John Baldwin Buckstone
Encyclopedia
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
actor, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
who wrote 150 plays, the first of which was produced in 1826.
He starred as a comic actor during much of his career for various periods at the Adelphi Theatre
Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...
and the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
, managing the Haymarket from 1853 to 1877.
Biography
Buckstone was born in HoxtonHoxton
Hoxton is an area in the London Borough of Hackney, immediately north of the financial district of the City of London. The area of Hoxton is bordered by Regent's Canal on the north side, Wharf Road and City Road on the west, Old Street on the south, and Kingsland Road on the east.Hoxton is also a...
, London and educated at Walworth Grammar School. He was briefly apprenticed on a naval ship at age 10 but returned to school. He studied law and was articled to a solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
but turned to acting by age 19.
Early career
Buckstone first joined a travelling troupe in 1821 as Gabriel in The Children in the Wood. and toured for three years, mostly in the southeast of England. He found a mentor in Edmund KeanEdmund Kean
Edmund Kean was an English actor, regarded in his time as the greatest ever.-Early life:Kean was born in London. His father was probably Edmund Kean, an architect’s clerk, and his mother was an actress, Anne Carey, daughter of the 18th century composer and playwright Henry Carey...
. He made his first London appearance, on 30 January 1823, at the Surrey Theatre
Surrey Theatre
The Surrey Theatre began life in 1782 as the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy, one of the many circuses that provided contemporary London entertainment of both horsemanship and drama...
, as Ramsay in The Fortunes of Nigel
The Fortunes of Nigel
The Fortunes of Nigel is a novel written by Sir Walter Scott. The setting is some time between 1616 and 1625.- Plot introduction :...
. In 1824 he joined that theatre and played Peter Smink in The Armistice with great success. He also began to write plays.
Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...
, where he remained as the leading low comedian of the Adelphi until 1833. Buckstone's acting was described as "a union of shrewdness and drollery, with their interaction upon each other, ... was irresistibly comic." Buckstone wrote most of his plays in the first half of his career, and many of these were produced at the Adelphi. As his acting career reached the height of its success, his playwriting output declined. At the Adelphi, he appeared as Bobby Trot in his first really successful play, the melodrama Luke the Labourer (1827), which he had written in 1826. Other well known plays were Wreck Ashore (1830) and Forgery (1832). Perhaps the most successful of these early plays was his 1833 play, The Bravo, based on James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
's Bravo.
Peak years
He first appeared at the Haymarket TheatreHaymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
during the summer season in 1833, also writing plays for this theatre, including Ellen Wartham (1833). Another hit for the Haymarket was the drama Thirty Years of a Woman's Life. At that theatre, his acting was praised in The Housekeeper by Douglas Jerrold (1833), Pyramus and Thisbe, and in his own plays, Uncle John, Rural Felicity and Agnes de Vere (all in 1834). He stayed at the Haymarket until 1838, producing The Dream at Sea among other plays.
In 1839-40 he returned to the Adelphi to write and star in a number of plays, including his extraordinarily successful play Jack Sheppard
Jack Sheppard
Jack Sheppard was a notorious English robber, burglar and thief of early 18th-century London. Born into a poor family, he was apprenticed as a carpenter but took to theft and burglary in 1723, with little more than a year of his training to complete...
, based on the novel of the same name
Jack Sheppard (novel)
Jack Sheppard is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth serially published in Bentley's Miscellany from 1839 to 1840, with illustrations by George Cruikshank...
published that year by William Harrison Ainsworth
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Harrison Ainsworth was an English historical novelist born in Manchester. He trained as a lawyer, but the legal profession held no attraction for him. While completing his legal studies in London he met the publisher John Ebers, at that time manager of the King's Theatre, Haymarket...
. After his return from a visit to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1840 where he met with little success, Buckstone played in his own play, Married Life, at the Haymarket. He then appeared at several London theatres, among them the Lyceum
Lyceum Theatre (London)
The Lyceum Theatre is a 2,000-seat West End theatre located in the City of Westminster, on Wellington Street, just off the Strand. There has been a theatre with this name in the locality since 1765, and the present site opened on 14 July 1834 to a design by Samuel Beazley. The building was unique...
, where he was Box at the first representation of Box and Cox
Box and Cox
Box and Cox is a one act farce by John Maddison Morton. It is based on a French one-act vaudeville, Frisette, which had been produced in Paris in 1846....
