Samuel Foote

Samuel Foote (1720-1777). Portrait by Jean-François Gilles Colson (1733-1803), 1769. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Samuel Foote (January 1720 - 21 October 1777) was a British playwright, actor and theater manager from Cornwall. He was known for his comedic acting and writing, and for turning the loss of a leg in a riding accident in 1766 to comedic opportunity.

Life

Youth and education

Foote was baptized at Truro on 27 January 1720. His father was a man of good family and position. His mother, (Eleanor Goodere), whom he is said in person as well as in disposition to have strongly resembled, he liberally supported in the days of his prosperity, and after her death indignantly vindicated her character from the imputations recklessly cast upon it by the revengeful spite of the duchess of Kingston.

Foote was educated at the collegiate school at Worcester, and at Worcester College, Oxford, distinguishing himself in both places by mimicry and audacious pleasantries of all kinds, and, although he left Oxford without taking his degree, acquiring a classical training which afterwards enabled him neatly to turn a classical quotation or allusion, and helped to give to his prose style a certain fluency and elegance.

About the time when Foote came of age, he inherited a fortune through the murder of his uncle, Sir John Dinely Goodere, Bart., by his brother, Captain Samuel Goodere.

Early career

Foote was “designed” for the law, but certainly not by nature. In his chambers at the Temple, and in the Grecian Coffee-house hard by, he learned to know something of lawyers if not of law, and was afterwards able to jest at the jargon and to mimic the mannerisms of the bar, and to satirize the Latitats of the other branch of the profession with particular success. The famous argument in Hobson v. Nobson, in The Lame Lovers, is almost as good of its kind as that in Bardell v. Pickwick. But a stronger attraction drew him to the Bedford Coffee-house in Covent Garden, and to the theatrical world of which it was the social centre.

After he had run through 2 fortunes (the 2nd of which he appears to have inherited at his father’s death), and had then passed through severe straits, he made his earliest appearance on the actual stage in 1744. It is said that he had married a young lady in Worcestershire; but the traces of his wife (he affirmed himself that he was married to his washer-woman) are mysterious, and probably apocryphal.

Foote’s earliest appearance as an actor was made little more than 2 years after that of David Garrick, as to whose merits the critics, including Foote himself, were now fiercely at war. Foote's own debut, as Othello, was a failure; and though he was fairly successful in genteel comedy parts, and was, after a favourable reception at Dublin, enrolled in the regular company at Drury Lane in the winter of 1745–1746, he had not as yet made any palpable hit.

Diversions

Finding that his talent lay neither in tragedy nor in genteel comedy, Foote had begun to wonder “where the devil it did lie,” when his successful performance of the part of Bayes in The Rehearsal at last suggested to him the true outlet for his extraordinary gift of mimicry. Following the example of Garrick, he had introduced into this famous part imitations of actors, and had added a variety of other satirical comment in the way of “gag.”

Engaging a small company of actors, he now boldly announced for 22 April 1747, at the theatre in the Haymarket “gratis,” “a new entertainment called the Diversions of the Morning,” to which were to be added a farce adapted from Congreve, and an epilogue “spoken by the B-d-d Coffee-house.” Foote’s success in these Diversions obtained for him the name of “the English Aristophanes,” an absurd compliment, declined by Foote himself (see his letter in The Minor).

The Diversions consisted of a series of imitations of actors and other well-known persons, whose various peculiarities of voice, gesture, manner or dress were brought directly before the spectators, while the epilogue introduced the wits of the Bedford engaged in ludicrous disputation, and specially “took off” an eminent physician (probably the munificent Sir William Browne, whom he afterwards caricatured in The Devil on Two Sticks), and a notorious quack oculist of the day.

The actors ridiculed in this entertainment having at once procured the aid of the constables for preventing its repetition, Foote immediately advertised an invitation to his friends to drink a dish of tea with him at the Haymarket on the following day at noon — “and ’tis hoped there will be a great deal of comedy and some joyous spirits; he will endeavour to make the morning as diverting as possible. Tickets for this entertainment to be had at St George’s coffee-house, Temple-Bar, without which no person will be admitted. N.B.— Sir Dilbury Diddle will be there, and Lady Betty Frisk has absolutely promised.”

