
we already know that he had written an article on the Garrick in 1776. Davies’s identity as an
author begins to build: with Massinger, he introduces Dramatic Miscellanies as forthcoming,
with Garrick, he reinforces the Dramatic Miscellanies as a supplement to the biography. Finally,
upon publishing Dramatic Miscellanies, he justifies them based on the popularity of his Garrick,
and even wrote upon the title page “By Thomas Davies, Author of Memoirs of the Life of David
Garrick, Esq.” The increasing identification of authorship in Davies’s works, particularly as a
biographer, suggests mounting pride in a literary career, and the understanding that Davies’s
name itself had come to possess commercial value, signifying a reliable author.
But if the readers gain innumerable tightly written and evocative portraits of the leading
thespians from the Beggar’s Opera to 1779, several succeeding generations of theatrical
biographers received an exemplary model of the genre and a source-text from which to borrow,
Weldy Boyd 57

and Davies gets his most significant foothold into fame, alas—there is, at least for this reader, a
notable void. David Garrick himself is barely described in character, the most sustained
description of a character being that of Hamlet seeing his father’s ghost. Davies writes, almost
painfully linking his own project as a biographer to Garrick’s as an actor, “Hamlet was a part
which he knew the public expected from him,” a part for which every reader would have
expected that Davies supply a detailed critical report (1:62). “I have promised to give a review of
his principal characters in another place, and shall therefore here only give a short draught of
Garrick’s playing Hamlet, with its effects” (63). While Davies recognizes the audience’s
expectation, he separates the key grain of theatrical biography that distinguishes it from other
forms of biography. The Dramatic Miscellanies (“another place”) do not do justice to audience
expectations of a surrounding narrative, and the Life suffers for it. (This is why Cooke quotes
indiscriminately from the Life and the Miscellanies as one unit.) The beginning of the “short
draught” is promising, as Davies describes that Garrick, upon initially encountering the Ghost,
instantly impressed his terror upon the audience: “His expostulations with the vision, though
warm and importunate, were restrained by filial awe.” Alas, Davies does not elaborate, and
dwindles to general praise: “The strong intelligence of his eye, the animated expression of his
whole countenance, the flexibility of his voice, and his spirited action, riveted the attention of the
admiring audience” (1.64).
In sum, Davies does a far superior job describing supporting characters than his main
character, and while Garrick abounds factually in the narrative, he does not receive the lion’s
share of anecdote or description that one would imagine for such a commanding physical
presence and personality. It is an interesting omission, one that the immediately succeeding
biographer, Murphy, would strive to correct, but not succeed in doing. Perhaps Garrick was too
Weldy Boyd 58

remarkable to be fully described. Perhaps Davies assumed that his readers were universally
familiar with Garrick’s motions and characterizations. The strange ever-present cipher of David
Garrick perhaps accounts for some of the most pervasive criticism about the Life—Davies’s
financial motivations and the work’s lack of organization. The former we have briefly addressed;
the latter perhaps is explainable by the difficulty in pinpointing Garrick himself, but also a trend
that is carried over in later biographies, as we will see in the next two chapters.

Reviews of the Life as Extensions of Davies’s Character
With Garrick himself as an absent presence in the work, the more visible, named, author
received a surprising amount of personal criticism. Just as Davies’s work benefited both initially
and ultimately from his personal reputation and the connections that he had made in his private
life and his profession, his personal character as well as his professional talent were also fair
subjects of debate and critique. In turn, Davies’s shot at immortality increased, as newspapers
not only discussed his name, but his salient personal characteristics in reference to his writings.
The technical craft of biography was, of course, also discussed.
In May 1780, one particularly truculent review appeared in the Westminster Magazine by
a critic who appears to take issue not just with the composition but by the composer himself. He
writes: “The Author…not having the abilities to delineate so extraordinary a character as that of
Mr. Garrick, has thrown together a farrago of anecdotes and circumstances relating to those
theatrical personages who had any connection with the hero of his work” (277). Not only has
Davies thrown together a hodge-podge of loosely related events, contends the critic, but his
doing so is deeply related to another fatal flaw: Davies’s incessant praise of Dr. Johnson, which
is categorized as too much panegyric at the expense of eloquence, and, additionally, as
Weldy Boyd 59

misdirected. Despite Davies’s obvious belief in Johnson as the "Greatest English Author," the
reviewer is unconvinced, crisply noting two potential motives for Davies’s worshipfulness, both
ultimately economic:
Dr. Johnson has compiled enormous volumes; which are great objects in the eye of a
bookseller, when they are saleable: he [Johnson] also suggested the plan of the present
work for the Author’s emolument. The conclusion therefore must fairly be, that he is the
greatest man of the age. (278)
The reviewer slyly suggests not only that Davies would benefit from Johnson's patronage of the
lesser-known man's writing career, but also that Davies, as a bookseller, would support Johnson
in the insincere craft of "compiling" (here meant in the Curllian sense of an unethically loose
gathering). The conclusion to be drawn is that the bagginess of Davies’s narrative is a technique
for achieving more money, one that Davies learned from Johnson's supposedly underhanded
method of compilation (which, it is worth noting, is more frequently praised than derided by
contemporaries).
Having dispensed with the veil of purity surrounding Davies’s allegiance to Johnson, the
reviewer moves to an earlier benefactor, Garrick himself. Davies, “as a decayed Actor,” should
have access to the unemployed or financially struggling actors' relief fund that Davies so grandly
touts David Garrick as having graciously initiated (278). Either Garrick's relief fund has been
overstated by Davies, or he is a fool to bother the public for relief via the current book; since the
book should not be a financial necessity, as determined by the Westminster critic, “we are
therefore under no temptation to spare a faulty work, [just] because it has been projected for the
Author’s emolument. Truth is in no case more important than in Biography.”
Weldy Boyd 60

Davies’s character is excoriated by the reviewer: his literary sensibilities are corrupt, he
has rapaciously written a biography larded with irrelevant stories and patently faulty praises on
his heroes, and he has betrayed the good name of Biographer for economic advantage born about
by poor management of Davies’s acting career not only by Davies, but also by Garrick through
the apparently defunct actor-relief program.
40
Although money is, evidently, almost always a
strong motive for thespian biographies in this period (especially in the case of cut-and-paste
artists looking to capitalize on a death), the reviewer is particularly biting about the state of
Davies’s personal finances. Just as the cult of the actor under Garrick produced additional
scrutiny on the thespian’s personal life, so too did the increased ownership and presence of a
“real” author seem to allow for the probing of the biographer’s character and circumstances.
But if Davies’s good name received some tarnish from the Westminster critic, his
reputation also went up in the estimation of many readers. Representative of this opposite end of
the spectrum is a fanciful piece, one more in keeping with the view of Davies that circulates in
later literature. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, in September 1780, The Town and
Country Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge, Instruction, and
Entertainment published a poetical piece by J.R. called "On Reading Memoirs of the Life of
David Garrick, Esq., by Mr. Davies" (494).
41
In this fanciful depiction, we find Shakespeare and
Garrick strolling "arm in arm" on Pindus, a mountain range in Greece almost certainly meant to
evoke the mythical conception of Parnassus, home of the Muses and resting place of poetic

40
If this characterization of Davies seems inordinately harsh, it is difficult to quibble with the reviewer's last
objection: Davies’s misguided attempt to classify David Garrick as superior to the Roman Roscius by virtue of
Garrick’s dealings with the upper classes (consider the earlier anecdote in Section 2 about Garrick’s visit to the
French thespian Preville). No such records of Roscius’s dining schedule exist—therefore, Davies’s musings are
irrelevant if patriotically driven speculation at best.
41
Unfortunately, there seems little hope of identifying J.R.
Weldy Boyd 61

talents. While discussing "the drama and Nature's laws," they are interrupted by Truth's goddess,
who appears with a copy of Davies’s Memoirs which she presents as a gift to Garrick:
This present accept; when perus'd you will own
That justice impartial is here amply shown;
And all those great talents that rais'd you so high,
Are painted in colours that never will die...
It is worth noting that Truth's goddess, in contrast to the Westminster's critic, specifically lauds
the "justice impartial" of Davies’s account, which speaks directly to the critic's concerns. More
importantly to students of biography in general, the goddess praises Davies for achieving the
ultimate goal of good biography: to preserve or immortalize a subject, a task which I will argue
in a later chapter is particularly important to, and difficult for, biographers of thespian subjects.
Davies, clearly, has succeeded not only in impartiality, but in vitality of his representation. More
specifically, Truth's goddess acknowledges that part of the power of Davies’s memoir was
tracing the "shades" of Garrick's weaknesses, "without which a portrait's mere outlines at best."
Having explained the technical features that set Davies’s memoir apart, she confides in Garrick:
As Davies sat writing, I warmly inspir'd him,
And Phoebus with wit, sense, and eloquence fir'd him;
Poor soul! He still thought, from himself sprung those flowr's
That dropt from his pen, but indeed, they were our's [sic].
Nature's goddess joins Truth's goddess in conference with Shakespeare and Garrick, who are
presumably still arm-in-arm; the new goddess embraces her favorite students, "loudly" declaring,
As long as old Time on this globe shall remain,
My Shakespeare and Garrick unrival'd shall reign,
Weldy Boyd 62

As Poet the one, and as Actor the other,
To both whom exulting, I hail myself mother;
While Davies’s name as historian and friend,
In Fame's brightest page shall on Garrick attend.
While the first several lines from Nature's goddess are predictable, this last couplet is significant
to Davies’s standing. He is not Nature's goddess's child, and he does not have a place on the tour
of Pindus, but his work is significant enough for the Goddess of truth to interrupt the summit of
geniuses, and for the Goddess of nature to grant him mention on the same page of fame that
belongs to Garrick.
42
Davies is respected by Nature, but he only receives provisional
membership to Nature's club (his connection to Nature is through Garrick). Nonetheless, his
name lives on—the gamble to “own” the biography by throwing aside anonymity or the guise of
Leonato appears to have paid off richly.
If Davies has allied himself by name to Nature, Davies’s relationship to Truth is arguably
problematic, for although Davies is listed without qualification as Garrick's "historian," Truth's
goddess openly says that she and Apollo actually deserve credit for the brilliant verisimilitude of
Davies’s work. Divine inspiration was not an uncommon trope, though reserved as an indication
of highest praise in the context of a review. The poem does evoke a strange sense in which
Davies is the agent, and then again maybe only the vehicle, for the Life of Garrick.
43

Nonetheless, the poem fundamentally narrates the fame of Davies as permeating not only the
book of Fame, representing posterity, but also the very ears of the deceased and much idolized

42
Surely the poet intends a parallel between Garrick's relationship with Shakespeare, by whose genius and authority
he himself derived his reputation; Davies, then, acquires the crowning jewel in his own reputation as the historian of
Garrick, benefiting from the actor's genius and authority, and, albeit mediated, Shakespeare's.
43
This criticism strangely foreshadows all the commentaries about the source of Boswell’s genius in the Life of
Johnson as actually belonging to Johnson himself rather than Boswell; the essayist was suggested to have flowed,
unmediated by any Boswellian intelligence or useful additions, through Boswell’s pen onto the page.
Weldy Boyd 63

Garrick and Shakespeare as stewards of the treasured past. In sum, this poem makes a
remarkably high endorsement for the significance and predicted enduring power of Davies’s Life
of Garrick, and, by extension, the reputation belonging to the name of Davies.
44

Taken together, the May review and the September poem may not provide a uniform
report of Davies’s success or failure, but they do make a powerful case for the importance of a
work's specific author. Davies’s memoir, to the reviewer from the Westminster, fails almost
predominately due to the character weaknesses of its author, which translate into an unpalatable
medley in the form of a book. To the poet in the Town and Country, Davies’s memoir succeeds
on the basis of his association with Truth and Nature as embodied in the Life which so accurately
immortalizes Garrick and simultaneously immortalizes Davies’s own virtue (and name) for
future generations. To write a biography is not only to open one's self to biographical
examination, but also to potentially snatch a footnote of fame for one's self at the same time.
Davies acquired more than a “footnote” of fame—in fact, his biography lived well into
the 19
th
century as the unquestioned primary biography of Garrick. In the next section, we will
consider four texts responding to Davies’s biography: an anecdotal compression of the Memoirs
as serialized in the London Journal in the spring of 1780 which will hearken back to the
anecdotal “life” that formed a proto-biography of Garrick in the second section; a memoir of
Garrick by the playwright Arthur Murphy in 1801, quite obviously designed to snatch the laurels
from Davies’s head by readjusting the baseline narrative of Davies to better fit what Murphy
thought audiences wanted; the first edited edition of Davies’s biography in 1808, which, by
virtue of the editor’s extraordinarily light hand, can tell us much about what was considered
“sacred” in the text; and, finally, two scrapbooks made from copies of Davies’s biography,

44
It also raises the possibility that at some point biographers might join poets and actors arm-in-arm on Pindus.
Weldy Boyd 64

representing a dilettante participation in theatrical biography from the pinnacle of the social
pecking order and, contrastingly, a much more modest attempt.
45
These latter two texts suggest
the depth of personal participation in these biographies that seems to have coincided with the
“personalization” of Davies’s approach to the genre.

IV. Editorial and Readerly Interventions
This section, in approaching a range of published and unpublished responses to Davies’s
Garrick, indicates how individual readers responded to the biography by desiring to “make their
own mark” on the work: they did so by participating in a range of phenomena from adding
portraits, to cleaving together multiple accounts by different authors, to making numerous
observations in the margins of the work. Particularly in light of the clearly iterated (but not
always clearly distinguished) taboo on authors who compile materials without sufficiently
blending them into a cohesive whole, editorial and readerly play allows for semi-sanctioned
rewriting to happen under the cover of cut-and-paste techniques. These same techniques, when
applied by someone claiming to be an “official” biographer writing a “legitimate” biography,
would be cause for excoriation. Thus, different standards and expectations emerge for the official
and unofficial, even though the original author and the “editor” both aim to preserve a favorite
figure—or, for those adding to an existing text, to preserve a particularly significant text about a

45
In the midst of these responses is a modest pamphlet-style David Garrick in 1807, which turns out to be a bait-
and-switch philosophical rambling about acting theory, a throwback to the biographies of Betterton but with the
added novelty of a named author, James Smyth. Smyth makes manifest his purpose in writing the pamphlet around
David Garrick, rather than simply producing a philosophical screed: “Had Garrick merely possessed the genius of
the greatest of actors, yet lacked those higher attributes of mind that go to make up the individuality of the truly
great man, history would never have known nor have accepted him as an epoch-marking figure in the annals of the
British stage” (38). Smyth credits “the emphatic intuition of his powerful fancy” for Garrick’s conviction that a new
way of acting was required, and that he was the right person to bring that style forward; Smyth makes a proto-
Romantic individualist out of Garrick, and himself the enthusiastic receiver, able to divine Garrick’s dreams and
ambitions, translating the biographer’s job into a sibyl-poet-philosopher figure. For our purposes, the importance of
Smyth’s work, beyond simple taxonomy, is to note the more explicitly Romantic philosophical permutation of
Curllian bait-and-switch.
Weldy Boyd 65

favorite figure— through intervention. This readerly play not only shows an interest in adding to
the monument of a favorite actor, but to express one’s own individual connection to the actor or
history through evidence of participation.

Serialized Life of Garrick (Davies Edition)
In the second section of this chapter, I suggested that the newspapers had a cooperative
but at times adversarial relationship with books. Newspapers have the great advantage of a much
shorter turn-around time, but they also operate within a significantly more conscribed space. The
“anecdotal life” of Garrick, serialized in two chunks for the Universal Magazine in May and
June 1780 under the title "Anecdotes of the Late David Garrick, Esq," appeared right after the
full-length text had been made available.
46
In a remarkable instance of regression, Davies’s
longer Life, having expanded from the original three-page article into the two-volume
phenomenon, was condensed back into ten densely printed pages, but with a much sharper focus
than the original sketch by Leonato.
Although it is not clear whether Davies himself or an editor made the selections of the
material that would constitute the "anecdotes," when juxtaposed with the longer text, the very act
of abridgment makes a claim about what parts of the narrative are important and, conversely,
unnecessary. The Universal Magazine “Anecdotes” come almost verbatim from Davies’s Life,
but without much of the context, character sketches, and incidental observations that make
Davies’s text such a delightful Cibberean read. Indeed, the “Anecdotes” does not offer more than
a handful of "anecdotes" in the true sense: instead, it is a narrative that has stripped away much

46
We can see in the introduction to this piece that an earlier, unrelated "anecdotal life" of the actor had appeared in
that same magazine in October 1776 by "F," only a few months after Davies’s first attempt at Garrick biography as
Leonato—I am not attempting to catalogue the exhaustive list of David Garrick pseudo-biographies, but merely give
a representative picture of the most prominent trends.
Weldy Boyd 66

of the action between Garrick and his contemporaries, and all diverting stories of other people in
which Garrick does not feature. Such small nuances round out the characters, and in fact form a
large part of the portions from Davies’s work that are in more frequent circulation today.
Characteristic is an apparently frivolous sentence in a paragraph about Garrick's Dublin tour in
the unseasonably hot summer of 1742, in which Davies claims that packed audiences
experienced "epidemical distemper," nicknamed "the Garrick fever," a detail that proves
irresistible to present-day scholars (1.52). Similarly, while two excellent bon mots of Quin and
Cibber reacting to Garrick are included, sacrificed to the editorial pen is Garrick's excellent
epigrammatic response to Quin's accusation that Garrickomania was a false religion (255).
Davies had recorded Quin’s famous quip: "That Garrick was a new religion; Whitfield was
followed for a time; but they would all come to church again" (1:45). Garrick’s ensuing ten-line
epigram captures his playful arrogance; the last four lines catch the characteristic sting and
significance of Garrick’s wit:
Thou great infallible, forbear to roar,
Thy bulls and errors are rever'd no more;
When doctrines meet with gen'ral approbation,
It is not heresy, but reformation. (Davies 1:46)
In the interest of space, perhaps, the omission of Garrick's epigram allows Garrick's wit,
unrepresented, to be eclipsed by his aggressors'. In other instances, events of Garrick's life that
might appear to be "canon" about Garrick's life, such as his much publicized rivalry with
Spranger Barry in which both men played Romeo in opposing playhouses on the same night,
appear unimportant based on their absence. We will see in later responses to Garrick's Life that,
in constructing his own version of Garrick's Life, either by abridgment or expansion, the
Weldy Boyd 67

individual had to make certain judgment calls about what to emphasize in the representation of
Garrick's years. In the context of the Universal Magazine's abridgment of "Mr. Davies’s
ingenious Life of that celebrated performer, just published," the “Anecdotes” were a marketing
device designed to sell copies of Davies’s book— to give away all of the material would not only
be spatially unwise for the magazine, but commercially preposterous for Davies, who was not
only the author but also the printer and the bookseller of the Life.
While the flavor of Davies’s phrasing remains largely intact, the reader of the serialized
abridged version of the Life misses Davies’s detailed examinations of specifics and rich
connections between Garrick and his world. The focus remains on Garrick, yet rather than
emerging from the sea of detail intact, the actor seems to be playing to an empty stage.
Ironically, we will see in the next chapter that by the turn of the century, a newspaper's cut of an
"anecdotal" life neither focuses exclusively on its purported subject, nor makes much semblance
of a narrative through-line, an almost exact reversal of the "anecdotal" life presented of Garrick
in 1780.
47
Acting as a double-edged sword, greatly abridged newspaper versions of a longer text
both publicize the work and, in the process of abridgement, allow the reader a seemingly much
clearer, but often skewed, perspective from which to critique the entire work primarily sight
unseen. However, a book as popular as Davies’s Life generated a startling number of relatively
direct engagements with the text in the form of critique and commendation, both implicitly and
explicitly rendered. The most prominent of those responses came from Arthur Murphy in the
form of a brand-new biography on Garrick.

47
Let it not be omitted that anecdotes stripped of narrative through-lines, introductory materials, and transitions
necessarily take away valuable real-estate for the author to make his own mark, especially in achieving a semblance
of mastery in telling a story of significant length. On the other hand, a properly executed anecdote is also an art
form.
Weldy Boyd 68

Improving on the Original: Murphy’s Life (1801)
While some readers were content to add personal touches to Davies’s biography, Arthur
Murphy, renowned playwright and member of Garrick's outer circle, chose to write his own
version of Garrick’s life in 1801, some twenty-one years after the initial appearance of Davies’s
work, and twenty-two years after his protagonist's death. I propose that the latter biography is
largely a reshaping of Davies’s narrative, driven by Murphy’s attempts to improve upon those
faults in Davies’s biography which had been noted and disapproved of by critics. As we saw
with the reviews about Davies’s Memoirs of Garrick, the rhetoric surrounding Murphy’s
publication pitted the two authors against one another in a contest of character just as often as
they evaluated the men’s writing skills. In other words, the creation of a new, rival biography
was the immediate occasion for the review, but the ensuing critique frequently functioned as a
referendum on the men themselves.
Later competitive models of authorship, as we will see in Chapter Two and Three, expose
a politic of ignoring one’s predecessor rather than calling attention to his existence. Murphy,
however, is almost painfully aware of Davies’s precedent, even though Murphy was a
significantly more established author and arguably better equipped to tell Garrick’s story because
of his existing reputation as a writer and a keen observer of life, even considering the lapse of
time between Garrick’s death and Murphy’s account. A talented man, Murphy practiced law,
wrote plays, acted, and wrote for newspapers. Today, Murphy can occasionally be encountered
through a play during eighteenth-century undergraduate coursework, but even with the
irresistible subject of David Garrick, Murphy has not achieved the same prominence as a
biographical beacon as Davies. Prior to his biography of Garrick, Murphy was responsible for
collecting Fielding's work and supplementing it with an introductory biography in 1762,
Weldy Boyd 69

followed by An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson (1792) which accompanied
Murphy's edition of the collected works of Dr. Johnson.
48

Although Murphy could claim the literary chops that Davies did not initially appear to
have, contemporary reviews reflect a consistent preference for Davies’s Life. A review from
the British Critic in June 1801 speaks to the disappointment readers faced: "These volumes
contain very little that has not already appeared among the variety of publications on the same
subject" (637). Admittedly, Garrick was a challenging subject for novelty, both because he had
made every effort to train attention on his public works, and he had painstakingly hidden the
majority of details about his private life.
49
The reviewer continues: "The Life of Garrick, by
honest Tom Davies, was so well received, as to pass through no less than four large impressions,
and there will probably be many who will yet prefer that work to the present" (637). While
Davies had the advantage of comparative novelty and the immediacy that comes with publishing
a work in the wake of the subject's passing, the reviewer makes it clear that Davies’s work
survived not on novelty, but on sustained interest, as testified by the number of editions it
required. "Honest Tom," we might assume, is a nod to Davies’s more humble literary pretensions
and his background as an actor and printer—it also juxtaposes him with the privileged,
cosmopolitan Murphy, who is accused of lifting the majority of facts about Garrick from Davies.
The Critical Review, also appearing in June 1801, carries an assessment that struggles
about its disapproval of Murphy’s biography. The reviewer, sensitive to the heightened
expectations for the work based on its subject and author, describes with considerable pathos that
"two old favorites stand before us" (Davies and Murphy), suggesting the potential pressure—and
sincere desire on the part of the critic himself—to present a positive review (“Article X” 189).

48
Murphy's Life of Johnson is a full-length biography, almost 200 pages, forming a large part of the first volume of
Murphy's twelve-volume project. Some copies treat the text as a stand-alone work.
49
Some people have speculated that there wasn’t much to Garrick when he was out of the spotlight (Wanko 196).
Weldy Boyd 70

This reviewer is not as brusque as his fellow critic at the British Critic, commending Murphy on
his impressively thorough appendix but faulting him for less criticism and instruction than had
been expected. The Critical Review’s article is more specific about Murphy's failure to deepen
Davies’s account: Murphy's account was much closer to that of a "hackneyed gazetteer" than for
a closer associate of Garrick (190). Additionally, the author expressed displeasure with the sheer
amount of space devoted to plot summaries of the plays that featured onstage during Garrick's
lifetime, but credited Murphy for being modest about his own achievements, as he necessarily
reviewed some of his own plays that Garrick's company performed (193).
These reviews, as a rather representative sample, suggest why a chapter on theatrical
biography of Garrick largely belongs to Davies. This does not mean, however, that his
competitor’s work is unworthy of analysis. Murphy’s work reads more like Cibber’s than like a
Curllian hodge-podge, especially in the prominent role that the author himself plays (though
admittedly, Murphy is far more restrained—and less relevant—than Cibber); there is a consistent
narrative voice and certain attempts at philosophy, criticism, wit, and comprehensive history.
The highest point of criticism about Murphy’s biography was his failure to incorporate
occurrences in Garrick’s life abroad during the actor’s hiatus from the stage. Probably taking a
cue from Davies’s earlier squeamishness about intruding on Garrick’s sabbatical, Murphy
anticipates disappointment from his audience and attempts to deflect it first through evoking
pragmatics and then genre: “An account of his tour…will not be expected in this place. We have
no materials, and if they were in our possession, they would not be of a colour with the present
work, which is the history of Garrick in his profession” [my italics] (2:14-15). He later reiterates
his purpose, “We have now gone through the history of our great Roscius in his public capacity”
[my italics] (2:152-153). Murphy’s straightforward interest is in the public Garrick, whereas
Weldy Boyd 71

Davies maintained the illusion of displaying the private Garrick up to the point of
appropriateness but not one iota past it.
Murphy’s willful exclusion of life “in the round”—that is, not just in the theatre—extends
to his treatment of other famous figures. In the extended statement of his purpose at 2.152-4,
Murphy explains that he did not feel the compunction (as did Davies, he implicitly seems to say)
to follow each auxiliary character to his or her death in defiance of the chronological narrative;
rather, he allows characters to interweave at their moment of relevance and then fade back into
the ether. However, Murphy talks in terms of authors, rather than actors, as the most important
characters, a distinct departure from almost all other thespian biographies, where fellow
thespians populate the account, and are advertised as an integral part of the work. Wanko
accurately describes Murphy’s approach: “He picks up and drops characters as he needs them,”
which he says he does to avoid an unwieldy length and “a motley mixture” but which also allows
him to shine the spotlight the two main characters: Garrick and Murphy (Wanko 202; Murphy
2:154).
50
Wanko, who devotes a chapter of her book to comparing the two Life of Garricks,
claims that Murphy, as an author and playwright himself, was much more interested in
immortalizing a literary Garrick than the thespian Garrick that Davies recorded. This theory is
borne out in many of Murphy’s choices, and, I argue, contributed heavily to the perceived
inferiority of that work, as it led to too much plot summary and anecdotes about writers, when
the attraction of the genre was the ephemera associated with actors.
Testifying to the increasingly competitive spirit between biographers, Davies’s name
arises in context of Murphy’s self-righteous indignation over the earlier biographer’s treatment

50
In contrast to Murphy’s biography of himself and Garrick as great British theatrical authors, Wanko says that the
protagonist of Davies’s Life might actually be the English theatre itself, rather than Garrick (196). In both instances,
we can see that Garrick always seems to need a co-star, most likely to fill in the spaces that might otherwise be filled
with revelations of private life.
Weldy Boyd 72

of a conflict between Murphy and Garrick over a play that the manager initially rejected. Murphy
devotes a whole chapter to rehabilitating his own image (and, at least in his own mind,
Garrick’s), sniping that “a very lame and imperfect account has been published by different
authors, who do not seem to have had authentic information” (1:330).
51

Murphy also takes umbrage at Cibber’s biographical crown, declaring that “though
Cibber cannot be cited as a legislator in criticism, yet as a man of experience…he deserves the
attention of all dramatic writers” for his advice that a great thought in a play must be inserted in
the right place for it to count (1:104). Murphy cites the Apology several times, in one instance to
analyze where Cibber failed as a critic. “Colley Cibber was eminent in his profession, and a close
observer of the talents of his contemporaries; but when he attempts to give a portrait of
Betterton, he finds himself unequal to the task,” declares Murphy (1:365). This is the context of
Cibber’s famous lament on the difficulty of theatrical biography, given in full here, as in
Murphy’s account:
Pity it is that the momentary beauties flowing from an harmonious elocution, cannot, like
those of poetry, be their own record; that the animated graces of the player can live no
longer than the instant breath and motion that presents them, or, at best, can but faintly
glimmer through the memory of a few surviving spectators. Could how Betterton spoke
be as easily known as what he spoke, then might we see the muse of Shakespeare in her
triumph, with all her beauties in her best array, rising into real life, and charming the
beholders. But alas! since all this is so far out of the reach of description, how shall I
shew [sic] you Betterton? (2:175-176)

51
In truth, Davies sides with Murphy in his account of the play; he says that Garrick made a gross error in judgment
in not accepting Murphy’s play (2:213), suggesting not only that Davies was aware of Garrick’s weaknesses, but
also that Murphy was not altogether interested in relaying an honest representation of Davies’s account.
Weldy Boyd 73

Murphy refers to this genuine philosophical quandary as Cibber being “obliged to stop short.”
He adds that Cibber’s problem isn’t unique to Betterton: it’s the same issue the present
biographer of Garrick faces. Citing the single instance in which Cibber does “descend, as much
as might be expected, into minute particulars”—Cibber’s description of Betterton as Hamlet, he
says that the description could equally be of Garrick. Indeed, Murphy tries to outdo Cibber by
describing Garrick— while explaining how impossible it would be to describe Garrick:
His imagination was so strong and powerful, that he transformed himself into the man he
represented, and his sensibility was so quick, that every sentiment took immediate
possession of him. Before he uttered a word, the varying passions began to work, and
wrought such rapid changes in his features, in his action, his attitudes, and the expression
of his eye, that he was, almost every moment, a new man. (2:175)
Of course, even a mildly interested reader could point out that Murphy, too, fails to provide
particulars of Garrick’s acting, at least in this instance. Yet he has done so here and there
throughout the Life, but nowhere as affectingly as in his description of Garrick as the distraught
father Virginius in Virginia, first shown in February 1754. After a tremendous plot summary,
Murphy focuses in on two words in a single line:
During that time, Garrick, representing Virginius, stood on the opposite side of the scene,
next to the stage-door, with his arms folded across his breast, his eyes riveted [sic] to the
ground, like a mute and lifeless statue. Being told at length that the tyrant is willing to
hear him, he continued for some time in the same attitude, his countenance expressing a
variety of passions, and the spectators fixed in ardent gaze. By slow degrees he raised his
head; he paused; he turned round in the slowest manner, till his eyes fixed on Claudius;
he still remained silent, and after looking eagerly at the imposter, he uttered in a low tone
Weldy Boyd 74

of voice, that spoke the fullness of a broken heart, “Thou Traitor!” The whole audience
was electrified; they felt the impression, and a thunder of applause testified their delight.
(1:160-161)
This description of Virginius, obviously an established and anticipated point for Garrick, may be
the most successful moment in Murphy’s Life, as it preemptively answers his criticisms of
Cibber in Volume 2 and also seems in this instance to justify Murphy’s slavish devotion to plot
summary, the other main contemporary criticism of his biography.
While the copious plot summary and analysis is additional evidence for Wanko’s claim
that Murphy’s Garrick is an author-actor rather than an actor-author, it also suggests a degree of
defensiveness on the part of Murphy against Davies. Davies is charged with random tangents, so
Murphy ceases the tradition of following minor thespians’ life sketches to their demise despite
being in the middle of a larger narrative; Davies is charged with not incorporating enough
philosophy or criticism even though he had clearly bracketed instances in which he would be
providing further commentary in the Dramatic Miscellanies, so Murphy seeks to combine in one
two-volume Life what Davies took one two-volume Life and one three-volume Miscellanies to
do. With the burden of being a literary critic even before a theatre critic (Wanko notes Murphy’s
commitment to rehabilitating the reputations of plays which might have made better “closet”
plays, that is, ones read rather than viewed), it is no wonder that Murphy was charged with
summarizing too much of Garrick the man to make room for plays written for—and
occasionally, by—Garrick the manager. I do not think it an overstatement to suggest that
Murphy’s failures as a biographer are related not only to his own preoccupations, but also to his
desire to overcorrect from Davies’s failures as recorded in popular press.
Weldy Boyd 75

In the end, it is Murphy, and not Cibber (as Murphy had suggested) who iss known for
his plays instead of his biographical writings. As the immediate criticism of Murphy’s work
suggests, Davies’s account of Garrick’s Life received the laurels, a merit which was not of
meager value and which was all the more expensive given the general consensus that Murphy
was better equipped to the task by proximity to Garrick and literary bent. An excerpted anecdotal
gloss of Murphy’s Life, published in The Monthly Visitor, and New Family Magazine in
February 1801, praises “Mr. Murphy, whose pen is every way qualified to do justice to a
performance of this nature” (153-154); this hope and expectation seems gently put to rest by the
writer at the Critical Review, who had lamented the difficulty of having to judge two old friends,
Murphy and Garrick, unfavorably. The last lines of that review highlight what’s at stake in
biography, as Garrick drops out from the conversation entirely, leaving the spotlight entirely on
Murphy.
We may not again meet him on such pleasing ground: yet we are sorry to reflect that, on
scenes so promising, he has not scattered the flowers around him which he might have
culled, nor raised a monument of genuine criticism and more substantial instruction to his
own ‘fair fame’. (“Art. X” 195)
For all the prefacing about “our old acquaintance,” the critic makes clear that Murphy’s failure is
not just as biographer, or recorder of facts, but as author, critic, and instructor, suggesting the
importance accorded to a biographer and the almost impossibly high expectations for his task.
Moreover, while the critic’s appeal to Murphy’s existing “fair fame” pays homage to his success
as a playwright, it also highlights the missed opportunity of biographical immortality for the
author using language that is thematically similar, but tonally opposed, to the tributary poem that
shows Davies’s name attending as “historian and friend” to his subject on the brightest page of
Weldy Boyd 76

Fame. Biography proves a cruel mistress in the case of Murphy, whose work was not ignored,
but never reached the acclaim of Davies’s, always seeming to suffer by comparison. Thus, it was
likely unsurprising when a new edition of Davies’s Life emerged in 1808.

Unobtrusive Updating: An Editorial Approach to Davies’s Life
With Murphy failing to have toppled Davies, the 1780 Life received the high
commendation of being revamped by a professional editor, suggesting simultaneously and
paradoxically the work’s timelessness and its need to be kept up for sake of posterity. Davies’s
biography had enjoyed an unusual, and often-referenced, popularity, with four editions of the
memoir in his own lifetime (the fourth one, in 1784, appearing with an improved index by the
author). Murphy's 1801 biography, which I have suggested was undoubtedly intended to unseat
Davies as "Garrick's historian," was challenged by a posthumous, edited, fifth edition (1808) and
a sixth edition (1818) in the same vein. The editor who ushered Davies’s work into the
nineteenth century was Stephen Jones, who discreetly refers to himself only by initials, taking a
surprisingly non-proprietary approach to his task. In an advertisement by the editor, dated 1807,
describes the continued popularity of Davies’s biography, explaining that editing was required
simply to update the volumes with "facts and anecdotes [that] have transpired [and] which, as
illustrative of this Biography, the Proprietors were of opinion should be collected, for the
purpose of rendering the Work more complete," since the passage of twenty-seven years (1:xi).
As we will see in other examples of post-publication interventions, the impetus to make a
work more complete by adding in material that the author could not have possibly accessed
appears to be widespread; immediate relevance is not always a feature of the eighteenth-century
theatrical biography, and its readers appear to have had much more patience, and even
Weldy Boyd 77

enjoyment, for traipsing through a brief note on the historical happenings of even the most
narratologically minor characters. As an editor, Jones bridged the gap between the original,
official author, and the unofficial annotators, commentators, and extra-illustrators who had
continued to promote the book’s relevance. Jones’ success was in the way that he mediated the
demand for extra material without damaging or overwhelming the pre-existing structure.
It is reasonable to wonder, however, after the example of Murphy, who seems to have
largely relied on Davies’s narrative to furnish his own, why Mr. Jones did not simply write his
own competing biography of Garrick rather than reissuing Davies’s and confining himself to
footnotes (both literally and figuratively, considering the significantly less brilliant sheen of fame
this editor received compared to Davies). Perhaps Jones was not interested in devoting the
amount of time to writing a full-length biography; perhaps, having watched Murphy's failure to
produce anything that the critics deemed "new," he felt that he was not in a position to outdo
Davies’s biography either based on lack of familiarity with Garrick or inability to conceive of a
significantly better presentation of the established facts and stories. Additionally, he must have
recognized in Murphy’s failure an opportunity to enrich Davies’s increasingly dated account by
inserting some of Murphy’s novel bon mots or updated facts, strengthening the first biography at
the expense of the second. This transaction was, of course, precisely what Murphy had attempted
to do in his appropriation of much of Davies’s original text. Thus, the editor enacted poetic
justice on behalf of the deceased biographer, but in an admirably balanced manner.
According to John Nichols, editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, Jones had developed a
strong reputation for taking primarily intact narratives and editing in such a manner that the
works appeared to the public "with every advantage" (Nichols 665). Jones appears in the same
breath with Isaac Reed, who "was more satisfied with being a faithful editor, than ambitious of
Weldy Boyd 78

being an original composer." This self-effacement and focus on the work itself permeates Jones'
editorial decisions: he explains in the editorial advertisement that he originally planned to insert
his additions "according to local propriety" within the text itself, but that Davies’s non-
chronological style frustrates any plans to do so logically. Thus, Jones writes in his
“Advertisement by the Editor” that "it was determined to leave undisturbed the text of Mr.
Davies" (xii). For Jones, preserving Davies’s product is more important than following current
fashion— he is acknowledging the continued popularity of Davies’s narration. Further framing
Davies’s writing as valuable, Jones adopts the editorial practice that developed in the early
eighteenth century criticism dealing with classics, delineating the words of an important primary
text from the editor's commentary through marks of reference. Pope did so with Homer's Iliad;
for Jones to do so with Davies’s Garrick suggests a certain authority to Davies’s words. Unlike
Pope and other commentators, however, Jones keeps his apparatus quite sparse, with most pages
unmarked by an editorial hand.
Like Murphy before him, Jones appears to have been attuned to some of the criticism of
Davies’s original work. Underlying this entire chapter is a pervasive sense that, while critics
frequently gave conflicting reports about a particular work, authors and editors did remain
interested in readers’ feedback. Jones exercises discretion in responding to the criticism: he treats
Davies’s wild chronology as a virtue not to be disturbed, but he must have found validity in
accusations that Davies was too sycophantic to Garrick at times. Therefore, Jones inserts a
handful of anecdotes within the footnotes that complicate or contradict the main text’s assertions
about Garrick’s behavior. For example, Davies’s innocent reference to the young Garrick as
being “engaged for some time in the wine-trade” now links to a bon mot from Foote, who “used
sarcastically to say, that he remembered Garrick living in Durham Yard, with three quarts of
Weldy Boyd 79

vinegar in the cellar, calling himself a wine-merchant” (1:16). Certainly, the effect—if not
necessarily the intent— of Jones’ insertions is to undercut the reader’s reliance on Davies for the
“whole truth”; garnering the whole truth, one might say, was Jones’ intent, particularly as
Murphy had revealed the same bon mot verbatim in his frequently less flattering Life (1:11).
Jones would likely feel less need to shield Garrick from censure, as they were not direct friends,
as the taboo of speaking critically about the dead seemed to wane relative to years deceased, and,
perhaps most urgently, as an editor whose project received additional challenge from the
appearance of a rival Life that was more than willing to depict the less attractive side of
Garrick.
52

Sometime between Davies and Murphy, some of the “gentlemanly” rules governing
biography seem to have shifted. Testifying to the twenty-four year gap between the fourth and
fifth editions of Davies’s Life, Jones more candidly remarks on the nature of Peg Woffington’s
amorous relationship with Garrick, adding in a suggestive anecdote that Davies obviously
neglected even as he dedicated an entire chapter of the Life to Woffington. The story, which was
much-repeated, is that Woffington, enjoying a tryst with Garrick, heard another gentleman with
whom she was involved entering the home. Garrick having fled rapidly, the gentleman is
surprised to find a man’s wig in the floor. He demands to know the meaning of the wig;
Woffington, coolly composed, explained that it was her own, for use in an upcoming breeches
role. Perhaps not worried about proving himself a gentleman, or alternatively recognizing the
need to preserve a historical connection that would be lost by more chaste biographies, Murphy
made the relationship clear to anyone who hadn’t already been quite aware. Similarly to his

52
The view that Davies promotes of Garrick was not, contrary to the reviews, utterly positive: actually, Davies spent
a decent amount of time expounding on Garrick’s weaker characteristics, especially in the penultimate section of the
biography, the character sketch. Furthermore, although Wanko declares Davies’s biography to be universally
unobjectionable, we can recall that Eva Marie Garrick had found the characterization of her husband most unfair.
Weldy Boyd 80

treatment of the Woffington affair, Jones recognizes the clash between Davies’s desire as a
gentleman to maintain privacy and their mutual charge as biographer-historian-editor to make
sure that the work remains intelligible beyond the first generation of readers who can often fill in
omissions based on popularly circulating knowledge. Thus, Jones shows no qualms in adding a
footnote to identify the victim of a rather rude caricature by Samuel Foote: Mr. A---- is revealed
to be Mr. Aprice (1:229) and a slandered author, R.B. Esq. becomes demystified as Richard
Bentley (1:380). Jones does, however, either assume that the audience can decipher “the Hon. B.
D--d-ngton, afterwards Lord M-l--mbe” (or does not wish for them to be able to do so) just a
page later.
Beyond splicing in Murphy when useful and being more faithful to the facts and less to
the honor of the people involved, the largest alteration of Jones is his decision to insert an entire
transcript of a small pamphlet war between Charles Macklin and David Garrick, the former of
whom believed that the latter had betrayed him by going back on their agreement to boycott their
theatre's unfair working conditions. These pamphlets traverse pages 83-115, sometimes leaving
only a few lines for the body of the main text. Jones' largest systematic intervention is a number
of letters used as supportive evidence for Davies’s narrative, which is meant to bolster the
authority of Davies. Most directly, I believe that Jones is seeking to compete with Murphy's
tremendous appendix at the back of the second volume of his Life of Garrick, at least the parts
that Murphy didn’t import wholesale from Davies’s narrative (as he did with the letters between
Reverend Colson and George Walmsley on the boarding and education of David Garrick). Much
of the almost thirty appended offerings was novel, including numerous prologues and epilogues,
letters written by Garrick to Smollett and to the newspaper, some poetic odes about Garrick, the
contents of his will, and, forming a significant chunk, the entire play-by-play of Garrick’s battle
Weldy Boyd 81

with Macklin. Notwithstanding Murphy’s superficially better organization, his “appendix,” while
associated with scholarly work today, should remind a critical reader of the less sophisticated
patchwork of the Old Comedian and Curll.
In contrast, Jones's footnote insertion of full texts, while burdensome to the eye, more
successfully weave the source materials into the narrative than Murphy's discorporeal sheaf of
endnote sources, their contexts frequently forgotten over the span of many chapters' worth of
narrative. In this way, Jones respects the original efforts of Davies both by not inserting his own
“improvements” into the original text directly, but by adding them onto the proper pages rather
than simply cobbling together an addendum or appendix at the end of the volumes. The effect is
to treat the narrative as a cohesive whole that is to be respected, but to introduce additional
materials where they are immediately relevant and useful in relation to the narrative.
Citing admiration for the value of Davies’s work in bringing to life the genius [Garrick]
that brought to life another genius [Shakespeare], the Gentleman's Magazine grants a three-page
review to the Life of Garrick as edited by Stephen Jones, just as they critiqued the original
biography. "It would be almost superfluous to recommend a work so well known as Davies’s
Life of Garrick…” unless those readers had not been old enough or aware enough to acquire the
prior 1784 edition (“Article CX” 718). Such readers “will deprive themselves of much rational
entertainment if they still reject the opportunity of possessing it [Davies’s updated narrative],
particularly as the present volumes afford additional amusements..." notes the anonymous critic.
The reviewer promises to include a few choice anecdotes added by Jones, highlighting that
form’s portability and popularity. Of Jones’ technique in managing anecdotes, facts, and
criticism, he continues: “We entirely approve of the Editor's reasons for confining those
additions to notes in preference to incorporating them in the text, by which means the works of
Weldy Boyd 82

an author become in a series of years a book of scraps and ends, without method and in half a
dozen different styles (718). The reviewer promises to include a few of the choicest new
anecdotes in the review after observing, that "The Editor [Jones] has faithfully performed his
task"; his assessment connects the virtue of the editor to the virtue of the original author. Thus,
Jones gets a footnote in fame, and provides a bridge between sanctioned and unsanctioned
readerly participation in theatrical biography. As an editor, Jones elevates Davies’s biography as
a work worth preserving: he also provides a model of what types of documents might be usefully
added, as well as how those documents might be spliced into the existing book in such a way as
to be unobtrusively illustrative.

