(1720-1777)
The name of Samuel Foote suggests a whimsical, plump little man, with
a round face, twinkling eyes, and one of the readiest wits of the
eighteenth century. This contemporary of the elder Colman, Cumberland,
Mrs. Cowley, and the great Garrick, knew many famous men and women,
and they admired as well as feared his talents.
Samuel Foote was born at Truro in 1720. He was a young boy when he
first exhibited his powers of mimicry at his father's dinner-table. At
that time he did not expect to earn his living by them, for he came of
well-to-do people, and his mother, who was of aristocratic birth,
inherited a comfortable fortune.
Throughout his school days at Worcester and his college days at
Worcester College, Oxford, where he did not remain long enough to take
a degree, and the idle days when he was supposed to be studying law at
the Temple and was in reality frequenting coffee-houses and
drawing-rooms as a young man of fashion, he was establishing a
reputation for repartee, _bons mots_, and satiric imitation. So, when
the wasteful youth had squandered all his money, he naturally turned
to the stage as offering him the best opportunity. Like many another
amateur addicted to a mistaken ambition, Foote first tried tragedy,
and made his debut as Othello. But in this and in other tragedies he
was a failure; so he soon took to writing comic plays with parts
especially adapted to himself. 'The Diversions of the Morning' was the
first of a long series, of which 'The Mayor of Garratt,' 'The Lame
Lover,' 'The Nabob,' and 'The Minor,' are among the best known. As
these were written from the actor's rather than from the dramatist's
point of view, they often seem faulty in construction and crude in
literary quality. They are farces rather than true comedies. But they
abound in witty dialogue, and in a satire which illuminates
contemporary vices and follies.
Foote seems to have been curiously lacking in conscience. He lived his
life with a gayety which no poverty, misfortune, or physical suffering
could long dampen. When he had money he spent it lavishly, and when
the supply ran short he racked his clever brains to make a new hit. To
accomplish this he was utterly unscrupulous, and never spared his
friends or those to whom he was indebted, if he saw good material in
their foibles. His victims smarted, but his ready tongue and personal
geniality usually extricated him from consequent unpleasantness.
Garrick, who aided him repeatedly, and who dreaded ridicule above all
things, was his favorite butt, yet remained his friend. The irate
members of the East India Company, who called upon him armed with
stout cudgels to administer a castigation for an offensive libel in
'The Nabob,' were so speedily mollified that they laid their cudgels
aside with their hats, and accepted his invitation to dinner.
To us, much of his charm has evaporated, for it lay in these very
personalities which held well-known people up to ridicule with a
precision which made it impossible for the originals to escape
recognition. Even irascible Dr. Johnson, who wished to disapprove of
him, admitted that there was no one like "that fellow Foote." So this
"Aristophanes of the English stage" was mourned when he died at the
age of fifty-seven, and a company of his friends and fellow-actors
buried him one evening by the dim light of torches in a cloister of
Westminster Abbey.
There is often a boisterous unreserve in the plays of Foote, as in
other eighteenth-century drama, which revolts modern taste. As they
consist of character study rather than incident, mere extracts are apt
to appear incomplete and meaningless. Therefore it seems fairer to
represent the famous wit not alone by formal citation, but also by
some of his _bons mots_ extracted from the collection of William Cooke
in his 'Memoirs of Samuel Foote' (2 vols. 1806).