According to "Some Account of the Life of Mr. W. Mountfort" prefixed to the collected plays of 1720, William Mountfort, successful playwright and actor, was born "the Son of Captain _Mountfort_, a Gentleman of a good Family in _Staffordshire_; and he spent the greatest Part of his Younger Years in that County, without being bred up to any Employment." Since "his Gaiety of Temper and Airy Disposition ... could not be easily restrain'd to the solitary Amusements of a Rural Life,"[1] he set out to make his fortune in London, and was employed by the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theater. First notice of him appears in the part of the "boy" in _The Counterfeits_, attributed to John Leanerd, and produced in May, 1678.[2] Mountfort was to win notice as an actor in the part of Talboy in Brome's _The Jovial Crew_, where as a rejected lover he was called upon for storms of comic tears. In his _Apology_, Cibber praises Mountfort in this part: "in his Youth, he had acted Low Humour, with great Success, even down to _Tallboy_ in the _Jovial Crew_"[3] and Mountfort himself alluded to his early success in the prologue to his first play, _The Injured Lovers_, where he defies the critics: "True Talboy to the last I'll Cry and Write." Mountfort scored his first major success as an actor when he played the title role in Crowne's _Sir Courtly Nice_. The play's popularity owed much to Mountfort's acting of a part which recalls Etherege's Sir Fopling Flutter. The "Account" of 1720 says that Mountfort "gain'd a great and deserved Reputation, as a Player; particularly in Acting the part of Sir _Courtly Nice_," and Cibber, who was later to create the great Sir Novelty Fashion, says of Mountfort's Sir Courtly: There his whole Man, Voice, Mien, and Gesture, was no longer _Monfort_, but another Person. There, the insipid, soft Civility, the elegant, and formal Mien; the drawling delicacy of Voice, the stately Flatness of his Address, and the empty Eminence of his Attitudes were ... nicely observ'd.... If, some Years after the Death of _Monfort_, I my self had any Success, in either of these Characters, I must pay the Debt I owe to his Memory, in confessing the Advantages I receiv'd from the just Idea, and strong Impression he had given me, from his action them (_Apology_, p. 76). In 1686, Mountfort married one of the attractive young actresses then appearing in London, Susanna Percival, and the Mountforts appeared together in a number of plays until his untimely death.