A Different Book of “Scraps and Ends”: Charlotte’s Extra-Illustrated Life of Garrick
A second Life of Garrick—Murphy’s—incorporated much of Davies’s first Life. Later,
the editor of the first Life, Jones, incorporates the second Life (Murphy’s) into a revised edition
of Davies’s original. The cycle might seem interminable, especially as greater numbers of
biographers join the fray.
53
As much as formal additions to the established biographies may have
been encountered warily, unofficial additions flourished in the hands of individual readers. A
particularly popular type of intervention was the extra-illustrated scrapbook. Originating outside
of theatrical biography in the 1770s, the trend is described by Stuart Sherman as “a nascent genre
that, at least within the cloistered context of theatrical archives, can seem to have been born for
the sole purpose of sustaining Garrick’s memory” (977). He points out the prominence of
periodical press material in these scrapbooks, firmly linking scrapbooking to Garrick’s flooding
of the market with his own image and letters with the intention to fashion a “periodicals-based

53
In Chapter Two, for example, Edward Parry Abbott, Macklin’s fourth biographer, will attempt to draw the best
materials from all three of his predecessors, creating an overwhelming patchwork effect rather than a unified work.
Weldy Boyd 83

posterity.” Looking at two examples of extra-illustrated theatrical biography, we see that each
serves as a monument to David Garrick, but also to their owners, with different implications
about textually-based legacies than that seen with Garrick and his biographer, Davies.
Later additions to a text of this period is described by two main terms: "annotated" refers
to marginalia or notes and is a readerly practice quite common today; "extra-illustrated" is a term
that in the late eighteenth century referred to a burgeoning trend of rebinding an individual copy
of a book to include illustrations, newspaper articles, playbills, or other related phenomena that
were deemed relevant to the text by the extra-illustrator. A less technical but widely accepted
term denoting extra-illustrations is "Grangerizing," derived from the last name of James Granger,
who wrote a Biographical History of England specifically designed to encourage later
illustration by individual buyers of the text.
54
A number of books of illustrations appropriate to
the Biographical History marketed themselves as such, climbing in popularity through the
1820s.
55
But a number of extra-illustrated texts culled materials from a wide range of sources.
Just as every hand-annotated text will be different, each extra-illustrated copy of a text has a
story to tell about how the text was read or used (or imagined to have been read or used). Each
extra-illustrator, thus, greatly affects the understanding of the text based on his or her chosen
amplifications or extractions. In acknowledgment of the role an extra-illustrator plays, the
archival record lists the original and additional “author” of an extra-illustrated text when

54
To speak of anyone in the 1780s as "grangerizing" the Life of Garrick is accurate but anachronistic, as, according
to the OED, the term only came about in 1882, despite the evident occurrence of such activity in the eighteenth
century. The word took on a pejorative sense for some critics who objected to the destruction of some books to
provide illustration for other books, or disliked the sometimes comical expansion of a contained text into an
unwieldy multi-volume repository of only loosely related scraps. See the Folger Library's brilliant webpage on
extra-illustrated works about Garrick.
55
In fact, due to markings by an interested librarian, we can see that the extra-illustrator of the copy under
discussion heavily relied upon a text called Worthies of Britain, presumably a large volume replicating engravings of
important figures. By the 1880s, publishers began to openly advertise the desirability of a particular text to a
"Grangerizer", either as providing a central source from which to harvest portraits, or having blank backs on pages
to facilitate the desire of owners to paste in their own illustrations.
Weldy Boyd 84

possible. It is comparatively rare to know the second author in such cases, as most of the books
were altered for private consumption, and thus not labeled. Copies with acknowledged authors
are particularly relevant to readers interested in peeping into the readerly practices of a
biography's contemporary audience. One such person who did sign her extra-illustrated edition
of Davies’s Life of Garrick was Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg, Consort to George III.
While the Queen does not date her receipt of the text nor the dates of her interventions, it
seems reasonable to suspect that her additions occurred while the text was quite fresh. The two-
volume Life is expanded through Charlotte's industry into four.
56
Through several notes of
provenance in the front of the first volume, Caroline Murray, who identifies herself as a former
lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Gloucester, elaborates on the significance of the text to Her
Majesty. Extra-illustration was the Queen's pastime, including the "collecting and arranging of
Prints, collating them with the page appropriately, and having these works, all relating to the
Drama, rebound in this form." The letter, signed August 1863, also lists a Life of Colman as
among Princess Sophia's literary inheritance of the illustrated Life from her mother, suggesting
an assumption that theatrical Lives should be of particular note.
An additional, later note in the text, written in the pencil that so often indicates the work
of a librarian, highlights the representative nature of the present copy of Garrick's biography:
"Queen Charlotte, Consort of King George the Third, spent many leisure hours with books and
prints about the theatre. This is an example of her handiwork in which she inserted appropriate
prints in the text of a life of a famous actor, David Garrick." Unlike later examples of annotators
or extra-illustrator-annotators, Charlotte's practice precluded any writing beyond writing "The

56
These volumes attest to their own importance in the eyes of later readers by the librarian's brief notation on the
inside cover naming the prestigious owner; an extended note on the facing page describing the biography's purchase
by James Bantes Stanhope, a private collector, in 1848; and a letter of provenance written to Stanhope and housed in
a specially made pocket affixed to one of the initial leaves in the first volume of the text.
Weldy Boyd 85

Queen" on the inside cover of each of the four volumes. She did, however, commission a hand-
drawn title page for the third volume (which was actually the first half of Davies’s second
volume), in an attempt to “legitimize” her additions to Davies’s work beyond the superficial or
limited efforts of extra-illustrators who simply added an appendix or left sheets of paper,
unsecured, between leaves. For an extra-illustrator, what one chose to augment the text with, and
how one went about it, left key clues about the illustrator’s social status, preoccupations, degree
of leisure, and generic expectations.
As in Chapter Two, in which I discuss the effects of an annotator, J.J. Cossart's,
contributions on a copy of Cooke’s 1804 biography of Charles Macklin, Queen Charlotte's
insertions change the phenomenological experience of the text. Each intervention affects our
appreciation of a given text; while Cossart contributed commentary and corrections to Cooke's
writing, Charlotte's is at first less invasive, amplifying rather than contesting the text that it seeks
to illuminate. In all instances, Charlotte has selected pictures that are immediately relevant to the
closest page: a portrait of the comedian Woodward complements the written portrait offered by
Davies, confirming Davies’s description of the man's appearance, with the effect that we can
more readily imagine the movements of the figure pictured, as described by the accompanying
text. In some cases, Charlotte has inserted several pictures of a single actor in multiple
"characters" so that the motion is freeze-framed. She does not seem to have chosen portraits that
contradict Davies’s accounts. Because of the importance of visuals in theatrical biography, the
Queen's records are primarily helpful, and understandably, she is able to include a greater range
of portraits of actors, and otherwise, than might be available to collectors of lesser means.
However, either by virtue of her own priorities or the likely abundance of certain portraits over
others, Charlotte's illustrations at times subtly overemphasize the part accorded to royalty,
Weldy Boyd 86

famous philosophers, and other bit players in the written record, as in the case of a portrait of
Frederick, Prince of Wales, facing Davies’s page 155 in Volume 1, and George II in Volume 3.
This is not to say that the vast majority of illustrations are not of Garrick's fellow thespians;
indeed, portraits of actors and actresses were readily abundant, as evidenced not only from a
sampling of grangerized theatrical biographies at the turn of the century, but also by another
helpful librarian note identifying one illustration as "from Set of 12 portraits of Actors by
Laurie." Stripped of Davies’s words, it might have been difficult to have perceived exactly
whom the biography was about; while Garrick is certainly featured, her collection is of Garrick's
world rather than Garrick.
While there is a danger in abstracting too distantly the reading habits of an entire town based
on a single book copy, Queen Charlotte's interest in theatrical biography is worth considering.
Evidently, she had a well-known interest in extra-illustrating, and was known to direct this
interest primarily, if not exclusively, to books about the theatre. To some extent, the ease of
acquiring material representations—tickets, playbills, portraits, and other items commonly
appearing in Grangerized texts— makes theatrical books an obvious choice. On the other hand,
Charlotte doesn’t include tickets and playbills; she also demonstrates a focused interaction with
the text, not sprinkling Garrick memorabilia indiscriminately between any two pages. It is
obvious that she read, and presumably enjoyed Davies’s work, that those around her realized the
value of the texts to her by noting their later presence in Charlotte's daughter Sophia's library and
iterating (and reiterating) the value of the text within the very pages of that text, lest later readers
should miss the significance of Charlotte's work.
Objectively, Charlotte’s approach to the text aligns her with the authorial practices of Curll
and other “hack” writers who primarily piece together existing objects for the sake of amassing
Weldy Boyd 87

more material. However, her materials—fine art engravings—and method of placement—based
on a key word in the text—are systematic rather than simply accretive, more akin to Davies’s
insertion of letters in the narrative than to those in Murphy’s displaced appendix. But extra-
illustrations belong on a continuum, and not all such “authors” have access to the time and
materials available to a Queen: in those volumes, the “scrap” in “scrapbook” may manifest much
more literally.

Overwriting a Life: Anonymous Life of Garrick Scrapbook
Theatrical biography seems to invite reflection upon one’s own place in the world, a
phenomenon that forms one of the strands of argumentation in Chapter Two: suffice to say, the
consideration of a thespian’s impermanence onstage, and our corresponding impermanence in
the world’s memory, not to mention the occasion of theatrical biography as the thespian’s
passing, seem to yoke theatrical biography to death. We saw that Queen Charlotte valued her
theatrical biography collections not just for their innate value, but for the investment in time that
she made to augmenting them, enough to formally include them as part of her legacy to her
daughter. The books thus became a stand-in for her, a physical artifact passed down in lieu of her
physical presence.
Providing a remarkable contrast in appearance to Queen Charlotte’s beloved Garrick, an
anonymous scrapbook housed at the Folger, also claims the title of "Life of Garrick,” and also
serves as a glimmer of insight into the life of the scrapbooker himself.
57
Labeled as an
eighteenth-century manuscript, for of course many of the engravings and text would have been
made in the 1700s, the work looks to have been compiled in the first few years of the nineteenth
century, certainly after 1801, as it makes use of documents published in that year, but probably

57
More information about the item under discussion can be found in the Folger catalogue, item W.b.471.
Weldy Boyd 88

not much later based on the comparative meagerness of the collection and lack of scrapbooking
technique. Notwithstanding its purposefully made binding, it is, as Garrick scrapbooks go, a
notably philistine effort, a comparatively lean 86 pages in length, with ragged edges, readily
visible [tabs for edging in] and clumsily pasted-in clippings that sacrifice one page of each leaf to
the pasting process (more sophisticated scrapbookers, such as Queen Charlotte, would cut a
frame into a larger sheet, enabling viewers to see both sides of a leaf). At first glance, it does not
appear to be a Life of Garrick, but rather, the carcass of a French book offering a collection of
capsule biographies of leading English public figures.
With the exception of the first few pages, a pattern emerges of a short biography on the
recto, or the left side of the page, serving as "backing" for the verso, or right side of the page,
which would have a scrap of Garrickiana pasted over the biography originally printed there.
Thus, the left side of one page features part of Charles I's biography, while the narrative on the
right side has been purposefully obscured by a handwritten bet about the year in which Garrick
came to the English stage (Scrapbook 45). A fragment of Cromwell's biography faces off against
a portrait of Garrick as Hamlet (Scrapbook 39). Biographies of George I and II are less than
augustly opposed to a syncopated account of the Stratford Jubilee (syncopated because one side
of every leaf has been pasted to the book).
58
Such juxtapositions not only invite the reader to
consider Garrick as literally overwriting history, but also as coming before, or in spite of, a
number of traditionally more hallowed British figures. While the book copy is far from perfect,
with several pages bound upside down, and two pages of the original text appearing in English
rather than French, the owner still went to some effort to create the scrapbook and willfully

58
Intriguingly, the scrapbooker's skill seems to progress as his project continues: he develops a system of flaps
where readers have access not only to both sides of the page that he's added, but to the original text underneath.
Weldy Boyd 89

decided that a "Life" of Garrick was worth rendering unusable at least 29 other "Lives."
59
This
makes a strong case for the importance not just of biography, but of theatrical biography, as
something to be experienced in an individual’s life: the popularity of the genre may be a function
of accessibility, as I will suggest later, as a regular Englishman might hope to meet a Garrick
while attending the theatre but might not have felt such a connection to a remote French royal
worthy.
60

The anonymous "author," or more appropriately, "compiler" of this alternative Life of
Garrick, takes a page (figuratively and literally) from Thomas Davies and Arthur Murphy's
biographies, along with numerous popularly printed etchings of Garrick in costume and as
himself.
61
The six leaves taken from Davies come from two different sections of the work: the
account of the Stratford Jubilee, Chapter Forty-five of Volume Two; and the account of David
Garrick and Spranger Barry's competition over the part of Romeo, which occurs in Chapter 12 of
Volume One. The proceedings, in which Garrick attempts to route the sultry rival actor of
Covent-Garden by secretly mounting a production of the star-crossed lovers at his Drury-Lane,
are immortalized in a pithy epigram, recorded by Davies and preserved by this anonymous
scrapbooker, who speaks to the frustration of having to watch the same play at both playhouses
for “almost a fortnight”:

59
Strictly speaking, the Life was not built on a single copy of the French text, as several pages of the text appeared
identical: thus, it was more likely that the owner acquired a number of leaves from several copies, perhaps enticed
by the generous size of the margins of the original, the texture of its leaves, or other features of the physical book
that made it a desirable base text.
60
Those lives appearing on the recto or, in some cases, underneath a flap on the verso, include: Villiers (thrice).
Howard. Hume (twice). George 2 (twice). Inigo Jones (twice). Johnson (twice). Fairfax. Fox. George 1. George 3.
Dobson. Vandyke. Steele. Thurloe. Churchill. Cromwell (twice). Percy. Charles 1. Reynolds. Manners (thrice).
Russel (thrice). Raleigh (twice). Locke (thrice). Lelys. Lambert. Newton. Charles Edward Stuart. More. James
Stuart.
61
Although I have already given my rationale for centering this chapter on Davies, rather than Murphy, those
readers interested in Murphy’s Garrick should know that the text also forms the entire basis for a number of extra-
illustrated editions which are quite worthy of study, though outside of the scope of the present project.
Weldy Boyd 90

“Well, what’s to-night,” says angry Ned,/ As up from bed he rouses? Romeo again! and shakes
his head;/Ah! pox on both your houses! (Davies 1:100).
For reasons difficult to fathom, this anonymous scrapbooker follows three leaves from
the Jubilee with yet another leaf about Romeo, returns to the Jubilee for one more page, and
returns to Romeo for a leaf. Either having had access only to these two "high points" or having
selected them as the two most essential parts of Garrick's life as told by Davies, the compiler
then adds a single page from Arthur Murphy's biography of Garrick: the first page of Chapter
Nine, which comments on Garrick's status as “another Proteus, in the celerity with which he
transformed himself into different shapes” (1:66; Scrapbook 27). This addition suggests that the
compiler did have some interest in what Garrick actually did while onstage, as Murphy mentions
Garrick’s ability to change “his voice, which was naturally clear and agreeable to the ear [but
which, as John Brute] was changed to a rough and sullen tone.” Even among the less materially
sophisticated scrapbooker, descriptions of the actor receive priority. Turning back to the two
incidences from Davies, the rival Romeos illustrates the potential for competition among actors
(actually, Spranger Barry and Garrick usually practiced a peaceable division of English
audiences), and the Stratford Jubilee outlines the growing accessibility of David Garrick as
someone not just available onstage, but off-stage. One could, as Boswell did, attend the Stratford
Jubilee and participate in the parade. Both of these incidents are larger than life, and yet
accessible.
Scrapbooks (or extra-illustration, or annotation) are, ultimately, about participation:
scrapbooking itself is an act of participation. While Queen Charlotte’s extra-illustrations reflect a
more sterile aesthetic of “I am immortalizing evidence that this happened,” the anonymous
scrapbook projects an ethos of “I am immortalizing evidence that I was there,” as he may have
Weldy Boyd 91

stripped the advertisement of Othello from a wall, or acquired the signature of an actor in a
coffee-shop. Moreover, even in the case of Charlotte, whose illustrations were undoubtedly taken
from books, the act of intervening in the text is a testament to the inclination to devote an
irreplaceable portion of one’s life to the act of memorializing. The impulse to record something
fleeting, in all instances, is at work, even if the announced centrality of oneself to the project of
scrapbooking varies.
Like second and third iterations of an author’s life, edited versions, and newspaper
abridgements, the scrapbook continues to demonstrate (often more radically) the sanctioning of
readers to increasingly insert themselves into or otherwise play within the space of the
memorialized life. So frequently, thespian biography was attendant upon death, and thus the rise
of the newspaper genre obituary-biography and the inclusion, as early as Booth’s first biography,
of intimate details of the actor’s autopsy—invasive, but mediated.
62
In a similar, but arguably
more macabre vein, Garrick’s anonymous scrapbooker appears to have attended Garrick’s
funeral in order to collect signatures of the mourners at this last public spectacle. This death-
register, helpfully labeled "the list of persons that followed the late Mr. Garrick's remains in
1779” is comprised of cobbled-together strips of tatty yellowing paper bearing individual
signatures (Scrapbook 81).
63
At least some of the signatures are certainly legitimate originals
based on obvious variations in the hand; other signatures seem remarkably similar in
penmanship, both in terms of letter formation and pressure of strokes, suggesting the
commitment that the author had to making the register comprehensive.
64
The register can lift up
to reveal the original text of the French capsule biographies: one of several pages on David

62
See Wanko for an analysis of the significance of Booth’s autopsy in his theatrical Life.
63
The vogue for collecting signatures seems to have arisen simultaneously with an interest in scrapbooking: even
Queen Charlotte, who did not deign to post actual scraps in her extraillustrated copy of Davies, did include a handful
of signatures from noble persons.
64
A research librarian at the Folger verified the divergent penmanship.
Weldy Boyd 92

Hume can be found underneath the third page of the register. The signatures, significance on
scraps, partially obscure the scraps of the French book that used to hold meaning. Thus,
scrapbooking represents both the cure and the disease. In dissecting the book, program, or other
memento to repurpose it, the original record is abridged, if not rendered unintelligible; the
dismemberment of the prior artifact is committed in service of creating a new artifact designed to
preserve or memorialize.
65
As I suggested earlier, scrapbooking in particular upends the
paradigm established in theatrical biography of disdaining cut-and-paste: scrapbook is cut-and-
paste to the exclusion of the cohesive narrative so prized in traditional biography.
Scrapbook culture, while an obvious extension of the biographical impulse, is not
designed to result in great fame for the individual creator. Unlike the theatrical biographer, who
must always worry about the obsolescence of his version of a story (as I argue in my second
chapter), the scrapbooker’s own immortality is not a concern because a private scrapbook can
less easily be rewritten, declared unimportant, or entirely replaced than an “official” mass-
produced Life. Davies, who puts his name to the title page of his work, is at the vanguard of the
“personalization” push for “official” biographies, shown by the abandonment of pseudonyms and
anonymity. For expansions or alterations of a biography, the scrapbook shows signs of agency
without identifying the agent: anonymity is the rule, not the exception. What emerges from the
contrast of theatrical biography in the form of a continuous narrative versus scraps is a
dichotomy between the named and the unnamed, the accountable and the free. The only
reputation of concern in scrapbooking is that of the subject. Anonymous cut-and-paste biography
is not thrall to the constraints that attributed linear biography faces because the motives of self-
directed fame or monetary gain do not apply, and only the preservation of the subject remains.

65
Some scrapbooks incorporate the entirety of a memento, as in the case of another anonymous scrapbook at the
Folger which proudly offers an official death notice of Eva Marie Garrick, complete with black-edged mourning
paper.
Weldy Boyd 93

Extra-illustration as a practice continued to flourish into the 1900s, with pronounced
activity on theatrical biographies in the last two decades of the century. While beyond the scope
of this examination, the fact that readers continued to extra-illustrate biographies of eighteenth-
century actors by eighteenth-century authors stresses the importance accorded to early works of
theatrical biography, and not infrequently, to the original authors whose works were reprinted to
accommodate interest some hundred years after their first appearances. Thus, the biography, its
basic text sometimes unchanged, and sometimes even greatly abridged or fragmented, became a
vehicle of transcendence even as the additional materials available to the extra-illustrator varied
from period to period. Davies lives on, no doubt in some part to the interest shown by a great
number of less-effective fellow biographers or now-anonymous readers who felt a need to
respond to his writings, and thus perpetuate his name, even if only in scraps.

V. Davies as an Enduring Figure of Theatrical Biography
Through personal participation, first his own, and then his readers’, Davies acquired more
fame. In turn, readers want to know more about the author. In Davies’s case, we are able to
recognize him in the cast of characters encountered during the Life of Johnson, as readers at that
time would have been able to do. Davies’s name is carried on in future theatrical biographies and
in readerly additions. In short, biography functions dually as a memorial or surety for the author
and the actor-subject. Because Davies was the first to achieve very solid success writing thespian
biography (rather than autobiography), his ascendance provided a model to a number of would-
be biographers with their eye on future fame.
The present day’s ultimate cut-and-paste source for biography, Wikipedia, where the
presence of a page indicates some level of fame, lists “Thomas Davies (bookseller)” among the
Weldy Boyd 94

other famous Thomas Davies of the ages.
66
The Dictionary of Literary Biography notes the
“frequency with which leading literary figures of the day referred to the Garrick
biography.” Both sources pay attention to Davies’ participation in literary, theatrical, and social
scenes, especially as involved Johnson and Garrick. I should like to argue that the interest in
Thomas Davies (one-time actor, bookseller, biographer, and colourful personality) would not
have maintained relevance if not for his biographical enterprise; he would instead be just another
small cog in Boswell’s grand biography, a capsule biography unto himself.
What is so colorful about Davies, a small man relative to the popularly known terrain of
famous eighteenth-century authors, slipping among the giant shadows cast by David Garrick and
Samuel Johnson? The biographer lives on not only through his own writings, but as he appears,
quite jauntily and much more directly, in the Life of Johnson. It seems fair that he should receive
a mention, perhaps a vote of gratitude from the author, as we have already discovered that it was
he who facilitated the meeting between Johnson and Boswell (and indeed, I suspect, one of
several models of biographical fame after which Boswell modeled his anticipated biographical
career). Boswell actually gives several views of Davies, beginning with a character assessment:
“Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a
liberal education. Though somewhat pompous, he was an entertaining companion; and his
literary performances have no inconsiderable share of merit,” opines Boswell. Davies was a
master at mimicking Johnson, a talent that only increased Boswell’s desire to meet the doctor for
himself. Of Johnson’s laugh, his acolyte says, “It was a kind of good humoured growl. Tom
Davies described it drolly enough: ‘He laughs like a rhinoceros’” (2:494). Johnson loved Davies

66
If the academy has not yet produced a paper about Wikipedia as the direct inheritance of Edmund Curll, I have
found my next project. The ongoing debate about Wikipedia’s viability or usefulness as a source of “knowledge” is
a relatively convincing piece of evidence to support Stuart Sherman’s delightful argument that the present century is
actually still a part of an extremely extended eighteenth century. I would also add that Wikipedia is hardly the
guarantor of a legacy that some might hope, as articles are routinely weeded out when deemed no longer relevant.
Weldy Boyd 95

and was sorry when he quarreled with the “somewhat dramatic” bookseller who was “not
without pride and spirit” (1.745; 1.248). More unpleasantly, Boswell relates that after Davies
gave a mutual friend an encouraging clap on the back, one observer said “he could not conceive
a more humiliating situation than to be clapped on the back by Tom Davies” (1:476). And, of
course, he was always in need of money: in the surprisingly frequent cameos of Tom Davies into
the narrative, several remark on Johnson’s charitable reaction to “his poor friend’s narrow
circumstances” (1:460).
There is both irony and poetical justice that Davies should receive his most sustained
biographical treatment as a supporting character in the Life of Johnson—in life, he seems
constantly to have been immersed in Johnson’s shadow, and certainly would have been so in
death, had he not written the Life of Garrick (and, even that is not free from his connection to
Johnson both because of Johnson’s role in the creation of the Life and his participation in the
actual life of David Garrick as an early travel companion and prominent social contemporary).
Davies’s name primarily lives on in the context of Garrick’s biography and his innovations to the
practice of theatrical biography in the eighteenth century. Almost twenty years before Boswell
hitched his fame to Johnson, Davies achieved what was then unparalleled fame in theatrical
biography based on the twin poles of the unexpected maturity of his biographical worldview and
his willingness to associate the work with his actual name and reputation. As mentioned earlier,
so central to the work was Davies’s reputation and character, that while Davies did not discuss
himself as a subject within the biography, the reviews almost invariably commented upon the
author and thus left incremental memorials to the man behind the Life. Davies’s character lived
on after death. The Gentleman’s Magazine comments on the popularity of the Life as a function
of Davies’s appeal: “Such was the reliance of the literary world upon the amiability and integrity
Weldy Boyd 96

of Mr. Davies’s character, that they approved, and the public admired” (“Art. CX” 717).
Conversely, Percy Fitzgerald, who was perhaps the most voluminous and well-known
practitioner of thespian biography in the latter 1800s, wrote contemptuously of the “faithless
biographer” in his own Life of Garrick (1868): “…it is a relief to be able to finish with one who
has played so unworthy a part in Garrick’s life—whose own life was such an alternation from
bullying to fawning, from bluster to obsequiousness” (2:284).
67
Counted among Fitzgerald’s
seven memoirs pertaining to the theatre is his autobiographical Memoirs of an Author (1895),
suggesting the monumental rise in the status and importance of the individual biographer that
had occurred in the past century, certainly in part attributable to the efforts of Thomas Davies.
Fitzgerald’s criticisms, and others who find fault with Davies, are not uniformly incorrect.
Just as it has been suggested (uncharitably) that Boswell’s exemplarity as a biographer was less
predicated on his actual talents, and more on his fortuitous selection of a subject, it may also be
that some of Davies’s weaknesses are excused and some inadvertent benefits given to his
account by virtue of the cultural clout of David Garrick as a subject.
68
But none of the treatments
of Garrick before Davies’s receives more than a cursory reference in the annals of time, and all
of the formal biographical treatments of Garrick thereafter, and many of the readerly responses,
seem to be compelled to acknowledge Davies’s claim on the Life and on the genre.
Perhaps even more important than the effect of Davies’s work on the representation of
Garrick as a historical subject is his impact on the general practice of theatrical biography. The
second chapter, presenting three rival presentations of the life of Charles Macklin, a comedian,

67
Percy Fitzgerald’s impressive biographical cache included David Garrick (1868), the Kembles (1871), Catherine
Clive (1888), the Sheridans (1886), Henry Irving (1893), and Samuel Foote (1910). Also counted among his
theatrical memoirs—even though he was not at any point an actor— is his “Memoirs of an Author” (1895),
suggesting the monumental rise in the status and importance of the individual biographer.
68
See Adam Sisman’s Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson (2000) for an account
of Boswell’s craft that contradicts the view of Boswell as a mere transcriber of Johnson’s genius.
Weldy Boyd 97

will expand upon the increasing competition between biographers, a politic which we saw
developing with Murphy’s absorption and correction of Davies’s account in his Life of Garrick
and subsequently played upon by editors and readers.
69
This competition is spurred on by the
realization following Davies’s success that a biography may serve not only as a memorial to the
subject, but also to the author—thus, we see Davies’s convention of naming himself become a
norm, and an increase in authors inserting themselves more deeply into the action of the
biography. The increasing understanding of theatrical biography as a profession unto itself leads
to the application of the “cult of the author” status generally denied to the genre up to that point.
These changes, and the accompanying revisions to the theory of theatrical biography, will be
discussed in the third chapter, which finds its center on the serial biographer James Boaden.

69
Boswell says that Murphy had claimed to be present at the famous first meeting between Boswell and Johnson,
but that Thomas Davies, and not Murphy, was there: he would have remembered if Murphy had been. This small
note contributes to a strong sense of Murphy attempting to take over Davies’s claims to fame/association, first with
Garrick in the dueling biographies, and then even in a high point in Davies’s personal life. Like Garrick, Johnson
becomes a point of contestation. Davies wrote fairly extensively about—and for—Johnson in the Life of Garrick,
Murphy wrote an “Essay on the Life of Johnson,” and of course, Boswell wrote Johnson’s Life. I am intrigued by
this palpable desire to possess Samuel Johnson: in Boswell, Murphy, and Davies (who didn’t even write a biography
about Johnson) we see three biographers locked in a competition for proximity to Johnson and biographical
authority via Johnson.
Weldy Boyd 98

Chapter Two: His Work, My Words: Anxiety and Competition
in the Posthumous Lives of Charles Macklin, Comedian

I. Establishing Expectations: The Biographer as Artist
“This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew!” So runs the most famous bon mot about Charles
Macklin, comedian (ca. 1699-1797), supposedly spoken extemporaneously by Alexander Pope
after witnessing Macklin assay the role of Shylock in the early 1740s. In 1968, J.O. Bartley
introduced his edited version of Macklin’s plays by suggesting that if any person could
successfully make the transition from flesh to page, it would be Charles Macklin, due to the
stodgy actor and playwright’s strongly delineated characters (which he often wrote for himself,
as versions of himself).
70
This chapter seeks to evaluate the extent to which Macklin’s early
biographers were able to “draw” the man who drew the Jew that Shakespeare drew. Certainly
there was something special about Charles Macklin: upon his death in 1797, Macklin supplied
the subject for three biographies in just six short years. Almost immediately, Francis Congreve’s
concise Authentic Memoirs of Charles Macklin (1798) appeared, followed by James Kirkman’s
strikingly inflated Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin (1799) and finally, William Cooke’s
Memoirs of Charles Macklin (1804). In contrast, the practically undisputed leading actor of the
mid-eighteenth century and renowned pursuer of fame, David Garrick (1717-1779), had only two
full-length biographies to his name in the same time period, spaced twenty years apart.
71
This
chapter attempts to address the intersections of temporality and preservation that fascinated and
repelled theatrical biographers: I will particularly focus on the extent to which biographers could

70
Bartley says, “It is not hard to imagine what sort of actor Macklin was” (18).
71
Those biographies were discussed in Chapter One of the present work. Early Garrick biographies included
Thomas Davies’ highly influential Memoirs of David Garrick (1780) and Arthur Murphy’s belated but unapologetic
reinterpretation, David Garrick (1801). Currently, Garrick boasts the greatest number of biographies of any
eighteenth-century thespian, and has been a consistently popular subject of study. Macklin, on the other hand,
enjoyed a brief renaissance of interest with Edward Abbott Parry’s Charles Macklin (1891) as one installment of a
planned collectable set of thespian biographies; he became the focus of his first (and only) full-length monograph
“scholarly” biography in 1960 at the hands of William Worthen Appleton in Charles Macklin: An Actor’s Life.
Weldy Boyd 99

hope to overcome the barriers of time and space imposed in the shift from live performance to
fixed text, and the effects of those anxieties still legible upon the biographies themselves.
It is easy to accept Macklin, an actor, as an artist: he brings a character to life from a
playbook. The theatrical biographer performs a parallel but inverse operation, bringing a
character to life from the stage onto the pages of biography. However, an assessment of current
criticism involving biography as a genre shows a pervasive tendency towards discounting
biography as having literary value in its own right. Biography, with few exceptions, is equated
with source texts that enrich or explain literary works, more akin to an encyclopedia than a
novel.
72
Thus, when The Guardian’s critic Tom Paulin was faced with evaluating Richard
Holmes’ Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer in 2000, he charged Holmes with
overstepping generic expectations, writing, “Is the biographer an artist who can and should exist
on equal terms with the dramatist, fiction writer and poet? The short and robust answer is
‘certainly not’” (Paulin). While I believe that the time is ripe for a reconsideration of biography
as an artistic genre, I wish to consider, in this chapter, the unique artistic challenges of the
theatrical biographer in particular. There is little debate that many theatrical biographies in the
eighteenth century were rushed, overstuffed, plodding tomes of miscellanea—however, this
chapter urges us to consider not only the stated purpose of theatrical biography at the time, but
also the extent to which the biographers achieved it, and by what means. In effect, it asks that we
consider the eighteenth century biographer as an artist, even in those instances where his art falls
far short of expectations.
This chapter thus centers on two foci: first it turns to theatrical biography as a test-case
for my revised understanding of biography as an art, arguing that theatrical biography, instead of

72
This division, I believe, is rooted in a privileging of fiction over fact as innately more creative, and thus more
“artistic.”
Weldy Boyd 100

being a strictly factual account of which plays a performer participated in, and to what acclaim as
measured by tickets or audience commentary, allows the biographer to capture portions of the
actual on-stage activity due to the specific criteria of evaluating performance in the eighteenth
century. Second
Second, concentrating on Charles Macklin as my case study, I argue that the specific
temporal conditions surrounding theatrical biography coalesce into the biographer and actor
sharing similar anxieties in relation to their art, an anxiety which provides meta-commentary on
the particularly competitive nature of originality in the eighteenth century, even in genres that
may initially seem to foster collaboration in place of contest.
I hope to highlight the unique struggles faced by theatrical biographers in terms of their
own technique and, perhaps more importantly, their own understanding of challenges. I suggest a
special role for theatrical points, and simultaneously, anecdotes, in capturing the lifeblood of
theatrical judgment at the time, and in bringing the stage, as it were, to narrative. I note, also, that
the use of anecdote both engenders and endangers the narrative, especially in the case of the
Macklin biographies here under consideration. Finally, calling upon an annotated version of
Macklin’s third biography, I will indicate that the reader response to theatrical biography was
dynamic. While readers recognized and responded to the idea that the actors could not entirely be
faithfully recaptured in a static art form, there was ongoing engagement with the actors through
theatrical biography and the accretion of layers of mythos.

Tracing the Parallels between Actor and Author
As mentioned in the introduction to this project, Marvin Carlson’s contention that all
performers and audiences face a stage crowded with ghosts (or memories held by the audience
Weldy Boyd 101

and the performer himself) of the previous persons who have played a role, of the previous roles
the particular actor has assayed, and of other conditions which overlap with prior performer or
spectator memory can easily be applied to theatrical biographers (Haunted 8); because the
biographer’s task of assessing an actor was so frequently comparative in nature, he could not
help but be attuned to the competition that he himself faced from other biographers (and from his
readers’ comparisons). Thus, the biographer’s temporal concerns amplified those of the actor,
while recontextualizing them into the new medium of translation. This section argues for a
shared experience between actor and biographer as the biographer, in effect, joins the long line
of people who have “performed” the roles of a chosen thespian, while also competing with other
biographers for the right to tell the story. Overarching this chapter is the claim that theatrical
biography is worthy of study simply for discovering the extent to which, and how, biographers
sought to preserve what the thespian did onstage—let alone for the ways in which that task
affected biographers as fellow artists. We can see these anxieties first in the general story of the
actor Charles Macklin, as he struggles to become known and remain relevant, and again in the
retelling of that story by multiple biographers who must battle the ghosts of their predecessors
and ensure their own relevance in the face of newer, forthcoming, biographies.
Charles Macklin, the subject of this chapter—or more appropriately, the subject once
removed, as I primarily am interested in Macklin through his biographies—achieved prominence
in London when he appeared as Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Both true to,
and complicating, Carlson’s theory of returning to the grandfather at the expense of the father in
the pursuit of novelty, Macklin introduced three innovations to the role. First, Macklin restored
Shakespeare’s “original” version of Merchant from an adaptation by George Granville, The Jew
of Venice, which had previously held sway as “Shakespeare’s” play since its appearance in 1701.
Weldy Boyd 102

Secondly, Macklin took it upon himself to research painstakingly what he believed to be Jewish
costumes, customs, and mannerisms, appearing onstage in historical dress and attempting to
“act” appropriately Jewish. Finally, he elected to portray Shylock as a straight-man, rejecting the
overwhelming expectation of the character as a laughable comedic figure.
73
Unwittingly giving
keen insight into some of the anxieties and solutions that he himself found when approaching
Macklin’s life story as his third biographer, William Cooke writes of Macklin’s strategic
approach to Shylock:
He very properly considered he was then in a situation, which, by assiduity and
enterprize, [sic] might add something to his rising fame as an actor, which at no other
time of his life before he had such an opportunity of attempting ; and that 'there was no
lucky minute after the first opportunity.' He therefore cast about in his mind what new
part he should adopt, and to this purpose carefully looked over the stock list, as well as
several obsolete plays, to find out one which he thought appropriate to his own powers
and conception. (89-90)
Cooke depicts a very cunning approach to the selection of roles by an actor who connected
novelty with long-lasting appeal. Macklin’s own writings uphold Cooke’s understanding of the
actor’s career strategy, revealing its ramifications, with the actor writing pitifully on February 17,
1773, towards the end of his time onstage, to Drury-Lane manager George Colman that it was
imperative he not be featured too frequently in two of his main roles because his success at that
point primarily relied on novelty (Autograph List of Correspondence with George Colman). But
in 1741, according to Cooke, Macklin was simply looking for the right vehicle to stardom. This

73
Macklin likely got inspiration from Rowe’s 1709 biography of Shakespeare, in which Rowe claims that “though
we have seen that play received and acted as a comedy, and the part of the Jew performed by an excellent comedian
[Thomas Doggett], yet I cannot but think it was designed tragically by the author. There appears in it such a deadly
spirit of revenge, such a savage fierceness and fellness, and such a bloody designation of cruelty and mischief, as
cannot agree either with the style or characters of comedy” (1:xix-xx).
Weldy Boyd 103

approach seems to foreshadow that of the great biographer James Boswell, whom Leo Braudy
describes as having the revelation that he “had the desire to write but no subject,” and “he
wanted to be recognized but wasn’t sure why or how” (384). Cooke writes, "Macklin saw this
part [The Jew] with other eyes; and, very much to the credit of his taste and understanding, as
well as a proper estimation of his own powers, he found he could build a reputation by reviving
the original of Shakespeare, and playing the character of Shylock in a different manner” (90).
Shylock, or the Granvillian adaptation that Macklin confronted, actually formed an ideal entry
point for an actor who was conscious of the existing on-stage pecking order. In reviving
Shakespeare’s ‘original’ work, since it had been unseen and unheard for four decades, he
bypassed the threat of treading on the toes of the more experienced thespians in his troupe, who
had not had the opportunity to play Shylock using Shakespeare’s script. The existence of the
adaptation allowed Macklin to bypass the father (Granville) to confront the grandfather
(Shakespeare), without having to grapple with a developed oral or written tradition about exactly
how Burbage would have played the role under Shakespeare’s direction (tragic or not).
Furthermore, by performing the role in a tragic manner, he evaded the likelihood of merely
replicating his immediate predecessor in the role. In his bid to secure fame as Shylock, Macklin
not only dismissed the tired customary Shylock outfit, he tossed out the prompt-book of
Granville’s script that had been handed down through decades of Shylocks, and spurned the
performance of traditional points and flourishes expected of a comedic Shylock. Thus, Macklin
became both ‘original’ in the sense of a novel take on an existing work, and ‘original’ as
indicative of a return to the character’s roots.
While writing the definitive biography of Charles Macklin may not seem to have notable
parallels to acting the definitive portrayal of Shakespeare’s Shylock, Cooke and his fellow
Weldy Boyd 104

Macklin biographers seem to have recognized a kindred spirit in their subject’s drive for
possession of a story already told. Macklin’s story was an attractive one, both because of his
strongly delineated characters (personal and onstage) and his immense longevity: his first and
third biographers record him as living for 98 years, his second biographer 107. He had come to
the theatre later in life, achieving prominence in his forties (or fifties). This timing was ideal for
a theatrical biographer because a work about Macklin could align perfectly as a companion piece
and continuation of Cibber’s Apology, which had offered the history of the stage from the
Restoration until 1740. Macklin’s biographers could present Macklin as a second Cibber, with
the history resuming neatly in 1741 (the year that Macklin achieved prominence as Shylock) and
continuing up to the very end of the century. Undoubtedly, this propitious timing had occurred to
Macklin, who had set about beginning his own autobiography. Numerous friends remarked that
it would be a great project, but that Macklin lacked the temperament and discipline to complete
such a ponderous task when there were innumerable projects among which he could flit until
they no longer amused him.
74
Ultimately, the majority of the notes and outlines for that work
were lost when a ship carrying Macklin’s worldly effects from London to his native Ireland
capsized; the remaining scraps suggest that a life of Macklin by Macklin might have consisted of
many political digressions and moral lessons, hardly the tour de force that his third biographer,
Cooke, imagined that such a work might have been (Autograph Papers of Charles Macklin).
75

74
Cooke writes in his Life’s introduction that “those who know the human heart, know that such resolutions only
shewed he was the dupe of his own irresolution. He had not courage sufficient to undertake a work of so much
labour and retrospection…”
75
A collection called The Autograph Papers of Charles Macklin at the Folger holds a Sotheby’s record of
provenance that markets the papers as including an outline of Macklin’s intended autobiography, most of the rest of
which was lost in the shipwreck (see Y.d.515(8)). Correspondingly, Kirkman states of the accident, “It was not Mr.
Macklin alone that had to lament the loss; the Stage, and the whole of the dramatic world, suffered very materially
by the shipwreck: the merciless waves destroyed his Treatises on the Science of Acting, on The Works of
Shakespeare, on Comedy, Tragedy, and many other subjects, together with several manuscripts of infinite value to
the British Theatre” (Kirkman 2:46-47).
Weldy Boyd 105

And as Cooke was well aware, Macklin left behind a field of opportunity for the biographer
eager to weld his own name to Macklin’s story.

II. Rising to the Biographical Occasion
The question must be asked—how could one capture a thespian’s onstage antics in a
book, given the different dynamics of each situation? Paying attention to how acting was
evaluated at the time actually suggests biography’s place as a useful representative art. Having
indicated the potential obstacles to preserving on-stage action (Cibber says it is impossible to
preserve the electric fire of “harmonious elocution” and “elegant grace”), nearly all a function of
the supposed poverty of memory and difficulty of inter-medium translation, I will turn
specifically to three components of acting theory and pragmatics, some of which have been
gleaned from the biographies themselves and others from history books or other available source
texts. These three components, while not solving the totality of problems arising from attempting
to encapsulate a theatrical performance on paper, at least provide a poignant counterpoint to our
assumption about the absolute inability of biography to capturing on-stage antics.
Paradoxically, the obsession with time that characterizes Cibber’s “Pity it is” comment
actually touches on the period-specific principles used to critique acting which both justify and
disqualify biography (and autobiography) as suitable genres for the recording of performance.
Palfrey and Stern note that pronuntio and actio—pronunciation and movement/gesture—were
considered, from the time of Shakespeare, to be measures of successful acting (68). William
Worthen, in The Idea of the Actor (1984), observes a desire in Renaissance, Restoration, and
neoclassical acting to discover universal gestures; in The Actor, or A Treatise on the Art of
Playing (1750), John Hill similarly emphasizes the yearning to standardize interpretation
Weldy Boyd 106

(Worthen 73). The qualities of pronuntio could be demonstrated in brief snatches: for example,
Sarah Siddons’ biographer Thomas Campbell, writing in 1834, constantly praises the actress’s
remarkably clear and powerful elocution, but only specifically describes her initial difficulties in
overcoming her unfortunate “provincial ti-tum-ti” (36). Campbell also records Garrick’s
obnoxious reliance on the verbal padding “eh, eh”. Assessing his own performances, Cibber
comments that he was hampered by his own voice quality—specifically, the thinness of it—but
he cannot represent this thinness. Luckily, one editor of Cibber’s autobiography, B.R.S. Fone,
cites an unflattering review of the actor’s pronunciation as Richard III: “…our Comic-Tragedian
came on the Stage, really breathless, and in a seeming Panick, screaming out this Line thus—A
Harse, a Harse, my Kingdom for a Harse” (140). Generally, though, an unkind review or brief
reference to vowels or errant breathing habits constitutes the recording of pronuntio available to
biographers (and autobiographies seem not to labor on elocution, perhaps because of the
perceived license to omit parts of one’s own life, especially shortcomings).
76

Autobiography—and especially biography—excelled at actio. On its most basic level,
actio can be described like pronuntio: Siddons is depicted by Campbell as “rolling…from side to
side, swelling with the triumph of her son” as Coriolanus’s mother, just as evocatively as Cibber
was depicted as “screaming” his lines in Richard III: both recountings provide sharp sensory
impressions (Campbell 250). But an understanding of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century acting
conventions again reclaims biography from its perceived futility of capturing onstage
performance: actio, besides being theorized in rigorous detail by actors like Heywood, Cibber,
and Betterton, was also measured by the curious convention of theatrical pointing.

76
Chapter Three will dwell on pronuntio more, as the emphasis shifts from movement to action during Boaden’s
tenure as a theatrical biographer.
Weldy Boyd 107

“Points,” declares Worthen, “provided a structured moment of intense emotion” (72), and
in fact became the key marker of an actor’s success or failure in a role during the majority of the
eighteenth century. As “a device emphasizing technique more than meaning,” pointing promoted
comparisons between actors in the same role precisely because comparisons were possible when
one isolated specific moments of a longer performance (72). A steady theme of auto/biographies
about the long eighteenth-century actor is these “pointed” comparisons. The two most well-
rehearsed moments occur in Hamlet, when Hamlet encounters his father’s ghost for the first
time, and in Macbeth, during Lady Macbeth’s candlelight scene. Betterton’s name is inevitably
linked to the actor’s innovation of falling over a chair upon seeing the ghost.
77
Biographers and
critics delight in discussing Garrick’s mechanized “shock” wig and horrible grimace (the latter of
which is immortalized in a series of paintings).
78
Sarah Siddons describes her decision to break
with Mrs. Pritchard’s traditional candlelight “point” as Macbeth’s wife: it was “presumptuous
innovation” to dispense with the candle, a hallmark expected by the audience (Campbell, 187).
Similarly, in taking over the part of Lady Randolph, Siddons omitted Crawford’s signature
scream, a gamble that incited audience approval. In the earlier part of the century, Colley Cibber
understood the theatrical economy of comparison, observing that an actor’s deviations, perhaps
even more than his successful replication, brought to mind that actor’s predecessors. As
anomalies were the heart of criticism, violating the established “points” was a sure way to
differentiate oneself, receiving harsh censure or rapturous applause.

