Foote, Samuel

1721

1777

Samuel Foote was christened on 27 January 1721 at St Mary, Truro, the son of Samuel and Eleanor Foote. The child’s father was, among other things, a lawyer, his mother the daughter of a baronet. The younger Samuel attended a grammar school and then Worcester College, Oxford, but it was not long before the lad’s independent spirit and eccentricity lost him his scholarship. He tried law at the Inner Temple but never registered formally and preferred spending his inheritance and displaying his wit at the Grecian Coffee House. To make money he published an exploitation of a scandal on his mother’s side of the family – the murder of Sir John Dinely Goodere by his brother. Much of his life was a series of ventures or adventures: a partnership with a swindling brewer and seller of small beer, a brief marriage in 1741 to a girl whose dowry and patience he quickly spent, a long series of brief engagements at major and minor theatres in London and Dublin as an actor with mimic skills and a venomous tongue, authorship of a number of satirical comedies that scared the wits out of his subjects, publication of books on acting and drama, illegal stage productions pretending to be musical concerts or parties with free performances of plays, frequent wars of words in the press with opponents, on-again off-again friendships with the leading theatre professionals of his day, fortune telling in Dublin in 1758, procurement of a patent for the Haymarket Theatre in 1766, the refurbishing and managing of that old playhouse, inventive puppet productions, the operation of Edinburgh’s Theatre Royal in 1770-71, libel suits brought against him by offended subjects of his satires, a successful suit brought by Foote in 1776 for accusations of homosexuality, and so on. Foote’s career in acting – the least of his several talents – began on 6 February 1744 at the Haymarket Theatre, where Charles Macklin presented a ‘Concert of Music’ followed by a performance of “Othello”, with Macklin as Iago and his acting student Foote (identified only as a young gentleman making his stage debut) in the title role. The performance was said by one paper to have received ‘Universal Applause’ and by another to be ‘a masterpiece of burlesque,’ and it is now impossible to tell just what came to pass. Foote over the years acted some important characters, such as Lord Foppington in “The Relapse”, Bayes in “The Rehearsal”, Sir Harry Wildair in “The Constant Couple”, Pierre in “Venice Preserv’d”, Sir Novelty Fashion in “Love’s Last Shift”, Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” and many comic roles in his own plays – Cadwallader in “The Author”, Mrs Cole in “The Minor”, and Major Sturgeon in “The Mayor of Garratt” being among the favourites. His career as a writer consisted not only of academic works like “A Treatise on the Passions “(1747) and entertainments of all sorts but also comic puffs in the papers intended to drum up business at this theatre or that. His fertile mind seemed always to be creating some new tomfoolery or barbed satire like “Taste” or “Tea” or “Auction of Pictures” or “Dish of Chocolate”, most of which were regularly doctored by Foote to keep them topical. He attracted audiences partly because he was so unpredictable. Little David Garrick was, of course, one of his favourite targets. In 1769, for example, Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford, which was a disaster even without Foote’s intervention, was a prime target for Foote’s wit. He added mocking speeches to his performance of “The Devil upon Two Sticks”, and he planned a parody in rags of the lavishly costumed Jubilee procession Garrick mounted at Drury Lane after the Stratford event was rained out. When Foote announced that he planned on using a puppet of Garrick in his mockery of the Jubilee he was asked if the puppet was to be life-size, and he replied ‘Oh no – not much above the size of Garrick.’ Foote avoided long associations with theatrical companies and their playhouses, and was happier when running a theatre himself, especially when it was one of the smaller houses like the Haymarket. As a theatre manager he was clever, inventive, always trying to poke fun at some one or some thing and creating merriment for his audiences in the process. Edward Gibbon said 'When I am tired of the Roman empire I can laugh away the Evening at Foote's Theatre'. Sam could ridicule himself too. He lost a left after he was thrown from a frisky horse in 1766 but did not let a wooden leg deter his stage career. He even nicknamed himself Captain Timbertoe, and as Zachary Fungus in The Commitee he rode on a hobby horse. Anyone with that sense of humour couldn't be all bad. But when he died on 21 October 1777 there was some who heaved a sigh of relief and no many who mourned. Garrick told Lady Spencer, 'He had much wit, no feeling, sacrific'd friends and foes to a joke, & so has dy'd very little regretted even by his nearest acquaintance'. The writer Arthur Murphy came to a similar conclusion at greater length. Samuel Johnson noted that, after all, Foote exposed only those who were fools already. But when Dr Johnson heard that Foote was planning to caricature him, he 'threatened to beat the mimic with an oak stick' and cut off his good leg. 'Brief Lives', Burnim & baskett, 2003.