Bullock, Christopher

c.1690

1722

Born about 1690, Christopher Bullock was the first son of William Bullock the elder, a popular player and fair booth operator (q.v.). The younger Bullock made his first stage appearance, probably, on 31 December 1707 at the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket, playing the small comic role of Appletree in “The Recruiting Officer”. Similar parts came to him at the Queen’s and at Drury Lane, and in 1714 he settled at the new Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre under the management of John Rich for a successful career as a player of fops (like Sir Novelty Fashion in “Love’s Last Shift”), comic servants (Scrub in “The Stratagem”) and lovers (Constant in “The Provok’d” Wife), and as the author of light, popular plays like “Woman’s a Riddle”. Bullock also shared in the theatre’s management. He was described by the “London Chronicle” in 1758, long after his death, as tall and agreeable in person, with ‘a comic kind of voice, which vented itself in a shrillness of tone, but never sunk into meanness.’ As a ‘smart sprightly actor’ he was the closest thing Rich’s company had to the successful Drury Lane comedian Colley Cibber. Young Bullock’s popular and promising career was cut short in 1720-21, when he was frequently too sick to perform. He died of consumption and a fistula on 5 April 1722, leaving a shrewish wife and three children. She was the former Jane Rogers the younger, a minor actress in Rich’s troupe. (BDA) [EAL]