77
Carlson observes that subsequent actors often "stressed their difference from their absent originals” by not
knocking over the chair" (Haunted 167). Intriguingly, the biography of Betterton by Charles Gildon is largely given
over to an acting treatise supplying very detailed directions for how to represent the passions. For example, Gildon
writes, “You must never let either of your Hands hang down, as if lame or dead; for that is very disagreeable to the
Eye, and argues no Passion in the Imagination…in Swearing, Attestation, or taking any solemn Vow or Oath, you
must raise your Hand…” (77).
78
See Shearer West for further discussion of points in painting.
Weldy Boyd 108

Points themselves emphasize the delicate balance actors faced: one might either be
compared unfavorably to one’s forbearer in a role because of misguided innovation, or
participate in what Joseph Roach calls “the doomed search for originals by continuously
auditioning stand-ins” (qtd. Carlson 12). Cibber, having been called as understudy to a character
usually played by Doggett, assayed to be the best Cibber-as-Doggett-as-Old Batchelor (rather
than the best Cibber-as-Old Batchelor); Siddons was known to gamble with innovation due to
her “fear of being taxed with imitation” (Cibber 114; Campbell 84). Theatrical criticism and
practice as mixed together in auto/biography reveals—and revels in— an inherent conflict: how
should one adopt the standard delivery that was handed down from player to player while hoping
to make a name for oneself? (Palfrey 69). Similarly to an actor, the biographer receives some
immutable facts, but he maintains prerogative of presentation in the form of inclusion, emphasis,
and interpretation. As I claimed earlier, while biography cannot entirely capture the anxieties of
originality and precedence made manifest onstage, the genre productively enacts such anxieties
of originality and competition in an unexpected way (especially for a genre that, some insist,
does not partake in creativity). Biography’s use of points to achieve the fundamentally stated
goal of the genre reifies and amplifies the competitive element of ownership that might otherwise
still be present, but less visible, in other forms of biography.
Not only are points, fixed moments in an otherwise fluid performance, able to be
conveyed by biographies: biographical art imitates theatrical art as these points in turn became
expected in biographies, varying only by the biographer’s arrangement of the point in relation to
his larger narrative and his critique of the specific actor whose points were recounted. Thus, the
point, which allowed the audience to evaluate an actor compared to his predecessors, mapped
onto biography, with any biographer worth his salt seizing on predictable “points” of the actors
Weldy Boyd 109

and, as time went by, predictable “points” that stood out in other auto/biographies. These
“points” translate quite wonderfully into the form of anecdotes: both are short and characteristic
moments of significance that have been pared down for ease of memory. The effects of
anecdotes as a succor and a threat to the success of the biographical project will receive extended
consideration shortly, but for now I will stress their similarity to points in becoming expected
moments rife for comparison between “performers”—actors, and then, biographers.
For example, Cibber’s oft-repeated “Pity it is” comment, quoted at length above,
achieves a similar shorthand status as the tale about Kemble’s controversial substitution of an
empty chair for Banquo’s ghost, or Quin’s comment upon finding out that he had acted in an
adaptation rather than the original Lear: “Have I not all this time been acting Shakespeare’s
play?” (Campbell 263; 169). Such “points” become expected in auto/biography; all three of these
anecdotal moments appeared in Campbell’s biography of Siddons as a deliberate nod to
expectation. Carlson’s discussion of theatrical adaptation—a genre which gradually fell out of
favor in the nineteenth century—praises the efficacy of allowing audiences to focus not on “what
the plot is but how it’s being presented, allowing an avenue of uniqueness without losing the
benefit of familiarity—in effect, the author can stress his own originality by presenting a
variation on a known story” (Haunted 27). This relationship similarly allows the artist to make
his own impression while telling an already-told life—the domain of history. Thoroughness and
presentation are reinforced as means of originality, a characteristic generally (and unfairly)
denied to biographers.
While stage biographers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries theoretically
attempted to capture the theatrical experience of their subject through conveying, with varying
degrees of success, the actor’s delivery and gestures in reference to specific roles, the act of
Weldy Boyd 110

shaping the narrative results in a competing story focused on the biographer himself and his
relationship to his competitors in terms of originality. In a sense, every biography becomes
auto/biography. Cibber recognizes the competitive aspects of auto/biography, noting that he
penned his own biography before anyone could “interrupt” or “contradict” him: he triumphs both
as the chief authority on himself (the original performer of the “role” of Colley Cibber) and as
the first to write about his subject extensively (21). The authority for applying theatrical
terminology to auto/biography is no less than Cibber himself, who wittily announces, “The Part I
have acted in real Life, shall be all of a piece…I will not go out of my Character” (15).
79
With
Macklin’s failure to produce an autobiography, three competitors came to the fore (Congreve,
Kirkman, and Cooke). Each of them brought their own character, as well as their interpretation
of the role of the biographer and how his aim might be best achieved. The competitive spirit
manifested itself in three discrete attempts at the hybridization of theatrical biography with other
genres—literary biography, fictive biographical novel, and collections of anecdotes—
innovations designed to snatch the laurels from the earlier biographer or biographers.

The Part of the Biographer
One need look no further than Macklin’s first biographer, Congreve, to perceive a
defensive, forward-looking attitude towards his task, presented as being steeped in comparison
and competition. Notwithstanding that Congreve’s biography is little more than a pamphlet,
some 60 pages in length, its author appears to have an esteemed opinion of what he is doing, not
just because of the value of biography as a genre, but due to Macklin as a subject. He says that

79
Cibber’s relationship to originality/truthfulness was influenced by his dual nature as subject/author, which he
played to his advantage. A discussion of the complications raised by autobiography is outside of the scope of this
dissertation; please see Felicity Nussbaum’s The Autobiographical Subject (1989) and Laura Marcus’s
Auto/biographical Discourses (1994) for further insight.
Weldy Boyd 111

"few characters, who have filled the circle of active or busy life, have more justly merited the
recording hand of Biography, to perpetuate their names, than the late Father of the British
Drama" (“Preface”). The impersonal unity implied by the hand of Biography simultaneously
deflects and points attention to Congreve, who stresses his own honesty and attention to
correcting false details and adding new, true ones. Again, we see the attention paid to Macklin by
basis of his relationship to time, as well as to Britain’s history. Congreve notes that "his
[Congreve's—not Macklin’s] labours will meet with that reward, which a just and liberal nation
is ever ready to bestow on productions of real worth." Perhaps he protests too much: with his
subject’s worthiness and his own veracity balanced to correspond with Britain’s maintenance of
its reputation as “a just and liberal nation,” Congreve’s aggressive defense of his project points to
a possible gap between author and audience in terms of the text’s—and perhaps the genre’s—
perceived contributions.
Just as Thomas Davies groundes the legitimacy of his biography of Garrick in the urging
of Samuel Johnson, Congreve hearkens back to Rome to establish his work’s pedigree and,
correspondingly, to demand respect from his fellow Britons. He contrasts the value of his work
in present-day Britain with the equally meritorious biographies of Roman actors that Britain had
once “consigned to oblivion” by “the spirit of contumely.” He claims that such an attitude no
longer prevails in Britain. Congreve has seized upon the competitive nature of his enterprise.
Pitting present-day England against the England that failed to preserve Roman biography he
compares actors, “the children of the histrionic muse,” to “the patriot or the hero” as equally
deserving “a niche in the proud structure of Fame.” For Congreve, his project’s worth is
inseparable from his subject’s worth; the value of subject and iteration in turn grant him
Weldy Boyd 112

legitimacy as one who “perpetuate[s] the actions of men, eminent in their respective professions,
[which] ought ever to be the theme of the impartial Biographer" (“Preface”).
Having ennobled his subject and his enterprise, he reveals a lofty intent to correct the
existing factual inaccuracies to spare the embarrassment of “the future Biographer” (10). Thus is
the prerogative of a man who is celebrating his luck at arriving first to a stage which will soon
become crowded. While Congreve may merely intend to minimize the economic motive of
making one shilling and six pence per copy, his wording suggests that he anticipates further
Macklin studies, and that he sees his role as not only gathering the facts of Macklin, but paying
particular attention to correcting the untruths of illegitimate, less formal accounts in preparation
for his successor. Congreve can afford to be generous, as he has not had to compete with other
biographies of Macklin: he is, in effect, the originator of the role.
Congreve does, however, have his own model in mind, one which speaks to his view not
only of his subject, but also of his genre and even of his own authorship. Congreve elects to end
the character sketch, and indeed the entire biography, by comparing Macklin to Samuel Johnson,
whose biography had appeared in 1791. Perhaps in a quest to look impartial, as he had
sometimes indicated a fondness for Macklin, or with the goal of imitating Boswell imitating
Johnson’s love of balanced character assessments, Congreve first highlighted primarily
unattractive qualities. Dr. Johnson and Macklin shared a “dictatorial style” of conversation, a
pronounced dislike of Scottish people, and a resolute desire to obtain victory in arguments, “for
if his pistol missed aim, he would knock a person down with the end but[sic] of it” (60).
80

Nonetheless, Congreve says, adopting the traditional verdict of Samuel Johnson that Boswell
also embraced, Macklin’s failures were outmatched by his virtues, with abilities “few have

80
Congreve joined Johnson and Macklin in his cultural bias: he commends Macklin’s play The Man of the World for
excelling in spite of its reliance on “the deformities of the Scottish speech” (54).
Weldy Boyd 113

equaled, still fewer excelled.” By concluding his biography with the claim that Macklin was like
Samuel Johnson, Congreve is according the comparison great importance. He was, additionally,
attempting to harness some of the immense popularity of Boswell’s biography, which Congreve
and many of his intended audience had undoubtedly read.
It was, of course, common for the biographer to stress the exemplarity of his subject,
especially at the end of a work. Boswell, for his part, concludes his biography of Johnson by
professing to be so overcome by the death of Johnson that he requires the support of a friend’s
words:
I shall, therefore, not say one word of my own, but adopt those of an eminent friend,
which he uttered with an abrupt felicity, superior to all studied compositions:-- ‘He has
made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to
fill up. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best:--there is nobody; no man can be said
to put you in mind of Johnson.’ (Boswell 2:580-581)
Immodestly, Congreve makes the claim that, as early as 1798, someone, namely a cranky
Irishman known for his terrible temper, tedious lectures, and flights of fancy, could put you in
mind of Johnson, and he, Congreve, had taken the liberty of writing that very man’s biography.
Boswell’s eminent friend, William Gerard Hamilton, had wished to stress the exceptionality of
Johnson by not only suggesting that nothing could replace Johnson (a typical sentiment) but that
nothing would even make the attempt to fill his place. Hamilton’s sentiment could hardly be
applied to Macklin, whose roles were designed to be filled and had already been apportioned out
to spryer actors, including Henderson, King, and Kemble, with the next big Shylock, Edmund
Kean, debuting the role in 1814 (F. Marshall 249). Possibly because he was all too aware of the
onslaught of competition for Macklin’s limited laurels, Congreve challenges Hamilton’s
Weldy Boyd 114

assertion by positing Macklin as a surrogate Samuel Johnson through his persona and cultural
importance. Moreover, Congreve lays siege to the notion that authors are less easily replaced
than actors: by aligning Macklin with Johnson, Congreve may even seek to suggest that there is
not a natural tendency for something to “fill up” the space of Macklin, only the artificial demand
made by his profession.
In addition to claiming a high cultural position for Macklin, Congreve’s appropriation of
Samuel Johnson as parallel to his subject implies a comparison between Congreve and Boswell
as biographers. If comparing Macklin to Johnson might serve to revise Macklin’s status as an
inherently replaceable actor, aligning himself with Boswell catapults Congreve’s biographical
endeavor not only towards the more serious pursuit of literary biography, but indeed aims at the
apex of that genre. Finally, the implied similarity of Congreve with Boswell negates Congreve’s
earlier stated intention to provide a strong foundation for a future, and presumably superior,
biographer. If Macklin, like Johnson, is not replaceable, and Boswell was invaluable in capturing
Johnson’s allure, so too Macklin’s achievement would be inseparable from Congreve’s telling of
the story.
Congreve’s monumentally large moment of hubris to invite comparison between
Congreve’s meager pamphlet-cum-biography and Boswell’s voluminous story of Dr. Johnson
was answered, poetically, only a year later by Thomas Kirkman, the second “player” to inherit
the role of Macklin’s biographer.
81
As previously suggested, Congreve would have had the
greatest advantage relative to time: not only would his memory of Macklin onstage be the
freshest, but with the exception of a few long-circulated anecdotes, large parts of Macklin’s story
were virgin territory, becoming Congreve’s to tell for the first time. However, Congreve’s

81
Kirkman even had a “prompt book” in the form of Congreve’s biography; just as the prompt book both aided and
constrained an actor’s innovations, so too did a previous biography.
Weldy Boyd 115

biography was in no way comprehensive, and Kirkman had two tactics with which he sought to
supersede Congreve’s work, beyond simply ignoring any references to Congreve as a stepping-
stone for his own biography.
Like Congreve before him, Kirkman grumbles non-specifically about other sources that
had polluted the truth of Macklin’s life, but asserts his role as the first actual authority with the
power to set the record straight. Undoubtedly aware of his secondary position, Kirkman
additionally elects to claim precedent of knowledge over prior story-tellers based on his unique
position as Macklin’s close relative who had lived with the actor for some number of years
before his passing.
82
Curiously, the exact relation between Kirkman and Macklin is unspecified,
leading scholars to suspect that Kirkman exaggerated the degree of closeness between himself
and his subject. Kirkman claims that his subject specifically requested that he write the
biography and furnished him with private memoranda.
83
Routinely, the reader is confronted with
Kirkman’s insistence on his literal ownership of the story: “We shall here present the reader with
Mr. Macklin’s own account…copied verbatim et literatim from his Memorandum book, now
before us…” (1:318)… “We shall present the reader with the following specimens of the
lectures…copied verbatim from the papers of Mr. Macklin…” (1:362). Congreve could not have
hoped to compete with Kirkman, whom, scholars have confirmed, did in fact have access to a

82
Macklin’s fourth biographer, Parry, suggests that some people believed Kirkman to be Macklin’s illegitimate son,
a notion which opens up the floor for further debate about “ownership” of Macklin’s story (3).
83
Kirkman writes: "...he resolved to give the material to some person, on whom he could depend, for the purpose of
compiling and throwing them into form" (1:3). Like Cooke after him, Kirkman characterizes himself as a compiler;
the description of “throwing” materials suggests a diffidence that undercuts the writing self as a "biographer."
Nonetheless, Kirkman stresses the importance of his selection: "With this view he made choice of the author,
conceiving, as it is hoped the reader will, that a near relation, bred up, and living for upwards of twenty years with
him; acquainted from his infancy with his descent, family, and connections; and enabled by daily observations to
trace out, and truly delineate his character, would be more likely than any other person to write a history
recommended by truth and fidelity; objects, in Mr. Macklin's opinion, far superior, in intrinsic value, to all the
graces and beauties which the highest embellishments of style could bestow upon it" (1:3). The project changes– a
mere compiler need not add own material—and Kirkman’s role grew from a compiler to an artist capable of
"delineat[ing] his character" and "writ[ing] a history."
Weldy Boyd 116

veritable treasure-trove of Mackliana with which to set his account apart. Kirkman parlayed his
familial connection to Macklin and the access to Macklin’s notes into a rollicking multi-volume
farce that more closely resembled a Fielding novel than the sober biographical efforts of his
predecessor.
Faced with challenging the precedent set by Kirkman, Macklin’s third biographer,
William Cooke, would seem to come up woefully short. He could not benefit from the clean slate
that Congreve had, or follow in Kirkman’s footsteps in denying his predecessors, because Cooke
needed to mine much of his material from Kirkman, who had enjoyed superior access to
documentation. But his reliance on anecdotes and bon mots provided by Kirkman placed Cooke
in a delicate position of avoiding merely duplicating his immediate predecessor’s work. Looking
further back, Cooke takes a cue from Congreve’s obsession with objective fact, contrasting his
own objectivity with the whimsical Kirkman; additionally, Cooke also must establish his
supremacy over Congreve, which he accomplishes by showcasing his superior access to
Mackliana—which of course was largely made possible through Kirkman. While Kirkman
already began the cycle of balancing time elapsed from the events depicted with the possibility
for further research or documentation to be discovered, Cooke seeks novelty in the other gift
provided by the passage of time: perspective on the significance of his subject’s life. However,
Cooke was only writing seven years after Macklin’s death, so benefits of retrospect were
minimal. The other intervention that Cooke made was altering the emphasis of his biography as
focused, narrative-driven life featuring anecdotes to a book built around anecdotes featuring a
loosely narrative-driven life.
In 1891, eighty-seven years after the first appearance of Cooke’s biography, a new
biographer, Edward Abbott Parry, would openly mine all three preceding biographies for choice
Weldy Boyd 117

anecdotes. He claims ascendance based on his ability to glean insight from almost a century of
time elapsed, which, as suggested, gave Parry an advantage in assessing Macklin’s importance to
theatre beyond his immediate time period but correspondingly set him at a disadvantage for any
personal connection to his long-deceased subject. As a biographer, Parry is emblematic of
Garraty’s claims that all biography is doomed to fall short of perfection: while retrospective
biographers excel at discussing trajectories, including career and reputation, contemporary
biographers paint superior pictures of character. When assessing his limitations, Parry must have
realized that anecdote provided the best means of evading Stauffer’s criticism about the divisive
lines drawn between character and narrative by some biographers. Unabashedly collecting the
most questionable anecdotes from every source possible, Parry thrives on sensationalism, but
also pays considerable lip-service to the duties of a biographer. Mindful of the extent to which he
relied on the earlier biographies for his information, Parry preemptively strikes out at critics who
might discount his biography as being “a work of paste and scissors, to which a kindly critic
would perhaps add—and research” (i). His plan to mine large swaths of the previous biographies
using “their own language and without paraphrase” is justified, he says, by his presumably self-
effacing belief that “the research, the scissors, and the paste, in that order, are of greater value to
the reader than the biographer’s pen. And it is for this reason that I have endeavored, wherever
possible, to find and use the words of others instead of my own.”
84
Parry, then, navigates the
continuum between Garraty’s theory of time elapsed and corresponding strength of perspective
(contemporary biographers excel at character, distant ones at assessing the life’s meaning and

84
Surprisingly, Parry does not cite any material from Cibber’s Apology or from Boaden’s collective corpus (both
popular choices for compilers of theatrical lore); he offers a brief comment from Davies’ Life in which Davies states
that Macklin was “the only player I ever heard of that made acting a science” and culls material from Davies’
description of Henry Mossop (78; 166). This latter use of Davies shows how easily a capsule biography or an
anecdote could be incorporated by another author.
Weldy Boyd 118

subject’s reputation) by choosing to add his viewpoint in between the earlier biographers’
stories—unchanged—that readers had come to anticipate.
Finally, in 1960, the first “scholarly” biography of Macklin appeared. This fifth, and as of
this writing, final, competitor for the definitive Macklin biography, William Worthen Appleton,
chastises Parry for being a “mere compiler” of the other men’s works and important documents,
Cooke for similar but less flagrant misconduct, and Kirkman for unhinging the narrative from
reality, awarding the palm to Congreve with the qualification that he had lacked the scholarly
apparatus now offered by Appleton’s own biography (2-4).
85
Luckily for Appleton, but perhaps
not for those interested in longitudinal studies of Macklin biographies and the people who write
them, Appleton’s biography has held stage uncontested for the past five decades. It is doubtful
that Appleton could have anticipated such success, as the vogue for scholarly lives of other
eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century actors has produced over a dozen biographies of
Garrick and at least four of Siddons, depending on how one delineates a “full” biography.
Even this brief survey of the five extant full-length biographies of Macklin demonstrates
that in each case, it was imperative for the biographer to justify why his retelling of Macklin was
necessary. Along the way, not only did the view of how the biographer should approach his task
seem to shift, but also the understanding of exactly what that task included seemed to expand or
contract with each successive iteration.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the quest to originate the “role” of Macklin’s biographer is
reified most prominently by the comments of his fourth biographer, the unapologetically cutting-
and-pasting Parry, who traces the lineage of prior Macklin biographers until himself

85
The inclusion of an archival dimension does not prohibit an author from achieving originality: on the contrary,
Stauffer locates one of the first early modern biographies in the early 17
th
century, claiming that Izaak Walton’s
Short Lives, a series of four prefatory biographies published between 1640 and 1672, turned raw archival materials
“into those artistic and individual compositions which are unmistakably his own” (Biography before 1700, 265).
Weldy Boyd 119

(capitalizing, I believe, on the trend of retiring players passing down their part-books—and, in
effect, the sanctification of legitimacy— to select newer actors). Unembarrassed in his obvious
reliance on those who came before him, Parry limns the stories offered by his predecessors,
introducing the three largest ghosts that he must overcome in his quest for originality—for,
similarly to the anxieties expressed by generations of Shakespeare editors—there is no need for a
new edition unless it provides further insight. This truth speaks to a key difference between the
anxieties of an actor and a biographer: because the earlier player dies, the new player could have
a reasonably successful career impersonating the lost player, but since the biographer leaves his
“performance” intact, the urge for originality is even stronger for biographers, translators, and
other practitioners of the heretofore considered less-creative/historical/reference genres. This
fourth biographer is perhaps unusually opinionated: he excoriates the last of three key
predecessors, Cooke, as “not…more trustworthy than his fellow-biographer” Kirkman, who was
widely known to be a teller of tales. Parry also condemns much of the speculative interpretation
involved in filling in gaps in Macklin’s history as “wretched heresy” (5). Nonetheless, Parry
explains that he will quote these other, faulty, biographers at length “in order that every one may
form his own opinion” which allows him to gather the best fruits of the earlier laborers while
marking his own interventions and improvements.
86
What is perhaps most important to the
encapsulation of theatrical experience is the strong sense of ownership over a “part”—in this
case, the right to tell a life’s story and the theatrical measures taken to secure the laurel over
other potential interpreters. To look at a more in-depth case, let us turn to the ways in which

86
Similarly, as we will see in Chapter Three, Siddons’ second biographer, Campbell, writing in 1834, genially
thanks his “brother biographer, Mr. Boaden” for the reminiscences that he borrows from the earlier account of
Siddons, written in 1827. Nonetheless, he is not above critiquing Boaden’s work: for example, he notes, “I have
strong doubts with regard to this anecdote” (36), elevating his own credibility at his “brother’s” expense, attempting
to overcome the ghost of his predecessor.
Weldy Boyd 120

these first three men actually represented Charles Macklin, as the most-contested “site” or
subject of theatrical biography at the cusp of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

III. First Fruits: Congreve’s Character Sketch (1798)
For all of his efforts to assert the importance of his project, Congreve seems to fail at
actually representing the onstage Macklin as he would have been experienced. Of Macklin’s
biographers, Congreve had the great fortune of writing in the closest proximity to the actor’s
death. Ironically, while Congreve should have excelled at giving concrete detail about Macklin’s
character and characters, he may not have felt a need to describe Macklin’s acting style in great
detail since it should have been etched in his readers’ recent memory. A second probable
explanation is Congreve’s rigorous upholding of a traditional generic feature of early theatrical
biography: the separation of narrative and character.
It seems that, particularly among less sophisticated biographies, the author tended to
remove characterization, or the focused description of an individual’s traits, from the
chronological, plot-based narrative, saving the description of the subject’s physical appearance
and moral fiber until after the subject has died and the narrative section of the memoir has
closed, perhaps in a distortion of Solon the Athenian’s warning not to judge a man happy until he
has met his end.
87
Donald A. Stauffer argues that the division of character (a purposeful
depiction of the person as he “was” through appearance, thought, or deed) from narrative (a
chronology of happenstances or social events) weakens biography, for “an impersonal chronicle”
and a “static character” remain “two incompatible fragments” that do not replicate “the unity in

87
Perhaps it was reflective of the philosophical principle that a man’s character cannot be fixed or known until he is
deceased—having access to a full narrative before pronouncing the final judgment on character allows the assessor
to avoid any embarrassment if the subject/character proves inconsistent later in life. It should be noted that Johnson
endorsed the character sketch, but as a summation tool, rather than depriving the narrative of characteristic flavor.
Weldy Boyd 121

which it [the subject’s life] was lived” (Biography before 1700, 273). Stauffer is highlighting a
problem of motion: biography, as a narrative, demands movement, while character becomes not
unlike a portrait, fixed in a moment in time and often abstracted from context. The best
biography, then, would find a means of fusing character development with the action of the
narrative, a requirement that frequently evaded Congreve. This difficulty is doubly present for
the theatrical biographer, who is beholden to supply the actor’s character offstage as well as his
characters onstage. The two responsibilities twinned each other in later biographical practice: I
believe that anecdote, like “pointing” on the stage, was the tool of choice for fusing off-stage
action and character together, as anecdote highlighted some aspect of a character’s personality,
often in the context of a discussion with some physical action (even if it didn’t necessarily
advance the plot). Biographical authors came not only to understand the power of anecdote as
part of characterization, but eventually to remove anecdote from larger narrative substance—a
move that, while providing bursts of unity between narrative and characterization that had defied
Congreve, still tended to stick out awkwardly from the plot or background narrative.
The struggle between the highlights of one’s life in chronological order, like those
featured in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), and anecdotes, pithy moments
of characterization, manifest itself in a range of solutions that suggest anecdote’s role as a
substitution for the more sustained character sketch. For example, the Theatrical Monitor, or
Green Room Laid Open (1767-1768), a series of collected capsule theatrical biographies, each
entry about four pages long, separated narrative from anecdotes and jests by design, so that
“character” began to be represented almost solely through anecdote (although a more traditional
“character” would have included physical description, others’ perceptions, and a direct
Weldy Boyd 122

assessment of moral qualities, as found in a “character sketch”).
88
Cooke’s memoir of Macklin
emphasized anecdote so significantly as to include that word in the title and to decry an attempt
at a traditional narrative biography. At its most extreme, anecdotes existed entirely out of
surrounding context, jumbled together in books held together only by the common theme of
anecdotes, with each anecdote bluntly unrelated to its neighboring selections in character,
purpose, or scenario: narrative was subsumed by anecdote. While at its best, anecdote could
combine with narrative and character to amplify both, anecdote also threatened both elements,
able to become a tool of subversion acting against the unification of the biographical impulse.
While Congreve’s discussion of Macklin as Shylock, appearing in chronological order
relative to the actor’s career, lacked specifics, this may be in part attributable to Congreve’s
commitment to the eighteenth-century preference for division outlined above: sustained
“character sketches” at the end of a heavily narrative biography.
89
Thus, Congreve may have felt
that to perform a detailed critique of Macklin “in character” at the chronological point that
Macklin achieved prominence in the role, would impede the plot or narrative thrust. But when
assessing the successes and failures tied to the character sketch at the end of Macklin’s
biography, it is important to remember that it was an expected feature of the genre (even as it
seemed to have impeded other biographical goals when dealing with theatrical subjects). During

88
Capsule biographies were always governed by a narrative progression; they might include characterization within
the narrative, via anecdotes, in a separate sketch, or eschew character entirely. However, they were not immune to
competition too: in a 1827 volume of a rival publication, Oxberry’s Dramatic Biography, the compiler criticizes the
Green Room series for its perceived “vulgarity, inaccuracy, and servility…The fact that none, out of the many
volumes of this nature, have ever obtained any popularity, is perhaps, a fair criterion of their value: for a work of
merit on a subject so prolific of amusement and instructions, could scarcely be supposed to fail” (i-ii). Historically,
the Green Room and Oxberry were both popular, if cheap, and prone to using the same devices to court popularity.
89
It is interesting to consider how biographers divided narration and description: Stauffer writes that the narrative
part was “dynamic and progressive” while the portrait/character is “static and final” (Biography before 1700, 269).
Portrait, according to Stauffer, is “without incidence and all elements of chronology” (271). In keeping with the
tendency to force a comparison between biography and other genres or art forms, the larger narrative is play-like,
full of motion and incidence, often driven by chronology or cause-and-effect, whereas a character sketch sets up
permanent traits independent of the world in which the character lives (more like portrait—fixed). Biography is not
so static as a painting due to its ability to pinpoint multiple important moments.
Weldy Boyd 123

the course of his narrative, Congreve does make a gesture at assessing Macklin’s acting. When
writing about Macklin’s historically disastrous portrayal of Macbeth, Congreve says that
although the aged thespian lacked the memory, utterance, elegance, flexibility of face, and
dignity of Garrick, who usually played the role,
he shewed so complete a knowledge of the character, so just a conception of the manner,
in which it should be personified, so accurate an attention to the propriety in the scenes,
dresses, decorations, and other incidental parts of the performance, as afforded a very
general satisfaction, and produced universal applause; of his own representation of
Macbeth, there was not so much unanimity of opinion. (44)
90

How Macklin could have “shewed so complete a knowledge” of Macbeth and yet failed to
deliver a convincing representation is a seeming paradox that appears not to trouble Congreve.
The best indication of precisely how Macklin portrayed the king is given in a popular poem
contained within a footnote, which goes through a pithy assessment of the eight most notable
actors to assay the role: Macklin’s only victory is that he “falls the last,” likely a reference to his
age rather than any spectacular acting skill (45).
91
In both instances of assessment, Congreve pits
Macklin against his competitors, first the much younger Garrick, and then a succession of
Macbeths, simultaneously suggesting a never-ending supply of “doomed surrogates,” as Joseph
Roach describes successive actors jockeying for a role.
92

90
Additionally, Congreve borrows from an account of Foote a description of how Macklin, as an acting coach,
required his pupils to practice their lines as though in normal conversation, commanding, them to use “more force,
but preserving the same accent” as their everyday speech pattern (22-24). This gives a clue, albeit not a strong one,
of how Macklin acted onstage.
91
The inseparability of Macklin with discussions of time and memory is a recurring theme in all of his biographies.
92
Such a comparison also highlights the unique staying power of David Garrick. Garrick’s unique ability to remain
relevant, coupled with Davies’ pole position as the first major biographer of Garrick, helps to explain the decidedly
less competitive approach of Davies as his biographer.
Weldy Boyd 124

Although some critics might argue that Congreve, writing a simple pamphlet about
Macklin in a few months after the man’s death, might not deserve the title of biographer,
Congreve’s persona was determined to stand on generic ceremony (i.e. the character sketch) as a
means of asserting his skill in the chosen role: “Having now brought this Memoir to its
concluding period [Macklin’s death], it remains alone to give a sketch of Mr. Macklin’s manners
and temper, such as may claim a just right to that impartiality which ought ever to preside over
the pen of a Biographer” (58). Congreve simultaneously reminds the reader of Congreve’s role
as a biographer, calling attention to his own character as an “impartial” and dutiful biographer
even as he ostensibly intends to unveil Macklin’s character.
93

Those hungry for a glimpse of Macklin as a man might be surprised to note that within
the realm of his character sketch, Congreve commented on Macklin’s movements and speech
rather generally, revealing more about Congreve’s biases than Macklin’s perambulations or
locutions:
He was remarkably upright in his stature, both off and on the stage, and disdained all that
"twining of arms and tripping of legs, &c." which modern actors make use of to aid their
delivery. His mode of acting was certainly peculiar, and if it was not altogether pleasing
to the "common eye," it always gave satisfaction to the connoisseur. (59)
Congreve, then, is a connoisseur, one with the requisite judgment to write a biography of this
actor, and a traditional man, suspicious of “modern” fads. It is difficult for Congreve, who
announces himself as “impartial,” to avoid giving as many hints about his own character as

93
This moment, concluding the “Memoir” portion of the work, nicely bookends Congreve’s opening salvo about the
task of a “Biographer”: “To perpetuate the actions of men, eminent in their respective professions, ought ever to be
the theme of the impartial Biographer, fortunately for the memory of deceased merit, the spirit of contumely which
consigned to oblivion the lives of the Roman actors no longer extends its injurious influence over supporters of the
British Theatre…” (3). The sentence continues, undaunted, to elevate “the children of the histrionic muse” to the
position of statesmen on “the war crowned field.”
Weldy Boyd 125

Macklin’s, even though in comparison to later Macklin biographies, Congreve’s pamphlet is
notably more fact-based than anecdotal, speculative, or philosophical. While commendable for
its factual approach to Macklin’s life events and its own vast claim to generic importance,
Congreve’s work does not uphold the Cibberian intent of the genre: Congreve does not capture
even a glimmer of Macklin’s genius.

IV. Lines of Competition Embellished: Kirkman’s Life of Macklin (1799)
Congreve’s slender volume made little claim to the biographical field beyond arriving
first to the task and limning the verifiable facts of Macklin’s life. Kirkman, second in line,
appears to have written his biography with the intent of countering Congreve by providing two
sizeable volumes of massively exaggerated, and in some cases, rather transparently imaginative,
adventures of Macklin. Just as Congreve claimed affiliation with Boswell at the end of his
character sketch, so too must Kirkman make his claim to legitimacy. He does so implicitly by the
scope of his story and his investment in providing Macklin’s own written pieces, and explicitly
in his claim to personal knowledge and kinship with his subject. However, his thousand-page
narrative frequently reads like a novel rather than a trustworthy biography, and otherwise like a
cobbled-together collection of litigation and other undigested documentary remnants of a subject,
the likes of which could easily be confused for the work of the notorious bookseller and pseudo-
literary shill Edmund Curll. Kirkman’s biography, while not a reliable source of information
about Macklin, is useful for investigating the ways in which Kirkman responded to Congreve’s
biography. Far from being completely superficial in his undertaking of Macklin’s story, Kirkman
shows awareness of the difficulty and importance of his job, ultimately attempting to work
through his own theories of how best to preserve the British stage in print.
Weldy Boyd 126

Kirkman’s title, Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esquire not only makes that
explicit claim for the increased authenticity of his provenance: “principally compiled from his
own papers and memorandums” but also goes on to note that those papers—and by extension,
the memoir—“contain his criticisms on and characters and anecdotes of Betterton, Booth, Wilks,
Cibber, Garrick, Barry, Mossop, Sheridan, Foote, and most of his contemporaries.” Already,
Kirkman has made a much greater claim for Macklin’s status (Mr. has become Esquire), added
“compiler” to the task of the biographer, and enlarged the scope of the biography to not only
include Macklin but a veritable roll call of the actor’s famous colleagues.
94
Immediately
following this is the offer of “his Valuable observations on the Drama, on the Science of Acting,
and on various other Subjects, The Whole forming A Comprehensive but succinct HISTORY OF
THE STAGE; which includes a period of one hundred years.” Kirkman’s claim to provide a
history of the stage as well as a few acting treatises threatens to catapult his biography into the
broader disciplines of history and philosophy, while still maintaining the titillation of
“anecdotes” and “criticism”, both agreeable currency for the gossip market.
95

While Congreve had suggested his motive for writing was to enhance the veracity of
materials available to future biographers, Kirkman immediately envisions his project in a way
that strongly suggests a direct reaction to Congreve’s project. Kirkman critiques a pair of
biographers whose work was “very dull and uninteresting memoirs” which were “universally
read” by readers who were “only astonished, that so much time should have produced so very
little incident” (1:1). It is hard to imagine that Kirkman was not intentionally taking cues from
Fielding in promoting what he saw to be a more exciting, vital type of biography. After all,

94
Interestingly, while Kirkman’s title page only recognizes Macklin’s male colleagues, the contents of his text
include a number of his female colleagues as well, though rarely in the same sharpness of detail.
95
Of course, Kirkman was not the first to offer a history of the stage. He was also far from the first to include or
append acting treatises to a biography (Thomas Betterton’s first biography, in 1710, featured the biographer and the
actor delivering acting advice through an imagined Socratic dialogue).
Weldy Boyd 127

Fielding had lashed out against Colley Cibber’s Apology and its subsequent popularity,
parodying them in a number of his books; in Tom Jones particularly, the narrator charges
Cibber’s work with dullness due to its relentless obedience to strict chronology (67). Moreover,
the narrator describes his own present approach as “a new province of writing” (68). Similarly,
Kirkman reveals his intention to create a gripping narrative designed to amuse, perhaps in a bid
to encourage his readers to perceive his work as something to be read and reread, rather than
thrown aside after consumption.
Kirkman was utterly obsessed with the concept of time, and within that, how to ensure
one’s own continued existence in the face of newer attractions. This preoccupation with time
may have caused a particular affinity to Macklin, whose major claim to fame besides Shylock
rested in his having achieved phenomenal old age. Because Macklin was so old, Kirkman writes,
“his biographer considers himself, therefore, as discharged from the necessity of apologizing for
the subject he has undertaken” (1:2). Kirkman’s interest in time permeates his writing, most
frequently appearing in his excuses or justifications for his project and its shape.
Rather than expending energy on the odious task of making lists or dwelling on less fertile
ground anecdotally, Kirkman pleads the excuse of time—his desire not to waste time, that is: "It
would be an uninteresting and tiresome task to the reader to go through, if it were possible to
give a detail of, the various characters he played, or the variety of offices he executed” (Kirkman
1:59). It should be noted that Fielding had already played this narrative card in Book 2 of Tom
Jones, on the page following his attack on Cibber’s Apology:
When any extraordinary Scene presents itself, (as we trust will often be the Case) we
shall spare no Pains nor Paper to open it at large to our Reader; but if whole Years should
pass without producing any Thing worthy his Notice, we shall not be afraid of a Chasm
Weldy Boyd 128

in our History; but shall hasten on to Matters of Consequence and leave such Periods of
Time totally unobserved. These are indeed to be considered as Blanks in the grand
Lottery of Time.” (68)
96

In the context of Macklin’s Life, this strategy allows Kirkman to indulge his novelistic impulses
both in ignoring the demands of chronology and in filling in gaps according to his own whimsy:
Sometimes he was an architect, and knocked up the stage and seats in a barn; sometimes
he wrote an opening Prologue, or a parting Epilogue, for the company: at others, he wrote
a song, complimentary and adulatory to the village they happened to play in, which he
always adapted to some sprightly popular air, and sung himself: and he often was
champion, and stood forward to repress the persons who were accustomed to intrude
upon, and be rude to the actors. (1:60)
However, if Kirkman does not have time for the basic chronology of characters and other
“offices” filled by Macklin beyond describing him in terms meant to promote Macklin as the
very reincarnation of the jack-of-all-trades titular hero in Tom Jones (and perhaps Kirkman as the
reincarnation of Fielding), he nonetheless finds time to provide a voluminous “history of the
theatres.” Kirkman uses the 1733 playhouse revolution, which directly led to Macklin catapulting
onto the mainstream British stage, as a means to tell “the following history of the theatres, which
we have faithfully compiled from Mr. Macklin’s memorandums on the subject” (1:71).
Beginning with the reign of Elizabeth I, Kirkman quickly lays out the two rival patentees in the

96
Other similarities between Tom Jones and Kirkman’s Memoirs of Macklin include the degree of digression
appropriate to a history: Tom Jones’s narrator states, “Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any further
together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I
am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to mind their own
business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the
authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction” (33). Just as Fielding often
addresses his reader, Kirkman refers to this ideal reader frequently, offering, for example, to “lay before the reader”
criticisms (2:259), “present the reader” with letters (2:329), and trust that “the reader will be able to form some idea”
from collected conversations (2:416).
Weldy Boyd 129

Restoration and the subsequent unification and eventual fracture of 1733. Linking the narrative
of Macklin to a larger, more universally significant strand of history, is a transparent bid to fulfill
one of the more difficult generic desires of his audience, one that would be more likely to secure
the longevity of the biography. In the process of considering the political history, however,
Kirkman begins to consider what is innately required of his genre. He gravitates towards
comparisons of the actors as performers rather than comparisons of the managerial systems or
the actors’ deportment during the revolution. Kirkman names seven great actors and six great
actresses of the Restoration through eighteenth century, and pontificates on the progressive loss
of ability to sharply recollect each specific performer over time:
And here, thinking of the mighty dead in that line, recollecting, as we do, Garrick, Barry,
Mossop, and many others, whose exquisite performances have so often thrilled to our
marrow, and almost suspended life, we cannot help lamenting the fate of such great men,
and regretting that their labours, like those of the poet or the painter, cannot go down to
after ages, as a testimony of their excellence, and a record of the delight and
improvement they afforded. We know, and our children's children will know hereafter,
how a Shakespeare, an Otway, a Congreve, or a Sheridan WROTE— but how shall we be
able to conceive how a Betterton, or a Nokes ACTED?— or how shall those, who are to
come after us, be able to form any adequate idea how SHAKESPEARE's Lear, and
OTWAY's Jaffier, were improved by the inimitable performances of BARRY?—how
Shylock was identified, and CONGREVE's Sir Paul Pliant supported, by MACKLIN—
or how SHERIDAN's Sir Fretful Plagiary could receive as much support from an actor's
merit, as it does from the author's wit, when they will not be able to conceive how it was
performed by a PARSONS? (1:79-80)
Weldy Boyd 130

Kirkman seems overwhelmed at the difficulty, but also the necessity, of fulfilling this specific
demand of theatrical biography. When given the chance to perform his office, however, Kirkman
defers to a literary source rather than attempting to describe “how a Betterton, or a Nokes
ACTED.”
Much as Boswell snatches a particularly poetic sentiment from a friend when faced with
trying to express the significance of the dead Johnson, Kirkman turns to a lengthy poem by
Thomas Sheridan, “Verses to the Memory of Mr. Garrick,” written two months after the actor’s
death. The most significant point based on Kirkman’s lead-in seems to be the series of lines on
the nature of the Poet’s fame in comparison to the Actor’s: the author’s fame, it is implied by the
comparison, is safe because his monument is secure. Sheridan’s Actor “only shrinks from Time's
award;/ Feeble tradition is his memory's guard..." and “E’en matchless Garrick’s art, to heaven
resigned,/ No fix’d effect, no model leaves behind” (Kirkman 1:82). Sheridan refers to action,
expression, gesture, silence, speech, and finally passion, as integral to forming Garrick’s success,
but he spends little time developing or describing the “grace of action,” instead focusing on the
audience’s supposed response to Garrick’s performance. The “gesture that marks” and the “sense
in silence,” are described as forcefully conveying Garrick’s “feeling fraught” and “will in
thought,” respectively; his speech “gives verse a music” due to its “pure and liquid tone.” While
provincial or foreign speech might perhaps be easiest to encapsulate or preserve through time,
Sheridan dismisses the characteristics of Garrick’s acting as “all perishable! like the electric fire,
But strike the frame—and as they strike, expire.”
97
While Sheridan claims that the “blest

97
Macklin had the advantage, at least for posterity, of beginning life as a foreign and provincial speaker. His
pronunciation was apparently so jarring that his first manager suggested that he spend some time touring with lesser
theatres before applying for the London stage. Kirkman shares an anecdote in which Macklin, assaying the role of
Friar Lawrence, was told by his manager (who was playing Romeo) that “if he could cut three or four inches more
of the brogue from his tongue, he would speak the part well. Macklin replied, he wished he could; but observed, that
cutting off tongues was a dangerous experiment—if not, it would certainly be more practiced…for there were some
who would be much more inoffensive actors, if they had no tongue at all.” Kirkman records that Manager/Romeo
Weldy Boyd 131

memorial...[of] Our Garrick’s fame” is best understood as residing within the reader who has
presumably seen Garrick on stage and now has a responsibility to convey to others. Yet
Sheridan, in providing a model of what it might look like to repay Garrick’s final onstage tears
(as he claims readers should too), sets Garrick’s boisterous memory to poor advantage by
refusing even to attempt a description of how Garrick’s acting works. Just as Garrick is “a
martyr” to the fancy and superstition that will obscure his memory, Sheridan—and Kirkman—
willfully, even gladly, adopts the role of “martyr” in taking on a task that both poet and
biographer had declared to be impossible: translating the fluidity of Garrick (or Macklin) onstage
into the static medium of written remembrance. His failure to provide descriptions of those
actors may have to do with a strange philosophy centering on the relation of events in time.
As has been expressed by nearly all subsequent writers on Macklin, Kirkman was a
capricious writer: any omission on the part of Kirkman thus seems more significant than for a
concise writer like Congreve. While Congreve gives a handful of basic details of Macklin’s life
before he came into prominence on the English stage, Kirkman is an opportunist when it comes
to the intersection of time and historical fact. He creates stories when the record is meager (in
this case, forty or fifty years of Macklin’s life before he came to the British stage),
98
and he
reverses his own biographical prerogative about the extent to which—and how—some details
could be known. In the midst of his citations on the great famous actresses and actors leading
into the time of Macklin, Kirkman notes that the actor Edwin Booth refused comparisons to other

“took Macklin by the hand…observing he was a clever fellow” (1:64). While he may have tempered his brogue,
Macklin had a distracting verbal tic of overusing the honorific “Sir” which persists in every dialogue supplied for
him by Kirkman and Cooke, and appears to serve as a presumed mark of conversational authenticity. In one such
instance, Cooke admits to staging a particularly dramatic conversation after it has been presented: “We have thrown
the above conversation into dialogue, for the purpose of better elucidating the two characters: it is in substance what
we have often heard from Macklin, animated by those looks of terror and alarm, which no man could assume better
than himself” (Cooke 84). Macklin’s comparatively brief lines include four “sir’s”: “Sir, I have no time to trifle…I
can’t wait, by G—d, Sir…No trifling, Sir!...Well, Sir, I’ll give you the meeting.”
98
The number of “missing” decades depends upon which date of Macklin’s birth one chooses to accept.
Weldy Boyd 132

actors, especially if they were in his favor, as a mark of respect towards his predecessors.
Kirkman does not hesitate to cite Cibber’s opinion that Betterton was superior to Garrick and
Barry in a number of roles, but that Booth (who, Kirkman reminds us, Cibber did not like)
approached Betterton as a worthy rival. Having engaged in relaying Cibber’s comparison,
followed by Booth’s dislike of comparisons, Kirkman superciliously adds that Booth was right to
decline comparisons, “which it is impossible at this day to make” (1:85-86). Kirkman’s rationale
for the limitation of comparisons appears to be temporal, thus leaving room for Cibber’s
comparisons to be legitimate, since he had personally witnessed all actors involved in the
comparison.
Kirkman’s premise that comparisons including long-dead actors are less valid sets serious
limitations on the biographer if comparison is, as I argue, the primary currency of the evaluations
which frequently form the best attempts at preserving an actor’s memory. Advantage then rests
with the most long-lived biographer, or with biographers who had the fortune to live during a
period with a large cluster of talent, for each biography would, at best case, likely be limited to
sixty or seventy years’ worth of comparisons. This contradicts Kirkman’s avowal of
comprehensiveness, or at least his title-page claim to present one hundred years of the English
stage. Nonetheless, Kirkman, for whom seeing Betterton onstage was distinctly improbable, feels
comfortable relying on Cibber’s comparisons, and to generate his own just one page after his
temporally circumscribed premise. The Restoration actor Montford becomes “the Barry of his
day”—though whether Montford was the Barry of his day based on shared good looks, proper
enunciation, or ability to move a crowd is left unspecified (1:87).
It appears that Kirkman is working his way through a philosophy of preservation
comprising memory, homage, comparison, time, and propriety. He writes, "To convey a just idea
Weldy Boyd 133

of the excellence of deceased actors, is, as before lamented, impossible. The best mode of giving
a notion of their style and merits, is by a scale of comparison with some actors in remembrance"
(1:88-89, my italics). Kirkman simultaneously raises the stakes from long-dead actors to all
deceased actors, and denies his premise by saying that comparisons are not a necessary evil
based on convention, as implied by his use of Cibber’s judgments, but that they are the only
means of resuscitating a deceased actor’s merits. More important that Kirkman’s inability to
maintain a consistently principled approach to the problem of writing about deceased actors is
his obvious awareness of the problem, and the easily shaken veneer of comfort with his task that
his original premise is meant to suggest. Having abandoned the premise, Kirkman fills the next
pages by justifying a stream of comparisons between Montford and Barry (who would almost
have exactly answered one another’s descriptions); Kynaston and Mossop (allowing Kynaston to
have “more grace and dignity”); and Underhill and Lee (who were seemingly interchangeable as
second-rate versions of Nokes but who specialized in the roles Nokes couldn’t quite pull off).
Discretely acknowledging his own temporal limitations based on not being directly
familiar with the work of many leading thespians to whom he made reference, Kirkman notes
that “we have no one to compare [Nokes] with”—he thus obliquely makes the argument that his
wholesale incorporation of swaths of Cibber’s autobiography would be justified, and that
Kirkman himself could not join the conversation if a comparison to a modern actor could not be
made (1:90). Kirkman has also highlighted the tremendous temporal advantage of Colley
Cibber’s biography, which had become the supreme thespian autobiography and a main
autobiographical source of theatre history: with each passing year, Cibber’s written legacy
became more valuable because first-hand accounts of Betterton ceased to be possible once
Betterton and all of his audience had ceased to exist. Other actors could perhaps seek to recreate
Weldy Boyd 134