The device succeeded to perfection; further resistance was abandoned as futile by the actors, whom Foote mercilessly ridiculed in the “instructions to his pupils” which the entertainer pretended to impart (typifying them under characters embodying their several chief peculiarities or defects — the massive and sonorous James Quin as a watchman, the shrill-voiced Lacy Ryan as a razor-grinder, the charming Peg Woffington, whose tones had an occasional squeak in them, as an orange-woman crying her wares and the bill of the play); and Mr Foote’s Chocolate, which was afterwards converted into an evening Tea, became an established favourite with the town.

In spite of this success, Foote seems to have contrived to spend a 3rd fortune, and to have found it necessary to eke out his means by a speculation in small-beer, as is recorded in an amusing anecdote told of him by Samuel Johnson. But he could now command a considerable income; and when money came he seems to have freely expended it in both hospitality and charity.

Haymarket Theatre

During his engagements at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane, of which he was joint-manager, and in professional trips to Scotland, and more especially to Ireland, he appeared both in comedies of other authors and more especially in his own. He played Hartop in his Knights (1749, printed 1754). Taste (1752), in which parts of the Diversions were incorporated, was followed by some 18 pieces, the majority of which were produced at the Haymarket, the favourite home of Foote’s entertainments. In 1760 he succeeded in obtaining for this theatre a licence from the lord chamberlain, afterwards (in 1766) converted into a licence for summer performances for life.

The entertainments were a succession of variations on the original idea of the Diversions and the Tea. Now, it was an Auction of Pictures (1748), of part of which an idea may be formed from the 2nd act of the comedy Taste; now, a lecture on Orators (1754), suggested by some bombastic discourses given by Macklin in his old age at the Piazza coffee-house in Covent Garden, where Foote had amused the audience and confounded the speaker by interposing his humorous comments. The Orators is preserved in the shape of a hybrid piece, which begins with a mock lecture on the art of oratory and its representatives in England, and ends with a diverting scene of a pot-house forum debate, to which Holberg’s Politician-Tinman can hardly have been a stranger.

At a later date (1773) a new device was introduced in a Puppet-show. The piece (unprinted) played in this by the puppets was called Piety in Pattens, and professed to show “by the moral how maidens of low degree might become rich from the mere effects of morality and virtue, and by the literature how thoughts of the most commonplace might be concealed under cover of words the most high flown.” In other words, it was an attack upon sentimental comedy, which was still not altogether extinguished. An attack upon Garrick in connection with the notorious Shakespeare jubilee was finally left out from the Puppet-show, and thus was avoided a recurrence of the quarrel which many years before had led to an interchange of epistolary thrusts, and an imitation by Woodward of the imitative Foote.

On the whole, the relations between the Garrick and Foote became very friendly, and on Foote’s part unmistakably affectionate, and they have not been always generously represented by Garrick’s biographers. A comparison between the 2 as actors is of course out of the question; but, though Foote was a buffoon, and his tongue a scurrilous tongue, there is no authentic ground for the suggestion that his character was that of malicious heartlessness. Of Samuel Johnson’s opinions of him many records remain in Boswell; when Johnson had at last found his way into Foote’s company (he afterwards found it to Foote’s own table) he was unable to “resist” him, and, on hearing of Foote’s death, he thought the career just closed worthy of a lasting biographical record.

Meanwhile most of poor Foote’s friendships in high life were probably those that are sworn across the table, and require “t’other bottle” to keep them up. It is not a pleasant picture — of Lord Mexborough and his royal guest the duke of York, and their companions, bantering Foote on his ignorance of horsemanship, and after he had weakly protested his skill, taking him out to hounds on a dangerous animal. He was thrown and broke his leg, which had to be amputated, the “patientee” (in which character he said he was now making his 1st appearance) consoling himself with the reflection that he would now be able to take off “old Faulkner” (a pompous Dublin alderman with a wooden leg, whom he had brought on the stage as Peter Paragraph in The Orators) “to the life.”