, by John Maddison Morton
John Maddison Morton
John Maddison Morton was an English playwright who specialized in one-act farces. His most famous farce was Box and Cox . He also wrote comic dramas, pantomimes and other theatrical pieces.-Biography:...
, in 1847. There he also created the role of Bob, in Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
's Old Heads and Young Hearts, and played several other memorable roles, including, Slowboy in Cricket on the Hearth, Dan in John Bull
John Bull
John Bull is a national personification of Britain in general and England in particular, especially in political cartoons and similar graphic works. He is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged man, often wearing a Union Flag waistcoat.-Origin:...
, MacDunnum of Dunnum in A School for Scheming, Scrub in The Beaux' Stratagem
The Beaux' Stratagem
The Beaux' Stratagem is a comedy by George Farquhar, first produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London, in March 1707. In the play, Archer and Aimwell, two young gentlemen who have fallen on hard times, plan to travel through small towns, entrap young heiresses, steal their money and move on. In the...
and Golightly in Lend Me Five Shillings, and several Shakespeare roles. For the Adelphi, he wrote The Green Bushes and The Flowers of the Forest, both in 1847. He also dramatised The Last Days of Pompeii
The Last Days of Pompeii
The Last Days of Pompeii is a novel written by the baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. Once a very widely read book and now relatively neglected, it culminates in the cataclysmic destruction of the city of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.The novel uses its characters to contrast...
.
He returned to the Haymarket in 1848, writing and playing in An Alarming Sacrifice, Leap Year and A Serious Family. During this period, he memorably played Moses in Stirling Coyne's adaptation of The Vicar of Wakefield
The Vicar of Wakefield
The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762, and published in 1766, and was one of the most popular and widely read 18th-century novels among Victorians...
, Appleface in Jerrold's Catspaw, Shadowly Softhead in Lord Lytton
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...
's Not as Bad as We Seem and in many Shakespeare productions with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean
Charles Kean
Charles John Kean , was born at Waterford, Ireland, the son of the actor Edmund Kean.After preparatory education at Worplesdon and at Greenford, near Harrow, he was sent to Eton College, where he remained three years...
.
Later years
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
s, though markedly fewer than before. As manager of the Haymarket, he surrounded himself with an admirable and effective ensemble company, including Edward Askew Sothern
Edward Askew Sothern
Edward Askew Sothern was an English actor known for his comic roles in Britain and America, particularly Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin.- Early years :...
, Henry Compton
Henry Compton (actor)
Henry Compton was an English actor best known for his Shakespearean comic roles.-Biography:...
, Mr. and Mrs. Charles James Mathews
Charles James Mathews
Charles James Mathews was a British actor. He was one of the few British actors to be successful in French-speaking roles in France. A son of the actor Charles Mathews, he achieved a greater reputation than his father in the same profession and also excelled at light comedy...
and the Kendals
William Hunter Kendal
William Hunter Kendal was an English actor and theatre manager. He and his wife Madge starred at the Haymarket in Shakespearian revivals and the old English comedies beginning in the 1860s. In the 1870s, they starred in a series of "fairy comedies" by W. S. Gilbert and in many plays on the West...
. He produced the plays of James Planché
James Planche
James Robinson Planché was a British dramatist, antiquary and officer of arms. Over a period of approximately 60 years he wrote, adapted, or collaborated on 176 plays in a wide range of genres including extravaganza, farce, comedy, burletta, melodrama and opera...
, Thomas William Robertson
Thomas William Robertson
Thomas William Robertson , usually known professionally as T. W. Robertson, was an Anglo-Irish dramatist and innovative stage director best known for a series of realistic or naturalistic plays produced in London in the 1860s that broke new ground and inspired playwrights such as W.S...
, Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
, John Oxenford
John Oxenford
John Oxenford , English dramatist, was born at Camberwell, London, England.-Life:He began his literary career by writing on finance...
, H. J. Byron and W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
, as well as his own, and in most of these he acted. Buckstone's management made the Haymarket into the premier comedy theatre of the age. Buckstone's own gifts in comedy contributed much to the theatre's remarkable success. According to The Times, "Few men... have possessed to a greater extent the power of communicating the spirit of mirth to an audience.... He was helped, too, in his vocation by remarkable physical attributes" and a peculiar, hilarious voice.