Betterton based on collective memory passed down from other actors, but no biographer born
after Betterton’s death could claim the cultural capital of having seen Betterton act. Kirkman’s
direct competition as the biographer of Charles Macklin came from other Macklin biographers,
past and future, particularly given the temporal proximity of the three accounts by people who
had lived contemporaneously to their subject. Nonetheless, Kirkman’s decision to mine material
from Colley Cibber’s account, and to a lesser extent, Victor’s history of the theatre and Thomas
Davies’ biography of Garrick, among other texts, emphasized Kirkman’s inability to successfully
challenge earlier biographers’ advantages, including witnessing their subjects in action and
approaching the field uncluttered by predecessors.
For all of the lamentations about Macklin’s fleeting stage life and the impossibility of
preserving his legacy, the onus fell to the biographer rather than to Macklin, as the actor could no
longer speak on his own behalf. In life, of course, Macklin, as Shylock, was able to circumvent
the temporal obstacle Kirkman faced relative to past intercessors of a role. We recall that even
though Macklin did not have the advantage of Burbage, who was likely trained by Shakespeare
in the art of playing Shylock, or the ability to have seen Burbage in action, Macklin was
nonetheless heralded as having produced, in 1741, “the Jew that Shakespeare drew.” Departing
from the past precedence of playing Shylock as a comedic character, Macklin did not need to
consult with Shakespeare or witness Burbage to offer what audiences deemed to be a “correct”
or “true” interpretation of Shylock, even after well over one hundred years. Conversely, a
removal of one hundred years between Kirkman and the subjects that he wanted to talk about
who had been working at the beginning of the eighteenth century understandably proved
problematic.
Weldy Boyd 135

Macklin as an actor was only in thrall to time when it came to the preservation of his
memory—his ability to do his job was not dependant on the distance between his subject
(Shylock via Shakespeare’s text) and himself as the player. In fact, that Macklin was supposed to
have been able to divine Shakespeare’s intent for Shylock from Shakespeare’s writing suggests
that eighteenth-century folks were less interested in a multiplicity of interpretations than finding
one “canon” interpretation, and moreover indicates that the audience felt they would know
“Shakespeare” when they saw his intent laid out by a player onstage—even if that new
interpretation-cum-canon wildly deviated from the long-standing canonical understanding of the
role.
In writing a biography of Macklin, Kirkman would constantly be reminded of his
limitations as he attempted to tackle that lengthy life that had been lived, for the most part,
before Kirkman was born—the life of a man who became famous, at least initially, for unseating
the prevailing interpretation of Shylock. Macklin served as a deterrent to anyone who hoped to
write a “definitive” biography of the actor; his restoration of Shakespeare over Granville
profoundly shifted both script and onstage character, signaling that definitive status (which
Granville was long assumed to have achieved) could be reversed in a single blow. Kirkman no
doubt could imagine the sting of a rival Life outselling and replacing his story—this is, I contend,
why he went to such lengths to conjure up such a boisterous and seemingly unsurpassable
monument to Macklin. However, considering that Congreve’s biography had only been available
for a year before Kirkman attempted to unseat his fellow biographer, it would seem logical that
time should weigh so heavily on Kirkman’s mind as he anticipated the approaching spectre of
Macklin’s next biographer. As it turns out, that biographer would not challenge Kirkman on
grounds of fact versus imaginative fiction, but on the central role of Macklin in the narrative.
Weldy Boyd 136

V. An Impressionistic Life: Cooke’s “New Species” of Biography (1804)
In an effort to foreground narrative while delivering character, Kirkman frequently chose
to stretch anecdotes and basic facts into multi-page diversions, torturing what appears to be a
rather spotty archive into a continuous master version of Macklin’s life. While Kirkman’s tale is
more entertaining than the drier chronology of Congreve, he sacrifices the honor of a biography
to attempt to tell the truth. Of course, biography is the attempt to provide a reasonably cohesive
understanding of a life in full, and as Stacy Schiff suggests, even the honorable biographer
realizes that she must operate within gaps and introduce some speculative interpretation not only
to move the narrative along, but also to endow the life with some purpose.
Cooke’s book finds its own purpose not in Charles Macklin’s life, but around it. The
author introduces his book by expressing regret that Macklin did not leave behind a finished
autobiography: “We have, however, to regret, that a complete life of this value, and this extent,
was not given by himself” (ii). However, the value that Cooke assigns to Macklin’s “life” is less
about Macklin himself as actor and more about Macklin as observer of the world around him.
Cooke notes that Macklin’s biography would have been valuable due to his ability to provide “a
regular history of the stage” (rather than facts or perspective specifically about his own life, as in
a true biography). Timing is everything:
His acquaintance with the stage had just preceded the retirement of Cibber, he could
have, from tradition, informed us of its usages and customs since the beginning of the last
century; the professional and private characters of the principal performers; the talents
and estimation in which the dramatic writers were held, with their characters, &c. the
number, temper, and acumen, of the several audiences; together with the progressive
manners of the age operating on the whole. (ii-iii)
Weldy Boyd 137

As mentioned earlier, Macklin’s biography would actually be more of a history, in any case,
closer to Kirkman’s vision rather than Congreve’s. Beyond the fortuitous timing of Macklin’s
arrival onstage relative to the decline of Cibber, and perhaps the man’s legendarily long life,
Macklin as a person or actor is depicted as much less central to the success of the story than a
book entitled Memoirs of Charles Macklin might suggest.
It may be that Cooke not only had a grasp on what his readers wanted—theatre history
loosely woven around the unifying strand of a central figure—but moreover that he had taken his
cues from Macklin’s notes for his own memoirs (either from reading Kirkman or gaining access
to some of Macklin’s outlines for the autobiography).
99
It seems to me that Cooke was
responding to readers’ tastes—Cibber had popularized the notion that the most useful
biographies should also include smaller embedded biographies of other leading thespians and
commentary on the manners and conduct of the times—but also narrowing the field of research
and subject matter by centering his subject on Macklin. Finally, as I suggested earlier, the
spottiness of documentation about parts of Macklin’s life, and the man’s tempestuous character,
led to very vivid stories floating to the top of a murky background—Macklin’s obscure origins,
numerous interactions with curious characters, and strange behavior, suited a narrative design
merging the late eighteenth-century love of capsule biographies (ones in which an outline of a
life is compressed into a paragraph or a page) and anecdotal collections with the interest in full-
length biography. For example, the first few chapters of the Life feature a number of capsule
biographies of actors who would have been at the end of their careers when Macklin’s began in
place of Macklin’s early life, since not much was able to be said about that.

99
In Chapter Three, we will see Boaden attempt to weave a larger theatrical history around John Philip Kemble, a
tactic that obscures his main character. Boaden would go on to adjust his formula for his next biography, the Life of
Siddons. The balance of individual to group biography was difficult to master within a single text.
Weldy Boyd 138

While Memoirs is the short title of Cooke’s text, he offers additionally “the dramatic
characters, manners, anecdotes, &c of the age in which he lived” which suggests that Macklin’s
life may not always be center-stage in the memoir. The final piece of the title, “forming an
history of the stage during almost the whole of the last century” attempted to secure the laurel
that Cibber had earned in presenting a comprehensive history of the stage from the Restoration to
1740, again stressing Macklin’s longevity to support the choice of Macklin as a vehicle for
presenting the history of the stage.
Cooke’s impressionistic technique was not appreciated by all readers. One critic writing
in 1805 for The European Magazine commented in a section of reviews preceding the second
edition of Cooke’s work that the book was “not, correctly speaking, biographical” because “it
seems to us, from its detached parts, consisting of characters, anecdotes, notices of manners, &c.
a new species of composition, in which a Life is rather indicated, or involved, than given” (“The
Opinion of This Work” 4). This review, as damning as it may appear to Cooke’s sporadic claims
to be a biographer (rather than a compiler), was included in the front matter of the second edition
of Cooke’s Memoirs, most probably because of the reviewer’s claim that Cooke may have
created “a new species of composition.” I share in the impression that, in comparison to other
biographies prior to and contemporary to it, Cooke’s was unusually liberal with accepting chunks
of narrative strung together. This technique sacrificed the periodic smoothness of Kirkman’s
approach to anecdotal interpolation but created a greater impression of trustworthiness on the
part of Cooke, since he was not willing to create elaborate flights of fancy to connect disparate
sections or use the sleight-of-hand fiction techniques employed by Kirkman.
100

100
It is easy to find jagged edges in Kirkman’s narrative, however, as he tended to roughly insert archival materials,
and by no means consistently achieved effective transitions between episodes, using chapter breaks for maximum
disruptiveness in the style of Fielding.
Weldy Boyd 139

Cooke recognized the potential downside of his approach. Adopting the defensive
posturing we have seen in both of Macklin’s earlier biographers, he attempts to justify how he
approached his craft, just as he had felt the need initially to justify the subject matter itself.
Curiously, Cooke’s thesis statement for his text arrives somewhat unexpectedly, mid-narrative:
It is not within the province of these anecdotes to relate a regular life of Macklin, which
has been already done in various forms, but to touch upon points of his long intercourse
with the stage not generally known, and which might best elucidate the manners and
characters of the times in which he lived. (136)
Cooke is writing not a “regular life”—a memoir or a biography—but a collection of anecdotes
loosely gathered around the twin points of novelty and education. The emphasis on things “not
generally known,” coupled with the observation that “various forms” of Macklin’s memoirs have
already filled the need for traditional biography, suggests Cooke’s profound interest in placing
his own “spin” on Macklin. But while Cooke was attuned to trends, he saw his work as
occupying a timeless place of value. When inserting a very long digression about The Beggar’s
Opera—because, Cooke notes, everyone loves that play and has come to expect a section on it
(an observation borne up by the content of both preceding biographies), he not only appeals to
current taste but to posterity
101
:
As such, we insert the following; well knowing how perishable the anecdotes of modern
tomes are, which, from being too often only committed to memory, die within their
present possessors, and are lost to posterity. How little, for instance, do we know of the
familiar life and habits of Shakespeare, who lived in an age when history began to
assume a creditable shape, and whose high and transcendant[sic] talents should have

101
A veteran actor, J. Moody, writes on behalf of the book, declaring that “His [Cooke’s] Digressions (by far the
best Part of the Work) are the Digressions of a Gentleman” (“Advertisement” 2).
Weldy Boyd 140

commanded the attentions of the whole literary world! yet that little would have been
less, were it not for the researches of Rowe, who, perhaps, just in time, snatched those
materials from perishing, and left them as a basis for his succeeding biographers to build
upon. (28)
While Cooke’s point about the slipperiness of memory is applicable to any art form or past
happening, it is no coincidence that he should appeal to Shakespeare—an actor and author—as
his example of a life that merited detailed preservation. To make the judgment that the
actor/playwright “should have commanded the attentions of the whole literary world” not only
carves out a privileged space for biography, but specifically for thespian or stage-related
biography.
102

It is my contention that anecdote in theatrical biography has two specific roles: first,
anecdote is a tool to “preserve” a person, as frequently anecdotes speak not only to the presumed
mindset of a character, but may also describe his motions and speech patterns. Anecdote seems
particularly suited to seeking to encapsulate the goings-on of the theatre because of the shared
precision of spacio-temporal limits involved in recollection: one can only recall so long of an
encounter in detail, and the expense of print and necessity of portability places spatial limitations
on any one remembrance in a larger work. Cooke appears to have used his anecdotal-tissue life
of Macklin as a catch-all memorial for numerous thespians. He sees it as his duty not only to

102
Comparisons run amok not only in reckoning the value of an actor, but also the value of biography: Cooke
compares himself to Rowe by common characteristic: both men preserved details that would otherwise have gone
unknown. It is also not insignificant that Cooke chooses, of all of Shakespeare’s many editors and several
biographers, Rowe, who was not only the first to attempt a biography of Shakespeare, but also the only one to do so
for several decades. Although a number of edited editions of Shakespeare were put forth by talented author-editors,
it was common practice to include the entirety of Rowe’s biography rather than to seek to supplant it. By comparing
his goal of presenting yet unknown elements of Macklin’s life to Rowe’s accomplishment in doing the same for
Shakespeare, Cooke on one hand collapses the distance between the first biographer and a third biographer in terms
of potential to rescue pertinent details, and on the other hand points out the accretive nature of biographies which are
meant to be supplanted. This double-bind of wishing to represent the apex of biographical accomplishment
pertaining to one’s subject in perpetuity and also recognizing the potential of your work to lend a hand to future
biographers whose work may or may not signal one’s own obsolescence is balanced in Cooke’s vision of Rowe’s
contribution to thespian biography.
Weldy Boyd 141

rescue Peggy Woffington from the incomplete accounts provided by her biographers (122) but
also to assist Spranger Barry into achieving the proper posterity-directed fame that the actor
himself had not been forward-thinking enough to secure during his lifetime (177). In each case,
Cooke provides a wealth of admittedly tired anecdotes about the character in question,
sometimes featuring a cameo role for Macklin, and then shifts his tone from the jocundity of
anecdote to the serious pronouncements of a character sketch. Thus, an anecdote becomes a
gateway to a character sketch that includes a chronological timeline and some characterization.

Spranger Barry’s approaching obscurity raises a philosophical edge to Cooke, who allies
the poet and the historian as dually yoked in creating a memorial of the thespian’s art. He also
uses the impending sketch to argue for the theatre’s contribution to moral education and social
manners before turning to the formal character sketch, showing his continued awareness that his
text should act as a constant but gentle defense of the theatre just as much as a defense of the
larger applicability of his own project. As part of a capsule biography, character sketches, for
Cooke, illustrate a man’s worthiness, and thus serve as a moral example in the midst of the
amusements provided by anecdote.
103

Most interestingly with respect to his treatment of Spranger Barry, Cooke follows the
model supplied by Garrick’s biographer, Thomas Davies, singling out specific lines and
attempting to relay how Barry delivered them.
104
For example, Cooke transcribes two lines of the
“tender ejaculations” of Othello in reference to Desdemona, inserting that Barry’s “voice was so

103
Cooke also affords Spranger Barry’s wife, an actress, a capsule biography, in which Mrs. Barry was given a
domestic narrative rather than a tour of her theatrical contributions, while Spranger had the dignity to be included for
his theatrical doings and his personal life remained offstage. See Kristina Straub’s Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth
Century Players and Sexual Ideology (1991) for further discussion of gendered issues, as well as Cheryl Wanko’s
chapter on Lavinia Fenton for the unsettling dynamics of biography focused on female thespians.
104
Although Kirkman disapproved of Davies, Garrick’s first biographer, for what he claimed was an overly
worshipful attitude, Cooke evidently esteemed Davies as a model for successful biography. We can recall from
Chapter One that at Cooke’s first opportunity to create a vision of an actor’s prowess for his readers, Cooke evades
the pressure by literally co-opting Davies’ more successful performances in the Life and Miscellanies.

Weldy Boyd 142

melodiously harmonized to the expression, that the sigh of pity communicated itself to the whole
house, and all were advocates for the sufferings of the fair heroine” (181). In such a moment, the
success or failure of Cooke’s description not only stands to impact Cooke’s reputation as a
believable, knowledgeable guide, but also Barry’s reputation as an actor. If Cooke’s description
leads the reader to determine that such a sigh of pity as described would be appropriate to the
situation, he will not only think well of Barry but also think well of Cooke for his accurate
description. Alternatively, Cooke might describe the actor’s action or speech and then frame it
disapprovingly, as in the case with his assessment of Macklin’s failure to merge the theoretical
and the representational as Macbeth: the burden is on Cooke to do a good job “acting poorly”,
for his description must not only seem to convey the objective facts of what the actor was doing
but also introduce the subjective elements of taste that suggest the critic-biographer’s superior
knowledge. Cooke records:
His figure (even from his boyish days) was never calculated to impress the character of a
dignified warrior; and in his first scene, when the audience saw a clumsy old man, who
looked more like a Scotch Piper than a General and Prince of the Blood, stumping down
the Stage, at the head of a supposed conquering army, "commanding a halt upon the
heath," they felt it under an impression of absurdity and ridicule. His address to the
witches, and his reflections on their prophecies, however, were given with such a
knowledge of the character as to redeem the first impression; and his subsequent
interview with Lady Macbeth was very much in the spirit of the author; but when he
came to the dagger scene, which requires both a marking eye, as well as grace of action,
he failed, at least in representation. (284-285)
Weldy Boyd 143

As we see, the biographer has the onus to describe the acting in such a way that the reader
vividly understands why that approach was not effective—in this case, the description of
Macklin “stumping down the Stage” accomplishes that both clearly and pithily. The biographer
must also clearly iterate why the particular performance of a scene merited retelling, since scenes
that were most useful for such purposes were usually very well known. In the instance above,
Cooke takes it upon himself to anticipate that the audience will summon to mind a successful
example of a “marking eye”—quite probably Garrick’s— with which to contrast Macklin.
But if Cooke strove for novelty, or a new spin on the same old story, and certainly we can
see that he was aware of the need for his own interpretation, he was sometimes too focused on
his interest in educating his readers philosophically to rise to the occasion of providing all parts
of his own interpretation from description through significance. Cooke relies on Thomas Davies’
excellent descriptions of Spranger Barry onstage initially, gradually emulating Davies’ technique
of focusing a pinpoint of light on particular lines of the play rather than falling prey to the usual
vagueness that haunts descriptions of actors’ crafts. However, when Cooke writes about
Macklin’s turn as Shylock, arguably the most important individual task of providing a snapshot
of Macklin as a man of theatrical significance, rather than attempting to describe what Macklin’s
success consisted of, he elected to present the critique as Macklin’s own recitation of what
happened on opening night. Macklin describes a slow start and a gradual warming of tone and
temper until he “threw out all my fire” and finally, returning to the green room amidst applause
from the audience and praise from his fellow performers, Macklin recalls,
My brethren in the greenroom joined in his [the manager’s] eulogium, but with different
views— He was thinking of the increase of his treasury— they only for saving
appearances— wishing at the same time that I had broke my neck in the attempt… By
Weldy Boyd 144

G-d, Sir, though I was not worth fifty pounds in the world at that time, yet, let me tell
you, I was Charles the Great for that night. (92-93)
Allowing Macklin to speak for himself illustrates the starts and stops in Macklin’s natural
speaking voice, and his ability to tell an engaging narrative. However, in deferring to the proud
thespian, Cooke does not bother to describe what Macklin actually did on stage to deserve such
applause—rather understandably, following Macklin’s lead, his focus is on the generalized
positive reaction of the audience. He can isolate specific scenes (the trial scene and Macklin-as-
Shylock’s denunciation of Jessica) which provoked the greatest audience reaction. This account
is entertaining and educational, but Cooke neglects the duty of replicating Macklin’s
performance even though he clearly understands and is capable of glimmers of performance
when discussing the highlights of Spranger Barry’s onstage success. It is almost as if, in his
incredible awareness of the popular audience’s desire for amusing anecdotes and the genre’s
requirement for philosophical teachings if it hopes to be “legitimate”, Cooke rather carelessly
uses Macklin as a magnet for anecdotes, saving his superior philosophical musings and sensitive
reiterations for other characters and events. Macklin becomes a prop for Cooke’s larger history,
rather than the history being a stage for Macklin’s art.

VI. Macklin, Interrupted: Multiple Threats of Displacement
Perhaps the most startling aspect of Macklin biographies is the extent to which anecdote
sometimes obscures Macklin as a subject. I have suggested that in a number of theatrical
biographies, anecdote is used to describe the onstage behaviors of an actor, as in the case of
Booth’s famously felt-lined socks which allowed him to present a particularly convincing ghost
Weldy Boyd 145

in Hamlet.
105
It can also be used to capture the reaction of the audience, as in the delightful tale
that Parry relates surrounding the rivalry of Spranger Barry and David Garrick as Romeo: “When
I saw Garrick, if I had been his Juliet,” quipped one woman, “I should have wished him to leap
up into the balcony to me; but when I saw Barry, I should have been inclined to jump down to
him” (87). One does not have to read particularly widely to gather a considerable store of
disconnected but lovely anecdotes about various thespians, particularly since theatrical
biographers rarely constrain their story-telling to the immediate subject at hand.
In the previous sections, I have demonstrated that each biographer has manifested
significant anxiety about his project in relation to other biographical enterprises centering around
Macklin, and that each has made an effort to carve out a particular niche for his work. I have
shown the limitations of separating characterization and narrative, highlighted the misdirection
of Kirkman’s treatment of biography as novelistic fiction, and suggested that anecdote provides a
great parallel to the onstage “pointing” technique that allows critics to compare and encapsulate
the work of their favorite thespians. In the process, I have provided a number of instances in
which theatrical biographers freeze moments of performance. Kirkman, Cooke, and Parry all
partake in this tradition to varying degrees—but primarily do so when discussing other actors
besides Macklin. Macklin’s biggest anecdotal moments take place offstage, rather than onstage,
in these biographies. This can perhaps be explained by Macklin’s bigger-than-life flair for off-
stage dramatics, or by the trend of theatrical biographers to want to cover new, undiscovered
territory for their readers.
I have suggested that, in the case of Cooke’s anecdotal approach, the stories threaten to
displace Macklin himself. Similarly, one printing of the book Joe Miller’s Jests, or Vade Mecum

105
Cooke records that Macklin “used to dwell with delight on his [Booth’s] performance of the Ghost in Hamlet,
which he made very awful and pathetic. In this performance he used cloth shoes, (soles and all) that the sound of his
step should not be heard on the Stage, which had a characteristical effect” (16).
Weldy Boyd 146

(1744) was dedicated to a handful of distinguished persons, including Macklin. The book
promised to tell the anecdotes of numerous colorful characters, among who numbered our actor.
Yet for all of the anecdotes numbered therein, Macklin only took part in a single one: the quip
about the Jew that Shakespeare drew.
In fact, the “Jew that Shakespeare drew” appears to be the only Macklin anecdote that is
universally required among Macklin biographers. It is pithy, to its great advantage, and it
rhymes, which sets it apart from the great bulk of Macklin anecdotes. Nonetheless, one would
assume that there were certain episodes that must be covered in any respectable biography of a
life—for instance, Macklin’s murder of fellow actor Mr. Hallam in 1735; the first meeting of
Macklin’s lecture series, The British Inquisition, in 1753; and Macklin’s much-advertised and
advised-against portrayal of Macbeth in 1773.
The first event under consideration, the death of Hallam, took place in the green room at
Drury-Lane. Accounts seem to concur that the conflict arose over a specific wig which Macklin
wished to wear onstage but which Hallam claimed for his own. The two men verbally sparred,
and Macklin appeared to relent, ignoring Hallam for about fifteen minutes before lunging at him
and skewering his eye out with a stick (or cane, depending on the version told). It is a graphic
event, not necessarily anecdotal in terms of its humor, but an unexpected turn of events that is
important enough to attach itself in capsule biographies of Macklin within larger biographies
about other thespians.
Congreve does not make use of the theatrical possibility of making us “see” the attack: he
merely reports its happening and claims that the act was not premeditated: Macklin “drove at
him with a stick which he had in his hand, without any aim it is supposed, but unhappily with too
fatal effect, as it entered the right eye of his opponent, penetrated the brain, and caused his death
Weldy Boyd 147

the next day” (16). The biographer notes that the action transpired in “a hasty fit of passion…
repented of as soon as done.” The degree of Macklin’s culpability clearly iterated
(manslaughter), Congreve returns Macklin to the stage in the next sentence.
Kirkman, however, supplies an incredibly long-winded narrative from the trial itself in
order to be beyond reproach as an honest biographer in his own right and in deference to “the
memory of Mr. Macklin” (1:188). Thus, Congreve’s paragraph-long account becomes a sixteen-
page interpolated trial record, unmediated, Kirkman says, so that the reader might make up his
own mind as to Macklin’s guilt. He quotes Thomas Arne, who describes himself as the
“numberer of boxes” at Drury Lane and, more importantly, an eye-witness. He recalls Macklin
yelling at Hallam: “‘Damn you for a rogue,’ says the prisoner, ‘what business have you with my
wig.’” Having described an interval of cooling after the initial skirmish, Arne continues:
‘Upon which the prisoner started up out of his chair, and, with a stick in his hand, made a
longe [sic] at the deceased, and thrust the stick into his left eye; and, pulling it back again,
looked pale, turned on his heel, and, in a passion, threw the stick into the fire—‘G-d d—n
it,’ says he; and, turning about again on his heel, he sat down.’ (1:192)
Arne goes on to describe how Macklin goes to Hallam and cradles the eye, reassuring the man
that it hasn’t fallen out because he can feel it under his hand. Arne, also in the theatre, reads
Macklin’s actions sympathetically: when Macklin (acting as his own lawyer) asks whether he
showed concern to Hallam, Arne replies: “I believe he was under the utmost surprise, by his
turning about, and throwing the stick into the fire: and he shewed a further concern when he felt
the eye-ball” (1:193).
106
Kirkman adds, in Macklin’s own words, as taken from the published
account of the trial proceedings, that Macklin urinated in Hallam’s eye, supposedly at the request

106
Four more accounts of six are outspokenly sympathetic to Macklin, drawing on the moment of frustration and
Macklin’s subsequent repentance, with one witness testifying that Macklin held Hallam’s hand as the surgeon
dressed the wound. All of them describe the lunge and attempt to replicate the immediately preceding conversation.
Weldy Boyd 148

of his victim, and supplied a guinea—“all the money I had about me”—to the cause of Hallam’s
surgeon’s bill (1:202). It is interesting, and troubling, to see how Kirkman relies almost entirely
on the words of Arne and, by extension, the court proceedings, to describe the murder, when
generally Kirkman liberally adds his own voice and framing.
Perhaps more surprisingly, Macklin’s third biographer, Cooke, ignores the Hallam
episode entirely. It may be that Cooke recognized that such a gruesome murder did not lend itself
to a pithy anecdote, and thus he made use of his prerogative as a collector of a constellation of
anecdotes loosely orbiting Macklin to skip this one very unappealing happenstance.
Edward Abbott Parry, who has a tendency to present as many versions of Macklin’s
foibles as he finds interesting, chooses to combine the best of Congreve and Kirkman
(unfortunately having nothing from Cooke, who was more concise and reliable than Kirkman
and more florid than Congreve). Parry begins with a dry recitation of the basic narration,
supplementing the known accounts with the revelation of “a letter…expressing his deep sorrow”
that Macklin supposedly wrote to the manager of the theatre, Drury Lane (27). Parry provides
Thomas Arne’s account from Kirkman verbatim, and portions of Macklin’s own defense. Parry
shows his awareness of Kirkman’s multiple accounts, but seems to only see the need for one eye-
witness account, as the other accounts primarily corroborate the information given by Arne. He
sums up two other arguments on behalf of Macklin, and adds a quick aside about the state of
manslaughter as a legal concept during the preceding century.
The Hallam episode is a particularly unsatisfying but representative example of those
times in which Macklin’s biographers appear to abdicate from really representing him, receding
behind other men’s words on one hand but trying to interject their own details to justify their
expertise. Of course, the lack of effort in recreating the scene may stem from the impossibility of
Weldy Boyd 149

any of the biographers having witnessed the slaying: the time, sixty years prior to the first
biography, and the place, the private green room, makes the staging of this particular scene only
accessible by second-hand knowledge.
The second isolated event, Macklin’s founding of a British Inquisition, a dinner and
lecture series foray designed to give him a captive audience for pontificating at large upon
philosophical questions and dramatic matters, gives a better scope of the possible reactions by
each biographer in attempting to make the story at hand his own. Congreve, whose Boswellian
ambitions, alluded to in the closing paragraphs of his biography, are barely detectable in his
stripped-down retelling, reproduces the advertisement for Macklin’s first meeting. The
Inquisition is “upon the plan of the ancient Greek, Roman, and Modern French and Italian
Societies of liberal investigation,” writes Macklin loftily (35-37). He details his plan to “lecture
upon the Comedy of the Ancients, the use of their masks and flutes, their mimes and
pantomimes, and the use and abuse of the Stage…” The list of potential topics continues,
establishing an ongoing trajectory for these lectures, the first of which was to be on Hamlet and
feature a post-lecture debate over “whether the people of Great Britain have profited by their
intercourse with or their Imitation of the French nation.” Each biographer replicates the notice in
full, because the amount of hubris required for one man to undertake such an effort demands
documentation (Kirkman 1:359-361; Cooke 203; Parry 95-96).
Congreve displays little incredulity at Macklin’s plan, noting that it was ill-advised, that
“a cotemporary diurnal writer” affirmed an attendance of over 800 people at the first lecture, and
that the venture was not helped by the antagonistic raillery of Samuel Foote. He provides no
example of Foote’s needling, although Foote was a noted wit with a sharp sense of humor.
Kirkman, whom one might expect to reproduce Foote’s many witticisims at Macklin’s expense,
Weldy Boyd 150

blames the failure of the Inquisition on Foote’s nastiness, but yields no sampling of the caustic
barbing. Kirkman does augment Congreve’s account by providing several excerpts that he claims
were abridged notes from Macklin’s intended lectures, including The Art and Duty of an Actor,
On Acting, On Newspapers, and Garrick-Bane. Congreve was not one for anecdote, which
explains his silence about Foote’s quips; Kirkman’s love of anecdotes could only be stifled by
his transparent reluctance to make Macklin, a “close relative,” the butt of the joke. This is even
seen, in one instance, where Kirkman takes an insidiously rude quip about Macklin at the hands
of his sometimes-rival, James Quin, and turns it into an opportunity to laud Macklin’s patience in
enduring such rudeness (119).
Under no compunction of allegiance to Macklin, Cooke makes the best of Macklin’s
foolhardy plan. He critiques Macklin’s intended regimen of lectures by pointing out the chasm
between Macklin’s enthusiasm and his ability to fulfill his scheme. He offers the account of an
anonymous “literary gentleman” who attended the initial meeting of the Inquisition. He describes
the “dumb show” that Macklin puts on as head waiter and proprietor:
Macklin himself always brought in the first dish, dressed in a full suit of clothes, &c.,
with a napkin slung across his left arm. When he placed the dish on the table, he made a
low bow, and retired a few paces back towards the sideboard...He had trained up all his
servants…and one principle rule…was, that not one single word was to be spoken by
them whilst in the room…The ordinary, therefore, was carried on by signs previously
agreed upon. (200-201)
Cooke describes Macklin’s highly theatrical transition from head waiter to lecturer, wherein he
would break from character: “Macklin, quitting his former situation, walked gravely up to the
front of the table, and hoped ‘that all things were found agreeable.’” He then bowed and retired,
Weldy Boyd 151

only to return in character for the lecture. “Of the other part of his plan [the lectures]…it is
impossible to think, without ascribing to the author a degree of vanity almost bordering on
madness,” begins Cooke, who tells four anecdotes resulting from the Inquisition, all of which
reflect poorly on Macklin. The first shows Macklin expounding to Garrick about his plan to
contrast Garrick’s Romeo to Spranger Barry’s—Macklin describes Spranger’s cocky swaggering
as enough to wake the Capulets up, in contrast to Garrick’s muted approach, which he describes
as being “like a thief in the night.” Garrick begs him not to continue, implying that Macklin’s
plaudits, while well-intended, were not desirable. Macklin remains delightfully oblivious.
The other three anecdotes were the long-anticipated Foote ones, referenced but not
provided by Congreve or Kirkman. First, an uncharacteristically brief Macklin anecdote:
Macklin is preparing to start his lecture and finds that Foote is still holding court in the back of
the room. Cooke describes that Macklin “therefore cried out, with some authority, ‘Well, Sir,
you seem to be very merry there; but do you know what I am going to say now?’ ‘No, Sir,’ says
Foote; ‘Pray, do you?’” Cooke records that the quip stunned Macklin into silence “for some
minutes.” The second anecdote is longer, with Foote attempting to stop an interminable lecture
on the origins of dueling: the wit interrupts to note that drunkenness leads to quarrelling, which
leads to dueling, “and so there’s an end of the chapter” (209). Macklin was not able to resume his
lecture, and let everyone go home. Finally, of Macklin’s famous dumb-show, the actor explains
that he learned the serving techniques from James, Duke of York, who invented the signals for
use of the fleet. “‘Very apropos! indeed,’ says Foote, ‘and good poetical justice; as from the fleet
they were taken—so to the Fleet both master and signals are likely to return” (209). Cooke
remarks that Foote went too far when he set up a mockery of Macklin at the theatre at
Haymarket, “where neither cut so good a figure as they did in the British Inquisition” (209).
Weldy Boyd 152

Parry manages to dredge up three entirely different Foote anecdotes surrounding the
British Inquisition. “The simple went to learn, the witty to laugh and sneer, the learned to wonder
at Macklin’s folly,” prefaces Parry. One joke from Foote’s Haymarket routine sees Foote
pretending to be Macklin tutoring a classics student, expounding upon how Roscius, the greatest
Roman actor, could never have played Shylock. The next joke, also in dialogue, represents
Macklin telling an improbable story to an amused listener: ‘Macklin’ describes having an
encounter with the Prince during which the Prince voiced his great admiration for Macklin. In
telling the story, Foote makes use of Macklin’s speech patterns and delivery in ascribing
dialogue to the Prince via Macklin: ‘Sir, if I were not the Prince—ha—hum—you understand?—
I should wish to be Mr. Macklin!’ Upon which I answered, ‘Royal Sir, being Mr. Macklin, I do
not desire to be the—’ Macklin could no longer contain himself, but, starting up, he stretched his
body forward and shouted, “No, I’ll be d—d if I did!’” This anecdote captures not only the real
Macklin’s inability to take a joke, but also his stubborn decision to attend a show that was
designed to mock his Inquisition. The biographer notes that the “burlesque…probably did as
much as anything to bring Macklin’s experiment to a speedy termination” (98). Parry concludes
his showcase of Foote’s wit by sharing an incomprehensible paragraph that Foote astutely
penned and presented to Macklin in the midst of the latter’s discourse on memory, with hopes
that the lecturer would demonstrate his superior technique by repeating from memory. The
paragraph, dubbed “immortal nonsense” by Parry, is preserved for posterity; Parry notes,
however, that “how Macklin took this ridiculous jest history does not relate…if he read and
repeated it, his system of memory must have been a very complete one indeed” (98-99).
It turns out that the majority of catchy anecdotes in the memoirs of Macklin pertain to
other characters entirely, or to situations in which Macklin is the butt. I have already remarked
Weldy Boyd 153

upon the strange reticence of our biographers to take it upon themselves to describe Macklin’s
debut as Shylock—it remains to be seen, then, whether they are more willing to rise to the
occasion with Macklin’s much-discussed decision to assay a series of three tragic roles in his
dotage. He had an ambitious plan to play Macbeth, Richard III, and Lear as he felt they should
have been played (an extension of the plan iterated in the Inquisition, which called for his
opinions on what Shakespeare intended his famous characters to be like). Years earlier, Macklin
had tried to convince Spranger Barry to lend him the right to perform some of the more
substantial tragic characters alternately with Barry, to no avail. So when Macklin took the stage
as Macbeth, disrupting the understood pecking order of the theatre in which certain actors
“owned” particular roles, not everyone was pleased. I have earlier discussed Congreve’s opinion
that while Macklin showed a good understanding of the role, that his portrayal was not entirely
successful. Congreve includes an apparently popular poem that compares several actors’
Macbeths by figuring them as the eight kings that appear in parade, noting that the descriptions
“are so happily characteristic of the manners of the different performers, that it is needless to
make any apology for inserting them”:
“Eight Kings appear and pass in order, and Banquo the last,”
Old Quin, ere fate suppress’d his lab’ring breath,
In studied accents grumbled out Macbeth.
Next Garrick came, whose utterance truth imprest,
While every look the tyrant’s guilt confest.
Then the cold Sheridan half froze the part,
Yet what he lost by nature, sav’d by art.
Tall Barry now advanced tow’rd Birnam Wood,
Weldy Boyd 154

Nor ill performed the scenes he understood.
Grave Mossop next to Fores shap’d his march,
His words were minute guns, his action starch.
Rough Holland too—but pass his errors o’er,
Nor blame the actor, when the man’s no more.
Then heavy Ross essay’d the tragic frown,
But beef and pudding kept all meaning down.
Next careless Smith try’d on the murd’rous mask,
While o’er his tongue light tripp’d the hurried task.
Hard Macklin late guilt’s feelings strove to speak
While sweats infernal drenched his iron cheek.
Like Fielding’s kings he fancied triumph’s past,
And all he boasts is that he falls the last. (45)
107

This droll poem clearly indicates the desire to crystallize performers in a compact and
comparable way: each Macbeth receives a couplet that describes his weakness, with the
exception of Holland, whose failure is alluded to by the descriptor “rough” and the horrifyingly
endless possibilities left open by the author’s refusal to specify his precise “errors,” and Garrick,
who appears to have been a Macbeth beyond reproach.
It may have been this irreproachability that led several Garrick supporters to take their
place in the audience in order to heckle and hiss Macklin. Congreve merely says that Macklin

107
Henry Mossop, who died at an early age, was slated to be a serious rival to David Garrick if he could have had
time to overcome his legendary stiffness. Parry relates the advent of “Barryists and Mossopists,” fans who preferred
one or the other of those two actors; he gives praise to Mossop for superior learning, but notes Mossop’s “over-
deliberation both in speech and action,” citing the phrase “Mossop’s minute-guns” (117). Equally illuminating is
Cooke’s description, borrowed from Charles Churchill, of Mossop as “The Distiller of Syllables”—“the frequent
resting of his left-hand on his hip, with his right extended, has been often ludicrously compared to the handle and
spout of a tea-pot,” notes Cooke disapprovingly (258). Of course, the above poem is consistent with these
characterizations.
Weldy Boyd 155

received “repeated marks of approbation” before the smaller number of critics began hissing.
Nonetheless, the hissing turned to rioting and eventually, to Macklin’s removal from the stage
“by order of the public.” Understandably incensed, Macklin filed a lawsuit against the principle
hissers for loss of livelihood. Kirkman devotes two hundred pages (roughly one-fifth of his Life
of Macklin) to the trial, yet seems to have deemed a description of Macklin’s performance
unnecessary. Parry replicates the poem that Congreve gave us, and repeats one of Cooke’s
criticisms, that Macklin lectured, rather than performed, Macbeth. He also adds one viewer’s
opinion that “Macklin’s [Macbeth] was certainly not marked by studied grace of deportment, but
he seemed to be more earnest in the character than any actor I have subsequently seen” (161).
To Cooke go the representative laurels: in an inverse of Kirkman, he devotes a few
sentences to the hissing and subsequent trials, but several pages to critiquing Macklin’s Macbeth,
scene by scene (a treatment which, unfortunately, he does not give Macklin’s Shylock earlier).
Cooke notes the moment at which Macklin soared highest and sunk lowest. Most notably, Cooke
highlights a known “point” for actors playing Macbeth—the moment in which Macbeth replies
to the messenger who reports the movement of Birnam Wood. Cooke gives the four lines, in
which Macbeth threatens the messenger with hanging if he is lying, and tells the messenger that,
if the report is true, he wouldn’t mind if the messenger hung him. Cooke writes:
The first part of this speech was delivered in a tone and look of such terrible menace as
almost petrified the audience; while in the last line he fell into such an air of
despondency, as shewed the effect of contrast in a most masterly manner. In short, this
little speech might be classed amongst the chef d’oevres of general acting, and as such
was applauded by the whole of the audience. (286)
Weldy Boyd 156

It seems that we get a much better idea of how Macklin acted, or at least the high and low points
of his skill set, from his assaying the role of Macbeth than his Shylock. Perhaps this can be
explained, as Cooke notes, by the uniqueness of Shylock: “If he could not play Richard or
Macbeth to any advantage, Shylock was exclusively his own, beside a number of other
characters, where he had few competitors, and no superior” (289). Perhaps Macklin’s first three
biographers had difficulty discussing Shylock because descriptions were based around contrasts,
and no strong competitor had emerged by which to juxtapose Macklin. We can recall Kirkman
opting out of trying to discuss Nokes as an actor because there was no present-day actor who
roughly corresponded with him in terms of skill set.
While perhaps we can excuse the lack of description about Shylock, the fact still remains
that the choicest anecdotes in Kirkman’s work pertain to Macklin’s childhood and early years, a
time which remains contested and cloudy. Cooke’s most memorable anecdotes focus on other
characters in the Macklin universe.