The duke of York made him the best reparation in his power by promising him a life-patent for the theatre in the Haymarket (1766); and Foote not only resumed his profession, as if, like Sir Luke Limp, he considered the leg he had lost “a redundancy, a mere nothing at all,” but ingeniously turned his misfortune to account in 2 of his later pieces, The Lame Lover and The Devil on Two Sticks, while, with the true instinct of a public favourite, making constant reference to it in plays and prologues.

Legal troubles

Though the characters played by him in several of his later plays are comparatively short and light, he continued to retain his hold over the public, and about the year 1774 was beginning to think of withdrawing, at least for a time, to the continent, when he became involved in what proved a fatal personal quarrel.

Neither in his entertainments nor in his comedies had he hitherto (except in Garrick’s case, and it is said in Johnson’s) put any visible restraint upon personal satire. The Author, in which, under the infinitely humorous character of Cadwallader, he had brought a Welsh gentleman of the name of Ap-Rice on the stage, had, indeed, been ultimately suppressed. But in general he had pursued his hazardous course, mercilessly exposing to public ridicule and contempt not only fribbles and pedants, quacks or supposed quacks in medicine (as in The Devil on Two Sticks), enthusiasts in religion, such as Dr. Dodd (in The Cozeners) and George Whitefield and his connection (in The Minor). He had (in The Nabob) not only dared the wrath of the whole Society of Antiquaries, and been rewarded by the withdrawal, from among the pundits who rationalized away Whittington’s Cat, of Horace Walpole and other eminent members of the body, but had in the same play attacked a well-known representative of a very influential though detested element in English society, the “Nabobs” themselves. But there was a species of cracked porcelain which he was not to try to hold up to contempt with impunity.

The rumor of his intention to bring upon the stage, in the character of Lady Kitty Crocodile in The Trip to Calais, the notorious duchess of Kingston, whose trial for bigamy was then (1775) impending, roused his intended victim to the utmost fury; and the means and influence she had at her disposal enabled her, not only to prevail upon the lord chamberlain to prohibit the performance of the piece (in which there is no hint as to the charge of bigamy itself), but to hire agents to vilify Foote’s character in every way that hatred and malice could suggest.

After he had withdrawn the piece, and letters had been exchanged between the duchess and him equally characteristic of their respective writers, Foote took his revenge upon the chief of the duchess’s instruments, a “Reverend Doctor” Jackson, who belonged to the “reptile” society of the journalists of the day, so admirably satirized by Foote in his comedy of The Bankrupt. This man he gibbeted in the character of Viper in The Capuchin, under which name the altered Trip to Calais was performed in 1776.

But the resources of his enemies were not yet at an end; and a discharged servant of Foote’s was suborned by Jackson to bring a charge of assault and apply for a warrant against him. Though the attempt utterly broke down, and Foote’s character was thus completely cleared, his health and spirits had given way in the struggle — as to which, though he seems to have had the firm support of the better part of the public, including such men as Burke and Reynolds, the very audiences of his own theatre had been, or had seemed to be, divided in opinion.

He thus resolved to withdraw, at least for a time, from the effects of the storm, let his theatre to Colman, and after making his last appearance there in May 1777, set forth in October on a journey to France. But at Dover he fell sick on the day after his arrival there, and after a few hours died (pm October 21). His epitaph in St Mary’s church at Dover (written by his faithful treasurer William Jewell) records that he had a hand “open as day for melting charity.”

Recognition

Foote is buried in Westminster Abbey; his resting place is without any memorial.

Publications

Plays

• Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, Esq.; to which is prefaced A Life of the Author. London, 1809. Reprinted by Benjamin Bloom, Bronx, New York.

Non-fiction

• Cooke, William. Memoirs of Samuel Foote, Esq: With a Collection of His Genuine Bon-mots, Anecdotes, Opinions, &c], 1805. (Online].)

