Comedy plays; English drama -- 19th century; Farces
But to return to his younger days. He was educated in Paris and
Germany from 1817 to 1820. After that he went to school at Islington
for a short time, and from 1820 to 1827 we find the future dramatist
at Dr. Richardson's celebrated seminary at Clapham. Under the roof of
the famous author of the English dictionary he found, and soon took
for companions, Julian Young, Charles James Mathews, John Kemble,
Henry Kemble, John Liston, Dick Tattersall, young Terry, son of Terry
the actor, whose widow subsequently married the lexicographer, Dr.
Richardson. In 1832 Maddison Morton was appointed to a clerkship in
Chelsea Hospital by Lord John Russell, but he did not appear to relish
the desk any more than his subsequent friends, W. S. Gilbert and
Robert Reece. He did not wait patiently for a pension, like Tom
Taylor, Anthony Trollope, etc., but got sick of government office-work
in 1840, when he resigned his situation.
It was in April, 1835, that Maddison Morton produced his first farce
at the little theatre in Tottenham Street destined afterwards to
flourish as the Prince of Wales Theatre, and to be the nursery of
Robertsonian comedy. The farce was called "My First Fit of the Gout,"
and the principal parts were played by Wrench, Morris Barrett, and
Mrs. Nisbett. As I have said before, Maddison Morton lived in the
happy days when farces were popular, when programmes were ample, and
when actors were not ashamed of their work. Among the cultivated
artists who have played in Maddison Morton's farces are the elder
Farren, Liston, Keeley, Buckstone, Wright, Compton, Harley, Robson,
Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Stirling, Charles Mathews, and many more of our own
day, such as Toole, Howe, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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