Knight, Edward

1774

1826

Born in Birmingham in 1774, Edward Knight played with touring provincial companies in Wales and the north of England until he joined Tate Wilkinson’s company at York about 1803. He joined the Drury Lane company at the Lyceum in 1809, making his first London appearance there on 14 October as Timothy Quaint in “The Soldier’s Daughter” and Robin Roughhead (G0404) in “Fortune’s Frolic”. He also made favourable impressions as Label in “The Prize”, Jerry Blossom (G0406) in “Hit or Miss”, Scrub in “The Beaux’ Stratagem”, Varland in “The West Indian” and Sam in “Raising the Wind”, among other roles. When the company moved into its new Drury Lane Theatre his first role there was Simple in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” on 23 October 1812. Knight remained at Drury Lane the remainder of his career, playing scores of characters and specializing in domestics, rustics and farmers. A short man, some five feet two, with a shrill voice, he was said to be unequalled in various lines of pert servants, like Arnulf (G0405) in “Plots! Or the North Tower”. In his “Dramatic Biography”, Oxberry wrote that Knight’s country boys are never unsophisticated; ‘they are shrewd, designing, knowing.’ Illness caused Knight to retire from the stage in 1825-26. He died at his house in Great Queen Street on 21 February 1826 and was buried in a vault at St Pancras New Church. After the death of his first wife, whom he had wed at Leeds, in 1807 Knight married Susan Smith, the sister of the actress Sarah Bartley (q.v. as Sarah Smith). (DNB)