Play performed

Title	Year of Premier	Location of Premier	Year Published
The Diversions of the Morning or, A Dish of Chocolate (revised as A Cup of Tea)	1747	Haymarket	----
An Auction of Pictures	1748	Haymarket	----
The Knights	1748	Drury Lane	1754
Taste	1752	Drury Lane	1752
An Englishman in Paris	1753	Covent Garden	1753
A Writ of Inquiry on the Inquisitor General	1754	Haymarket	----
The Englishman Returned from Paris	1756	Covent Garden	1756
The Green-Room Squabble or a Battle Royal between the Queen of Babylon and the Daughter of Darius	1756	Haymarket	Lost
The Author	1757	Drury Lane	1757
The Minor	1760	Haymarket	1760
Tragedy a la Mode (alternative act 2 for Diversions)	1760	Drury Lane	1795
The Lyar	1762	Covent Garden	1764
The Orators	1762	Haymarket	1762
The Mayor of Garrett	1763	Haymarket	1764
The Trial of Samuel Foote, Esq. for a Libel on Peter Paragraph	1763	Haymarket	1795
The Patron	1764	Haymarket	1764
The Commissary	1765	Haymarket	1765
The Devil on Two Sticks	1768	Haymarket	1778
The Lame Lover	1770	Haymarket	1771
The Maid of Bath	1771	Haymarket	1771
The Nabob	1772	Haymarket	1778
Piety in Pattens	1773	Haymarket	1973
The Bankrupt	1773	Haymarket	1776
The Cozeners	1774	Haymarket	1776
A Trip to Calais (revised as The Capuchin)	1776	Haymarket	1778

See also

The Great Panjandrum Himself Read by GNB LibriVox Weekly Poetry Samuel Foote

• List of English-language playwrights

References

• Davison, Peter. Samuel Foote. in Pickering, David, ed. International Dictionary of Theatre. Vol. 3. New York, St. James Press. 1996.
• Doran, Dr. Annals of the English Stage from Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean. Vol. II. London, John C. Nimmo. 1888. Reprinted by AMS Press, New York. 1968.
• Douglas, Howard. Samuel Foote. in Backscheider, Paula, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 89: Restoration and Eighteenth Century Dramatists, 3rd Series. Detroit, Gale Research. 1989.
• Findlay, Robert. Charles Macklin. in Pickering, David, ed. International Dictionary of Theatre. Vol. 3. New York, St. James Press. 1996.
• Foote, Samuel. The Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, Esq.; to which is prefaced A Life of the Author. London, 1809. Reprinted by Benjamin Bloom, Bronx, New York.
• Hartnoll, Phyllis. ed. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983.
• Holland, Peter. "Samuel Foote." in Banham, Martin. ed. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Melville, Lewis (pseud.) (ed.) The Trial of the Duchess of Kingston ("The Notable British Trial Series) (New York: John Day & Co., 1928), 328p., illus. See the introduction pages 24–29.
• Murphy, Mary C. and updated by Gerald S. Argetsinger. "Samuel Foote." in Rollyson, Carl and Frank N. Magill ed. Critical Survey of Drama, 2nd Revised Edition, Vol. 2. Pasadena, CA, Salem Press, 2003.
• Parry, [His Honor Judge] Edward Abbott Vagabonds All (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1926), 264p., illus. See "Chapter VIII: Samuel Foote, The Player of Interludes", pp. 158–183.
• Thomson, Peter. "Haymarket, Theatre Royal." in Banham, Martin. ed. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
•  Ward, Adolphus William (1911). "Foote, Samuel". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 625-627.  Wikisource, Web, Apr. 14, 2020.

External links

Poems

• Samuel Foote at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive ("MR. FOOTE's ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC, After a Prosecution against him for a LIBEL.")

Audio / video

• File:Speaker Icon.svg Samuel Foote public domain audiobooks from LibriVox

Books

• Works by Samuel Foote at Project Gutenberg
• Samuel Foote at Amazon.com

About

• Foote, Samuel in the Dictionary of National Biography

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at Foote, Samuel