VII. Extending the Life: J.J. Cossart and the Act of Annotating
The motivation of anecdote, like all story-telling, is to amuse or to educate, often some
combination of the two. For a biography to shun anecdote was to deny readers a fundamental joy
of the medium: seizing upon and trading anecdotes was a celebrated and stigmatized pastime, as
evidenced by the reactions of some publications to rival journals or books that peddled anecdotal
extracts from cohesive narratives. This section focuses on the accretive efforts of J.J. Cossart, an
annotator whose quest for the most comprehensive set of anecdotes compelled him to spill into
the margins of the sanctioned text, radically reinvisioning biography as a shared treasure-trove of
anecdotes pertaining to all characters, rather than a narrative focusing on a main character. In
Weldy Boyd 157

short, Cossart sees in the ongoing battle between characterization and narrative a license to act as
unsanctioned biographer-editor, expanding Macklin’s world and reach even further through
Cossart’s own knowledge and reading.
Cossart’s approach was not without precedent. In fact, anecdotes often formed the first
grains around which a larger narrative of a theatrical life developed into a publishable work. It is
no coincidence that Macklin’s second and third biographers, Kirkman and Cooke, serialized their
memoirs of Macklin for newspaper print before presenting their work in whole as freestanding
volumes. However, while Cooke’s narrative ran, unmolested by abridgement, Kirkman’s more
fanciful and novelistic rendering of his “protagonist’s” life was reduced from a tissue of
anecdote-driven narrative to a collection of anecdotes without the gathering membrane of a
larger story. For example, one installation of Kirkman’s memoirs appears in the Edinburgh
Magazine, or Literary Miscellany in June 1799 under the heading “Anecdotes of Charles
Macklin” and indicated as coming “from his Life, in 2 vols., by Kirkman.” Like the collections
of primarily unrelated anecdotes to which the Theatrical Mirror and the Green Room belonged,
the Edinburgh Magazine’s presentation of Kirkman cherry-picked anecdotes from the narrative.
Characteristic is one example of an anecdote centered on the manager of Covent Garden, Rich,
who, upon witnessing a patron tumble from the upper galley of Covent-Garden, “very
generously ordered that he should have every possible assistance…at Mr. Rich’s expence [sic]…
Mr. Rich told him that he should be welcome to the freedoms of the pit, provided he would never
think of coming onto it in that manner again!” (418). In the particular context of the magazine,
the anecdotes were not used for the sake of illustrating anything particular about Macklin,
stripping Kirkman’s attempts as philosophical or moral framing and frequently focusing on
Weldy Boyd 158

secondary characters in Kirkman’s narratives that tangentially suggested something about the
subject of the anecdote and his relationship with Macklin, if indeed Macklin appeared at all.
In the dismembering of Kirkman’s volumes, the newspaper editors make headings of
character names: “Macklin.” “Anecdote of Rich, the Manager.” to force crude divisions between
anecdotes that, in Kirkman’s work, appear many pages apart and thus are not intended as
immediately connected. The anecdote of Rich as manager, stripped of its embedded meaning in
the narrative, stands out sorely in a smattering of anecdotes about Macklin, suggesting both a
disinterest in restricting the subject matter to the supposed subject, Macklin, and a desire to
maximize Kirkman’s writing as a source of brief, catchy stories at the expense of subordination
to a greater purpose.
108

Although eighteenth-century biographies bore little resemblance to today’s heavily
researched and properly cited scholarly works, and much of the genre was populated by “hack”
authors committing cut-and-paste assaults on existing documents, a certain type of reader took
particular biographies reasonably seriously.
109
In Chapter One, we saw Queen Charlotte’s
painstaking extra-illustrations to Davies’ Life, as well as the work of the anonymous collector
who patched together Davies’ and Murphy’s Lives, along with Garrick’s funerary register. The

108
The move of anecdote into a single scene detached from a larger narrative evokes opportunistic and transgressive
possibilities: unmoored from surrounding frameworks or assessments, anecdote can transition from being an integral
part of a philosophical meditation on the character under discussion to being simply an easily traded, cheaply
consumed commodity. After all, anecdotes took very little space to print and could mingle promiscuously in a
hodge-podge collection that lacked organization even by the remarkably loose eighteenth-century standards. This
combination of unmediated and disorganized snippets meant that such compilations did not take very much energy
to edit, and could largely be reused from edition to edition with some updated or new material supplanting the old
chestnuts after several editions. Anecdotes thrived in the rich soil of newspapers, where editors had precious little
space and little time, and where readers received a comparatively high bang for their buck, so to speak, in being able
to trade anecdotes—being brief and memorable-- about specific public players and thus seem to be “in the know.”
109
In the Tatler for October 22, 1709, Richard Steele officiously reminds readers that the French word “memoir”
means “novel,” thus obscuring, or complicating, the genre’s relationship to fact and fiction.
Weldy Boyd 159

anecdotal approach of Cooke’s Life of Macklin attracted the attention of J.J. Cossart, a collector
who took pains to annotate his copy.
110

In brotherhood with Cooke, Cossart’s main interest seems not to have been Macklin, but
the collection of anecdotes pertaining to the stage and its key figures. Cossart’s copy of
Macklin’s Life was bound together with a similarly annotated copy of Harley’s Life of Master
Betty (1804), the precocious child actor whose meteoric rise to fame was only matched by his
rather sudden fall from favor.
Cossart demonstrates a commitment both to the gathering of anecdote and to the
verification of such stories. Providing a mark of respectability to Cossart’s anecdotal annotations
is a very lengthy letter from the actor William Ballantyne, designed to buoy the possibly
apocryphal story of Macklin incurring some trouble with a landlady over his name change.
111

Cooke’s work comes significantly nearer to our present understanding of the requirements of
biography than the prior two works about Macklin, in terms of content, organization,
verifiability, and the glimmer of an engaged skepticism. The bridge between florid exaggeration
and cautious restraint was indicated in Cossart’s many annotations, some of which augmented
Cooke’s more reasonable account with some of the wild anecdotes generated in Kirkman’s
novelistic rendering and the gossip-heavy Gentleman’s Magazine, even as other notes seemed to
demand a higher standard of scholarship by indicating the weakness of Cooke’s understanding of
his subject. For example, he takes umbrage to Kirkman’s earlier classification of Thomas

110
For more information on marginal annotation, see H. J. Jackson’s Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (2001).
111
Ballantyne writes to an unspecified addressee who “desire[s] me to give you a conversation that passed between
Mr. Macklin, the comedian, and me.” Ballantyne offers a dialogue between himself and Macklin in which the
veteran engages in an extended monologue, explaining that his last name was originally M’Laughlan, but that in the
process of transitioning over to the more Anglicanized Macklin, a caller came to his lodgings and asked for
M’Laughlan since he “had forgot to tell him I had changed my name.” The landlady was appalled, as she believed
that she had contracted the flat to a man named Macklin: “She said I must quit her apartments, for she had no good
opinion of a man that went by two names,” says Macklin. Although this anecdote is not particularly significant,
Ballantyne’s verification of it is designed to boost its value as true rather than yet another tall tale.
Weldy Boyd 160

Doggett as a “low” comedian. “Vide Tatler No. 122/120. with respect to this performer.—A low
Comedian is a technical term applicable to the most excellent in that walk. A very low Comedian
implies very little merit” (90-91). At another point, he refers the reader to a playbill from a play
featuring Peg Woffington, latching onto the trend of supplementing biographies with the type of
documentation one can paste into the biography as evidence of one’s proximity to the subjects
discussed. Another note indicates that a letter that Cooke identified as from Swift to Gay was
actually to Swift from Gay—Cossart writes in all caps “ERROR” before correcting the record
(46).
112
Later, Cossart inserts an anecdote that he identifies as coming from a different letter
written by Gay to Swift, not only inserting a pleasing side note, but also indicating the
commentator’s familiarity with a corpus of Gay’s letters. Emending Cooke not only created a
more accurate biography, but also allowed Cossart to show off his knowledge as a scholar and as
an interlocutor familiar with the stage.
Cossart is not only a historian: he is a critic. Like Kirkman, and to a lesser degree, Cooke,
Cossart points to his qualifications by noting his connections to the stage: his defense of Garrick
as “the most sober man I ever knew,” not only indicated Cossart’s proximity to big names, but
formed the backbone of his contention that Garrick did not make a mistake when he slept
onstage in the characters of John Brute and King Lear. Cossart, who explicitly claims knowledge
of Macklin’s opinions in one note and of theatrical practice and criticism in several notes, adds
that not only was it Shakespeare’s original intention for all Lears to sleep onstage as Garrick had,
but that all previous Lears had done so as well (79). (Macklin, however, rails in his own notes
about Garrick’s ridiculous and novel notion of sleeping onstage as a means of avoiding the
challenge of probable characterization.) In the same passage that he chastises Cooke on the

112
In another instance, Cossart corrects Cooke for identifying Macklin as an Englishman—“Irishman.” is carefully
written in the margin next to the inaccurate description (406).
Weldy Boyd 161

proper term for “low comedian,” Cossart asserts that Macklin “not only exceeded the Shylock
immeasurably of all other performers but was equal to any of Garrick’s best performances” (90).
Later, he writes, presumably from direct experience seeing both actors, that while Barry was
inferior to Garrick as Lear, he made “a very fine” Othello (161). He compares Arthur, Yates,
and Shuter on two separate occasions, finding all of them inferior as Shylock to the actor Cooke,
who was widely estimated to be equal to or a bit below Macklin in that role (406). Cossart finds
Shuter, Yates, and Arthur all superior to Macklin in the role of Sir Francis Wronghead, since “I
have seen them all play it” (407). This latter criticism contradicted Cooke’s assertion that
Macklin’s Sir Francis “was by far the best of modern times, because Macklin could remember
the manners from which the original was composed.”
113

In emending Cooke’s work, Cossart had three primary advantages: as mentioned above,
he was not beholden to other critics or scholars, but moreover, he was not obligated to follow a
reasonably firm structure of narrative, and he was writing his notes several years after the
biography had been published, giving him an advantage to add significant incidences that
happened after 1804. These last two advantages allow Cossart to circumvent some of the
temporal or spatial boundaries that Cooke experienced. By literally transcending the space of the
formal narrative—Cossart wrote his notes in the margins, with one note spilling across several
subsequent pages—Cossart could afford to offer information such as how Hyppesly, an actor
famous for his role in the Beggar’s Opera, “kept a Coffee-house” and died in 1748. Hyppesly is
surely only incidental to the narrative, and one could easily imagine that Cooke felt strange
enough dwelling so long on the Beggar’s Opera (in which Macklin and his wife portrayed Mr.

113
Cooke’s account is built on an assumption of lost glory years of theatre, versus Cossart’s forward-looking
optimism. Cossart’s views clash with Kirkman, too: the annotator insists that he is qualified to judge the worthiness
of performers because he has seen them all in performance, whereas Kirkman claimed that at a certain point there
was no practical use for, or even possibility of, comparisons between thespians over time.
Weldy Boyd 162

and Mrs. Peachum), but as many biographers noted, readers loved the Beggar’s Opera and were
always delighted by diversions, digressions, and tangents. Cossart’s addition of the nickname
story and Hyppesly’s fate after the heyday of his fame actually serves as commentary on
Cooke’s composition: Cooke did not judge correctly what would interest the audience. Such
instances when Cossart inserts information that Cooke should have known, based on chronology,
stand in contrast to the points where Cossart updates the biography to include events that had yet
to happen at the time of publication: strangely, he adds a note nominating a new actor for the
Macklin’s vacated title of “Father of the Stage,” and then notes that that actor died in 1807. But
Cossart marks the task of finding a new “Father of the Stage” as significant by devoting a note to
it; moreover, he indicates that not even a position that we might think of as static—“Father of the
Stage”—can go long without being filled when it comes to the theatre.
It is easier, of course, to annotate an existing biography than to create an entirely new
version. Because he can cherry-pick the sections or tidbits to which he has something intelligent
to add, Cossart’s notes exhibit none of the defensive posturing that haunts the full-length
biographer.
114
Cossart’s form of biography is additive, accreting around a larger work.
Furthermore, since his copy is presumably private, Cossart can afford to simply write a
correction with himself as the implied source, or, when providing the source for a presumed
correction or extension, frequently instruct the reader to “Vide Victor,” without specifying the
reason to refer to the recommended text.
115
Cossart’s comments were not rushed, and indeed
they show evidence of revision: in one instance he corrected his own correction. Frequently, he
directs readers to see one of his earlier notes, and sometimes even directs attention to notes
occurring over a hundred pages later (“Vide Note p. 443,” he directs the reader at page 314).

114
In fact, a large bulk of his notes pertain to the section about the Beggar’s Opera, suggesting just as much, if not
more, interest in that play than in the parts pertaining more directly to Macklin, who was not part of the original cast.
115
See Victor’s Stage Histories.
Weldy Boyd 163

That Cossart should be so diligent in adding anecdotes and facts from other theatrical
biographies and stage histories, while serving as a belated editor, suggests not only his own fairly
pedestrian attempts to navigate truth and fiction, but also that setting a correct and
comprehensive account of Macklin and his world was of value to the owner of the volume. Thus
Cossart became both a collector and a scholar, or an anecdote-monger and quibbler over small
details, depending upon the value assigned to the particular theatrical biography in question and
the veracity of the anecdotes and emendations offered.
Cooke’s 1804 biography of Macklin did, in fact, fulfill the terms of Cibber’s biographical
charge most closely, notwithstanding the text participating in “a new form of [purely anecdotally
based] biography.” It therefore may be surprising to discover that only five years later, changes
to the construction of London’s only functional theatre would vastly alter the way the way that
actors acted, and in turn, how biographers rose to the challenge of onstage and offstage
representation. In the case of James Boaden, the subject of the following chapter, this would
mean a severe restriction of the points and anecdotes that had formed the main tools of
competition and success for Macklin’s first three Lives. Boaden’s vision of theatrical biography
proposed yet more adjustments to the proper province of the genre, as well as to the role of the
author in mediating his subject’s story.

Weldy Boyd 164

Chapter Three: Epistolary Resurrections:
James Boaden and the Rise of the Professional Thespian Biographer

I. James Boaden as “Goodman Delver”
In the Life of Mrs. Jordan (1831), James Boaden describes himself as “the modern
patron” of ghosts. A playwright as well as a biographer, he is discussing his plan to stage a
deceased character in Lewis’s play The Spirit in the Castle. “I had no intention to give up the
ghost,” he quips, describing how he was able to rig an apparatus that allowed the “maternal
shade” to levitate rather than shuffle across the stage. “But enough of such spectacles,” he says
abruptly, by which he means stage machinery rather than supernatural intervention (2:5).
Today, Boaden has acquired a niche following among theatrical historians based on his
delightful descriptions of staging ghosts in several of his own plays, and his recurring analysis of
how Hamlet should have responded to his father’s ghost in the pivotal drawbridge scene. In his
auspices as a biographer, Boaden himself was the stage machinery that figuratively resurrected
the dead, seeking, just as he had with the ghosts in his plays, to animate lost players, albeit by
different techniques.
116
His first biography was motivated, he says, by his immediate and
immense sorrow at the passing of his “excellent friend” John Philip Kemble, renowned
Shakespearean actor. Appropriately, Boaden announces this plan in his An Inquiry into the
Authenticity of Various Pictures and Prints…Offered to the Public as Portraits of Shakespeare
(1824).
117
The Life of Kemble accordingly appeared in 1825, one year after Kemble’s death. Next

116
He seems to see a connection between his employments: weighing the possibility that he might have seen Mrs.
Jordan as a ghost in London one day, he writes, “I have had, it is true, some ghostly intercourse, as a dramatic poet,
but Voltaire, no mean authority as a poet, has never rendered by his Semiramis a noon-day spectre either terrible or
credible” (Jordan 2:306).
117
Boaden writes, “While these sheets are passing through the press, I am shocked and grieved with the
intelligence, that my excellent friend has departed this life, at an age that allowed a reasonable hope of many years
of honourable retirement. At no very distant period, I hope to deliver to the public a work, the object of which is to
record his progress in the art which he professed, and also to display his personal character as it unfolded itself
Weldy Boyd 165

came the Life of Mrs. Siddons (1827), followed by the Life of Mrs. Jordan (1831), the Private
Correspondence of David Garrick (1831-2), and finally the Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald (1833).
118

Boaden is unique among early thespian biographers for the unprecedented fecundity of
his biographical muse: he is, in a sense, the first professional theatrical biographer based on
output. His temporally brief but topically broad career offers a rare glimpse into the trajectory of
an artist seeking to re-evaluate not only his own work, but the underpinnings of the genre in
which he continually participates. His first statement on the task of theatrical biography is at
once remarkably predictable and unusually self-assured. “The biography of an actor is the record
of his art,” declares Boaden in the Life of Kemble. This statement in support of the power held by
theatrical biography seems to refute Colley Cibber’s oft-evoked pessimism (or
acknowledgement) of the pragmatic limitations of theatrical biography as a genre seeking to
capture the actor. Like Davies before him, Boaden quotes Cibber’s “Pity it is” rallying call, and
like Macklin’s second biographer, Kirkman, he includes Sheridan’s verses expanding on
Cibber’s sentiment about the actor’s art “unvouch’d by proof, to substance unallied!” As other
biographers before him, and after, Boaden draws a melancholy comparison between an author
who leaves “immortal writings to bear his name” and the actor, who cannot leave behind “the
living organ of his success” (Siddons 1:ix-x).
119
This chapter will show that Boaden struggled to

during an intimacy of nearly thirty years. Fortunately the materials before me are at once abundant and authentic. It
is my design in this work to pay equal attention to the splendid talents of his sister Mrs. Siddons. I cannot at all hope
to do justice to the one, without embracing the other in my theatrical picture; and even then the work would be
imperfect, did it not notice the concurring, though not equal merits, of those who acted with these great performers
during their ample professional course” (Kemble v). Boaden’s plan for a combination memorial of Kemble and
Siddons resulted in two separate but distinctly interrelated biographies.
118
The Correspondence was a collection of letters with an accompanying capsule (or short) biography, and thus not
a true biography like the other four works under discussion.
119
Thomas Campbell also acknowledges the difficulties of capturing the spirit of a deceased actress, but emphasizes
the possibilities of catching what Cibber called “a faint glimmer” of excellence: “And yet, amidst all this vagueness
[of conception of an actress’s excellence], the mind can make out some general and trustworthy conclusions….I find
no queen of our stage so unequivocally extolled for majesty and beauty as Mrs. Siddons…” (52). The general
conclusion of lessons to be drawn, and the specific conclusion of Siddons’ majesty and beauty, unelaborated upon,
leaves much to be desired by those eager to defend the genre.
Weldy Boyd 166

address the task of preservation which he was heir to through Cibber, and that in the process of
seeking out the appropriate tools, Boaden reinvisioned the basis of a successful thespian
biography.
Boaden’s struggles—and growth— as a biographer are less apparent in his first two
biographies. Acknowledging the difficulties facing him as a theatrical biographer rather than as a
literary biographer in the Life of Siddons (as a literary biographer could easily enfold the
subject’s works into his own work), Boaden nonetheless cheekily refers the reader to the Life of
Kemble, released two years prior, as a specimen of generic success. His work has been well-
received by a wide range of readers who have “placed it, where it was my ambition it should be,
next to the delightful ‘Apology’ of Colley Cibber”; now, Boaden offers Siddons as “a suitable
companion” to the excellence of his own portrait of Kemble (Siddons 1:xii-xiii). As early as
1825, Boaden declared the act of preservation as a moral imperative:
I cannot expect to have many readers, who remember these exhibitions of talent;-- nearly
forty years have passed away, since they delighted and instructed us: all, therefore, that I
can hope to do, is to keep the memory of them alive, till some great and original master
of the art arise among us; that he may catch, from what has been done…[and redeem us
from stage antics] which degrade at once our morals and our taste. (Kemble 46)
Having introduced the continued goal of preserving the actor as Boaden expresses it in the first
half of his biographical career, this chapter continues the prior chapters’ efforts to show how the
biographer understood his own plight next to the actor’s in terms of confronting time and the
threat of obsolescence. Using Boaden as a case study and leading figure in 1820s-1830s
theatrical biography, I hope to demonstrate how his specific preoccupations changed the
contours—and to some extent, the very intention—of theatrical biography.
Weldy Boyd 167

Notwithstanding Boaden’s great pride in his authorial accomplishments as yet another
self-proclaimed successor to Cibber, by the 1820s, biographers appeared to be less sure of the
feasibility of their enterprise than predecessors. In my earlier chapters, I have already suggested
that the most successful way of describing an actor’s onstage presence during the late eighteenth
century is through the use of points, brief physical pauses that supposedly encapsulate a
character’s essence during a particularly significant moment in time; I have also argued that the
anecdote in written or spoken narrative mirrored the stage-bound tradition of “pointing.” Even
biographers who declaimed against anecdote as immoral saw the onstage anecdote—the point—
as a useful rhetorical device for presenting and critiquing a palatable fragment that could stand in
for the whole, the closest approximation to a collectable, tangible, artifact of the actor.
120

Anecdote, as we have seen, is a staple of theatrical biography, a practice that I suggest is
symbiotic with theatrical points. Anecdote, as well as pointing, attempts to concretize an event
that was originally oral with kinetic elements off-stage and on-stage, respectively. As we will
see, there are precious few anecdotes in Boaden’s work and a corresponding lack of expected
theatrical points. The first such exclusion reveals one of Boaden’s underlying principles of
biography, namely that he does not report what he himself did not see or could not reasonably
verify.
121
This heightened interest in material proof is linked to Boaden’s rather conservative pre-
Victorian moral viewpoint (the biographer is a reporter and interpreter, but not a rumor-monger).

120
For those interested in more material collectable artifacts, the playbill was a popular alternative: such documents
might trace the trajectory of the thespian, and represent a collector’s own attendance and investment, but did not
capture the actor’s art beyond noting the time, place, and subject thereof.
121
A number of anecdotes seem to have been “verified” by appearing in multiple, unrelated works; on the other
hand, the easy propagation of anecdotes also makes their authenticity as a function of widespread repetition suspect.
As with letters, there is an innate, not always logical, sense in which restriction or privacy seems to make something
more valid. Boaden’s approach to anecdote, repeating only those things he claims to have participated in or heard
directly, hinges on the credibility of his reputation. However, an independent account such as Boaden’s (with no
other living witnesses) is equally, if not more, suspect than a story reported by many people. Thus, the logic behind
whether an anecdote is verifiably true is fraught with contradictions. Boaden appears not to have entertained the
possibility that his word as a gentleman would not be sufficient to vouch for the legitimacy of a given anecdote.
Weldy Boyd 168

More importantly, Boaden’s reticence towards anecdote also reflects a change in theatrical
practice. Rather lambasted for his failure to participate in the anecdotal tradition expected of his
genre, Boaden had the ill fortune to write about the eighteenth century from an early nineteenth-
century vantage point in which several fundamental factors of the theatre had shifted in the first
decade of the century. The destruction and rebuilding of both theatres after fires had led to the
construction of much larger, deeper theatres: Boaden records with disdain, “The gallery called
the first, or two shilling gallery, had been hoisted up to the mansions of the gods; and those
turbulent deities were indiscreetly banished [sic] the house altogether” (Kemble 297). The acting
styles had changed to suit the setting, with much more interest in words and delivery than
onstage movement, for theatre-goers could “scarcely …see the actors, or what alone was of
much moment, their faces…” In other words, the power of representation seemed to have
moved to pronunciation and verbal timing rather than physical embodiment.
122
Unlike visual or
kinetic components, scripts and, to a lesser extent, delivery, might be more accurately
recorded.
123
For example, in his 1775 book An Essay Towards Establishing the Melody and
Measure of Speech, to be Expressed and Perpetuated by Peculiar Symbols, Joshua Steele
developed a specific set of symbols to represent pronunciation, which he applied to Garrick’s
delivery of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy of Hamlet:

122
This shift from corporeal to text-based should have made the task of immortalizing the thespian subject easier:
words into words, rather than motion into words. As it turns out, enunciation and verbal variation are challenging to
replicate; thus, many a lukewarm description is frequently followed by a reference to the “poverty of pen.”
123
Critics quibbled with Garrick about his pronunciation of specific words and lines through personal letters, with
“Ignoto” writing that in the word “tropically…that o, I imagine, should be pronounced short, as we pronounce the
word in logical…” (Correspondence of David Garrick 1:11). Another correspondent, signed as “Well Wisher and
Admirer,” takes Garrick to task for “several false pronunciations…chiefly… matron, Israel, villain, appal[sic]
Horatio, wind: which you pronounced, metron, Iserel, villin, appeal, Horetio; and the word wind you pronounced
short” (1:12). Even offstage, Garrick’s delivery was noted, with one observer commenting on the quality of his
voice during a reading at a church service (Daggett 43).
Weldy Boyd 169

(Steele 47)
Steele’s transcription is thought to be “the most faithful record of any human voice that had ever
been made before the invention of the gramophone” (Halliday 71). Such interest in material
documentation coupled with significant attention to making that documentation legible to
posterity allows authors to confront Sheridan’s fears about actors as being “to substance
unallied.” Theatrical biographers provided the best gathering place for those scraps of
immortality.
Generally rejecting anecdote off-stage for moral and professional reasons, and with
pointing becoming a less appropriate means of on-stage representation, Boaden had to find a way
to capture his protagonists in brief moments of time. Boaden thus turns to scripts onstage and
letters offstage, simultaneously realizing his own desire for material documentation as superior
both as proof and as true representation. His own careers as a playwright and Shakespearean
critic greatly influence his approach: he believes that scripts accurately describe what a thespian
should be doing onstage. Moreover, he holds a conviction about the power of letters to
encapsulate a thespian subject’s personality—and even her acting style. Thus, Boaden seeks to
Weldy Boyd 170

overcome Sheridan’s concern about material proof even as he overturns the expected
conventions of pointing and anecdote so prized by his genre’s earlier practitioners.
This alienation from accepted tradition did not come without consequences. As Boaden
cemented the supremacy of personal correspondence in his final three biographical writings, he
increasingly meditated on what space might be left for a biographer beyond the role of editor or
letter-curator. The use of actors’ epistolary archives helped him bolster the legitimacy of his
writings (which anecdote wouldn’t have done), but it also shifted authority from the biographer
to the letter-writers themselves. Boaden thus had to balance what he believed to be the best
method of preserving the linguistic presence of the actor in a time where speech was increasingly
considered superior to gesture, but also his own authoritative role in presenting the lives of his
subjects. Thus, the biographer searches in each biography for new ways to assert his presence in
the story: for Boaden, that means presiding over the narrative as a moral arbiter as well as an
editor.
124

More globally, the changes we see in Boaden’s understanding of the task of biography
and the relation of the biographer to his work highlights the shift in emphasis from kinetic
motion to aural speech to letters. Thinking about the theatre becomes more literary with the
passage of time, resulting in a more textual, concrete product that more closely resembles
“professional” biography today in both aim and methods.
125
These aims and methods in turn are
hotly contested by a rival biographer, Thomas Campbell, and obliquely by Boaden’s own son,
James, a painter and champion of that art’s superior ability to capture the actor.

124
Davies and many other biographers had advanced an openly moral purpose to their writings—Boaden was hardly
a vanguard in that. However, Boaden was able to be much more invasive about his subject’s social, religious, and
political lives because of the increased access to privileged, presumably private, documents.
125
Boaden’s approach to biography is rather modern, given his interest in multiple subjects, the gathering of large
archival bodies of letters to and by a subject, the practice of citations, the eschewing of unsubstantiated gossip in
favor of eye-witness accounts, and field research into less accessible parts of a subject’s life, such as visiting the site
of Mrs. Inchbald’s childhood home.
Weldy Boyd 171

II. Professional Approaches: Privileging Aural/Textual and Documented Sources
Throughout this dissertation, I have suggested that authors of theatrical biography seek
to work through their own anxieties about time and memory through their writing. The act of
biography is often reflexive as well as subject-focused, as the author must confront suggestions
of his own mortality as he performs an extended eulogy on a fallen thespian. Perhaps nowhere is
this more clearly iterated in Boaden’s writings than his defense of having written and published
the Life of Siddons in 1827.
The introduction to the Life of Siddons is very concerned with justifying the decisions to
write Siddons’ life and to present the memoirs before the actress was dead (two different
movements, one of which was mildly contrary to established conventions of full-length thespian
biographies, which almost uniformly appeared after their subject’s passing). Mrs. Siddons lived
until 1831, four years after Boaden’s biography, during which time she managed to bequeath her
memoranda to Thomas Campbell, who produced Siddons’ authorized biography in 1834.
Although not satisfactory to Siddons, Boaden’s rationale can be seen as a defense not
only of his own authorship, but also of theatrical biography as an enterprise, demonstrating the
tight intertwining of himself and his works in his own mind. Boaden lists five reasons in support
of his decision, only two of which indicate any legitimate urgency to publish: he wants to
reinvigorate the theatre by providing his Life for educational purposes, and he wishes to have the
volumes examined and corroborated by people who would have seen Mrs. Siddons and her
counterparts in their prime. Boaden stakes his claim as providing moral or artistic benefit to
England, and his ethos on seeking out knowledgeable critiques of his work. Additionally, he
argues that Siddons will not be embarrassed about her “unblemished personal life.” The marked
absence of any activity off-stage should be an honor, he suggests, to the morally upright actress;
Weldy Boyd 172

this is the only consideration for Siddons’ own perspective that he offers. The remaining two
reasons justify his authorship but not his publication timeline: Boaden cites his own dwindling
life expectancy as a source of immediacy (and indeed, he only lived for six years after its
publication), as well as his conviction that Siddons’ biographer should not be someone who has
only seen Siddons in her twilight years (1:xi-xv). This specific rationale was vindicated in 1834,
when Campbell, Siddons’ chosen biographer, admitted that he was not equipped to carry out the
charge without considerable assistance from Boaden and several other sources.
126
Although some
of his rationale proved valid, Boaden’s decision to publish was primarily self-focused as a means
of garnering some combination of money or fame, capitalizing on the interest that his Life of
Kemble had generated. Conversely, a pure desire to immortalize Siddons might have resulted in a
book written in 1827 but published in the year of her decease. Matthew Toothill, in a thesis
entitled “The Stages of Celebrity” (2013), opines that Boaden’s choice highlighted the
perception that for Mrs. Siddons, who formally retired in 1812, “her career was over and…[she
was already living] an afterlife of sorts” (46).
127
This sense of suspended living, or death-in-life,
infiltrated Boaden as well. Preparing to commemorate yet another death in the Life of Jordan, the
elderly author quips: “I feel myself becoming like ‘goodman delver’ in ‘Hamlet,’ a recorder of
the dead, and my place among the living somewhat coloured by my intimacy with the departed”
(2:178-179).
128

126
Campbell, a much younger man, willingly admitted his limitations as Siddons’ biographer: “I am glad that I have
far better testimonies than my own to offer in proof of the actress’s great triumph,” he noted in reference to a
character which he had seen Siddons play “in the autumn of her beauty.” Campbell says he had imagined that the
part would be played by a young lady rather than someone “large, august, and matronly” (100). To compensate for
his lack of knowledge about Siddons’ earlier years, he borrows from Boaden and “the newspapers of those times.”
Campbell’s admission of his limitations and biases against Siddons’ latter-years genius justify Boaden’s conviction
that a contemporary of hers should write her memoir rather than a youthful admirer seeing her in her decline.
127
Toothill’s argument addresses the work of Thomas Davies and of Boaden in furthering David Garrick’s celebrity
status, paying particular attention to an increasingly literary Garrick from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
128
A letter by W. Sherlock, pen name Photius, Junior, dated Feb 6, 1827, shows indignation at Boaden publishing
Siddons’ life before she was dead. Sherlock notes that Boaden’s project would have been appropriate had it been
Weldy Boyd 173

Toothill, as well as a number of then-contemporary reviewers, attributes Boaden’s
twilight interest in thespian biography to the precedent set by Thomas Davies, who made a
considerable profit from his Life of Garrick (Davies’ career as a thespian biographer is discussed
in Chapter One of the present work). Like Davies, Boaden experienced significant financial
upset that seemed to precipitate his arrival into the field of biography; Boaden’s fourth work, the
Private Correspondence of David Garrick, was offered by subscription, a measure often meant
to secure a sure income. Toothill suggests that the two-volume edition was released to coincide
closely with Siddons’ death, as Siddons was often linked with Garrick as Shakespeare’s most
accurate representatives. Having already produced a biography of Siddons before her death,
Boaden’s turn to Garrick at that time seems inevitable if, after anticipating success with the
epistolary Life of Jordan, he was looking for a similar project and an opportune time to present
it. In 1831, the same year as the first installment of Garrick’s correspondence, Boaden released
his biography of Dorothy Jordan, famous for her dual roles as an actress and as mistress of the
recently crowned King William IV back when he was still the Prince of Wales.
129
A
contemporary review of the Life in the January 1831 edition of Fraser’s Magazine for Town and
Country offered strenuous, damning criticism, asserted that the nature of the memoir, with its
private letters detailing Jordan’s well-known affair, indicated Boaden’s attempt to shame the
royal family into giving him money to remove the more damaging letters from circulation (738).
This seems a far cry from the Boaden who had delighted in his king’s special encouragement at
the beginning of his biographical career.

qualified as a “Theatrical” life rather than “The” life. Moreover, he took umbrage at a memoir of Siddons that was
made “without her having been art or part in the business, or even having (as far as it appears by the context,) a
common acquaintance with its modest writer” (Photius, Jr. 119).
129
George IV passed away in 1830; William IV began his reign that same year, receiving his formal coronation in
1831.
Weldy Boyd 174

It is easy to sketch a picture of Boaden’s last ten years that is marked by opportunism, a
scavenger among the relics of the turn-of-the-century English stage. However, Boaden’s choice
of Kemble as his first subject makes sense not only pragmatically, as his recent death created a
void to be filled by monuments of all types, but also idealistically: Kemble was above all a
Shakespearean actor, and Boaden’s greatest delight was as a Shakespearean critic. Both were
demonstrably pedantic and formed what Boaden illustrates to be a most convivial friendship
based around pronounced views of correct stage representation. Furthermore, the book had been
supported by no less than George IV, to whom Boaden dedicates the biography. The biographer
thanks “Your Majesty [who] has deigned to express your royal satisfaction, ‘that a permanent
record of that life was in contemplation’” (Kemble: iv). The project was to be not only a
“faithful” portrait of Kemble, but also a “not uninteresting” history of the stage in the tradition of
Colley Cibber (acknowledged) and Thomas Davies (unacknowledged), no light undertaking.
130

The first two biographies were histories of the stage, the last three epistolary-based. But what
was the impetus for the shift between the two periods of Boaden’s theatrical biography style?
Fundamental to understanding the changes in Boaden’s biographical practice is his initial
conception of the role of the biographer and the techniques appropriate to his station. Although
the primary tools of the trade may shift, the evidence is overwhelming that Boaden believed that
delineating onstage characters was part of a biographer’s task, at least in the first two
biographies. In Siddons, he writes:
However imperfect the attestation of the surviving spectator, [a particularly stunning
moments will] be remembered…some art is, moreover, acquired in the practice of
painting our impressions, and we shall always communicate by our touch some of the

130
The Life of Siddons was also dedicated to the King, with a review from the Monthly Magazine, or British
Register, mocking Boaden’s “crawling fawningness of the language” of patriotism (194). The works on Jordan,
Garrick, and Inchbald came out after his death.
Weldy Boyd 175

electric fire which we have received. It is, therefore, gratitude to the actor and duty to the
public to perpetuate the character of excellence, and afford models for imitation to future
artists. (1:xi)
The task of theatrical biography, he announces, “is not, however, a task for every hand nor for all
periods,” implying that he is in possession of the appropriate talents at the best time for such a
composition; this perspective mirrors his contention that Siddons, having been born “in the exact
position of life, and at the precise time she was,” was particularly suited for the stage from birth
(Siddons 1:9). Boaden’s aggrandizing sense of destiny aside, he vacillates greatly about how to
capture actors in action, primarily because he has a moral and aesthetic opposition to theatrical
pointing.
Just as Boaden rejects anecdotes as not conforming to the proper ethos of a biographer, so
he rejects points as inappropriate for stage criticism. In the Life of Siddons, Boaden explains that
points are morally damaging to the stage, as they “produce a ludicrous effect” where the
audience, specifically the uneducated, hangs on the points at the expense of the rest of the play.
The audience, according to Boaden, “is attentive to what it best knows, the fine things extracted.
A slight whisper is heard in the house just before the admired passage is delivered, followed by
an immense applause when it is concluded. The actor… learns to humour the audience by an
awful preparation and more sonorous declamation (Siddons 1:64-65).
131
In actuality, Boaden is
not the first to suggest that points encourage untutored and inappropriate clapping, or unwanted
audience participation, as audiences were prone to begin reciting the choicest lines in
anticipation of the “point.” Instead of focusing on the audience, however, Boaden’s ire is for the
actor whose interest in points prohibits him or her from performing a role appropriately—
specifically, as the playwright’s text would indicate. He offers the example of the maid Emilia in

131
Cibber and Davies also remark disgustedly on an uncultured audience’s applause affecting undisciplined actors.
Weldy Boyd 176

Othello. That character attends on Desdemona, having no meaningful lines or actions, and “does
but one thing of any consequence” by stealing the handkerchief that forms a central plot point.
The actress playing Emilia, Boaden notes wryly, “entertains a very different notion of [her
role’s] importance [than the playwright had]. Kept unwillingly in the back, longing to break forth
and show the wonders of her voice and the energy of her action, she contrives by outdressing her
lady…a rich plume of feathers…waves her promise to the spectators that, at last, their patience
shall be repaid.” Othello berates Desdemona, Iago comes to comfort her, and then Emilia has her
moment—“and forth she rushes to pronounce the following morceau.” Boaden quotes the lines at
length, a dialogue in which Emilia rails against Othello’s cruelty: “…the actress becomes a
perfect fury; and as if she waved the brand of Tisiphone….parades herself to the lamps in a
semicircle, and speaks thunder to the gods themselves.” The audience, in turn, “send down a roar
to ‘tell hell’s concave,’” which leads the actress later to brag about having received more
applause than that night’s Desdemona “(perhaps Mrs. Siddons),” adds Boaden slyly in order to
truly convey the insult to good judgment and theatrical decency (Siddons 1:66-67). Boaden’s
own interest in play-texts and playwrights as the ultimate sources of authority on the stage
manifests in his emphasis on considering the author’s intent, rather than simply the believability
of a given actor’s representation.
To a great extent, the contents of his biographies were driven by Boaden’s own beliefs
and interests, but he still bows to readerly expectations by including some points.
132
Merging
established conventions with his own style, it is from Hamlet that Boaden offers his most
sustained look at recognized theatrical points. He does so primarily in the Life of Kemble and the
Life of Jordan, which are yoked together as being more lively and more derived from personal
observation than the remote Siddons, and more theatre-focused than the delightfully literary

132
The most sustained look at Hamlet occurs early in the Life of Jordan, Boaden’s third full biography.
Weldy Boyd 177

Inchbald. In both Kemble and Jordan, the points are evaluated from an aural rather than the
expected gestural emphasis, having been filtered through Boaden’s own sensibilities.
133
As
Boaden interprets them, points provide the occasion for textual criticism—they allow a
discussion of how to interpret Shakespeare’s own words, rather than simply evaluating correct
emotion. Shearer West argues that the era of Garrick privileged feeling over judgment; Kemble’s
era reversed the equation (Image, 60-61). Boaden, firmly straddling both eras, recognizes the
utility of points, but takes his cues from the increasingly “judgmental” turn of the century. “A
pretty extensive list of such points is before me, noticed by myself and others, where Mr.
Kemble differed from Garrick or Henderson, or both,” he offers, keenly aware of the competitive
nature of points, wherein audiences would critique various actors in the same role based on their
performance in the most popular “moments” of the role rather than holistically.
134
“The points
too are curious in themselves, and merit to be here preserved; besides, that criticism
unexemplified is as fruitless as metaphysics where the terms are not defined,” notes Boaden,
giving insight into how he perceives his obligation (Kemble 54). In this instance of sustained
comparison, he provides relevant lines and shows, with italics, how Kemble’s pronunciation
differed, and how that difference altered the meaning: in Horatio’s line “Sir, my good friend! I’ll

133
The Life of Kemble provides some exception to this trend, as it features a discussion of Kemble’s sword, but this
pertains directly to the Ghost and still involves textual criticism. Kemble originated a design to lower his sword after
“menac[ing] his friends who prevented him from following the Ghost” so that he was not pointing a weapon at his
father’s wraith: “Kemble, having drawn it on his friends, retained it in his right hand, but turned his left towards the
spirit, and drooped the weapon after him—a change both tasteful and judicious” (Kemble 56-57). Kemble also knelt
at the spirit’s departure, which Boaden approves as marking “the filial reverence…Henderson saw it, and adopted it
immediately,-- I remember he was applauded for doing so.” So too, in Hamlet’s confrontation with Gertrude in her
bedchamber, did Kemble “kne[el] in the fine adjuration to his mother” and question her without the “unfilial
keenness” that some Hamlets before had displayed (59). These several gestural distinctions stand out in a sustained
investigation of Hamlet that is otherwise overwhelmed by text. Even so, the gestural component is bounded by the
text that authorizes it, Shakespeare’s own words.
134
When tracking the recurring theme of competition among the biographers discussed in this dissertation, it is
useful to keep in mind that Congreve, Kirkman, and Cooke (Macklin’s biographers) were writing within a five-year
time span in which Murphy’s Life of Garrick (1801) marked the midpoint. Davies and Boaden, then, were outliers
by at least two decades in either direction, with Davies representing the bridge between Cibber and Garrick’s styles,
and Boaden between Garrick’s and Kemble’s.
Weldy Boyd 178

change that name with you,” Kemble emphasizes “that” rather than “change,” which Boaden
believes to be the better emphasis to suggest that Hamlet will be Horatio’s servant, rather than
Hamlet and Horatio be equally friends. “Henderson, evidently so understood it,” observes
Boaden, for Henderson delivered the line as Boaden would. Similarly, Kemble directs Hamlet’s
“Good even, sir,” to Bernardo, even though “the commentators were too busy in debating
whether it should be evening or morning, to bestow a thought as to the direction of this gentle
salutation” (Kemble 54-55). Contrasting the “melting softness of Kemble” to the “almost stoical
firmness” of other Hamlets in scenes involving Hamlet Sr., Boaden invokes the power of
Kemble’s emotional pauses at the first meeting— “My father,—methinks I see my father”—and
Hamlet’s “panegyric” on his father’s memory. Boaden quotes and characterizes Kemble’s
tribute: “‘He was a man, take him for all in all’ [said Kemble, and] a flood of tenderness came
over him, and it was with tears he uttered, —‘I shall not look upon his like again” (Kemble 55). It
is in this contemplation, so hinged on voice delivery, that Boaden battles with himself about
whether the authentic words of Shakespeare should be subject to interpretation for added effect.
Thus, points become a moment to consider textual authority rather than to marvel at kinetic
representation—points are no longer about the audience feeling the depth of emotion conveyed
onstage, but whether the actor conveys the precise emotion that Boaden believes Shakespeare
“intended” the audience to see based on the text.
Fiercely protective of words, Boaden rails against common omissions of those who do
not pay proper attention to the author’s intention as laid out in a script, especially if that author
was the immortal Shakespeare. In a rare instance of tolerating points, during the Life of Jordan,
Boaden nevertheless tightly bounds their use: “The only question [about whether the staging is
just] is what Shakespeare himself intended,” blusters Boaden, aggrieved over the ongoing
Weldy Boyd 179

conflict about whether to stage Banquo’s ghost or to have it appear as a figment of Macbeth’s
imagination. “The imagination here is in the poet, not in the character,” snaps Boaden, drawing
attention to the stage direction “Enter Ghost,” which he feels is rather self-explanatory (Jordan
1:258-260).
135
Boaden opposes the omission of stage directions in collected works as well as
abridged performances onstage because they leave out important information planted by the
author to bring his characters to life.
136
Earlier, in the Life of Kemble, having acquired a copy of
Hamlet with Garrick’s alterations, Boaden notes with indignation: “There are upon this copy of
Hamlet evidences of some unpardonable liberties taken by another great actor, Mr. Betterton,”
Boaden notes, as the copy, from 1703, indicated which lines had been cut from production:
“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
What may this mean,
That thou dead corse[sic] again in complete steel,” &c.
Boaden declares, “All the solemn gradation by which Hamlet adjures the spirit (so dear to an
actor, who can discriminate,) were omitted” (Kemble 65). This explains why Cibber said that the
Hamlets of his recollection “absolutely bullied the ghost”; having employed an adaptation of the
text, those actors did not have the lines “that would have taught them how to approach so awful
and mysterious a being.” (In the omitted lines, Hamlet considers whether the ghost could be
hellish, with wicked intent, or otherwise, and resolves to speak to it nonetheless, asking the ghost
in rapid-fire a number of questions as to its purpose of return, questions which show Hamlet to
be piously concerned about his father’s comfort.)