In the 1850s, Buckstone produced An Unequal Match and The Overland Route by Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
, A Hero of Romance by Westland Marston, and Home by Robertson. In 1862, Buckstone produced a 496-night run of Our American Cousin
Our American Cousin
Our American Cousin is an 1858 play in three acts by English playwright Tom Taylor. The play is a farce whose plot is based on the introduction of an awkward, boorish but honest American, Asa Trenchard, to his aristocratic English relatives when he goes to England to claim the family estate...
, with Sothern in his most famous role as Lord Dundreary
Lord Dundreary
Lord Dundreary is a character of the 1858 British play Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor. He is the personification of a good-natured, brainless aristocrat. The role was created on stage by Edward Askew Sothern. The most famous scene involved Dundreary reading a letter from his even sillier...
. Robertson's David Garrick
David Garrick (play)
David Garrick is a comic play written in 1864 by Thomas William Robertson about the famous 18th century actor and theatre manager, David Garrick....
was a hit in 1864, also with Sothern in the title role. W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
premiered seven of his plays at the Haymarket during this time including his blank verse "fairy comedies" starring the Kendals, such as The Palace of Truth
The Palace of Truth
The Palace of Truth is a three-act blank verse "Fairy Comedy" by W. S. Gilbert first produced at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 19 November 1870, partly adapted from Madame de Genlis's fairy story, Le Palais de Vérite. The play ran for approximately 140 performances and then toured the British...
(1870), Pygmalion and Galatea (1871) and The Wicked World
The Wicked World
The Wicked World is a blank verse play by W. S. Gilbert in three acts. It opened at the Haymarket Theatre on 1873 and ran for a successful 145 performances, closing on 1873...
(1873). Buckstone also produced Gilbert's dramas, Charity
Charity (play)
Charity is a drama in four acts by W. S. Gilbert that explores the issue of a woman who had lived with a man as his wife without ever having married. The play analyses and critiques the double standard in the Victorian era concerning the treatment of men and women who had sex outside of marriage,...
(1874) and Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith
Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith
Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith is a play by W. S. Gilbert, styled "A Three-Act Drama of Puritan times". It opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 11 September 1876, starring Hermann Vezin, Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Marion Terry. The play was a success, running for about 100 performances and...
(1876), as well as his 1877 farce Engaged
Engaged (play)
Engaged is a three-act farcical comic play by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Haymarket Theatre on 3 October 1877, the same year as The Sorcerer, one of Gilbert's comic operas written with Arthur Sullivan, which was soon followed by the collaborators' great success in H.M.S. Pinafore...
. In 1873 Buckstone introduced the innovation of matinées starting at 2.00pm. By the mid-1870s, however, Buckstone's company was disbanding, and in 1877, ill and sustaining heavy losses, he gave up management of the theatre.
Personal life, death and ghost
For many years, Buckstone was closely associated with leading actress Fanny FitzwilliamFanny Fitzwilliam
Frances "Fanny" Elizabeth Fitzwilliam was the actress daughter of Robert Copeland, manager of the Dover theatrical circuit....
(née Copeland), who he was engaged to marry in 1854. She died of cholera a month before the wedding, and Buckstone married Fanny's sister Isabella Copeland. His daughter, Lucy Isabella Buckstone
Lucy Isabella Buckstone
Lucy Isabella Buckstone was an English actress, the daughter of John Baldwin Buckstone and Isabella Copeland and the sister of actor J. C. Buckstone....
and his sons John Copeland Buckstone
J. C. Buckstone
John Copeland Buckstone was an English stage and film actor of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, who was most famous for his 1901 stage play Scrooge, which was the basis for the first film version of A Christmas Carol in the same year...
and Rowland Buckstone also took to the stage.
After three years of ill health, Buckstone died at his home in Lower Sydenham
Sydenham
Sydenham is an area and electoral ward in the London Borough of Lewisham; although some streets towards Crystal Palace Park, Forest Hill and Penge are outside the ward and in the London Borough of Bromley, and some streets off Sydenham Hill are in the London Borough of Southwark. Sydenham was in...
in 1879 at the age of 77.
According to director Nigel Everett and stagehands at the Haymarket Theatre, Buckstone's ghost has often been seen at the theatre, particularly during comedies and "when he appreciates things" playing there. In 2009, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
reported that the actor Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...
saw the ghost standing in the wings during a performance of Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
at the Haymarket.