Birth date
1745
Death date
1814
Biography
The son of Thomas Dibdin, a silversmith from Southampton, Charles Dibdin was christened on 4 March 1745 at Holyrood Church. He received no formal education, not even in music, for which he had a natural talent, but before he was sixteen (he said) he was singing and playing the organ. Dibdin was drawn to London, became acquainted with theatre people, began composing, refined his knowledge of music and, by 1760-61, was singing in the choruses of “Thomas and Sally” and “Romeo and Juliet” for John Rich at Covent Garden Theatre. On 22 May 1764 Dibdin’s pastoral operetta, “The Shepherd’s Artifice”, his first full attempt at theatrical composing, was performed as an afterpiece for the composer’s shared benefit. He took the part of Strephon. In addition to singing and acting at Covent Garden, Dibdin performed at such pleasure gardens as Vauxhall in London and similar venues in provincial towns; indeed, much of his performing career in the summers was on tour.
Dibdin’s first real success was as Ralph in “The Maid of the Mill”, a mainpiece which was newly staged at Covent Garden on 31 January 1765. The management negotiated a three-year contract with Dibdin that assured him of three, four, and then five pounds a week for appearing in nothing but musical pieces – which was just as well, since few in his day accused him of having much acting talent, though audiences loved him as a singer and composer. But in 1767 the manager John Beard, with whom Dibdin worked comfortably, sold his Covent Garden patent to George Colman, with whom Dibdin did not. Charles decamped to Drury Lane and the managership of David Garrick in 1768.
Though Dibdin and Garrick had an edgy relationship, things began well, with Dibdin walking into the role of Mungo and sharing composer’s chores with Thomas Augustine Arne in the remarkably successful “Padlock”, which opened at Drury Lane on 3 October 1768. So Dibdin in his early 20s was a successful composer and singer at London’s premier theatre and, one would suppose, prosperous. But, as John Britton said, Dibdin was ‘ill-versed in the science of domestic economy, or the art of saving money.’ His biographical writings, which run to volumes, are full of complaints and justifications for his sorry financial state; he played the blame game well, always acting the put-upon artist and constantly wanting restitution and fuller control over his artistic talents. But he regularly sought out as his theatrical associates the most talented and powerful people, and he constantly found himself at odds with them. In 1774-75 he was £200 in debt to Drury Lane, and in 1776 Garrick discharged him. Without regular employment, Dibdin fled to France with several of his illegitimate children, and there he remained for two years, writing and composing works and sending them off for production at Drury Lane, Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells.
When he returned in the summer of 1778 he signed on at Covent Garden, not as a performer, but as composer to the theatre, for which he churned out musical pieces each season. This arrangement, however, did not prevent him from becoming quarrelsome with the manager, Thomas Harris. By 1780 he was ready to leave Covent Garden again and stage, on 1 March 1780 at the Haymarket, a revival of “The Comic Mirror”, a puppet show he had created. The audience rioted, misunderstanding that the performers were not to be human beings. Then Dibdin produced “The Surprise” at Sadler’s Wells in April and returned in the autumn to Covent Garden to squabble with the manager. His next attempt was equestrian theatre at the Royal Circus in Southwark, where, during the mid-1780s, Dibdin created some spectacle pieces and fought with his cohorts. Too often his efforts came to naught, as when he provided the Dublin manager Daly with some musical pieces and was bilked of £460, through no fault of his own except his gullibility in dealing with that charlatan in the first place. In May 1787 he set off on a fourteen-month tour of a