135
Boaden tells a delightful tale about a gaffe committed by Guernier, an artist who attempted to depict the banquet
scene in Macbeth. The eighth ghost in Macbeth’s banquet vision, Banquo himself, is described by Shakespeare as
one “who bears a glass” (a mirror, reflecting Macbeth’s horror-addled visage)—Guernier, fantastically, has depicted
Banquo’s ghost clutching “a common wine glass” (Jordan 2:72-3).
136
However, Boaden feels that actors should not study Shakespeare’s First Folio, because Shakespeare himself
didn’t study much, and therefore, “it will be difficult to show that more learning is required for the delivery of a play
than its composition. The playhouse copy is quite sufficient for the actor…The last shelter for pedantry should be
the stage” (Jordan 2:167).
Weldy Boyd 180

In the canon of Boaden, a discussion of Hamlet is never just a discussion of Hamlet, but
the touchstone for many of his personal views on theories of theatrical performance and
preservation that in turn deeply affect the very way that he approaches the task of a biographer.
Boaden’s theory of lines as providing clear evidence of how to act (which arguably has some
merit) in turn endows the written word with particular preservative properties. If a dramatic
author’s words should make it clear to readers how something is to be acted, then it should be
sufficient for a theatrical biographer, seeking to preserve the best of the stage representation of
his own time, to merely include the sections of the script that are most elucidating. To follow this
theory to its most extreme conclusion, there should be no need for anyone to preserve the
individual performances of an actor, unless it is to record incorrect interpretations as a caution to
later thespians: otherwise, the mere existence of the script negates the need for the theatrical
biographer (unless he supplies notes on the physical appearance and personal life of the actor).
Of course, Boaden doesn’t actually believe that the script reveals, at all times, how it is to be
acted: he seems to suggest that Shakespeare’s plays in particular have that quality. This is why
he feels that quoting two lines from Macbeth should suitably illustrate Siddons’ portrayal of
Lady Randolph in John Home’s Douglas. In his selection of the finest moments of Mrs. Siddons
in that character, Boaden declares, “The utmost anxiety was felt around me, as to the mode in
which she would deliver the famous ‘Was he alive?’ Shakespeare shall say how. As one, then—
‘Who almost dead for breath, had scarcely more/Than would make up the question” (Kemble
82). This reference to Act 5, Scene 2 of Macbeth, the messenger arriving to tell Lady Macbeth of
the King’s approach, not only alludes to Siddons’ most famous role, but again exemplifies
Boaden’s theory that the lines themselves can encapsulate an actor’s representation—a rather
backwards notion for most people. Moreover, Boaden contradicts himself on his own principles.
Weldy Boyd 181

In the Life of Jordan, he claims that one can simply read the lines of Shakespeare’s Falstaff and
thus be able to know how to play it, describing the fat knight as “a part so made out, that every
speech is a lesson as to the mode of its delivery” (1:19-20). This comment seems paradoxical
since Boaden himself rather frequently makes distinctions between Falstaffs who have graced the
stage in his own lifetime. If his claim is simply that there is a “right” way to act Falstaff (and
therefore, that many of the actors misread it), then his premise, that everyone can understand
what Shakespeare means, is demonstrably incorrect. Nonetheless, Boaden maintains that scripts
could easily stand in for the actor: more likely, the actor stood in for the script, as the emphasis
to Boaden was on author first, and then actor. This unusual viewpoint may account, at least
partially, for the mixed success of Boaden’s theatrical biography in “capturing” the actor.
It is, however, important to remember that mixed success in representation was a feature
of the genre well before Boaden. In earlier chapters, I have suggested that biographers claim to
represent actors’ onstage antics, but actually fail to deliver through limited use of points or
emphasis on actors other than the subject-thespian. Certainly, biographers were expected to
describe the pantheon of actors who worked beside their specific actor, and even those long-
gone, as a recitation of the history of the stage since the Restoration had become ingrained as an
expected feature of most large-scale biographies. Preserving actors who might otherwise go
unheralded was also part of the task. Boaden caters to these expectations accordingly: “To those
who have never heard Miss Catley [a contemporary of Garrick’s], I must, as my manner is, try to
give some notion of what was peculiar to her,” he writes (Siddons 1:103). Boaden marks the
fulfillment of his readers’ expectation but emphasizes that he will represent her as “my manner”
dictates—he therefore highlights the hearing rather than the seeing of Mrs. Catley as worthy of
preservation. This is not to say that Boaden could not create traditional points. After describing
Weldy Boyd 182

the voice and verbal emphases of Henderson, a particularly phenomenal Falstaff, Boaden
acknowledges, “He would sometimes delight to show, without language, the rapid and opposite
emotions, as they rise and chace[sic] each other in the mind” (Kemble 44). The example given is
Falstaff’s reading of Mrs. Ford’s letter in the presence of Mrs. Quickly (note that the crucial
point is Shakespearean, and also involves an actual letter—Boaden is rarely subtle in his opinion
of what constitutes good theatre). Falstaff manifests detestation of the messenger, “pished at [the
letter’s] apologies” and then transforms accordingly as he continues reading:
The Cudgell[sic] of Ford then seemed to fall upon his shoulders, and he shrunk from the
enterprise. He read a sentence or two of the letter,—a spark of lechery twinkled in his
eye, which turned for confirmation of his hopes upon love’s ambassadress—and thus the
images of suffering and desire, of alarm and enjoyment, succeeded one another, until at
last the oil of incontinency in him settled above the water of the Thames, and the
‘divinity of odd numbers determined him to risk the third adventure.’ (Kemble 45)
Thus, Boaden describes a significant moment in the development of Falstaff’s character, one that
was so powerful that it did not require an aural element, and yet was cherished among its
audiences.
While Boaden could, and occasionally did, indulge the reader with an old-fashioned
theatrical point, much more frequently, he tells rather than shows what an actor does. To modern
readers, this shortcoming would seem to be the bane of all descriptive writers who have an
implicit obligation to encapsulate an actor onstage for his readers. However, as suggested,
Boaden believed that one best displayed an actor through supplying the script. This could be
taken to extremes, however, when Boaden pursued textual criticism of specific lines in place of
an actor’s delivery. Boaden writes that Robert Bensley’s voice “had something super-human in
Weldy Boyd 183

its tone, and his cadence was lofty and imposing. If I had been suddenly asked what Bensley was
most like, I should have said, a creature of our poet’s fancy, Prospero…” Instead of attempting to
describe the voice, Boaden defers to Shakespeare (Kemble 33).
In the above example of Bensley, the implied dialogue by a hypothetical reader who is
curious about Boaden’s opinions is a recurring feature which goes hand-in-hand with Boaden’s
view of himself as a critic-biographer. In this instance, Boaden follows the specific flight of
fancy to its most likely conclusion, given Boaden’s own proclivities: “I avail myself of the
present opportunity to say [on the topic of Prospero] that, much has been done in the way of
scenic allusion, [and] much is to be done” for Prospero as well as for “the royal shade of
Denmark” in terms of costuming to prolong the illusion (Kemble 34). It is not unusual for
Boaden to describe the actor’s portrayal on rather vague terms and summarily shift emphasis into
how a particular role or play should be staged—usually roles or plays pertaining to ghostly
apparitions. The irony of Boaden’s being sidetracked by literal theatrical ghosts while pursuing
figurative ones continues to be a source of entertaining meta-commentary in the narrative as
Boaden offers it.
It seems to be even harder to “stage” these figurative ghosts in biography than their
counterparts in the theatre. The evidence against (or rather, lack of evidence for) theatrical
biography’s ability to live up to its generic impetus is formidable in Boaden’s biographies, to the
extent that he makes the effort to do so. Shortly after Boaden declares his need to preserve actors
as a moral imperative in the Life of Kemble, he backs away from describing Mrs. Pope in the
character of Abigail, saying that “it was too much like the lightning” to be captured (Kemble 47);
similarly, the preservation of Mrs. Abington cannot be guaranteed by Boaden, as she “is not so
easily described…Mrs. Abington remains in memory as a thing for chance to restore us, rather
Weldy Boyd 184

than design” (Jordan 1:18). Such moments undercut Boaden’s claim to intentionality (the
prowess of Boaden himself as a theatrical necromancer, rather than a meandering old chap’s
occasional bursts of luck and inspiration). Furthermore, his assertion that describing long-lost but
good actors will cause reader-actors to reform their styles (a greatly emphasized moral-
educational component and justification of the genre) hinges on the biographer’s ability to
purposefully and usefully transcribe the actor’s art so that another generation can glean enough
to fully embody the actor in question. If we accept Boaden’s contention that theatrical biography
has a moral imperative to revive a fallen actor’s style for the betterment of future generations of
actors, but find that Boaden fails to capture the actors’ moves enough for other actors to imitate
them, then Boaden must then fail as a biographer. Should Boaden not provide detailed enough
descriptions for contemporary actors to imitate, the desired resurrection of past genius stops at
the level of page and never (re)manifests on stage, rather like a script that, having been written, is
never read for performance.
In fact, the Abington thesis of “restoration by chance” seems antithetical to Boaden’s
claim of design. Yet he admits to being stymied by his task numerous times, adopting various
tactics to overcome the difficulty of translation. Siddons’ utterance of line as Lady Macbeth
“beggared all description,” he says simply (Kemble: 291). Similarly, he makes no effort to
describe Kemble as Coriolanus, one of his signature roles (Jordan 2:184). Foreshadowing his
increasing dependence on letters and artifacts to stand in for a narrative voice, he offers the cast
list for School for Scandal but makes no attempt to delineate individual character performances,
lamenting, “Why am I not as well able to convey the perfect impression of their performance?”
(Siddons 1:100).
Weldy Boyd 185

Using textual materials to fill in gaps in all the wrong places, Boaden makes a valiant
effort to capture Thomas King playing Lord Ogelby.
137
“I yet seem to hear him in that delirium
of ecstacy[sic] to Lovewell in the fourth act,” he writes, and accordingly, provides the lines of
dialogue between the two characters, with only the stage directions for Lovewell: “Where are
they, my lord? (Looking about)…[Ogelby’s line]…What company have you there, my lord?
(Smiling)” (Kemble 35). Boaden clings to scripts, offering hints on specific actors’ delivery by
way of capitalization and italics: for example, he offers “the sullen aversion of her look—the ‘I
a’n’t deaf”” of Mrs. Jordan in the character of Mrs. Prue—and indeed, Mrs. Jordan presents a
distinct obstacle to her biographer, as her chief recommendations appear to have been her smile
and her laugh, rather than any easily demonstrable physical tic or speech pattern (Jordan 1:104;
1:70). Boaden seems to “give up the ghost” almost entirely at times, citing a line from “The
Soldier’s Daughter” and laconically noting, “Mrs. Jordan spoke this address beautifully” (Jordan
2:140). While Boaden’s textual emphasis aided him in representing the actors’ personal or off-
stage lives, it seems to have hampered him in the original task of preserving the on-stage actor.
The failure is almost inevitable for Boaden not only because of his textual proclivities,
but also because of his preference for hearing over seeing. These two characteristics combine
most unproductively with regard to Siddons as Lady Randolph in the play Douglas. Boaden
writes: “I have thus attempted to mark the most striking, or most applauded passages of [those]
performance[s]; but I am sensible that the great charm of all, which may be admired, but
produces no applause, is that unity of character, that absence of self, that fixed attention to the

137
Having heard the critics’ complaints from Life of Kemble, and being an astute observer of the biographers who
had come before him, Boaden attempts to evade criticism about his reliance on scripts: “Whoever attempts to paint
the momentary beauties of elocution and personal expression must ask aid from the exact language uttered; the
reference from the actor to the poet is perpetual” (Siddons 1:xvi).

Weldy Boyd 186

whole business of a scene…” (Kemble 83). Thus, Boaden seems to imply, theatrical biography is
a doomed enterprise, despite his earlier boast about theatrical biography as the record of an
actor’s art. In this instance, Boaden has, in fact, run through the most significant lines in each
scene: “In the following scene with Glenalvon, the amazing intelligence of her look, and the
action of her right arm, when she uttered ‘I have not found so: thou art KNOWN to me.’”
Boaden describes that at another high point, “she pierced every bosom with the tones in which
she exclaimed, ‘Inhuman that thou art!/How could’st THOU kill, what waves and tempests
spar’d?’ The triumphant burst at last; ‘’Tis he! ’Tis he himself! It is my son!’ only her own organ
could convey” (Kemble 83). Boaden has both rushed to fulfill and exonerated himself from the
expectation that he would deliver the exact specifics of Siddonian excellence: a few motions are
thrown in—giving new meaning to “going through the motions”— but Boaden insists that
hearing the words, through Siddons’ “own organ,” would do the experience justice, and only
then in the context of the “full business of a scene” (Kemble 82). If one could agree that the voice
was impossible to preserve in its entirety, this left the script as the supreme artifact. Boaden
never seems to have reflected on the potential for scripts, based on the power that Boaden
assigned to them, to overtake theatrical biographies as the record of choice: this may be because
he recognized that neither pointing nor scripts could stand in for the other main component of
theatrical biography— the coveted insight into the thespian’s off-stage character.
If points onstage represented a moral lassitude, traditional anecdotes to represent off-
stage antics were similarly antithetical to Boaden’s conception of himself as an author and of
theatrical biography as a genre. While a number of biographers added the expected protests
against the illicitness of unfathered anecdotes, Boaden takes a stronger stance than most by
almost entirely excluding anecdote as readers had come to anticipate. His opposition to anecdote
Weldy Boyd 187

rests on the twin motivations of morality (frequently, the ones that caught on were scurrilous in
nature) and also on authenticity (Boaden wished to indicate his sources in order to be perceived
as reliable). Correspondingly, Boaden’s anecdotes generally fall into one of two categories: part
of an existing narrative tissue as told through letters or writings that are reproduced in context by
Boaden, or consisting of an oral transaction in which one of the involved parties was Boaden
himself (thus, resting on the letter writer’s, or Boaden’s own, word as a gentleman). This latter
move was a particularly effective method to accomplish Boaden’s less explicit goal of proving
himself indispensible to the narrative while still gesturing towards readers’ expectations, an
extension of the personalized participation explored in Chapter One with Thomas Davies.
Boaden simultaneously claims higher moral ground and unlimited license to center
anecdotes around himself in the name of avoiding the hearsay commonly associated with the
expected anecdote formula. In this way, he can “relate a simple fact to which I was a witness”
and be safely beyond reproach (Kemble 32). Generally, though, Boaden mentions the existence
of an anecdote with only enough detail to make it clear that he knows the story but not to indulge
anyone who has not heard it. This is only done in service of correcting rumors about Kemble or
another thespian subject. For example, when Kemble’s book of “fugitive poems” was published
without permission, Kemble supposedly sought to repress all evidence by purchasing and
destroying 250 copies. “I have read a ridiculous story,” huffs Boaden, outlining only the broadest
fact of the accusation without any of the characteristic colorful details of the actual anecdote to
which he refers (Kemble 19). He cites only to refute, thus furthering his own image as a
gentleman and also suggesting that he, among the available sources of Kemble-lore, is to be
trusted, in contrast with the leagues of scalawag would-be colleagues. Anecdote-mongering, says
Boaden, is not the province of a biographer: such writers “seem to have borrowed their notion of
Weldy Boyd 188

biography” from an unscrupulous theatre character (Kemble 9). Unusually, Boaden provides two
classic bon mots about Voltaire and Le Kain, who are barely incidental to the story of Sarah
Siddons; in this case, it is to be imagined that the characters were so foreign and the import so
minor that those exceptions were not seen by Boaden to threaten his established persona
(Siddons 1:125; 1:136). He was explicit about his careful cultivation of a professional ethos
since The Life of Kemble: “I have not ventured to record, what I had not every opportunity to
know, to see, and to examine,” declares Boaden as evidence of his trustworthiness (vii).
An unsatisfied critic in the National Magazine, and General Review says of Boaden’s
Siddons that Boaden “contrives to omit all the information that people expect to find in books of
this description”—namely, anecdotes (184). But according to the OED, “anecdote” had two
meanings: the more popular “narrative of a detached incident…told as being in itself interesting
or striking (at first, an item of gossip)” and the broader “secret, private, or hitherto unpublished
narratives or details of history.” The latter definition more precisely encapsulates Boaden’s
conception of anecdote, which was obviously at odds with his readers’ expectations. In Boaden’s
increasingly epistolary conception of biography, the novelty and presumed secrecy of a “hitherto
unpublished narrative” would pique his interest. Having precious few letters to call upon for the
Lives of Kemble and Siddons, and eschewing regular anecdote, Boaden heartily inserts himself
as the hub of information in the Kemble memoir. For example, rather than telling his readers that
Kemble was fond of a particular poem by Steevens, Boaden frames the information as a
discussion between Kemble and himself in which Boaden “expressed some surprise” at
Kemble’s preference, leading the thespian to “recite in his silver voice” the disputed passage
(Kemble 408). In another instance, Kemble expresses admiration for an epitaph for the deceased
actress Mrs. Crouch, apparently rhapsodizing to Boaden, “Boaden, I have just read an inscription
Weldy Boyd 189

upon Mrs. Crouch’s monument. As I feel every word of it, and know that I did not write it
myself, I know only one other man from whom it could proceed, and you are he” (Kemble 26).
The latter anecdote best captures Boaden capturing Kemble: he seizes upon those parts of
Kemble that best reflect Boaden. Thus, Kemble’s Boaden is a consummate Shakespearean critic
and, based on the emphasis provided by Boaden’s text alone, a frequent sidekick to our
biographer. In both the Steevens and Crouch instances, not only is Kemble’s range of motion
centered around responding to Boaden, but in both cases, Boaden supplies a piece of textual
evidence (lines from the play and lines from the epitaph, respectively). With the assurance of his
own experiences as represented in his own words, Boaden can feel secure in his professionalism
as a biographer, even as he threatens to edge out his subject.
Boaden’s almost obsessive need to insert himself speaks to the duality of the biographical
urge: the aging writer builds a monument not only to a beloved deceased thespian, but to himself.
Thus, a description of Kemble’s parents is prefaced with Boaden’s announcement: “The reader
who loved Kemble may thank me here for the impression made by the persons and minds of
those from whom he sprung” (Kemble 3); the parents merit inclusion in the narrative because it
is an opportunity for Boaden, who was in fact recording his own meeting with them upon
Kemble’s introduction, to indicate one of many tangible marks of favor from Kemble and to
imprint himself on the reader as part of the cosmopolitan theatrical “backstage,” if not a veritable
social hub unto himself like Cibber or Garrick’s biographer, Davies.
As with Kemble, whom Boaden knew, the biographer inserts himself into the Life of
Jordan wherever he can avoid using the epistolary evidence that would attest to his comparative
unimportance in her life. Boaden records an instance when he was asked about Jordan’s beauty
by someone who was, presumably, too young to remember the actress: “‘Pray, sir,’ said a young
Weldy Boyd 190

lady to me, ‘was Mrs. Jordan critically handsome?’ My answer was the absolute truth—‘Dear
madam, had you seen her as I did, the question would never have occurred to you!’” (1.275).
138

Boaden builds a significant amount of his ethos on distinguishing between his direct witness of
his subject versus recourse to secondary sources. This authority is temporal— a privilege
available only to the contemporary historian—and social, emphasizing the distinction between
traditional orally transmitted anecdote and Boaden’s more refined unveiling of proprietary
information.
Not only are Boaden’s “anecdotes” not pithy; they are also not humorous, and not
entirely about the thespian because the stories’ existence and inclusion are conditional upon
Boaden’s participation. While earlier anecdotes were parallel to theatrical points, quick and
essential moments of characterization, Boaden’s anecdotes were parallel to personal letters,
irrevocably bound to the narrator’s own frame of reference and—at times—of dubious interest.
Most importantly, directly witnessed anecdotes and personal correspondence both stake higher
claims to authenticity by seeming to have, or actually possessing, concrete materiality.
Caring less about reliability, some critics were mightily displeased by Boaden’s straight-
laced approach of leaving anecdotes out entirely, and the simultaneous bait-and-switch method
of reframing anecdotes to suit his ambition of showing his own wealth of private knowledge. A
reviewer from Robins’s London and Dublin Magazine hotly declared of the Memoirs of Mrs.
Siddons, “…Mrs. Siddons’s fame will most certainly not owe its perpetuation to her self-satisfied
biographer” since the volumes barely addressed her private life, and the worthwhile parts of the

138
Another anecdote involves Jordan being criticized as “quite the Duchess” for showing exasperation at a rehearsal.
Jordan explains that her interlocutor is not the first “who has condescended to honor me ironically with that title”;
earlier the same morning, she had discharged a fiery Irish cook, whom she describes as banging her wages on the
table, shouting, “Arrah now, honey, with this thirteener, won’t I sit in the gallery?—and won’t your Royal Grace
give me a curtsy?—And won’t I give your Royal Highness a howl, and a hiss into the bargain?” (Jordan 1:343).
This story seems permissible to Boaden because it was told to Boaden by Reynolds (Boaden inserts the tag “says
Reynolds himself” in the midst of the story to secure its lineage) who himself heard it from Jordan.
Weldy Boyd 191

memoir, by and large, were pillaged from newspaper and magazine articles already made
available to the public (149). The reviewer tasks himself with excerpting all the “readable” parts
(a fairly common practice in reviews). However, he finds himself unable to recommend anything
but a few facts in relation to Siddons’ childhood and one delightful, shining, almost traditional
anecdote in all its great glory (to be reproduced in full, momentarily). For the rest, the reviewer
declares, “Mr. Boaden’s work has been rather improperly entitled ‘Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons,’
for nine-tenths of it consists of stupid criticism on damned plays and digressions” (153). Like the
playwright-biographer Arthur Murphy before him, Boaden’s own interest in plays, above and
beyond the players, manifests in the magnified spatial presence granted to plays and criticism.
The digressions, of course, are part of the heritage of theatrical biography, albeit a feature that
appears to be falling out of favor since J. Moody claimed in 1804 that William Cooke’s
“digressions…are the digressions of a gentleman,” by far the best part of his biography of
Macklin (“Advertisement” 2).
Digressions, unlike anecdotes, served Boaden’s purpose of self-immortalization without
the potential moral downside of anecdote. If theatrical biography is an exercise in suspended
animation, the digression is a way of preserving the very movement of thought. Moreover,
recording Boaden’s direct thought process is to record Boaden’s own existence. To a greater
extent than for earlier authors who partook in digressions, it seems that Boaden’s brand of
anecdote-into-criticism digression is a self-affirming exercise meant in part to ensure
preservation of Boaden himself: his ideas, passions, understanding.
Unfortunately, the Kemble and Siddons biographies suffer from their split subjects of
actor/author. The general impression is of a talented author whose work is overrun by self-
promotion. The reviewer from the National Magazine quipped that, in his earlier memoir on
Weldy Boyd 192

Kemble, Boaden already revealed all he knew “not only upon subjects connected with the stage,
but upon almost every other subject.” Since Boaden doesn’t feel obligated to confine himself to
the subject indicated on his title page, “the reader cannot therefore by any stretch of foresight
imagine what delectable matters he may meet with in one of Mr. B’s volumes—‘perhaps it may
turn out a song, perhaps turn out a sermon’” (184).
Given Boaden’s desire to mediate the experience of Kemble and Siddons through
himself, it should be less surprising to find that the single key anecdote in each of these
narratives has not to do with either main subject, but does center on the performative pragmatics
of how Hamlet should properly behave when faced with his father beyond the grave. In other
words, the anecdotes which merited inclusion were suggested by Boaden’s own hobby-horse
rather than any direct relation to the subject of his memoir. Moreover, on both occasions, the
anecdote is properly situated in relation to Boaden, either as evidence of his self-importance or
his trustworthiness in only including verified anecdotes. The first anecdote, which appears as the
veritable crown jewel in the Life of Kemble, was spurred on by Boaden’s task of recording
Macklin’s death.
139

140
True anecdotes in Boaden’s accounts come rarely, and, as I suggested, the
story he tells is less of an anecdote and more of a revelation that emphasizes his own
indispensability to the narrative. Boaden frames the anecdote as a discussion about whether
Garrick really invented the new stage delivery, calling upon a cherished memory of a
conversation between Charles Macklin and himself.

139
“As I paid much attention to Macklin’s performances, and personally knew him, I shall endeavor to characterize
his acting,” writes Boaden, describing the veteran as “essentially manly,” with weighty delivery, coldly colourless
eyes, and a skill of modulating his voice that could “inveigle as well as subdue” (Kemble 248).
140
Boaden relates that he goes to the theatre to compare Macklin at the age of 89 to Henderson in the role of
Shylock—the specificity of detail stresses that Boaden was, in fact, present on a specific night (Jordan 1:117). The
encounter is framed even more author-centrically when he notes that he had yet to meet Macklin personally but still
felt at that stage that it would be worthwhile to describe him: “Who would not decorate the chambers of memory
with portraits painted by the great masters, in living colours, and all the truth of nature?” (1:118)
Weldy Boyd 193

In the story, Macklin is, presumably, railing about Garrick’s exaggerated gestures “by
which, he said, rather than by the fair business of character, he [Garrick] caught and attained all
attention to himself.” Boaden broaches the endless inventiveness that Hamlets bring to their
confrontation of the Ghost, which inflames Macklin and leads Boaden, like the second coming of
Boswell, to bait Macklin into showing how he might play Hamlet in the scene: “He [Macklin]
said, ‘Remember, sir, to give me the cues.’” Thus, Boaden becomes Horatio to Macklin’s
Hamlet. Macklin-as-Hamlet begins his part “with indifference, a little sarcastical.” In keeping
with his commitment to the words of Shakespeare as speaking for themselves, Boaden faithfully
transcribes, sans commentary, the exact lines of back-and-forth leading up to Horatio’s gasp
upon seeing the Ghost, finally getting to what long-eighteenth-century, point-loving readers
might consider the “meat” of the encounter:
‘Look, my Lord, it comes!’ Macklin, here, with a sudden spring of the shoulders, and a
slight throwing back of the body, the arms pointing downwards, and the fingers flying
open,--in a breathless, scarcely audible tone, pronounced the ejaculation—‘Angels and
ministers of grace, defend us!’ From ALL surprise, it is not to be expected, that even
Hamlet should be guarded; but always recollect, sir, that he came there, sir, to see his
father’s spirit.’ (Kemble 249-250)
Boaden records Macklin as seamlessly transitioning from the vivid cry in the persona of Hamlet
back to his more natural role as forceful preceptor, evidence of Macklin’s skill as well as his
rather abrasive, blustering personality.
141

To my knowledge, Boaden’s is the only account of Macklin’s brief turn as the Dane;
thus, it is an instance both of the traditional theatrical anecdote so prized by readers, and
Boaden’s specific understanding as a tale that, having happened to him directly, does not

141
Boaden, too, records the excessive use of “Sir” that characterizes practically every account of Macklin.
Weldy Boyd 194

compromise his authorial ethos. Furthermore, as in the examples involving Kemble and Boaden
embarking on a shared Shakespearean critical question, Boaden’s superior understanding draws
his immediate subject—in this case, Macklin— into an interesting discussion which in turn
furnishes material for the biography.
142
This anecdote travels far, as we recall its being one of
only several key points (literally and figuratively), consistently offered up by reviewers seeking
to isolate the best kernels of Kemble’s lengthy biography.
The Life of Jordan, which is allied to the biography of Kemble by bent of Boaden’s
personal relationship with his chosen subject, is much chattier in tone, its subject markedly less
lofty. Surprisingly short of the gossip-based stories for a book that claims “anecdotes” as an
essential component on the title page—an instance of Boaden attempting to correct, somewhat,
for the critics’ complaints in his subsequent works— the Life of Jordan offers a brief anecdote
about Garrick. Boaden records that whenever some new person told the renowned actor that he
was attempting Hamlet, Garrick’s most famous role, the veteran “used to turn his piercing eyes
quickly upon the candidate, and favour him with a question of surprise. ‘Eh!—how!—what!
Hamlet the Dane?’ Now what Garrick meant, is clear enough,” concludes Boaden primly,
suggesting that even when trying to appease critical demand for anecdote, the author’s
commitment to his own sense of morality was more important than delivering the entire
transaction (Jordan 2:99). Earlier, however, Boaden shared a much longer variation of this story
in the Life of Siddons, which, like the earlier example of Macklin as Hamlet in the Life of
Kemble, is the sole great anecdote recorded by the otherwise irritated reviewers. This anecdote is

142
Boswell was both reviled and begrudgingly admired for the thoroughness of his documentation of Johnson’s life,
having projected the image of living cheek-to-jowl with him for twenty years in order to get the clearest conception
of the man. (Some sources note that Boswell actually spent long periods apart from Johnson, and made the most of
their surprisingly limited meetings.) Boswell was known to ask questions of Johnson, more in the style of an
interview, in order to furnish good material for the biography he was working on. See Boswell’s Presumptuous
Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson (2000) for a peek at Boswell’s calculating approach to biography.
Weldy Boyd 195

an excellent example of the Boadonian anecdote—one in which Boaden inserts himself and
verifies the story’s provenance—on the exact same topic as the great Kemble anecdote—
Hamlet’s ghost— and once again, not involving the biography’s titular subject. In this case, the
story is authorized by Boaden’s participation not as a key player, but as the direct audience of the
actor and anecdotal foil, John Bannister. Boaden repeats the following lengthy story about
Garrick:
My friend, John Bannister, gave me the following accurate detail of his own reception by
Garrick, and even in the narrative veneration of the actor, the reader may indulge a smile
at the vanity of the manager.
“I was,” says the admirable comedian, “a student of painting in the Royal
Academy, when I was introduced to Mr. Garrick,--under whose superior genius the
British stage then flourished beyond all former example.
“One morning I was shown into his dressing room, when he was before the glass
preparing to shave. A white nightcap covered his forehead, his chin and cheeks were
enveloped in soap-suds; a razor-cloth was placed upon his left shoulder, and he turned
and smoothed the shining blade with so much dexterity, that I longed for a beard, to
imitate his incomparable method of handling the razor.
“Eh! well—what, young man—so—eh! You are still for the stage? Well, now,
what character do you, should you like to—eh?”
“I should like to attempt Hamlet, sir.”
“Eh, what! Hamlet the Dane? Zounds! that’s a bold—a—Have you studied the
part?”
“I have, sir.”
Weldy Boyd 196

“Well, don’t mind my shaving. Speak your speech, the speech to the Ghost—I can
hear you. Come, let’s have a roll and a tumble.” (A phrase of his often used to express a
probationary specimen.)
“After a few hums and haws, and a disposing of my hair, so that it might stand on
end, ‘like quills upon the fretful porcupine,’ I supposed my father’s ghost before me,
‘aim’d cap-a-pie,’ and off I started
‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
(He wiped the razor)
Be thou a spirit of health, or a goblin damn’d,
(He strapped it)
Bring with thee airs from heav’n, or blasts from hell!
(He shaved on)
Thou coms’t in such a questionable shape,
That I would speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet!
King, Father, Royal Dane!—O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance.’
(He lathered again)
I concluded with the usual
‘Say, why is this? wherefore? what should I do?”
but still continued in my attitude, expecting the praise due to an exhibition which I was
booby enough to fancy was only to be equaled by himself. But, to my eternal
mortification, he turned quick upon me, brandished the razor in his hand, and thrusting
his half-shaved face close up to mine, he made such horrible mouths at me, that I thought
Weldy Boyd 197

he was seized with insanity, and I showed more natural symptoms of being frightened at
him than at my father’s ghost. ‘Angels and ministers! yaw! whaw! maw!’ However, I
soon perceived my vanity by his ridicule. He finished shaving, put on his wig, and, with a
smile of good nature, he took me by the hand. ‘Come, said he, ‘young gentleman—eh, let
us see now what we can do.’ He spoke the speech—how he spoke it, those who heard
him never can forget. ‘There,’ said he, ‘young gentleman; and when you try that speech
again, give it more passion and less mouth.’” (Siddons 1:21-23)
It would be almost impossible to excerpt such an anecdote without losing some of its flavor.
Boaden begins by touting the accuracy of what he is about to share, the veracity of which
depends on his having heard it from the mouth of a participant, and the value of which centers on
Boaden’s surrogation of the now-absent but twice unforgettable Bannister and Garrick. Boaden
thus reenacts Bannister, who reenacts Garrick (and himself): Boaden is only once removed from
the action, but (indirectly) related nonetheless. (To draw attention to himself as “broker” of the
story, he also interrupts the narrative to slip in an explanatory note about Garrick’s
“probationary” phrase.) This is a true anecdote because we get the brusque rudeness of Garrick,
the proprietary attitude towards his role, and the legendarily paradoxical willingness to tutor
potential competitors (this latter impulse tinged with the arrogance of an actor who Alexander
Pope predicted would become spoiled from lack of a true rival). Most importantly to Boaden’s
conception of the role of anecdote, this story offered the public preservation of Garrick’s
character onstage (Hamlet) and off-stage (Garrick) which, to the best of the present writer’s
knowledge, had not appeared in papers or other memoirs, unlike more traditional anecdotes that,
like theatrical points, could practically be recited by memory among its intended audience. Thus,
in a rare moment of synthesis between new (sparsely used, often directly mediated) and old
Weldy Boyd 198

(liberally included, frequently unverified) anecdotal styles, Boaden offers a rare extended
glimpse of Garrick that Boaden had not published for fifty years.
143
As a biographer, Boaden
could conceivably singlehandedly preserve that memory for decades beyond his own life by
virtue of its publication in the Life of Siddons. This moment, then, was particularly successful, as
Boaden extends the life of his own specific recollection beyond the temporally bound event of an
oral retelling. In other words, Boaden ensures that, whatever happened to his own mind after his
death, the product of his memory, at least, would survive. And, ideally, the two “memories” of
Boaden and of his tale would be linked. The linkage between teller and tale would be more
pronounced than in prior biographies or other media because of Boaden’s steadfast association of
himself as the broker and guarantor of all that he presented. Crafting an image of himself as an
accurate, source-giving gentleman-biographer in his own lifetime, Boaden likely imagined that
he would be remembered because of the means (the Boaden-style anecdote) and accuracy of his
memory (the citations and gentleman-like guarantees).
144
In fact, contemporary references to
him, while admittedly few, inevitably include choice soundbytes from the Lives that have
become entangled with his own.
145

III. Letters and Collected Personal Archives
The most powerful source of Boaden’s success is his decision to peruse the collected
personal archives of his latter three subjects. However, he recognized that the inclusion of letters
required a deft touch, writing disdainfully in the Life of Siddons about the epistolary upswing:

143
Intriguingly, the story occurs in his potentially weakest biography, the impersonal, less documented Siddons.
144
We might recall that Davies also marketed himself as a gentleman, and his biography was heralded in large part
due to the weight of Davies’ own reputation as a good man. He did not, however, stand on as much ceremony about
sources and personal involvement as Boaden, who almost certainly took career cues from Davies.
145
There is a sense in which the sincerity of Boaden’s desire to immortalize a single actor is diluted by the
serialization of this impulse to commemorate: the more actors Boaden commemorates, the more it seems that his
end goal is to make a name for himself, rather than for any specific actor.
Weldy Boyd 199

If the worst of all friendly letters be those written with a view to ultimate publication, the
best may be those which, flowing spontaneously from the occasions of the parties, by
their intelligence and nature merit such a public disclosure. I write at a period when a
deluge of epistolary publications, of all times and from every sort of character, compels
one to see the striking advantage of the great fire of London.” (Siddons 1:184-185)
146

One of his next major projects after Siddons would be a collection of the correspondence of
David Garrick, in which Boaden’s biographical talents were subordinated to his editorial
abilities.
147
A reviewer in the Metropolitan is appreciative of Boaden’s efforts, noting “The
Editor of this volume has given us an elaborate memoir…If we are instructed rightly, Mr.
Boaden fulfilled this office and has done it with as much solemn care as if the fate of empires
hung upon his commentaries” (1). Boaden appears to have greatly revised his appreciation of
letters in service of biography at that time, as his next two biographies were based, like the
Correspondence of Garrick, off of personal letters.
148

Boaden’s biographical approach can profitably be considered to have two different
phases: lightly epistolary and therefore primarily driven by Boaden’s own recollection and

146
In this context, Boaden was commenting on a popular book of letters, Letters of Henry and Frances, between
Mrs. Griffiths, a playwright, and her husband.
147
The reviewer continues to praise Boaden, citing his “diligence in performing his task—a task for which he was
well qualified, and we render him accordingly our best thanks” for preserving a key piece of the “dominion of
imagination” (1). Contrastingly, a reviewer of Percy Heatherington Fitzgerald’s Life of David Garrick (1868) judged
Boaden’s Correspondence of David Garrick as bereft of imagination and judgment, resulting in a work “meagre in
details, and most colourless and jejune in treatment” (“Life of David Garrick by Percy Fitzgerald [Review]” qtd.
Littell 451). While the reviewer’s contention that a biographer could have written a good work just from knowing
Eva Maria and having the letters is interesting, his verdict on Boaden’s biography does not take into account that
Boaden was acting as an editor, not a true biographer. Boaden explicitly noted in the “brief précis” of Garrick that
he was not going to add any new details or interpretations.
148
The Life of Jordan was a more traditional biography using the actress’s letters, whereas the Memoirs of Inchbald
was almost entirely governed by the actress’s correspondence and writings. Boaden claims authorship of Jordan, but
signs himself as editor of Inchbald. Inchbald, then, represents the midpoint between epistolary-heavy theatrical
biography (Jordan) and a collection of letters (Garrick); Boaden’s perception of himself as “editor” of Inchbald,
even while he did significant biographical work to pull the narrative together, suggests his own uncertainty in
conceiving of his job in relation to collected correspondence.
Weldy Boyd 200

participation in the stage (Memoirs of Kemble; Memoirs of Siddons) and primarily epistolary,
each biography having been written with access to the deceased thespian’s personal
correspondence (Life of Jordan, Memoirs of Inchbald). Boaden appears to have sought to correct
Kemble’s flaws in the later Siddons by focusing his memoir more closely around a single subject;
Jordan and Inchbald both strive to provide fresh material about the titular thespian lamented as
absent by critics of Siddons. The critics’ preferences appear to have been microscoping, rather
than telescoping: audiences wanted a focused, potentially psychological, deeply personal account
of the actor’s mind rather than an urbane, witty recounting of general stage life loosely gathered
around a thespian.
149
Letters were the way to achieve this new goal, simultaneously
reintroducing some gossipy elements under the authentic aegis of personal correspondence.
However, as we will see, Boaden’s relationship with letters was at times uneasy, and he appears
to have felt compelled to use greater numbers of letters as his career went on: the incorporation
of epistles meant that Boaden had to balance his own authorial persona as a biographer with the
increasingly prominent tasks of an editor.
What is the value of letters to a biographer, and to his audience? Letters appear to have
three main sources of value to both parties: new information, reliability, and evidence of
presence. To many readers, and almost all biographers, letters are noteworthy for the new
information they provide, be it a show of emotion, a record of where someone will be or has
been, an indication of who was part of a given social circle, or a description of something the
letter-writer perceived. Moreover, an underlying assumption of letters as pure outpourings of the

149
The rise of the novel, with its frequent use of letters, seems to have shaped theatre-audience’s tastes accordingly.
See Ian P. Watt’s The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (1957) and Emily Anderson’s
Eighteenth Century Authorship and the Play of Fiction: Novels and the Theatre, Haywood to Austen (2009).
Weldy Boyd 201

heart makes correspondence almost sacred, an unimpeachably authentic source.
150
At its most
basic level, the letter is important because it is evidence of the writer’s physical act of writing.
More abstractly, the letter’s importance in the context of theatrical biography is elevated further
in contrast to the physical act of on-stage performance, which leaves no physical memento
beyond a playbill (and that, having been mass produced, likely never came into contact with the
thespian, and was not of her “making” anyway). Thus, Boaden preserves a number of letters that
are brief, little more than receipts frequently pertaining to the financial business of stage,
perfectly bereft of emotion, color, or personality. This letter from Dorothy Jordan seems
somewhat typical, a basic contractual agreement:
“Sir,
“ I agree with pleasure to your proposal
“ of giving you thirty pounds rather than ever
“ perform in York. I shall return to-morrow and
“ settle the balance of the account. I am, Sir,
“Your obligated, humble servant,
“D. Ford.” (Jordan 1:193)
151

“The signature causes me to preserve it,” writes Boaden, acknowledging that this letter, out of
context, might not provide much useful content to the reader about Jordan. Intriguingly, the real
signature, so prized by Boaden, is not present, even in a printed representation. We know that the

150
In his fifth biographical effort, Boaden praises Inchbald’s diary for providing evidence against countering
unattractive tales of her vanity: he promotes the idea that the diary recorded pure unblemished truths, unmeditated
upon in anticipation of their place in her future fortune (I1.71). Similarly, Boaden records that in a clash between
newspaper articles and private journals, journal always supersede because of their presumed sincerity (I1.22).
Boaden highlights the importance of Inchbald’s diary in reference to her earlier newspaper biographer Mr. Bellamy:
of that account, Boaden can approve only of moments where “such particulars are not at variance with her written
diary; which is higher authority than the best recollections that can be supplied in conversation, though held for the
express purpose of giving correct materials to a friend whom she trusted” (I1.254).
151
Jordan’s identification in letters as “Dora” and sometimes “J. Ford” remind us that “Jordan” was her stage name,
and that she had other, more intimate names for off-stage parts of her life, including “Dora” for friends, and “Mrs.
Ford” for official correspondences and businesses (her married last name). Jordan’s maiden name was “Bland.”
Weldy Boyd 202

technology did exist for such operations: lithograph signatures had become de rigueur under the
images of thespians that extra-illustrators pasted into biographies (if the collectors did not have
the connections to acquire authentic signatures on the margin underneath their portraits, like
Queen Charlotte did, or the questionable cunning of the gentleman who pasted together a death
roster of mourners’ signatures from Garrick’s funeral). It does appear that Mrs. Jordan’s business
expense receipts were a hot commodity for extra-illustrators and scrapbookers alike, as a number
of them surfaced in augmented works dedicated to Jordan and David Garrick. Written receipts’
small size, relative abundance, and lack of “deep” content may have made them ideal for
collectors whose main interest was the signature rather than the substance.
Signatures could be important for several reasons: evidence of the presence, certainly, but
also potentially for evaluative purposes: what does the handwriting look like? This latter interest
could, theoretically, be satisfied by lithograph. In Inchbald’s biography, Boaden writes, “We
shall, in its proper place, give Mrs. Inchbald’s own remarks…from an extract of her letter to Mr.
Harris, in her own hand-writing” (Inchbald 1:136). Here, he is stressing the authenticity of the
piece rather than promising to replicate the writing. However, Boaden must be aware of what is
lost in translating handwritten letters into mechanical typeface, as he both commends and
laments efforts to train ladies into having neatly anonymous handwriting:
As far as the eye is gratified by neatness, the penmanship is improved; but we have lost
the indication of character, which existed when the writing, like the walk, the various
action, the manner of doing every thing, was individual and peculiar; and to a very nice
observer sometimes made the letter itself a refutation of its contents. (Inchbald 1:12)
152

152
Boaden undermines, or at least challenges, his own assertion when he adds that Inchbald’s “exterior garb of her
candidate farces, ragged paper, rude penmanship, and careless orthography, was not at all prophetic of a Dramatic
Muse, who should become one of the best supports of comedy, and rank with Centlivre and Cowley” (I1:155).
Weldy Boyd 203

Boaden’s comments map onto printing nicely: the uniformity of David Garrick’s printed
Correspondence releases a reader from the burden of deciphering a range of different
handwriting techniques, and indeed ensures, by reduction of time and effort, that more people
will be able to access what was in the letters. What is lost, as Boaden notes, is the individual
character of the writing itself, which often aides in interpretation. Hand-written letters thus
clearly function as a surrogate presence for the absent actor.
The value of mass-reproducing Garrick’s correspondence, or Inchbald’s private letter to a
friend, is complicated by the extent to which the desire for presence is hinged on exclusivity. If
everyone has access to a tremendous supply of physical letters signed by Jordan, her signatures
will proportionally decrease in economic value (but may yet be emotionally valuable to the
individual collector). If instead, everyone (or a great number of people) has access to a sizeable
compendium of her letters as typed, abridged, and transcribed by Boaden, the signature or actual
presence is still evasive, but the value of the contents will depreciate as the news becomes
dispersed. Thus, just as letters themselves present a challenge for the biographer by supplying
authentic evidence in which to ground his interpretation but also threatening to overtake his spot
as the source of knowledge in the biographical transaction, so too the act of reproduction both
ensures the actor’s memory but also cheapens its value in a market driven by scarcity. This latter
relationship is the same one underlying Kirkman’s resentment of Macklin’s first biographer,
Congreve, Murphy’s resentment of Davies, or Campbell’s of Boaden—there is a sense in which
the first biographer has an easier task because of the comparative wealth of information that has
not yet been released. Both Kirkman and Campbell attempt to get around the challenge of being
second in line by deploying the “official” private writings of their subjects to which the earlier
biographers did not have access. These corpuses of unpublished letters meant that at any
Weldy Boyd 204

moment, conceivably years past a person’s decease (seven in the case of Siddons, and fifteen for
Mrs. Jordan), the epistolary body could arise, in a sense reanimating a body long assumed to
have been at rest: at once a literary corps and a literary corpse.
153

Such resurrections could be unsettling, the biographer likened to a grave-robber. In 1831,
Boaden released his biography of Dorothy Jordan, famous for her dual roles as actress and
mistress of the recently crowned King William IV back when he was still the Duke of
Clarence.
154
A contemporary review offers strenuous, damning criticism, asserting that the nature
of the memoir, with its private letters detailing Jordan’s well-known affair, indicated Boaden’s
attempt to shame the royal family into giving him money to remove the more damaging letters
from circulation. While Boaden paints a sympathetic portrait of the new monarch in the
biography, he certainly capitalizes on the British people’s potential interest in their new king by
publishing a biography of his mistress using her own letters. To that end, it is likely that Jordan’s
executor, Mrs. Phillips, realized the rare possibility to generate interest about the letters in her
custody. It is difficult to determine why Mrs. Phillips didn’t produce Jordan’s letters sooner after
her death, but her delayed decision meant that it must have been even more surprising to have
Mrs. Jordan “speak for herself” through these letters after such a long period of silence.
A biographical subject already somewhat “fleshed out” through written communications
is at once a great advantage to the biographer seeking to provide some depth and authenticity; it
is also an obstacle to one’s own storytelling as the source of authenticity. Exponentially more
challenging is the subject who has written her own autobiography, or fragments thereof. Thus,
when Boaden approached Mrs. Inchbald, his final thespian subject, he inherited not only a large
corpus of letters, but also fragments from a much-anticipated autobiography and the daily ledger

153
Unsurprisingly, the term “literary corpus”—or literary body—shares a root with “corpse.” The linguistic
similarities are apt in this instance.
154
George IV passed away in 1830; William IV began his reign in 1830, receiving his formal coronation in 1831.
Weldy Boyd 205

that she kept through most of her life, as many of her contemporaries would have done.
155

Boaden belies his purely scholarly interest in Inchbald when he rails against an advertisement
promoting a book pretending to be the genuine autobiography of Inchbald, having not been
consigned to the flames after her death as her will dictated. He writes, “I consider it a trick to
impose some pretended Memoirs on the world, or, if a copy has been taken of what she really
wrote, to defraud her executors” (2:280). He himself serves as an executor, both in deciding how
to dispose of her papers, and in insisting on her double-death: the death of the actress and the
death of her autobiography. Inchbald, twice silenced, must tell her story through her living
interlocutor, James Boaden—should Inchbald spontaneously appear in the form of her
autobiography, Boaden’s biography would have to rely on the most basic form of originality:
arriving to the scene first, rather than on superior presentation of ephemera or a closer
relationship with the subject. It is in Boaden’s best interest to insure Inchbald’s resuscitation is
tied to his own artistry, even within the context of her own letters.
In resurrecting this specifically literary corpse, Boaden not only satisfies his audience’s
demand for new material, but also satisfies his own moral requirements while cementing the
supremacy of textual artifacts in preserving a thespian’s memory. Recall that Boaden’s earlier-
mentioned resistance to traditional anecdotes can be traced at least as much to his own moral
scruples as his belief in written documentation as a legitimizing process. It is thus understandable
that a man who should replace descriptive kinetic, gestural points with direct quotations of the
relevant lines in a script would also herald letters as an equally powerful means of preserving the

155
The existence of an autobiography was a big selling point for Boaden, who lovingly describes the anticipation of
Inchbald’s autobiographical memoirs: when word got out that Inchbald was writing her own memoirs, Boaden
records, she was offered 1000 pounds in advance for their publication (Inchbald 2:57) and people began to wonder
how she would portray all of her friends who were still alive (2:63; 2:75). Eventually, a succession of buyers
retracted their offers and Mrs. Inchbald ordered her memoirs burned upon her death, having already burned a
significant amount of her own papers at the deaths of her sisters in 1815 (2:278; 2:201).
Weldy Boyd 206

actor. In my understanding, no prior thespian biographer had so strongly asserted the impact of
letters as Boaden.
Beyond the usual appeals that letters preserve the essence of an actor’s personality by
providing her own diction, syntax, and emphases, and that original copies may also act as a
physical record of momentary presence, Boaden makes one more crucial claim for the power of
epistolary intercourse in the Life of Jordan, the first of his heavily letter-based biographies.
Elevating the role of letters significantly, Boaden portrays and describes written correspondence
as representative of Jordan’s presence onstage. Just as a few lines from the script of a specific
play, unmediated by commentary about gesture or delivery, could represent a character onstage
for Boaden, so too could the actress’s own letters. Boaden explicitly claims that, just as Dorothy
Jordan’s acting as a “romp” character was marked by exuberant emphasis, “her letters are always
careless, unstudied effusions, written as fast as the pen will cover the paper” (2:220). In his
preface to her life, Boaden announces:
Permitted to use the very documents themselves, I have printed them exactly from the
ORIGINALS in her own handwriting; they are unstudied compositions, but they all
sprung warm from the heart, and, like her acting, speak its true and impassioned
language. Her ACTING, indeed, was heart in action; and its pulsations vibrated to the
extremities of its theatrical habitation. (Jordan 1:iii)
Mrs. Jordan, onstage, was often described as a child of nature, and in the memoir, Boaden
objects to Sheridan’s attempts to shoehorn the Jordan into a Kemble-like style of “high” delivery
at odds with her vaunted naturalness.
156
Indeed, Boaden strives to debunk any whiff of artifice or
performativity about Mrs. Jordan onstage, and transfers the ethos of the public actress onstage to

