Samuel Foote

Life
1720-1777; left Worcester Coll, Oxford, without a degree; wasted his fortune and turned to acting; became an actor-dramatist and discovered his metier with when he succeeded as a mimic in a revival of The Rehearsal (1671), by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; his own earliest piece, The Minor (1760; 2 acts), ridiculing the Methodists, was a failure when first given in Dublin but succeeded at Drury-Lane Th. three years later when given in an enlarged, three-act form;

Foote presented Diversions of the Morning in 1747, ridiculing contemporary persons including actors, calling these entertainments “teas” to avoid the licencing laws; he returned to the regular stage in 1753 and succeeded again in mimicry parts of his own composition; co-leased Drury Lane Th. with Arthur Murphy and appeared on stage with him; played the Irishman Peter Paragraph - a caricature of George Faulkner - in his own play Orators (1762) [var. Authors];

lost his leg through a practical joke at a party when he fell from a horse and suffered amputation and received a patent for a theatre in Westminster though the Duke of York in compensation - enabling him to act without subterfuge; wrote The Devil on Two Sticks satirising his predicament; went on to build the new Haymarket, 1767, and held it till 1777; the United Irishman Rev. William Jackson [q.v.] was represented as Dr. Viper in his play The Capuchin (1776); wrote A Trip to Calais (1778) in which the Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, is satirised among others - resulting in a prosecution that drove him from the stage; d. at Dover, Kent. ODNB

[ top ]

Works

Collected plays:

  • The Works of Samuel Foote, Esq., with remarks on each play, and An Essay on the Life, Genius and Writings of the Author, by Jon Bee, Esq., in Three Volumes (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper 1830) [Vol. II contains Ihe Minor; The Liar; The Orators; The Mayor of Garratt; The Patron; The Commissary; ending p.358];
  • The Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, Esq: The Life of Samuel Foote, Esq. [containing:] Taste. the Englishman at Paris. the Author. the Englishman Returned from Paris. the Knights. the Mayor of Garratt (Palala Press 2015), 334pp. [orig. edn. not stated in Amazon].
  • George Taylor, ed., Plays by Samuel Foote and Arthur Murphy (Cambridge UP 1984).
Contemp. editions (incl.)
  • The Orators [New Th. Haymarket (London: T. Lownes; T. Caslon 1780), 69pp. [with the epigraph, ‘Where more is meant than meets the ear’ —Il Penseroso [Milton]; available at Google Books - online; accessed 13.08.2023.]

The plays of Samuel Foote are largely reproduced in digital form at Online Books with editions of the Dramatic Works in 1760, 1770, 1778, 1782, 1788, 1797, 1809, .. 1897, 1980 (Blom), et al. - all online; accessed 13.08.2023.

[ top ]

Criticism
Percy H. Fitzgerald, Samuel Foote: A Biography (London: Chatto & Windus 1910), vii, 382pp. See also Arnott (Theatrical Literature), citing Lowe: ‘The Minor was first produced in Dublin without success in Jan. 1760. Foote extended it, and on its production in the Haymarket in the summer ... it was very successful. It is a bitter attack on the Methodists.’]

Jon Bee, Intro. to The Minor, in The Works of Samuel Foote (London 1830): "Originally produced in Ireland, in two acts; this celebrated piece nearly got its quietus on the first representation, at Crow-Street Theatre, 1760. The audience there could not comprehend the main plot, or contrivance, of Sir William Wealthy; a disrelish for the satire upon the methodists - from whose exertions much party good was then expected, produced the first mark of disapprobation: and when Mrs. Cole complained of the pain in her hip, Woodward"s manner of excruciating was so broad as to give general disgust. In England the same feeling could not be excited, because that arch-imitator touched on a very vulgar, but it should seem very generally recognised, saying, respecting Irish ladies, which none but Twiss (the traveller) [viz., Richard Twiss] ever alluded to - in print; and we, at present, shall not, seeing the extreme saline manner in which the sex treated the travellert"s memory, long after the publication of his celebrated journey. On that occasion, the row begun in the boxes! / Having added the character of Smirk, and a good many incidents, Mr. Foote brought out The Minor in three acts, at Drury-lane Theatre, in 1761, and it was here favourably received, brought about thirty-four full houses, and in print has gone through nearly half as many editions. [...] (There is an epistoloary dedication to the Duke of Devonshire.) [Available at Google Books - online; accessed 13.08.2023.]

[ top ]

Commentary
J. F. Molloy, Romance of Irish Stage (1897), Foote’s play The Author contains a character, Peter Paragraph, modelled on George Faulkner who at first ignored it, but later sued when he found his own mechanics attending with hilarity.

G. C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman (1937), Samuel Foote’s The Orators (1772) is along the same lines, and contains skits on two plays, Cock-Lane Ghost, and The Robin-Hood. In the later scenes, he introduces a number of Irishmen, the first being a witness, Peter Paragraph, journalist, “a native of Ireland, and born and bred in the city of Dublin”, arrived with the confessed purpose of marrying a London bookseller’s daughter, who falls out with his prospective father-in-law over their rival exploitation of the news-value of Fanny the Phantom, the central figure in the Cock-Lane Ghost, which is skitted in the first part of the play. [Note that Peter Paragraph is a caricature of George Faulkner]. Stage-Irishmen in the upper boxes of the play-within-the-play interrupt to rail against “that hopping fellow there, that Dublin journal man, Pra-paragraf by my shoul, that is none of his name.” Sending his men to shout it down in the theatre, Faulkner was humiliated since they were struck silent by Foote’s character which they mistook for their master.

Further: Samuel Foot’s The Bankrupt (1776) also contains an Irish journalist, Phelim O’Flam, who collects obituary details of the latest social casualties. In Dr Last in his Chariot, produced in collaboration with Bickerstaff[e], there is a Dr. Bulgruddery, while in The Devil Upon Two Sticks, there are Doctors Sligo and Osasafras. of these, the one says to the other, ‘Osasafras - that’s a name of no note; he is not a Milesian, I am sure. The family, I suppose, came over the other day with Strongbow, not above 700 or 800 years ago, or perhaps a descendent from one of Oliver’s drummers.’

Christopher J. Wheatley, ‘“Our own good, plain, old Irish English”: Charles Macklin Cathal McLaughlin) and Protestant Convert Accommodations’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 4, 1 (Autumn 1998), pp.81-102, narrating that Macklin gave a lecture on Irish duelling which was interrupted by Samuel Foote who remarked (in William Cooke’s words): ‘“about this time of night, every gentleman in Ireland, that can afford it, is in his third bottle of claret, consequently is in a fair way of betting drunk: from drunkenness proceeds quarreling, and from quarreling, dueling, and so there’s an end of the chapter.” The company seemed fully satisfied with this abridgement, and Macklin shut up his lecture for the evening in great dudgeon.’ (cooke, Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Comedian, 1804, pp.208-09; Wheatley, p.85.)

[ top ]

References
Eric Stevens Books (1992) lists The Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, Esq., P. Valliant et al, [eds.] ca. 1786, 4 vols. bound in 2, prints 19 plays, variously dated.

Samuel Johnson: Dr. Johnson, who was satirised by Foote, considered his wit ‘irresistable’. His retaliation on Foote’s broken leg is quoted in W. Clark Russell, Representative Actors (London: Frederick Warne and Co, 1888).

[ top ]