156
Contradictorily, Boaden claims that the “real” Jordan wasn’t like the “romps” that she played on stage, which
seems at odds with his insistence in her raw talent as opposed to artifice.
Weldy Boyd 207

the private lady in the midst of epistolary correspondence. He triumphantly notes that since
“Nature’s child” only dated her letters according to the day of the week, she made “a modest
presumption, unsustained by the fact, that they can be only of temporary interest” (Jordan
2:228). This claim would seem to defray any concern on the reader’s part about Mrs. Jordan’s
conscious cultivation of a rhetorical persona that was at odds with the everyday situational
reality. Jordan’s specific epistolary style not only justifies it as more trustworthy than, say, the
image-conscious Garrick, but also introduces letters as further evidence of acting styles,
promoting the written word as a superior lifeline for the memory of actors on multiple levels.
It thus appears that letters, for Boaden, seem to serve for the stage performer a function
similar to an anecdote about a noted wit. Letters and anecdotes crystallize performance or truth,
depending on one’s level of confidence in the ability to dispense with any self-conscious element
of performativity in a performance. In some instances, firsthand letters contain anecdotes, a
treasure-trove of delivery and characterization reflecting on both author and subject. (It is thus
similarly that points in theatrical biography, reproduced in biography, might be thought to
represent a referendum on the performance abilities of actor and re-performing biographer.)
Boaden may have believed that letters were a better replacement for traditional anecdote because
epistolary correspondence dispensed with the mediating “teller” of an anecdote; however,
Boaden must have recognized that he was required to mediate the narrative to some degree or
forfeit his own stake in the story. Instead of self-centered anecdotes in which he plays a pivotal
role, Boaden finds the balance between his ethical commitment to authenticity and his personal
commitment to self-preservation in assuming the role of moral arbiter vis-à-vis the increasingly
private content of his thespian subjects’ letters.
157

157
It does in fact appear that Boaden sought out personal archives for his latter biographies—paradoxically it seems
that very private caches of letters were increasingly being made available to specific biographers. Thus, we see
Weldy Boyd 208

As I suggested earlier, a reader approaching each of Boaden’s memoirs would rather
quickly discover the schism between his first two and latter three biographical efforts. While I
have noted that change in epistolary emphasis can account for the different texture, one might
imagine that Boaden intentionally chose a more conversational, author-directed method that
spared his dramatic thespians, Kemble and Siddons, from any inquiry into their personal lives,
while he allowed the lower-class comedians to speak for themselves, airing out their intimate
affairs: in other words, Boaden’s biographies appear to propose a radically different treatment for
great tragedians than for comedians (Jordan as great in her admittedly limited roles, and Inchbald
vastly less successful in her walk as an actress). Garrick, unsurprisingly, stands out because of
Boaden’s strict editorial approach, which was closer to the austerity of his Kemble family
biographies than his epistolary ones.
There is an alternative explanation for the crisp bisection between public tragedians and
private comedians: the inclusion of greater numbers of private letters almost necessarily means
that more of the subject’s personal life will come to the forefront. Boaden’s least-private (or most
professionally focused) biography is that of Mrs. Siddons, which boastes a handful of letters that
were presumably written by Mrs. Siddons and read or released as damage control for a perceived
insult to a needy colleague. These letters, Boaden snipes, were of inferior mettle and obviously
written by Siddons’ husband—undoubtedly without her eagle-eyed consent.
158
The value of the
letters thus is doubtful, both because they were publically released, and because they might be
products of a lesser hand. Lacking neither the presence of the thespian, the contents not having
flowed from her brain through her hand and onto the page, nor having the thrill of something

Siddons give her correspondence and memos to her preferred biographer, and Inchbald very self-consciously shape
the archive of materials that was designed to survive her death.
158
A worthwhile project could be found in addressing the class arguments manifest in Boaden’s framing of some
letters as authentic, as well as the types of content that Boaden released from each actor’s archive.
Weldy Boyd 209

once private, the meager cache of letters recycled from newspapers Siddons only excites in its
final few installments, chiefly in one beautiful letter written shortly after the untimely deaths of
two of Mrs. Siddons’ daughters. Boaden writes, “The actor shares in the common sufferings of
his kind, without the sacred indulgence of his grief, which decency commands in every other
condition. But let us hear Mrs. Siddons herself”:
…If Mr.--- thinks himself unfortunate, let him look on me, and be silent. The inscrutable
ways of Providence! Two lovely creatures gone; and another is just arrived from school,
with all the dazzling, frightful sort of beauty, that irradiated the countenance of Maria,
and makes me shudder when I look at her. I feel myself, like poor Niobe, grasping to her
bosom the last and youngest of her children; and like her look every moment for the
vengeful arrow of destruction. (Siddons 2:273)
It may be that this epistolary anecdote attracted attention because it fit into the popular image of
Siddons as a tragedian, allowing her to have a semblance of personal life that nonetheless did not
undermine her reputation as a rather pious actress devoted to her family and the stage.
159
It is a
stunning departure from the “professional” letters drafted by Mr. Siddons, where she sometimes
appears rather petty; the abovementioned letter, by contrast, would have been convincing
evidence to the Romantic reader of Siddons’ sensibility, moral uprightness, and occasional
vulnerability at the appropriate moments.
It should be acknowledged that Boaden did use letters even at the beginning of his
biographical career, albeit sparingly. Siddons’ brother, Kemble, had several personal letters
appear in his biography, courtesy of his younger brother, Charles Kemble. In praise of his
subject, Boaden appropriates Cicero’s encomiastic statement about the then-contemporary actor

159
Boaden’s critics suggested that the biographer stole most of his best Siddons material from newspapers—the
letter that Boaden opaquely leads us to believe that he has transcribed may be one such example.
Weldy Boyd 210

Roscius: “while he made the first figure on the stage for his art, was worthy of the senate for his
virtue” (Kemble 1:xvi). Boaden frequently links a lack of a personal life with the presence of
virtue. With both Kemble and Siddons, he seems to link excellent acting skills with a highly
private off-stage life. By virtue of Boaden’s biases alone, there is little of note in those letters;
rather, the majority of interest is in Boaden’s mediation of events. The biographer notes with
pride that he has “ventured to baffle the search of the malignant” who anticipate negative stories
about Kemble, and that he has stifled any letter or story in which Kemble appeared to express a
spontaneous opinion that seemed out of keeping with more leisurely pronouncements (Kemble
xvi). Evidently, Boaden feels very possessive of his friend’s life story, even taking it upon
himself to respond to a letter received by Kemble as Boaden believes Kemble would have
responded. Boaden makes a similarly presumptuous venture as to Siddons’ opinion in her Life as
well when the appropriate letter could not be found.
160

In short, Boaden exercises a very heavy hand over the inclusion and significance of
letters in his first two biographies, almost exclusively preferring to include his own encounters
with Kemble on moral grounds. It is therefore rather shocking to see the austere, moralistic
Boaden not only select Dorothy Jordan as his subject, rather than another Kemble sibling, and to
release a large number of letters from an actress known not to have had much discretion.
However, Boaden doesn’t flatten Jordan out to the vice in a morality show: he commends her
fellow actors for their defense of her character when she performed onstage while pregnant and
unmarried, noting that the theatre should not be confused with a sound moral education.

160
Similarly, Boaden mentions that Kemble had asked Inchbald to describe Henderson’s movements, costuming,
and delivery in the character of Sir Giles, as Kemble believed he would be asked to replicate Henderson’s
performance. “One cannot but regret the loss of Mrs. Inchbald’s reply to this letter; she was so competent to answer
all these minute questions by having acted with him,” notes Boaden. He graciously offers his own observations and
opinions in her stead, as “the present writer saw them together on stage” (I1.144-146).
Weldy Boyd 211

Certainly, Boaden has more to say about morality in the reasonably epistolary Jordan.
Ironically, he takes a heightened moral standpoint when addressing the vastly epistolary
Inchbald, whose life seemed much less exceptionable. It is probable that Boaden felt less need to
assert his moral judgment in order to be heard through the letters; additionally, as with Kemble,
Boaden could claim a personal relationship with Jordan. While Boaden cannot, and does not,
celebrate Jordan for great virtue, he takes a tone of indulgence about his subject, especially in
relation to the role that he himself played in her life: “We shall treat the memory of Mrs. Jordan
as we always did her person; when she had at all suffered…we were happy to restore the
equilibrium of her mind, by telling her anything of a soothing and respectful nature” (Jordan
1:199-200). He defends her right to privacy during her second pregnancy, approving of the
public’s détente on speculations about Jordan’s love life. Nonetheless, there is an element of
hypocrisy to Boaden’s declarations, since he has published a book containing his own friend’s
very private correspondence.
161

The great triumph of Boaden’s transition into epistolary biography is that letters supply
gossip and titillation while leaving Boaden almost beyond reproach due to their authenticity,
simultaneously positioning Boaden as moral arbiter. Boaden shifts from being a stage critic to a
social critic. Once Jordan retires, the text gets increasingly personal, in sharp contrast with
Siddons’ life after retirement, which was so obsolete in Boaden’s eyes that her biography could
be written (Jordan 2:209). Boaden’s eagerness to resurrect Jordan in the depths of her pain as an
ousted mistress coping with illness and exile is rather terrible to witness, so intent is he on

161
Troublingly, Boaden’s gentlemanly posture seems compromised by the inclusion of a series of letters between
Mrs. Jordan and “her confidential friend.” “These letters are for your eye alone,” an order that Boaden indicates (via
footnote) was followed originally by the correspondent, “faithfully obeying the condition attached to their
communication” (J2:251). Boaden’s earlier claims of decorum towards the job of a biography and indignation at
prying into intimate details of Jordan’s life during her pregnancies show in sharp contrast to this letter, apparently
safely returned to Jordan and then published, not so privately, in Boaden’s biography.

Weldy Boyd 212

providing an in-depth view of her life: “A momentous point in her life is about to open to us,
which we are happily enabled to illustrate by her own letters” (2:211). At the conclusion of the
second volume, after Jordan had quit the stage, slipped off to France and died, Boaden opines,
rather callously, that “the woman, in her, was too powerful for the genius” (2:331). This
sentiment conforms to his earlier iteration that a vibrant personal life was at odds with a strong
professional acting career. Ironically, Jordan’s personal life forms the basis of her biography and
marks her as a much more vivid presence than Boaden’s saintly Kemble or austere Siddons;
Jordan’s off-stage availability challenges the vacuum that Boaden usually filled with himself.
Unfortunately, the correspondence also overtook direct reference to Jordan onstage (and indirect
reference, if one does not buy into Boaden’s theory about Jordan’s letters as accurately
representing her onstage style). In the final pages of Jordan’s biography, Boaden adopts the
metaphor of himself as a judge, displaying evidence to a jury: while—occasionally—interjecting
his own biased feelings on the case at hand, Boaden positions the reader as the jury to read “his
minutes of the evidence” about the personal and professional merits of Jordan. Ostensibly, most
biographies make a case for the subject’s strong moral character as a dual lodestar alongside
acting ability: Boaden’s metaphor is particularly troubling because of its association with
criminal activity, and as the culmination of a biography which spends precious little time
addressing Mrs. Jordan in the public eye as an actress rather than a respected but slightly
scandalous possessor of a scurrilous love life.
In sharp contrast to the non-epistolary centered lives of Kemble and Siddons, Elizabeth
Inchbald, allied with Jordan as comediennes to whose letters Boaden had access, appears
remarkably infrequently as an actress in her memoirs. Jordan, whose private life was troublingly
public, had left piles of effusive letters supposedly with little thought to her textual afterlife;
Weldy Boyd 213

Siddons, whose personal life was remarkably separate from her professional transactions, left a
carefully orchestrated set of recollections for a hand-picked biographer (Campbell, not Boaden).
Inchbald, not nearly as spontaneous as Jordan nor as controlled as Siddons, neither devil nor
angel, wrote her autobiography but could not bring herself to publish it. While Boaden
presumably had less work to do in terms of atoning for a glaring moral error as in the case of
Inchbald, and less of a personal attachment to that actress, he had use of her personal reflections,
including a daily log of activity and emotion which revealed an unprecedented amount of detail.
Stripped of his usual ability to generate the momentum of the narration with letters as
punctuation or illustration, Boaden flounders to assert control over Inchbald’s voluminous
archive. For example, in the Life of Jordan, Boaden makes a meal of the scandal of Jordan
having to recite a line about hoydens chasing after princes: did she speak such a line? He writes
his own dialogue in response to a fictionalized gossip:
Pray, madam, pay a little regard to chronology, and suspect any thing rather than a want
of good taste in the Jordan: I can assure you, on my personal knowledge, that I have no
such instances to record, and that you will be convinced of my sincerity, if you will
honour me with your company into Yorkshire this very summer…you will see [events
happening outside of London]…you must wait a while [for the part about affairs with
princes]…” (Jordan 1:186-187)
Boaden writes as though he is a tour guide who will lead the woman through time. In reality, his
approach is not out of keeping with the task of a biographer, if a bit on the nose.
With Inchbald, Boaden fails to gain much ground as an author rather than an editor in
terms of structure: he painfully follows her day-to-day accounts, omitting large swaths but also
preserving such fascinating details such as Inchbald’s departure for Edinburgh at precisely 2
Weldy Boyd 214

A.M. on July 2, 1776, arriving in Valleri on the 23
rd
.
162
Then Inchbald commenced a trip to
Abbeville to see all its convents that next day, followed by Mass on the 25
th
(Inchbald 1:62). The
painfully rigorous chronology appears rather amateurish for a biographer of Boaden’s
experience, and the reams of factual evidence underscores that he played no role in Inchbald’s
life. Boaden doesn’t afford much opportunity for his self-insertions as a character in the
narrative: therefore, he uses the chronology to doggedly pursue his commitment to morality and
tracks every instance of Inchbald attending church, commenting disapprovingly when she fails to
be regular in her observance. In Volume 2, Boaden records that she made but one religious entry
in her diary for the entirety of 1799—a prayer on May 30
th
—(2:34). In contrast, only a little
later, she committed an act of great Christian charity in sitting up with an ill maid, thus showing
herself a true Christian woman (2:45). Inchbald later came back to religion full-force, lived in a
Catholics-only house for a brief spell (2:70-1), and attended many masses and very little theatre
(2:74). The link that Boaden traces inversely between mass and theatre is supported by his
belief—well established in the Life of Jordan— that theatre is not intended as a moral enterprise,
but he is on dangerous ground in terms of his own faith, one would think, as a theatrical
biographer. From 1777 to 1810, Boaden records periods of stunning religious inactivity on the
part of Mrs. Inchbald, noting that even terrible events did not drive her to the church as one
might have expected. Redeemingly, for Boaden, “the year 1813 was…all but devoted to religious
duties” (2:187). In effect, Boaden intrudes much more heavily into the personal and political
views of Inchbald, possibly for two reasons: her life did not provide a straightforward moral
warning like Mrs. Jordan’s short existence, and the depth of discussion in Inchbald’s letters and

162
The movement of time is quite dependent on what was new or interesting in Inchbald’s life as she presented it in
her personal ledger. Thus, Boaden covers the year 1798, uneventful for Inchbald personally, in just five pages. Such
personalized treatment is antithetical to that of Life of Siddons, where the titular thespian wasn’t even on the London
stage during some years that were nonetheless heavily chronicled by her biographer.
Weldy Boyd 215

diaries doubtless equipped Boaden with more material to showcase his armchair knowledge of
Inchbald.
Inchbald’s autobiography proves a boon as well as a burden to Boaden. While the
biographical outlines and chronology require a biographer with more discernment to harvest
useful details, the extra documentation also allowed Boaden to expose Inchbald’s personal life
without remorse as she herself had planned to at one time. The moral censure that surfaced in
relation to Jordan’s actions, rather than her person, is acutely present when Boaden assesses
Inchbald in the concluding “character sketch” as both a threat to and scapegoat for his own
biographical practice:
The materials of this biography are entirely her own—the record she wrote was a daily
duty which she performed: she could at all times review her life, with a certainty that was
equally awful to herself and others. Had we been disposed to dress up a perfect model of
woman, there are many decided follies that we should have suppressed in pure
compassion…[except that] our portrait so far would have been unlike the original.”
(2:291-292)
Boaden thus justifies the equivocal attention paid to Inchbald’s religious doubts as to her life as a
leading playwright. Of her acting career, he writes simply that she wished to be an actress but
had a stutter; subsequently, he reports, she met and became an acolyte of Mr. Inchbald, who was
“a master in his profession; and he made her an actress.” Thus, Boaden dispenses with her acting
career in a single line (2.289).
163

163
Intriguingly, Jordan didn’t receive the customary concluding character sketch; rather, Boaden established an
impassioned defense of the Prince of Wales’ financial generosity to Mrs. Jordan in the last years of her life, a sorry
but fitting epitaph on a woman whose passionate private life led to the destruction of her professional life. In death,
as in life, the last word went to the Prince.
Weldy Boyd 216

Ironically, Boaden’s study of Inchbald brackets her acting, but Inchbald’s preparations as
her own biographer circumscribes Boaden’s ability to thrive as a biographer. For example, a
signature component of long eighteenth-century biography was that of the “character,” an ending
summation of the actor as a person. This prerogative was generally reserved for a biographer, but
had already been supplied by a good friend of Inchbald’s, Mr. Moore. This man had provided a
character of her, which the actress had reviewed, found rather delightful, and preserved, likely as
part of her planned autobiography:
Inchbald, Mrs.— A very lively and ingenious English authoress, whom Fortune
maliciously placed in a situation, and threw into a profession, beneath her merits, though
her genius were to be left out of the account. Nature felt the affront, and was resolved to
vindicate the claims of her favourite. She inspired that energy which looks on difficulty
as the natural element of superior minds. She remembered that Shakspeare as a player
was only the tame and unskillful representative of his own apparition: as an author he had
soared to the sublime enthusiasm of Hamlet and Othello. Our fair authoress thus
instructed, but unsullied by her intercourse with the world both in her dramatic and other
pieces, has displayed a quick intelligence of the foibles of our nature— an horror at vice
yet pity for the vicious— and an assertion throughout of the native dignity of steady
moral principles. Her conversation was easy and animated. Her curiosity was not such as
is blasphemously imputed to her sex; yet she was inquisitive. Never did an antiquated
matron trace a tale of scandal through all its meanders of authority, with more
undeviating eagerness, than our heroine hunted out a new source of useful information.
Her school was society; to which she gratefully returned, as an instructress, what she had
gathered as a scholar. Her passion was the contemplation of superior excellence; and
Weldy Boyd 217

though her personal charms secured her admirers, which flattered her as a woman, she
preferred the homage of the mind, in her higher character of a woman of genius. A little
disposition to coquetry perhaps she had, but the frankness of her nature disdained it; and
when necessity called for the choice of the one or the other, sincerity was sure to triumph.
She was born in the year 1753, and passed to a better life (as one of her contemporaries
predicted) in the THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH year of her age. (Inchbald 2:254-
255)
164

In a moment of clear concession to Moore’s more privileged position, Boaden transcribed
Moore’s words seemingly exactly. It is a credit to Boaden that in this instance his desire to
provide the clearest portrait of Inchbald overcame his renowned interest in self-promotion.
Boaden would have been guilty of a grave omission had he not included Moore’s sketch, which
captures that man’s affection for the author-actress and her apparently whimsical nature.
If Boaden suppresses the ability for Inchbald to fully reanimate herself (reiterating that
the autobiography had been destroyed), he does recognize a kindred spirit. Inchbald’s motivation
to promote her own self-consciousness well beyond her time on Earth appears rather transparent
throughout the memoir. Boaden records the proposed table of contents for her fractured
autobiography, almost unintelligible in its vagueness and painfully similar to Charles Macklin’s
chicken-scratch sketches for the autobiography that never happened (Inchbald 2:232-235). Such
fragmentary autobiographies underscore the same menace of time that harrows the actor:
memory runs out, whether it is collective memory of one’s time on stage, or individual memory
upon a prospective autobiographer’s decease.

164
Moore’s parting line wishes upon Inchbald a spectacularly lengthy life-span, and speaks not only to the desire for
Inchbald’s preservation, but also to the (implicit) preservation of Moore himself, as “one of her contemporaries,”
alongside her.
Weldy Boyd 218

Although a rather widely applicable scourge, time is uniquely apparent in Inchbald’s
writings, as she writes a retrospective of herself entitled “Septembers Since I Married” which
Boaden introduces and then replicates via chart. Boaden cutely speculates that she
commemorates Septembers not for her birthday (in October) or wedding anniversary (in June),
but for her debut as Cordelia to Mr. Inchbald’s Lear, making Inchbald a kindred spirit to
Boaden’s own Shakespeare-centered interpretational lens. Inchbald ranks her overall mood for
each year’s September from 1773 to 1808 as “very happy” to “extremely unhappy” (2:258-260).
1791, designated as “after my novel, ‘Simple Story,” is the only year to receive the top
designation without caveats, and 1808 represents her lowest recorded year based on the
continued backlash from the critical prefaces (discussed below) and her favorite sister’s
declining health. Boaden observes of these years, which each receive a few highlights in clipped
phrases, “In fact, as actress and authoress, hers is truly a stage existence…[her Retrospect is]
bounded by her theatricals, though embracing other topics in subordination” (2.257).
The task of Inchbald’s biography was certainly split between literary and theatrical
biography, and this tension was exacerbated by Boaden’s maturing preference for all things
written, especially plays and letters. Inchbald’s own correspondence and accounts, as offered
through Boaden, at no time show much interest in how to act a character, or in preserving her
own theatrical legacy as a thespian. Accordingly, Boaden lightly suggests that Inchbald could not
have hoped to have secured immortality on acting alone, but that happily, her pen was a better
bet.
165
Indeed, Inchbald’s best performances were those that took place on paper, through plays

165
Inchbald’s diary becomes rather depressing (and Boaden’s memoir appropriately picks up the somber tone) once
she’s stopped producing works. This can be manifest most clearly in Inchbald’s “Retrospective”: starting in 1798
through 1802, each year is designated as “happy” from mildly to wildly so. During this time span, each “happy”
year receives the rationale for why it was enjoyable, and then, inevitably, a “but for…” clause of exception that
frequently pertained to her fading looks or declining health, or the passing of a close friend or relative. From 1802 to
1808, only two years receive positive marks, 1803 being “very happy” and 1807, more in keeping with overall
trends, “often very unhappy yet mostly cheerful, and on my return to London nearly happy.” Boaden honors the
Weldy Boyd 219

and letters. Consequently, Boaden had a better corpus of Inchbald than in his other biographies;
in many ways, Inchbald’s was more of a literary biography than a theatrical biography.
Inchbald’s unique positioning as someone who saw herself as both literary and theatrical,
like Boaden, was furthered by her own forays into writing thespian biography. As referenced in
her most melancholy entry for 1808 in “Septembers Since I Married,” Inchbald had had a
relatively successful career as a prefatory biographer, until one particularly disgruntled writer
had criticized Inchbald for including criticism of plays in his biography; in this man’s mind, the
tasks of biographer and critic were mutually exclusive—a perspective anathema to Boaden.
166

Inchbald, therefore, in perceiving the critical part of her task as a biographer as particularly
significant, and in writing so much material about herself, is almost as much a rival biographer to
Boaden as Davies was to Murphy with regard to Garrick, or as Campbell was to Boaden himself
when it came to Sarah Siddons. Reviewers picked up on this unbalanced co-authorship of
Boaden and Inchbald herself. A review from the Athenaeum on Saturday May 18, 1833, shortly
before the Inchbald memoir was made public, notes that the second volume, having a lot more of
Inchbald’s own voice in it, was markedly better than the first volume. Boaden can get bogged
down in trifles, notes the reviewer, but his occasional lapses in judgment aside, “on the whole,
Mrs. Inchbald’s character comes out delightfully” in the biography (305). It is Inchbald’s
character, rather than Boaden’s character of Inchbald, that is commended. Tellingly, the review

spirit of Inchbald’s letters and the factual realities of her decline, but seems to abandon his earlier mantra of
variation until the work has concluded and he presents a few miscellaneous letters that he claims not to have
received in time to incorporate into the body of the text, but which “will make the Volume fuller, and have
considerable variety as well as interest” (2:352). One might wish he had realized the potential conflict in expanding
a biography of over 700 pages, especially when the subject’s life reached an undeniable state of drudgery and
depression even according to the subject’s own memoranda.
166
This attitude seems at odds with the patterns of theatrical biography; the issue may have been the male author’s
disapproval of a female critiquing him, or a feeling of violation over Inchbald placing a widely published negative
opinion about the author’s work within that same author’s life’s story. The author’s indignation seems misdirected
based on established expectations for biography, particularly in the context of a prefatory biography attached to the
author’s works.
Weldy Boyd 220

primarily quotes Inchbald’s own materials rather than Boaden’s additions: the chronicler is
certainly a diminished attraction from his early days as a biographer playing multiple roles in the
Life of Kemble.
To briefly sum up several key relationships between the five Boaden biographies, the
character of Boaden (that is, Boaden’s reference to himself as part of the “action”) seems to
appear most strongly in inverse relation to his titular protagonist (more Boaden-as-key-player
leaves less room for the actor or actress on whom he was supposedly focusing). This Boaden
factor can be roughly assessed by the weight of personal correspondence in a given biography.
The John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons biographies, gathered around two characters who
should be larger than life, are also simultaneously acting as histories of the stage. There are few
personal letters in either work. Neither thespian’s private life is on the table for discussion,
beyond Kemble’s marriage and Siddons’ children—more theatre at large and less private life
equates to a rich stage for Boaden himself to caper about. Jordan, as a “stalking horse” for a
larger moral message (and possibly as an easy money-making enterprise) leaves room for a bit of
Boaden because he knew her personally, but is heavier on her own correspondence. The
narrative of Inchbald, who Boaden did not know personally, is rather strongly gathered around
her own correspondence and life off-stage, so Boaden as a potential participant is severely
limited. Finally, Boaden is most remotely related to David Garrick both in terms of their career
periods and personal interactions; thus, Boaden almost entirely allows the letters to speak for
themselves, formally accepting a position as an editor to the letters and demurring from the full
biographical enterprise by providing a prefatory biography that he explicitly states will be a
recapitulation of existing facts.
Weldy Boyd 221

While Boaden attempts to control his own role in each biography as he modulates the
balance of self-insertion to original correspondence, his struggle manifests itself clearly in what I
would like to term the “Hamlet Index.” I have earlier suggested that Hamlet provides a
touchstone for Boaden, a means for him to discuss almost any issue, and a frequent resting place
at the end of a train of thought. Intriguingly, when Boaden imagines or describes his titular
thespians in the part of Hamlet, his level of eagerness appears to reflect the degree and nature of
his personal involvement in the particular biography.
In the Life of Kemble, his earliest effort, Boaden describes Kemble’s Hamlet with
significantly more relish than any other role: specifically, he compares the particular points
where Kemble differed from Henderson and Betterton. For example, he writes, “It was observed
how keenly Kemble inserted an insinuation of the King’s intemperance, when he said to Horatio
and the rest, ‘We’ll teach you to DRINK deep,--ere you depart’” (55). This is one moment in
which Boaden almost focuses on the Cibberean intent of the genre by describing what Kemble
did to embody Hamlet. Ultimately, however, he is more interested in discussing how Kemble
and he believed the ghost should be played, or how Kemble should interpret a line of
Shakespeare. Such moments serve to emphasize his relationship with Kemble and his own skill
as a Shakespearean scholar, as he justifies or censures Kemble’s pronunciation choices. (The
points that Boaden describes are primarily aural rather than gestural, again picking up on
Boaden’s sensitivity to changing theatrical conventions.)
Similarly, the strength (or weakness) of Life of Siddons is perfectly encapsulated in
Boaden’s decision to attempt to assess Mrs. Siddons’ brief tenure as Hamlet in Manchester. He
claims that he knew enough about Siddons’ style to imagine how she played it—this ties into
Boaden’s earlier gambit of inserting himself into instances whether he was actually present
Weldy Boyd 222

originally. Moreover, he frames this speculative description of Siddons as Hamlet as “where and
how she would differ from her brother” in the role (Siddons 1:258). The Boaden who is
participating in the Cibber/Davies tradition of “History of the Stage” is deeply aware of the
competitive drive amongst biographers, and this manifests in his squaring off of the two siblings.
Boaden relates that Siddons would show “more feminine alarm” when Horatio describes the
ghost appearing: “As she heard a narrative at all times better than one was ever told, so I
conceive her breathless attention to the spirit during his disclosure, again benefited by the sex
itself, would, as before, be transcendent. …” (Siddons 1:258). The “To be” soliloquy would
appear “like audible rumination” as compared to Kemble, who was overly declamatory in that
scene. As to whether Siddons could transcend her brother, Boaden declares that notwithstanding
the inherit modesty of a female getting in the way of the manlier aspects of Hamlet (these he
does not enumerate) “…the conclusion at last might be, ‘were she but man, she would exceed all
that man has ever achieved in Hamlet’” (Siddons 1:259). In terms of the author’s intimacy with
his topic, Boaden’s Siddons is primarily smoke and mirrors, a critic leveraging Shakespearean
scholarship and speculation in lieu of an actual relationship with the object of interest.
Mrs. Jordan bears no relation to Hamlet, neither playing the character nor apparently
producing any letters on it—the absence of Hamlet, however, heralds Boaden’s inability to
attend to theatrical details in lieu of the personal affairs of Jordan (and indeed, Mrs. Jordan
appears to have been an immensely personal choice, predicated on his relationship with her).
Boaden still manages to indulge in some ghostly reminisces on Banquo’s Ghost. These
Macbethian musings are drastically removed from interest in Mrs. Jordan, per se; the further
away from Hamlet-related thespians that Boaden gets, the less stage material appears, and the
less opportunity for Boaden to unleash his torrent of personal knowledge while claiming to be on
Weldy Boyd 223

topic. Thus, the character in the Life of Jordan who is described as playing a role in Hamlet is
Boaden himself, as Goodman Delver: Boaden realizes that his own efficacy is drawing nigh and
appropriately codes himself as a minor, albeit significant, character in charge of the twin
paradoxes of burial and memory resurrection.
Continuing the downward slope of the immediacy of Boaden’s pet projects and opinions
in biography, Boaden merely mentions that Inchbald did in fact play Hamlet on a provincial
stage in the beginning of her career (Inchbald 1:120). Unlike Boaden’s wildly enthusiastic
speculations about the quality and nature of Siddons’ Hamlet, Boaden neither discusses how
Inchbald assayed the role of the Dane, nor how the production might have handled the intricacies
involving the Ghost. How did Mrs. Inchbald react in that pivotal meeting scene? Boaden’s
estrangement from active theatrical involvement (rather than moral quibbling about Inchbald’s
church-going activities) is most evident in this silence: contrary to his claims in the Life of
Jordan, Boaden has, figuratively and literally, given up the Ghost. It is little wonder that
Inchbald’s is his final biography.

IV. Time’s Effects: Boaden between Davies and Campbell
We have seen that while letters underwrite the truth of the biographer’s assertion, they
also threaten his position as an artist. He may feel compelled to contort his preferred narrative
around those instances for which he has epistolary evidence, or accord more weight to a
relatively useless or bland letter for sake of the illustrious name or the fleeting grasp at the
thespian’s presumed presence. Moreover, he may need to look for new ways to assert his
presence in the narrative, and for Boaden, that means turning more towards adding the character
of a moral arbiter to the task of an editor.
Weldy Boyd 224

The threat to biographers from letters has yet one more retrospective dimension. Not only
could letters reanimate the dead; they could also, by virtue of an increased interest in evidence,
call into question a biographer whose rendition had been celebrated or revivify a biographer’s
account that had been erroneously dismissed (not infrequently, by a rather biased author or
acolyte of a new biography on the same subject). It seems that the treatment of letters constituted
a particularly fertile battleground between rival biographers and biographies. The reviewer
writing for the Quarterly Review in 1868 on the occasion of Percy Fitzgerald’s new biography of
David Garrick dismisses earliest biographer-competitors Davies and Murphy as both having
negative agendas toward Garrick. “We should have had very different books from both, could
they have dreamed that their own letters to Garrick, with the drafts of his replies, had been
preserved,” writes the reviewer. Those letters could “rise up in judgment” against the
biographers as evidence contradicting their unprincipled representation of Garrick (“Life of
David Garrick by Percy Fitzgerald” [Review] 451).
167
Letters, then, continued to be seen as
guarantors, taking precedence even over personal interaction with a thespian subject. Boaden,
who received both correspondence and permission from the estate of Eva Marie Garrick almost a
decade after her death, had not known Mr. or Mrs. Garrick professionally or publically.
Nevertheless, by means of the collected letters from the Garrick estate, Boaden attempted to
overtake the prior two biographers as most trustworthy mediator: in effect, letters prolonged the
potential field of competition and this, in turn, potentially made the reputation of any biographer
considered good in his own time subject to revision.

167
This review establishes Percy Fitzgerald (M.A., F.S.A) as the fourth formal biographer after Davies, Murphy, and
Boaden. Fitzgerald’s biography is called The Life of David Garrick, subtitle from Original Family Papers, and
numerous published and unpublished sources. Fitzgerald, like Boaden, writes a great string of biographies:
investigating his work would be a good way to bring the present project into the mid-1800s. Fitzgerald’s Garrick fell
prey to many of the same complaints suffered by Boaden and Campbell: the work was too long, the syntax too
permutated, his facts often inaccurate even with his own haughtiness towards other men’s errors, his sources were
not always made clear.
Weldy Boyd 225

An interesting byproduct of Boaden’s multiple biographies is a burgeoning regard for
Thomas Davies, whose Garrick memoir had survived the slings and arrows of Murphy’s
criticism and stood up to Boaden’s own primary source investigations. Toothill has noted that
Boaden imported the majority of facts in the prefatory biography from Davies’ account, and that
details in the correspondence itself corroborate Davies’ account in those places that Murphy had
erroneously challenged it (Toothill). Furthermore, Boaden’s forthright announcement that he
intends to add no interpretation suggests a respect for Davies, as well as a reluctance to challenge
him in the field of interpretational biography. However, Boaden fails to cite from Davies in this
preface, as in other instances in his earlier biographies. Davies barely merits any mention in the
Life of Kemble, notwithstanding that the volume was a history from the time of Garrick to the
midpoint of Kemble’s career; he is cited only once, in reference to a story about Mrs. Cibber and
Arthur Murphy deceiving Garrick by acting as though Mrs. Cibber was hopeless in a role from
The Orphan of China, only to astound him by appearing to have improved so drastically in the
span of a week or ten days. “The story is inconceivably foolish,” says Boaden, which not
coincidentally appears to be a general referendum on Davies’ work. In the Life of Siddons,
Boaden mocks “my predecessor, as a historian of the stage,” noting his failure as a bookseller
and lukewarm acting career (Siddons 1:146). In the same volume, Boaden insults Murphy by
opposing his indulgence in anecdotes, among other complaints. The disapproving biographer
seems to consider the following insult to be particularly damning: “Murphy sadly disappointed
the world by his ‘Life of Garrick,’ which in fact, however difficult such a process must have
been, sunk below the level of Tom Davies” (Siddons 1:120).
By the Life of Jordan, having begun working on his prefatory biography of Garrick,
Boaden’s perspective has softened towards Davies, but not towards Murphy. The latter culled
Weldy Boyd 226

from too many sources without purpose, and could not focus on sharing someone else’s wit: he
“would be too ambitious to display himself, to do complete justice to his friend” (2.124) These
shortcomings, Boaden says, made Murphy’s life stack up poorly to Davies’s. He writes, “The
bookseller [Davies] did not want vanity, but the actor reverenced the master of his craft. It was
this feeling, added to a perfect memory, that made Boswell’s record of Doctor Johnson the most
striking achievement in biography” (Jordan 2:124). By the end of his biographical career,
remarking on Inchbald’s notation of having read Davies’ biography of Garrick when it appeared
in 1780: “Garrick’s Life by Davies was a professional lecture, which gave her both pleasure and
profit” (Inchbald 1:137).
168
In the next volume of Inchbald’s memoir, Boaden declares,
“Garrick’s Life by Murphy, [is] the most incorrect of all lives, and wretchedly inferior to Tom
Davies’s, which he probably undervalued without reading it…” (Inchbald 2:93). This latter
comment offers some insight into Boaden as a seasoned practitioner of his craft, having
sustained the barrage of criticism and fault-finding that inevitably accompanied the release of a
thespian memoir, and suggests that the switch from a Cibber/Davies presentational mode to a
more epistolary practice made Boaden nostalgic and also indicated the validity of what Garrick’s
earlier biographer had written. This transformation did not, however, still the competitive spirit
or Boaden’s tendency to depict the project of biography as explicitly moral. Murphy’s anecdote-
heavy style, in Boaden’s eyes, is immoral. Inchbald’s declaration of the practical and moral
applications of Davies’ work seems to have urged Boaden to accept Davies as a fellow
gentleman biographer, even as the tasks associated with writing the best type of biography
appeared to be shifting.

168
A contemporary review of Campbell’s Memoirs, found in the Quarterly Review, declares, “Davies knew more of
the history of the stage than any man since Colley Cibber” (120). He links Davies to Cibber, and Boaden to Davies,
declaring that “the fame of Mrs. Siddons should be rested on the evidence of Davies for her earlier, and on that of
Boaden for her later glories; but very little, we are sorry to say, on anything that Mr. Campbell has either written or
compiled (“Article IV” 121).
Weldy Boyd 227

In my earlier discussion of Charles Macklin’s three biographers, I argued that the tension
between the latter two came from a desire to put Macklin’s work into the individual biographer’s
words. Notwithstanding that the second biographer, Kirkman, claimed to have access to
Macklin’s personal papers, the latter two biographies very much built an antagonistic
relationship with those that came before it. One might be tempted to imagine that, in the
instances where an actor has more agency in telling his own story (through the use of letters,
commonplace books, memoranda, or previously collected essays), the author might feel less
competition, as the weight of his own words decreases in value proportionally to the amount of
previously unrevealed communication from the deceased actor that the biographer has access to.
Isn’t the biographer more of a skilled compiler, really—a literary scrapbooker, pasting together
literary artifacts into a cohesive whole? In Boaden’s case, his later-career technique of working
off of thespian archives was somewhat successfully used against him.
As mentioned earlier, the resolutely alive Sarah Siddons had been unhappy with
Boaden’s non-posthumous biography of her in 1827. In 1834, the respected poet Thomas
Campbell released a biography of Sarah Siddons with an immediate claim to preference over
Boaden’s: Campbell was Siddons’ authorized biographer, having received a collection of
“Memoranda” or “Reminiscences” from her several years prior to her death. Nina A. Kennard,
who wrote a biography of Siddons in 1887, declared that Campbell struggled to do justice to
Siddons’ memory even with the substantial aid of the actress’s memoranda, letters, and diary,
which. Siddons had requested that he “prepare for publication” (v). There is little doubt that
Campbell interpreted Siddons’ request as writing a Life rather than publishing her materials as an
editor, and Kennard records that Campbell, as the chosen biographer, once remonstrated bitterly
against one of Siddons’ daughters for supporting a potential rival biographer (v-vi).
Weldy Boyd 228

Having already bypassed Campbell in drawing a link from Cibber to Davies to Boaden,
the Quarterly Review calls Campbell’s status as a biographer into question: “We are much
inclined to credit a prevailing rumor, that Mr. Campbell ought rather to be considered as the
editor than as the substantial author of this book” (“Article IV” 96).
169
Whether there was a
formal ghost writer in place (entirely possible, given Elizabeth Inchbald’s recollections of her
own publisher authorizing her well-established name to be appended to biographies and critical
editions by other hands), the reviewer stresses that of the parts of Campbell’s biography not
directly copying Siddons’ notes, much was pirated, sometimes almost word-for-word, from
Thomas Davies’ Miscellanies, the life and miscellany of the Scottish writer John Galt—“who
himself professes to be only a compiler”—and, of course, James Boaden (112). Campbell also
had a third source for his account: theatre historian and Garrick Club secretary James Winston.
Boaden, however, was Campbell’s direct target.
The majority of references to Boaden are in the context of his mistakes: representative
examples include Boaden’s errors in suggesting that Siddons feared Mrs. Crawford as a serious
rival in the part of Lady Randolph (124), or that Kemble and Siddons had a feud that precipitated
Siddons’ retirement (252). Campbell’s “sage brother biographer” is admitted to be correct in
only two instances—his assessment of Henderson’s strengths and Siddons’ ability to play
Desdemona— in both instances, Campbell relegates Boaden’s success to “felicity of
expression,” suggesting luck rather than general insightfulness (48; 198). In short, Campbell
“bullies the ghost” of his predecessor.
The critic from the Quarterly Review rightfully notes Campbell’s almost obsessive desire
to show Boaden’s imbecility “on what we think very inadequate grounds” (104). After a painful

169
The reviewer describes Campbell as “a distinguished poet…a man of undoubted genius” but “it is not given to
any man to excel in all the walks of literature.” The conclusion trenchantly declares Campbell, “supposing him to
have actually written the book which bears his name—the worst theatrical historian we have ever read” (124).
Weldy Boyd 229

expose that showed, line by line, how frequently Campbell pilfered material, uncredited, from
Boaden, the reviewer justifies this approach as the appropriate response to Campbell: “We are
obliged to dwell on these small matters by the tone of superior accuracy which Mr. Campbell so
unmeritedly assumes” (105). If Campbell rarely cited his sources, and frequently quoted them
incorrectly, as claimed by the critic from the Quarterly Review, he also exercised remarkable
freedom with excerpting Siddons’ memoranda, leading the critic to complain that there was no
sense of what percentage of Mrs. Siddons’ own valuable materials were used, or what wealth of
information Campbell might have neglected. Campbell doesn’t supply enough Siddons:
A few pages of autobiographical memoranda, a couple of prosy dissertations on the
characters of Constance and Lady Macbeth, and three or four very unimportant letters,
are the only things that can in substance (if such trifles may, by any laxity of language, be
called substantial) distinguish Mr. Campbell’s Life from that of his predecessor (95).
Indeed, it is likely, based upon the references to Siddons assigning Campbell the task of her
biography with her collected papers, that Siddons was responding to Boaden’s work: either the
Correspondence model with David Garrick, which would have put Siddons in the position to
speak for herself with Campbell as a facilitator, or the personal memorabilia-heavy Jordan and
Inchbald.
170

Boaden’s latter-day approach was not a sure hit, and a critic from the New Monthly
Magazine and Literary Journal writing in praise of Campbell indicates both the promise and
difficulty in working with so much documentation:

170
It is apparent that Siddons had not been pleased with her representation in Boaden’s Life of 1827; I find it
unlikely that she would not have kept abreast of his subsequent work, especially as some critics wrote rather
discourteous reviews suggesting that Boaden might have an agenda of systematically picking through the Kemble
line as ready source of profit for his biographical enterprise.
Weldy Boyd 230

With the exception of a few lively, fascinating, and interesting though, after all, not very
instructive works of autobiography, we can not say that the English stage of modern date
has afforded the elements, much less the fruition, of good works of the class of
biographical literature. The memoranda, the diaries, and private letters of several actors
and actresses of great merit would almost contradict one part of this position; but,
unhappily, where we have been left in possession of these disjecta and disjuncta membra,
they have fallen into the hands of book-makers, either of so little judgment that they
knew not how to distinguish what was keen, recherche, new and interesting, from what
was common-place, trivial and vulgar; or who have resolved to give a crude and
undigested mass of the whole, in order to produce the dual number of ponderous
volumes. (“The Late Mrs. Siddons” 471)
In contrast, the reviewer claims, is Campbell’s work, which was rooted not only in
correspondence, but in personal friendship that helped to fill in a picture of Mrs. Siddons:
…the very eminent poet to whom she had bequeathed the office of writing her life, knew
her so intimately in all her domestic cares and private relations of friend, mother, wife,
and wooer of the muse, that the chasms which he has filled up seem emanations from
Mrs. Siddons herself. (474)
171

The reviewer declares that Campbell’s book is intended “to raise our moral character by the
freshness and cheerful vigour, with the healthy analysis of our passions and actions, which, to the
author's honour, shine in every chapter.” Thoroughly Romantic, the reviewer notes “many

171
The Cambridge University Press website, in service of promoting their 2013 edition of Boaden’s Memoirs of
Mrs. Siddons, evidently conflates Boaden with Campbell in their description of the text, offering a vision of Boaden
“closely collaborating with his subject.” More appropriately, the description notes an earlier reissuing of Boaden’s
Life of Jordan, describing Boaden as having “establish[ed] himself as an authoritative biographer, preferred over
others for his intellect and wealth of anecdotes from a lifetime spent within the theatrical world.”

Weldy Boyd 231

beautiful sentiments and fine discriminations, which may cleanse present society of the cant and
morbid confusion with which it is so disordered.” Thus, Campbell appears to have taken the
successful part of Boaden’s approach to Kemble and Jordan (his personal friendship) and
combined it with the epistolary parts of Garrick, Jordan, and Inchbald. He has also incorporated
Boaden’s pronounced call for theatrical biography as a redeeming moral force surrounding the
otherwise immoral stage.
Based on the reviews of Campbell that refer to Boaden, the qualifications for doing the
work of a theatrical biographer remain contentious. Campbell should excel because of personal
knowledge of Siddons and access to her personal papers. Boaden, on the other hand, “has
theatrical knowledge and personal recollections from the entirety of Siddons’ career,” as his
advocate in the Quarterly Review argues. The answer to which qualifications prevail depends on
whether one wants a largely contextual history of theatres, or a narrow field of interest in great
depth. In other words, do readers want the thespian as part of an ensemble cast, or solo, with
frequent recourse to ‘soliloquy’? What role are readers willing to afford to biographers?
As the 19
th
century began, theatrical biography continued to be challenged inwardly by
biographers jostling for supremacy and by the generic changes arising from theatrical practices,
audience demands, and biographers’ innovations. As theatrical biography moved further away
from preserving the actor onstage, painting, which lent itself to the convention of pointing,
continued to focus on those moments of representation. I have already suggested that audiences,
through scrapbooking, had recognized the potential to yoke theatrical biography and painting
together for maximum preservation; as mentioned earlier, Shearer West has convincingly noted
theatre audiences’ appropriation of critical vocabulary from painting. Unsurprisingly,
biographers also acknowledged painting as providing a valuable facet—visibility—that their own
Weldy Boyd 232

genre could not. But with the seeming failure of theatrical biography’s ability to represent the
onstage actor, and its growing abandonment of that task, some painters asserted the superior
power of their art to theatrical biography, challenging the need for written accompaniment when
painting could take center stage, fulfilling the original demands of theatrical biography.

V. James and John Boaden, Father and Son, Clash over Sister Arts
Competition theory often holds that the son seeks to overtake the father in asserting his
own way in the world. We have seen this in Boaden’s disavowal and eventual acceptance of
Davies, as well as in earlier chapters. Applying this theory more directly than it is usually
intended, the business of preservation was, for Boaden, a family business. In 1826, one year after
the Life of Kemble and two years after Kemble’s death, Boaden’s son John published a book
containing a series of eight portraits that the younger Boaden had painted of John Philip Kemble
when he was alive. The published collection was dedicated to the actor’s brother, Charles
Kemble, “as a tribute of sincere respect.”
172
We may recall that Charles Kemble had supplied the
senior Boaden with a selection of John Philip Kemble’s correspondence, supporting the
biography of his brother with this epistolary vote of confidence. It is therefore particularly
touching to see Boaden’s son publically acknowledge Charles’s importance to those interested in
preserving John Philip Kemble’s memory.
Interestingly enough, the younger Boaden’s painterly interest in recording Kemble
evidently preceded the older Boaden’s biographical impulse.
173
The sketches had been on
exhibition at the British Gallery during Kemble’s lifetime, as the preface to the paintings records

172
John Boaden was a successful portrait painter, associated with the Royal Academy and the Society of British
Artists. He was born in either 1792 or 1793, and died in 1839, the same year of his father’s decease.
173
This makes sense if we believe Boaden’s claim that the death of Kemble spurred him to write the biography.
Weldy Boyd 233

that the actor “spoke of it as an agreeable homage, and thought the whole of them was
exceedingly like him.”
What the publisher refers to as a homage, or tribute, to Kemble, is also presented a bit
grandiosely as “a rather comprehensive memorial” and “a faithful record of expression so
varied.” The latter claim may have emanated from the elder Boaden’s pronouncement that “the
biography of an actor is the record of his art,” just one year earlier. The prefatory sentiments
written on behalf of the younger Boaden suggest that the painter has a solemn duty to preserve
Kemble’s movement and visage: “‘The animated graces of the Player (says Cibber) can live no
longer than the instant breath and motion that presents them,’” he writes, showing his familiarity
with Cibber’s work and the primary challenge that Cibber perceived in writing a successful
biography. Not only does John Boaden link his work with the genre of thespian biography based
on purpose; he also asserts painting’s supremacy over Cibber’s (and, implicitly, his own father’s)
medium of the written word:
Painting, however, seizes a momentary and characteristic point of any performance, and
can shew with some accuracy how the performer looked, whose eloquence must be mute
forever. The representation of him during but a single moment will lead the imagination
to complete our pleasure, and we trace him through the whole of a character, of which we
possess but a single emanation. (“Preface”)
The certainty that “eloquence must be mute” rejects the power of the written word to transmit
speech, the very pillar upon which Boaden the biographer based his work. The younger Boaden,
likely less attuned to changes in the playhouse and more alert to the strengths of his own
medium, wholeheartedly embraces physical points to the exclusion of the aural elements. We
will recall that his father privileged speech over motion in his depictions. The struggle between
Weldy Boyd 234

the two Boadens reminds us that artists, like audiences, were not entirely unified in the best
methods by which to preserve thespians, or even which aspects were most worthy of
preservation. Painting’s ability to capture movement is also not undisputed, as critics note that
painting cannot adequately capture the charisma of the actor or the total effects of his physical
presence (West, First Actresses 2).
It may not escape the modern-day reader (nor that of the 1820s) that coupling
descriptions of Kemble as Coriolanus with a painting of the actor in the role would be the best
available method of accessing both pronuntio and actio, the criteria by which acting had been
measured since the beginning of theatrical biography as a recognizable genre.
174
Additionally
complicating the relationship between biography and illustration is the fact that paintings of
theatrical subjects were often made to suit the prerogatives and priorities of the painter—a
“mutual showcase” of painter and subject rather than a strict historical representation (First
Actresses 26-27; 32-24). Of course, the latter objection might equally apply to Boaden, Sr., as
critics frequently noted his intrusion upon the story of his subject. While an imperfect record,
the fact remains that a strong relationship existed between biographers and illustrators of the
same thespian subjects, a relationship fueled by a shared audience’s interest in consumable
products featuring their favorite actors.
Between the father biographer and the painter son, the Boadens could have been uniquely
qualified to provide a document that featured a biographical narrative and a variety of paintings,
with the potential benefit of inter-generational commentary about the actor. John Boaden’s
character portraits of Kemble showcase the actor in his eight greatest roles: Coriolanus, Hamlet,
Hotspur, Macbeth, King John, Cato, The Stranger, and Penruddock. These works might have

174
See the chapter on Charles Macklin for a discussion of pronuntio and actio.
Weldy Boyd 235

been inserted at the appropriate moments in his father’s Life of Kemble (which is, undoubtedly,
what some collectors did).
It seems strange, both on grounds of familial ties (generic and consanguine) that neither
biographer nor artist mentions his relative’s contribution to a collective art-based Kemble
memorial effort. Certainly, Boaden should have mentioned his son’s striking portraits during one
of his laments of the difficulty of capturing an actor’s actions by pen in his Kemble biography, or
even when discussing the fine portraits of Siddons in his life of that lady two years later or the
fetching portraits of Dorothy Jordan in 1831. Alternatively, the son might have included a
reference to his father’s rather successful biography, which would have been fresh and timely, a
textual portrait presumably of interest to those who wanted a copy of eight painted portraits of
Kemble. This latter transaction makes sense particularly in light of the large demand for
collections of actors’ portraits designed to be pasted into scrapbooks: with John Boaden’s
reference to Cibber in his preface, it would seem likely that his prints were intended for that very
purpose. However, his use of Cibber is less a declaration of intent to supplement theatrical
biography and more of a threat against the theatrical biographer’s claim to importance.
There appears to be a disconnect between painting and biography in this instance, at least on the
part of the artists. At first glance, the elder Boaden seems more culpable for the omission of his
son’s painting talents because he references and applauds a number of particularly impressive
paintings of his thespian subjects. It is obvious that the biographer Boaden recognized that many
actors lived out their “posthumous lives as occupants of a national portrait gallery,” as Gil Perry
puts it, even more prominently than in biographies (First Actresses 135).
175

175
Boaden populated his biographies with metaphors equivocating what he did to painting; recall from earlier in this
chapter his description of Macklin, whose death he sought to commemorate: “Who would not decorate the chambers
of memory with portraits painted by the great masters, in living colours, and all the truth of nature?” (Kemble 118)
Weldy Boyd 236

Most likely, the younger Boaden’s works on Kemble were not widely accessible at the
time of his father’s writings, and thus the reference would have been obscure. The younger
Boaden’s insistence on not linking his work’s success to his father’s memoir is ultimately more
provocative, suggesting that painters—at least in the case of Boaden the younger, did not feel a
need to ally their form of recorded memory to other forms of art.
Arguably, the eight portraits of Kemble by Boaden the younger do partake in some of the
familiar tropes of scrapbooking. The portraits boast a detailed title page printed as to appear
handwritten; similarly, the style and texture of the portraits replicate scrapbook margins and
multi-dimensional insertions. Indeed, it is quite possible that the margins were widely spaced so
that individual portraits could be easily inserted into a theatrical biography (most obviously,
Boaden the elder’s) at the proper intervals based on the citation of Kemble in the specific role.
While painting rather directly challenged theatrical biography’s efficacy in its
appropriation of Cibber’s words, theatrical biography was beginning to recognize that an
increasingly permeable genre membrane was the best strategy for continued relevance, especially
in light of scrapbook tradition, which allowed readers to insert their own favorite portraits into
biographies, along with a whole host of other multi-dimensional paraphernalia. Again, Boaden
the elder would have been particularly attuned to the significance of portraiture in preserving the
memory of a beloved thespian—his work on biography did begin with his project of cataloguing
portraits of the elusive Shakespeare.
With his biography, Boaden sought to transcend the putative limits of his genre by
achieving a visual realm in written medium: fans added the visual aids as a further completion of
what the biographer began. Boaden Jr., however, since he did in fact pair his paintings with a
written preface, seemed to understand that his paintings could not, alone, form an adequate
Weldy Boyd 237

memorial for Kemble. Considering the battle of genres depicted by the (written) introduction to
Boaden the Younger’s paintings, some satisfaction comes in discovering a copy of all eight
paintings inserted into a particularly grandly extra-illustrated Life of Kemble at the Houghton
Library: the son has become subordinated to the father, or at least the two are finally unified in
their common goal of seeking to preserve Kemble for posterity.
In the epilogue, we will tease out further developments in the competition between
textual artifacts and portraiture as the predominant or most successful mode of preserving
thespian memory. In the process, we will verify that, while the value of text to portrait may
fluctuate, the name and product of the biographer remains as part of the actor’s legacy. The
biographer has become an artist, with librarians seeking to preserve his performance just as he
sought to preserve the original actor’s art. Actor and biographer are joined in fame for as long as
the monument—the biography— lasts.

Weldy Boyd 238

Epilogue: The Limits of Materially Bound Permanence

Between the time of Cibber and that of Boaden, extra-illustration and scrapbooking
became a popular pastime of people wishing to relate more closely to the text. Although this
dissertation’s main objective has been to trace specific biographers’ contributions to and
struggles within, the growing genre of theatrical biography, the trajectory of evolution towards a
participation-friendly, material-based model provides an occasion to meditate on the permanence
of materiality sought by biographer and scrapbooker alike.
As we have seen, readerly interventions could be unobtrusive or violent alterations of the
original text. Unobtrusive examples include Cossart’s inclusion of a handwritten note from the
actor William Ballantyne, verifying a specific anecdote, or Queen Charlotte’s nicely inserted
pictures correlated with red underlines to indicate the specific subject of the portrait in relation to
the text. The most obviously intrusive example in this study is the death scrapbook of Garrick
which cannibalized parts of three biographies—Davies’s, Murphy’s, and the capsule biography
of French and British worthies upon which it was pasted. In all cases, obtrusive or unobtrusive,
some amount of destruction or alteration to the base text and the added texts was necessary, but
the higher purpose was to provide either a more comprehensive or a more interesting record of a
thespian’s life and times. This emphasis on materiality was, of course, the underlying rationale
for trying to concretize a thespian’s performance; it was also the impetus for adding supporting
pictures, letters, playbills, and other memorabilia to the text.
During the course of research, I was struck by the layers of participants who might have
“worked” on any given theatrical biography: the author and an annotator or scrapbooker loom
large, but these works also bear the literal and figurative marks of numerous librarians, heirs to
Weldy Boyd 239

the impulse to compile materials that manifests twice over in an extra-illustrated theatrical
biography.
176
But the librarian’s relationship to the material that he is charged to preserve is
complex, governed by contradicting codes that force him to restrict materials while making them
available in certain circumstances, or to dissemble a work in order to preserve individual pieces
more safely or conveniently for those readers to whom access is allowed.
It is true that, as I have suggested throughout this dissertation, the texts of long
eighteenth-century theatrical biographies themselves are often ignored or disregarded by
researchers, except when they offer a pithy anecdote or lithe description of a character or event.
Because of the value assigned to theatrical biographies in general, it is relatively easy for a
researcher to acquire permission from a librarian to handle an early edition of Thomas Davies’
Life of Garrick, for example. It is a much greater feat to be able to access the physical copy of a
first edition, extra-illustrated Life. Scrapbookers and extra-illustrators alike would be vindicated
by the sharp rise in value that a first edition receives due to the readers’ additions. There is
perhaps some irony that the eighteenth century is known as the period in which diligent
collectors and librarians endeavored to purge any evidence of a given text’s prior ownership,
obliterating priceless commentaries that might have shown us how certain texts were read
through time. Such was the tyranny of the large, unblemished margin that many notes and flights
of fancy were purged from historical record, something that the Romantics of the nineteenth
century came to resent.
177

176
Many more hands than those were undoubtedly involved, including proofreaders, typesetters and printers, fans
who gave feedback between manuscript and publication, and other people whose contributions are often taken for
granted.
177
Everything is cyclical, and contextual: a book on annotations, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books, begins by
evoking the image of a present-day annotated text, “most of the text” marked by yellow highlighter. “If it is left
behind on a bus, nobody will carry it off: it is unlovable and unsalable,” in stark contrast to our feelings about
“historical” annotations (1).
Weldy Boyd 240

More recently, libraries have had to contend with a number of practical challenges to
preserving texts like an eight-volume, heavily extra-illustrated and expanded Life of Kemble by
Boaden, housed at the Houghton Library at Harvard. The library has two copies of the book: the
physical original text and a microfilm copy, the latter of which is lent to most scholars. While the
Houghton has remarkably advanced microfilm readers that allow a user to make a PDF instantly
from a page at the push of a button, the microfilm is still black and white, and does not properly
record depth, layering, or texture. Many readers might argue that a good source of the charm of
scrapbooks is the interplay of colors and materials, especially in the case of a text like Life of
Kemble, where the anonymous extra-illustrator has taken great pains to commission or create
hand-drawn borders and designs to frame the text and his insertions into a cohesive document.
For tactile readers, as well, the experience of accessing an eighteenth-century text is the
perceived proximity to the real eighteenth-century person: microfilm is thus one more mediating
barrier. This desire to touch the real object is precisely the same impulse that led the death-
register scrapbooker of the Life of Garrick (mentioned in Chapter Two) to painstakingly stalk
attendees of Garrick’s funeral in hopes of genuine signatures of famous people.
It is easy to get overly indignant or fussy from a scholar’s—or, equally applicably and
likely, a fan’s—perspective, especially when libraries have different standards and rules for
accessing their rare book collections.
178
For example, while each rare book collection exercises
control over who can access what materials, the Clark Library in Southern California is
perceived as more accessible than the Folger, which in turn is much more willing to let a junior
scholar paw through an extra-illustrated first edition than the Houghton. However, sparing a
thought for the librarian, we might consider that he or she stands in a unique place of wishing to

178
The line between scholar and potentially over-invested fan is rather permeable; throughout this project I felt a
strong sense of phileo kinship with the collectors who took their materials about Kemble, Garrick, or Macklin so
seriously.
Weldy Boyd 241

facilitate access and use of archival materials while being charged with their preservation. For
the scholar of theatrical biography, especially extra-illustrated or otherwise augmented theatrical
biography, the librarian should appear as one more player in the chain of people who are
attempting to further the original aim of the biographer by preserving the record of the thespian.
If these theatrical biographies were not housed in libraries, they would likely fall into
disrepair and, very likely, disuse. The reality of time’s ravages for a book that is around two
hundred years old is undeniable: being at a library is likely the text’s best chance of survival. The
library that has an extra-illustrated copy of a Life of Jordan not only preserves Jordan’s
performance, but also Boaden’s as biographer, and the scrapbooker’s performance as audience-
participant in furthering the reach of the text. Finally, the library frequently preserves the lightly
penciled marks of generations of librarians, whose corrective marks both question and legitimize
the text. Thus, the librarian is simply one more soldier in the battle for preservation, a likely
unanticipated or unconsidered ally for Colley Cibber and the rest of his peers.
179

But the librarian is not just a benevolent or careful gatekeeper to the text, or an eagle-
eyed verifier of facts and purveyor of addendums. Libraries also have to decide the extent to
which they will actively intervene in the text for the sake of preservation. It is not uncommon for
libraries to elect to separate extremely desirable or famous portraits, playbills, or other such
artifacts from their original homes between the pages of a theatrical biography, in which case the
reader will turn a page to be confronted by a lightly penciled note instructing the reader that the
missing material may be requested under a separate call number. Often the portrait will be sealed

179
What if present-day scholars were permitted to add their marks alongside librarians and earlier owners? Consider
if the scholar approached the text like J.J. Cossart, emending errors and adding references to books that should be
consulted, or supplying a witty anecdote carefully culled from another text. The two main objections of such license
would be a cluttering of pages with useless folderol (in other words, a desire for our annotations to be “significant”
either due to the fame of the specific author or the general antiquity of the marks) and a fear of polluting a text with
inaccurate information. The distinctions seem to blur if you consider theatrical biography as most likely to survive
as a palimpsest; ironically, while contemporary scholars are delighted to find years of accrued commentary in an
older text, we do not, as a rule, contribute to the collective efforts due to commonly accepted library regulations.
Weldy Boyd 242

in an archival packet among other works of art, the scrapbook or extra-illustrated book
dismembered for sake of the individual print. An extra-illustrated book might have originally
taken a portrait from a given book of theatrical pictures in service of illustrating a favorite
thespian’s life, and that same portrait might, centuries later, be removed from the book and
preserved specially by a librarian. This phenomenon is interesting to me not just because of the
continuous re-adjusting of the literary corps, but also for the reassessing of value among
competing parts of a representational body. In the past century, based on library preservation
practices, the Boaden Juniors have won the battle of relevancy over the Boaden Seniors, with art
excerpted from extra-illustrated theatrical biographies by librarians, just as anecdotes are
excerpted by scholars.
Thus, the librarian takes his place as a type of modern-day scrapbooker, but one who
subtracts rather than adds to the base text. In this case, objects intended to add value to the
scrapbooks have exceeded the perceived value of the texts they were supposed to amplify—
scrapbooks, made from scraps cobbled together by an invested reader, formed an intact record
for a given period of time, only to be dissembled by the librarian in service of a new higher
priority: preserving small pieces of ephemera judged more valuable apart than together. The
scrapbooks have served their purpose as a valuable archive for materials about a thespian, but at
the expense of the artistry and comprehensiveness intended by the scrapbooker or collector.
For the individual theatrical biography, materiality is a double-edged sword. One often
craves material representation as an assurance of remembrance; however, the very tangibility of
material representation also means that the archive can be continually rearranged— added to and
subtracted from— as called for by the shifting priorities or values of the text’s guardians. Cibber
and his cohort of biographers worried endlessly whether the task of preserving the theatre actor
Weldy Boyd 243

was possible, but they seemed to have rested upon the conviction that a gathering of material
evidence would be sufficient. If the study of theatrical biography as a genre being developed in
the long eighteenth-century, and then being preserved by present-day librarians, shows us
anything, however, it is that the perceived finality of binding together a collection of material
culture was at the same time highly successful and vastly overestimated by biographers and
collectors as a stable guarantor of memory.

Weldy Boyd 244

Bibliography

Akerby, George. The Life of Mr. James Spiller, the Late Famous Comedian. In which is
Interspers’d much of the Poetical History of his Own Times. London, 1729. Eighteenth
Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 5 June 2013.
Anderson, Emily. Eighteenth-Century Authorship and the Play of Fiction: Novels and the
Theater, Haywood to Austen. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
---. “Revising Theatrical Conventions in "A Simple Story". Elizabeth Inchbald's Ambiguous
Performance.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 6.1. (2006): 5-30. JSTOR.
Web. 3 May 2014.
"anecdote, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2013. Web. 29 March 2013.
“Anecdotes of Charles Macklin.” Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany (June 1799): 416-
424. ProQuest. Web. 12 July 2013.
“Anecdotes of the Late David Garrick (I).” Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure
66:461 (May 1780): 252-256. ProQuest. Web. 28 May 2014.
“Anecdotes of the Late David Garrick (II).” Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure
66:462 (Jun 1780): 284-286. ProQuest. Web. 28 May 2014.
“Article IV: Life (sic) of Mrs. Siddons. By Thomas Campbell.” Review. The Quarterly Review
52:103 (Aug. 1834): 95-124. ProQuest. Web. 18 July 2014.
“Article X: The Life of David Garrick, Esq., by Arthur Murphy.” Review. The Critical Review,
or, Annals of Literature. 32 (June 1801): 189-195. ProQuest. 4 Mar. 2014.
“Article XII: Some Account of the Life and Writings of Philip Massinger.” Review. February
1779. The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle 49. London, Printed for D.
Henry, 1779. Print.
Weldy Boyd 245

“Article XIV: The Life of David Garrick, Esq. By Arthur Murphy, Esq.” Review. The British
Critic 17 (June 1801): 637-640. ProQuest. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
“Article XV: The Juvenile Adventures of David Ranger.” Review. The Monthly Review, or,
Literary Journal, by Several Hands 15 (1756): 655-656, 1756. Google Books. Web. 24
Oct. 2012.
“Article XIX: The Juvenile Adventures of David Ranger.” Review. The Critical Review, or,
Annals of Literature 2 (Nov 1756): 379. ProQuest. Web. 24 Oct. 2012.
“Article CX: Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick [Ed. Stephen Jones.]” Review. The
Gentleman’s Magazine. Aug. 1808: 717-719. ProQuest. Web. 31 July 2013.
Bate, W. Jackson. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. 1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1999. Print.
Betterton, Thomas [Edmund Curll]. The History of the English Stage, from the Restauration to
the Present Time…by Mr. Thomas Betterton. 1710. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale ECCO,
2010. Print.
Berkowitz, Gerald M. David Garrick: A Reference Guide. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980. Print.
“Biographical Anecdotes of the Late Mr. Garrick.” The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical
Chronicle. 49 (Mar. 1779): 117-119. ProQuest. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.
---. The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle. 49 (Apr. 1779): 171-173. ProQuest.
Web. 8 Dec. 2013.
---. The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle. 49. (May 1779): 226-228. ProQuest.
Web. 8 Dec. 2013.
---. The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle. 49 (June 1779): 280-282. ProQuest.
Web. 8 Dec. 2013.
Weldy Boyd 246

Blasingame, Dionne. “Shakespeare Character Analysis: The Character of Leonato in
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.” Literatures and Foreign Languages. 16 Oct.
2008. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997. Print.
Boaden, James. Autograph Letters Signed from James Boaden to John Bowyer Nichols
[manuscript], 1829-1835. The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
---. The Life of Mrs. Jordan: Including Original Private Correspondence, and Numerous
Anecdotes of her Contemporaries. In Two Volumes. 1831. London: Forgotten Books,
2012. Print.
---. The Life of John Philip Kemble. Illustrated with Portraits, Autograph Letters, Views, Play
Bills, and Original Correspondence. 8 vol. Extraillustrated. London: Longman, 1825.
Print. The Theatre Collection. Houghton Library, Harvard College, Boston, M.A.
---. Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, Esq.: Including a History of the Stage, from the
Time of Garrick to the Present Period. Two Volumes in One. 1825. Charleston, SC: Nabu
P, 2010. Print.
---. Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald: Including Her Familiar Correspondence With
the Most Distinguished Persons of Her Time, to Which are Added the Massacre, and a
Case of Conscience, Now First Published from Her Autograph Copies. In Two Volumes.
Ed. James Boaden, Esq. 1833. London: Forgotten Books, 2012. Print.
---. Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons, Interspersed with Anecdotes of Authors and Actors [Mrs. Sarah
Siddons.] 1827. 2 vols. Ulan P, 2012. Print.
Boaden, John. Illustrations of the Late John Philip Kemble, Drawn on Stone by R. J. Lane, from
Weldy Boyd 247

Pictures Painted in His [Kemble’s] Lifetime by John Boaden. London: J. Dickinson,
1826. Print. The Theatre Collection. Houghton Library, Harvard College, Boston, M.A.
“Boaden’s Life of Mrs. Jordan.” Review. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, 1830-1869
Ed. William Maginn. 2.12 (January 1831): 736-739. ProQuest. Web. 2 Sept. 2014.
Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. 2 vols. London: printed by Henry Baldwin,
for Charles Dilly, 1791. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of
Southern California. Web. 23 Apr. 2012.
Brack, O. M.. “Davies, Thomas (c.1712–1785).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed.
H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence
Goldman. Oct. 2006. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.
Braudy, Leo. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. 1986. New York: Vintage Books,
1997. Print.
Burnim, Kalman A. “An Introduction to Garrick.” Folgerpedia. Folger Shakespeare Library,
n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2013.
Campbell, Thomas. Life of Mrs. Siddons. 1834. Charleston, SC: Nabu P, 2011. Print.
Carlson, Marvin A. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2001. Print.
---. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey, from the Greeks to the Present.
Expanded Edition. 1984. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993. Print.
--- and Yvonne Shafer. The Play’s the Thing: An Introduction to Theatre. New York: Longman,
1990. Print.
Charlotte, Queen, Consort of George III, and Thomas Davies. Memoirs of the life of David
Weldy Boyd 248

Garrick, esq., interspersed with characters and anecdotes of his theatrical
contemporaries: the whole forming a history of the stage which includes a period of
thirty-six years. A new edition. London: Printed for the author, 1780. Print. USC Special
Collections Library. University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Churchill, C. (Charles). The Rosciad. 4
th
ed. London, 1741. Eighteenth Century Collections
Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 7 Jan. 2013.
Cibber, Colley. An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber: With an Historical View of the Stage
During His Own Time. Ed. B.R.S. Fone. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1986. Print.
Clifford, James L. Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism, 1560-1690. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1962. Print.
Congreve, Francis Asprey. Authentic Memoirs of the Late Mr. Charles Macklin, Comedian.
1798. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale ECCO, 2010. Print.
Cossart, J. J. [annotator] and Cook [Cooke], William. Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Comedian.
With the Dramatic Characters, Manners, Anecdotes, &c. of the Age in which He Lived:
Forming an History of the Stage During almost the Whole of the Century... London:
Printed for J. Asperne by T. Maiden, 1804. Annotations ca. 1806. The Folger
Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
Cooke [Cook], William. The Elements of Dramatic Criticism, containing a History of the
Stage…Concluding with General Instructions for Succeeding in the Art of Acting.
London: Printed for G, Kearsly and G. Robison, 1775. Eighteenth Century Collections
Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.
---. Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Comedian. With the Dramatic Characters, Manners,
Weldy Boyd 249

Anecdotes, &c. of the Age in which He Lived: Forming an History of the Stage During
almost the Whole of the Century... London: Printed for J. Asperne by T. Maiden, 1804.
1804. Charleston, SC: Nabu, 2011. Print.
Daggett, Windsor Pratt. The Sounds of English: Orthographic Texts and Phonetic
Transcriptions. Daggett Studio, 1928. Google Books. Web. 4 Jan. 2015.
Davies, Thomas. A Genuine Narrative of the Life and Theatrical Transactions of Mr. John
Henderson, Commonly Called the Bath Roscius. London, 1777. Eighteenth Century
Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 13 Aug. 2013.
---. Dramatic Miscellanies: Consisting of Critical Observations on Several Plays of Shakespeare
with a Review of His Principal Characters, and Those of Various Eminent Writers, as
Represented by Mr. Garrick, and Other Celebrated Comedians, with Anecdotes of
Dramatic Poets, Actors, &c. In Three Volumes. London: Printed for the Author, 1783-
1784. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California.
Web. 26 June 2013.
---. Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. Interspersed with Characters and
Anecdotes of His Theatrical Contemporaries… London: Printed for the Author, 1780.
Google Books. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.
---. Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. Interspersed with Characters and
Anecdotes of His Theatrical Contemporaries… Ed. S.J. [Stephen Jones]. 1806.
Charleston, SC: Nabu, 2011. Print.
Deutsch, Helen. Loving Dr. Johnson. Chicago: U Chicago P, 2005. Print.
Dickie, Simon. “Joseph Andrews and the Great Laughter Debate.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century
Weldy Boyd 250

Culture. Eds. Catherine Ingrassa and Jeffrey S. Ravel. 34: 271-332. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins U, 2005. Print.
Diderot. The Paradox of Acting. 1830. Piccadilly: Chatto and Windus, 1883. Web. 23 Nov.
2013.
Dobson, Michael. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship,
1660 –1769. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Print.
Edel, Leon. "BIOGRAPHY: A Manifesto." Biography 1.1 (1978): 1-3. Print.
Engel, Laura. Fashioning Celebrity: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for
Image Making. Columbus: Ohio State U P, 2011. Print.
The Extraillustrated Life of David Garrick by Davies, 1780. David Garrick Collection. The
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
Essays in Eighteenth-Century Biography. Ed. Philip B. Daghlian. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP,
1968. Print.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones. 1749. Ed. John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.
Print.
Garraty, John A. The Nature of Biography. New York: Knopf, 1957. Print.
Garrick, David. Florizel and Perdita. A Dramatic Pastoral, in Three Acts. Altr’d from the
Winter’s Tale of Shakespeare. London, 1758. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 16 June 2013.
---. Private Correspondence of David Garrick with the Most Celebrated Persons of His
Time...and a New Biographical Memoir of Garrick. Ed. James Boaden. 2 vols. London:
Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831-1832. Print.
---. Private Correspondence of David Garrick, with the Most Celebrated Persons of His time:
Weldy Boyd 251

Now First Published from the Originals, and Illustrated with Notes, and a New
Biographical Memoir of Garrick. 2 vols. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley,
1831-1832. Extraillustrated. The Theatre Collection. Houghton Library, Harvard
College, Boston, M.A.
---. The Sick Monkey, a Fable. London: printed for J. Fletcher, 1765. Eighteenth Century
Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 12 June 2013.
Gildon, Charles. The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton. 1710. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale ECCO,
2010. Print.
"Grangerize, v." OED Online. Oxford U P, July 2014. Web. 18 July 2014.
Hadlow, Janice. A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III. New York:
Macmillan. 2014. Print.
Halliday, M.A.K. Language and Education, Volume 9. Ed. Jonathan J. Webster. New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2007. Web. Sept. 2, 2014.
Heywood, Thomas. An Apology for Actors. Memphis: General Books, 2012. Print.
Highfill, Jr., Philip H. “A Peep behind the Curtain: Mass Theatrical Biography.” In Search of
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography: Papers Read at a Clark
Library Seminar, January 25, 1975. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library, 1975. Print.
Hill, John. The actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing. Interspersed with theatrical anecdotes,
critical remarks on plays, and occasional observations on audiences. London: Printed for
R. Griffiths, at the Dunciad, in St. Paul's Church-Yard, MDCCL. [1750]. Eighteenth
Century Collections Online. Web. 29 Mar. 2015. 3 June 2013.
Holmes, Richard. Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Weldy Boyd 252

Print.
---. Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer. New York: Pantheon, 2000. Print.
Jackson, H. J. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001. Print.
Johnson, Samuel. “Idler No. 84: Biography How Best Performed.” Samuel Johnson: Selected
Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt. Berkeley: UC P, 1977: 268-270.
Print.
---. “The Rambler No. 60: The Dignity and Usefulness of Biography.” Samuel Johnson: Selected
Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt. Berkeley: UC P, 1977: 181-185.
Print.
J R. “On Reading Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq., by Mr. Davies.” The Town and
Country Magazine, or, Universal Repository of Knowledge, Instruction, and
Entertainment 12 (Sept. 1780): 494. ProQuest. Online. 15 June 2013.
Kelly, Ian. Mr. Foote’s Other Leg: Comedy, Tragedy, and Murder in Georgian London. London:
Picador, 2013. Print.
Kennard, Nina H. Mrs. Siddons. Ed. John H. Ingram. London: W. H. Allen & Co, 1887. Google
Books. Web. 7 July 2014.
[Kimber, Edward.] The Juvenile Adventures of David Ranger, Esq.: From an Original
Manuscript found in the Collections of a Late Noble Lord. in Two Volumes. London:
printed for P. Stevens, 1757. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of
Southern California. Online. 17 June 2013.
[---.] The Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson. A Narrative Founded on Fact. Written by
Himself. Vol. 1-2. Dublin, 1771. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University
of Southern California. Online. 22 June 2013.
Weldy Boyd 253

Kirkman, James Thomas. Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin. 1798. Amazon Digital
Services, 2013. Print.
Lansdowne, George Granville, Baron. The Jew of Venice. A Comedy. London, 1701. Eighteenth
Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 1 Jan. 2012.
“The Late Mrs. Siddons.” Review of Life of Siddons by Thomas Campbell. The New Monthly
Magazine and Literary Journal 41:164 (Aug. 1834): 471-474. ProQuest. Web. 23 Oct.
2014.
Leonato [Thomas Davies]. “Eulogium on Mr. Garrick’s Leaving the Stage. From the St. James’s
Evening Post.” Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Review 46 (July 1776). Web. 18
July 2013.
“The Life and Death of David Garrick Esq., the Celebrated English Roscius [By the Old
Comedian].” Review. The Westminster Magazine (Apr. 1779): 196. ProQuest. Web. 12
Aug. 2013.
“The Life of Mrs. Siddons, by James Boaden, Esq.” Review. Monthly Magazine, or British
Register 3.14 (Feb. 1827): 194-195. ProQuest. Web. Nov. 23, 2014.
Longaker, John Mark, 1900. English Biography in the Eighteenth Century. Philadelphia:
U of Pennsylvania P, 1931. Print.
Macfarlane, Robert. Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century
Literature. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, UK, 2007. Print.
Macklin, Charles. Autograph List by Charles Macklin of Correspondence with George Colman
[manuscript], 1772-1773. The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
Macklin, Charles. Autograph Papers of Charles Macklin [manuscript], 1754?-1787. David
Garrick Collection. The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
Weldy Boyd 254

---. Commonplace Book [manuscript], 1778-1790. The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington,
D.C.
---. Four Comedies by Charles Macklin. Ed. J.O. Bartley. London: Sidgewick & Johnson, 1968.
Print.
Marshall, F.A. “Introduction.” The Works of William Shakespeare, Vol. 3. Ed. Henry Irving,
Frank Albert Marshall, and Edward Dowden. London: Blackie & Son, 1888. Web. 25
July 2014.
McFarland, Thomas. "The Originality Paradox." New Literary History 5.3 (1974): 447-76. Print.
Marcus, Laura. Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice. Manchester:
Manchester UP, 1994. Print.
Marshall, Gail, et al. Lives of Shakespearian Actors. I, David Garrick, Charles Macklin and
Margaret Woffington by their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008. Print.
---. Lives of Shakespearian Actors. III, Charles Kean, Samuel Phelps and William Charles
Macready by their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto; Eureka Press, 2010.
Print.
“Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq., Interspersed with Characters and Anecdotes of His
Theatrical Contemporaries [by Davies]” Review. The Westminster Magazine (May
1780): 277-279. ProQuest. Web. 30 October 2013.
“Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald [by Boaden].” Review. The Athenaeum 290 (May 18, 1833): 305-
306. ProQuest. Web. 6 May 2014.
“Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons [by Boaden].” Review. Robins’s London and Dublin Magazine (Feb
1827): 147-154. ProQuest. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.
“Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons, Interspersed with Anecdotes of Actors and Authors [by Boaden].”
Weldy Boyd 255

Review. The National Magazine, and General Review 1.3. (Jan. 1827): 183-186.
ProQuest. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.
Murphy, Esq., Arthur. An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. London:
printed for T. Longman, etc. MDCCXCII. [1792]. Eighteenth Century Collections
Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
---. The Life of David Garrick, Esq. Dublin: Brett Smith, 1801. Web. 23 Aug. 2013.
“The Life of David Garrick; from Original Family Papers…by Percy Fitzgerald” [Review].
From The Quarterly Review. In Littell’s Living Age, Volume 98. Eds. Eliakim Littell,
Robert S. Littell. Boston: Littell and Gay (1868): 451-476. Print.
"Murphy’s Life of Garrick." Review. The Monthly Visitor, and New Family Magazine (1801):
153-162. ProQuest. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
Nichols, John. Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century: Comprizing [sic] Biographical
Memoirs of William Bouyer, Printer. Vol 2. London: Printed for the Author, 1812.
Google Books. Web. 3 July 2014.
Norman, N. D. From a Record of Death to a Memory of Life: The Rise of the Biographical
Obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine. MA Thesis. Virginia Tech. Scholar Library:
Blacksburg, VA, 2008. Web. 1 June 2013.
Nussbaum, Felicity. The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century
England. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1989. Print.
O’Bryan, Daniel. Authentic Memoirs…of Mr. Robert Wilkes. London, 1732. Eighteenth
Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 1 Jan. 2013.
Old Comedian. The Life and Death of David Garrick, Esq., the Celebrated English Roscius.
Weldy Boyd 256

Second edition. London, 1779. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University
of Southern California. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.
Oldys, William. Memoirs of Mrs. Anne Oldfield. London, 1741. Eighteenth Century Collections
Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 1 Jan. 2013.
Oxberry, William. Oxberry’s Dramatic Mirror, or, Oxberry’s Dramatic Biography and
Histrionic Anecdotes. London: Published by G. Virtue, Printed by C. Baynes, 1827. Print.
Palfrey, Simon, and Tiffany Stern. Shakespeare in Parts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, UK,
2007. Print.
Parry, Sir Edward Abbott. Charles Macklin. London, 1891. Charleston, SC: BibloBazaar, 2011.
Print.
Paulin, Tom. “Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer [Review].” The Guardian. 7
July 2000. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.
Perry, Gillian, et al. The First Actresses: Nell Gwynn to Sarah Siddons. London: National
Portrait Gallery, 2011. Print.
Photius, Jr. [W. Sherlock] “Boaden’s Life of Mrs. Siddons, Feb. 6, 1827 [review].” Letters
on Literature by Photius, Junior. Vol. 1. Brussels: Printed by Adolphe Wahlen, 1836.
Print.
“The Private Correspondence of David Garrick, with the Most Celebrated Persons of His Time
[Ed. Boaden]” Review. 2.5 (Sept. 1831): 1-2. Ed. Frank Marryat and James Grant.
London: Saunders and Otley. ProQuest. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Radner, John B. Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship. New Haven: Yale UP, 2013.
Reinelt, Janenne G., and Joseph R. Roach, eds. Critical Theory and Performance. 2007. Ann
Arbor: U of Michigan, 2010. Print.
Weldy Boyd 257

The Repository of Wit and Humour, Comprising More than One Thousand Anecdotes, Odd
Scraps, Off-Hand Hits and Humorous Sketches. Arr. M. Lafayette Byrn, M.D. Boston:
J.P. Jewitt and Co, 1857. Print.
Roach, Joseph R. “Garrick, the Ghost, and the Machine.” Theatre Journal Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec.,
1982), pp. 431-440. JSTOR. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.
---. It. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Print.
---. The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting. Newark: University of Delaware
Press; Associated University Presses, 1985. Print.
Rowe, “Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear [sic].” The Works of Mr.
William Shakespear, in six volumes, adorn’d with cuts. Revis’d and corrected, with an
account of the life and writings of the author. 6 vols. London: Printed for Jacob Tonson,
1709. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California.
Web. 13 Mar. 2012.
Scrapbook of David Garrick/Life of Garrick [manuscript.] David Garrick Collection. The Folger
Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
Schiff, Stacy. “The Dual Lives of the Biographer.” New York Times. Nov. 24, 2012. Web. 8
Dec. 2012.
Schoenbaum, S. Shakespeare's Lives. Oxford: New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University
Press, 1991. Print.
Sherman, Stuart. “Garrick among Media: The ‘Now Performer’ Navigates the News.” PMLA
126:4 (Oct. 2011): 966-982. JSTOR. Web. 6 Oct. 2013.
Siddons, Sarah. Papers of Sarah Siddons [manuscript], 1778-1832. The Folger Shakespeare
Library, Washington, D.C.
Weldy Boyd 258

Sisman, Adam. Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson. London:
Penguin, 2000. Print.
Smollett, Tobias. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, in which are included Memoirs of a Lady
of Quality. 3 vols. London, 1751. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale.
University of Southern California. Web. 8 Dec. 2012.
---. The Adventures of Roderick Random. 2 vols. London, 1748. Eighteenth Century Collections
Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 8 Dec. 2012.
Smyth, James. David Garrick. London, 1887. San Bernardino, CA: University of Toronto
Libraries, 2014. Print.
Stage Lives: A Bibliography and Index to Theatrical Biographies in English. Comp. George G.
Bryan. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985. Print.
Stauffer, Donald. The Art of Biography in Eighteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton UP,
1941. Print.
---. English Biography before 1700. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1930. Print.
Steele, Joshua. An Essay Towards Establishing the Melody and Measure of Speech, to be
Expressed and Perpetuated by Peculiar Symbols. London: Printed by W. Bowyer and J.
Nichols, for Jay Almon, in Piccadilly, 1775. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 2 Aug. 2014.
Stillinger, Jack. Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991. Print.
Stone, Jr., George Winchester. “David Garrick and the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Notes toward
Weldy Boyd 259

a New Biography.” In Search of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatrical
Biography: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, January 25, 1975. Los Angeles:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1975. Print.
Straub, Kristina. Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth Century Players and Sexual Ideology. 1991.
Princeton UP, 1992. Print.
Taylor, Gary. Reinventing Shakespeare. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989. Print.
Theatrical Monitor, or, The Green Room Laid Open. No. 1-18 (Oct. 1767-April 1768). London,
W. Bingley and S. Bladon, 1768. Print.
“Thomas Davies.” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 142: Eighteenth-Century British
Literary Biographers. Ed. Steven Serafin. New York: Hunter CP, 1994. 69-77. Gale.
Web. 1 Feb. 2015.
Toothill, Matthew. The Stages of Celebrity. MA Thesis. University of Birmingham. eTheses:
Birmingham, 2013. Web. 2 June 2014.
Victor, Benjamin. The History of the Theatres of London and Dublin, from the year 1730 to
the Present Time. Vols. 1-2. London: printed for T. Davies. Eighteenth Century
Collections Online. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
[---.] Memoirs of the Life of Barton Booth, Esq. London, printed for John Watts, 1733.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Southern California. Web. 6
Apr. 2013.
Walton, Izaak. Izaak Walton’s Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, and George
Herbert. 1640-1678. Ed. Henry Morley. London: George Routledge and Sons: 1888.
Print.
Wanko, Cheryl. Roles of Authority: Thespian Biography and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century
Weldy Boyd 260

Britain. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2003. Print.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. 1957. Whitefish,
MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2010. Print.
West, Shearer. The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick
and Kemble. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991. Print.
---. “Roles and Role Models: Montagu, Siddons, Lady Macbeth.” Bluestockings Displayed:
Portraiture, Performance and Patronage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013. 164-186. Print.
Wilson, Garff B. "Consider Theatrical Biographies." Theater 5.1 (1973): 139-45. Print.
Wikipedia contributors. "Thomas Davies (bookseller)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Nov. 2014. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.
Winston, James [compiler]. David Garrick, A Collection of Engravings, Manuscripts, Playbills
[manuscript], ca. 1830. The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.
Worthen, William. The Idea of the Actor. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. Print.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This is a project about eighteenth‐century biography’s role in revising the eighteenth‐century concept of competition as relevant to theatrical biographers, who come to view their work as participating in the creation of art rather than simply recording art that already happened. “The Desire for Presence: Developments in Theatrical Biography during the Long Eighteenth Century” suggests a visible—but not impermeable—teleology from Thomas Davies as the first significant biographer to throw off the shadows of anonymity and weld his own image to his subject, David Garrick (Chapter 1), to three biographers of Macklin dueling amongst themselves for the right to tell Macklin’s story in the post‐Davies competitive market (Chapter 2), to the serial biographer James Boaden’s attempts to build a professional reputation for himself as a biographer and prominent participatory character in the multiple Lives he tells (Chapter 3). In each instance of producing a theatrical biography, the author is confronted not only with his duty to represent the actor, but the need to do so in an original, compelling manner that sets his account apart from other contenders and guarantees the permanency of his account as a treasured artifact of the stage rather than a disposable commodity. The willful encouragement of viewing literary materiality as an antidote to ephemeral stage‐business leads in turn to the absorption of prior biographical works and letters by authors, and reverberates in their readers’ quests to augment their copies of theatrical biographies through adding playbills, marginal notes, etchings, paintings, newspaper clippings, and even funerary souvenirs that not only testified to their interest in the stage, but secured their existence as well by evidence of participation. Thus, the author at once guaranteed the thespian’s legacy would live on while hitching his own likelihood of being remembered to the actor. The audience followed suit by adding their own personal touches, forming a palimpsest of participants eager to secure a small chunk of personal immortality. ❧ This project provides an introduction to theatrical biography as an immensely popular genre in the eighteenth century that deserves more scholarly attention. Currently, theatrical biography is usually overlooked or encountered solely in excerpts offered to advance individual research goals

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Suppositional thinking in eighteenth-century literature: authorship, originality, & the female imagination

PDF

Living her narrative: Writing heroines in the eighteenth-century novel

PDF

Believing in novels: Evangelical narratives and nineteenth‐century British culture

PDF

Remaking the New World: race, landscape, and eugenics in post-apocalyptic America

PDF

Branding trust: advertising, trademarks, and the problem of legitimacy in the United States, 1876-1920

PDF

Parodic male docieties in Russian culture: from the late Medieval period to the late Soviet era

PDF

The impact of globalization, economics, and educational policy on the development of 21st-century skills and education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in Costa Rican schools

PDF

The impact of globalization, economics and educational policy on the development of 21st century skills and STEM education in Costa Rica

Asset Metadata

Creator Weldy Boyd, Amanda (author)

Core Title The desire for presence: developments in theatrical biography during the long Eighteenth Century

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publication Date 06/09/2015

Defense Date 06/09/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Biography,Charles Macklin,competition,David Garrick,James Boaden,John Philip Kemble,materiality,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance,Sarah Siddons,Theatre,Thomas Davies

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anderson, Emily Hodgson (committee chair), Braudy, Leo (committee member), Dane, Joseph A. (committee member), Habinek, Thomas (committee member), James, Heather (committee member)

Creator Email amandachristineboyd@gmail.com,weldy@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-570529

Unique identifier UC11299574

Identifier etd-WeldyBoydA-3462.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-570529 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-WeldyBoydA-3462.pdf

Dmrecord 570529

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Weldy Boyd, Amanda

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA