1 Memoirs of that Celebrated Comedian, and very singular Genius, Thomas Weston (London: n. p., 1776), p. 50Google Scholar. Page numbers will be included in parentheses following subsequent references to the anonymous Memoirs.

2 Trefman, Simon, Sam. Foote, Comedian, 1720–1777 (New York: New York University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, describes Foote's fluctuating relationship with Wilkinson and Woodward en passant; see especially pp. 30–31, 101. Foote's not infrequently devastating manner with his performers is demonstrated in an anecdote from Bon-Mots of Samuel Foote and Theodore Hook ed. Jerrold, Walter (London: J. M. Dent and Company, 1894), p. 52Google Scholar:

A young actress having made her debut at the Haymarket Theatre with very indifferent success, was every now and then soliciting Foote to know “when she should make her next appearance.”

“Your next appearance?” said he one day musingly, “Let me see; why, madam, you shall make your next appearance—when the public has forgotten your first.”

Even close friends did not escape Foote's wit: see pp. 51, 60, for puns on the respective deaths of Charles Holland and Francis Delaval.

3 Trefman, p. 271. The dating of Foote's plays and the frequency of their performance, along with documentation of Foote's acting career, are derived from Trefman, “Record of Foote's Performances on the English Stage,” pp. 271–82.

4 The OED describes a spouting club as a “society meeting for the purpose of practising recitation, declamation, or oratory.”

5 Garrick was not so prescriptive, so Weston joined the Drury-lane company during portions of the year when Foote could not use him (his lease on the Haymarket was restricted to the summer months). However, his drinking caused problems with Garrick, “for liquor always made Tom saucy, and step much beyond the rules of good manners and decency, which frequently brought him into scrapes” (Memoirs, p. 24); his absence from rehearsals due to his general dissipation caused Garrick to discharge him (Memoirs, p. 26), but when Weston explained his desperation due to debts, Garrick received him again into the company. Despite this kindness, Weston continued his irresponsible attitudes and was infuriatingly undependable. After he became a popular comedian, Garrick was forced to suffer his excesses, alternately firing and rehiring him. See Memoirs, pp. 37–38; The London Stage 1660–1800, Part IV, ed. Stone, George Winchester Jr. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962), 1356–1357Google Scholar.

6 The Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, Esq; to which is attached a Life of the Author 2 vols. (1809; rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, n.d.), I, 25–26Google Scholar. All references to Foote's plays will be taken from this edition; volume and page numbers will appear in parentheses following subsequent quotations.

7 The Memoirs records that “the playing of his character was so chastely conceived by him, and so naturally stamped upon his face, that like the sombre colouring of a masterly portrait, he derived all his merit from the truth of his profession” (p. 52). That is, Weston was convincingly pathetic. This may well have been aided by a relentless affliction of scurvy, exacerbated by his drinking and irregular eating habits, “a scorbutic complaint, which not only affected his face by breaking out in blotches in a very disagreeable manner, but also his legs, one of which had a hole in it that discharged a very great quantity of matter, that was not only offensive to himself, but to every one about him” (p. 27); see also pp. 39–40.

8 As a result, Weston in 1761 was given the part of Brush in Arthur Murphy's comedy, All in the Wrong: see Emery, John Pike, Arthur Murphy: An Eminent English Dramatist of the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1946), p. 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Under “Jerry,” the OED lists a “Jerry-sneak” as “a mean sneaking fellow, a hen-pecked husband.” The first usage cited is Foote's play in 1764, followed by a reference to a “Jerry-Sneak expression” (1824) and “A…landlady…was mated to a Jerry Sneak” (1844). Virginia Ogden Birdsall's description of a comic actor's wit as “an expression of his own elemental drives towards self-assertion and self-definition,” Wild Civility: The English Comic Spirit on the Restoration stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), p. 27Google Scholar, seems an appropriate explanation for Weston's success as pathetic Jerry Sneak; cf. Memoirs, pp. 51–52.

10 Until the summer season, 1773, Foote also played the part of Matthew Mug, the “victualler” who is competing for the mayorship of Garratt, and whom Heel-Tap calls “a damn'd bitter draught” (I, 32).

11 Oliver Cromwell. Daniel De Foe. Sir Richard Steele. Charles Churchill. Samuel Foote. Biographical Essays (London: John Murray, Albermarle Street, 1860), p. 421Google Scholar.

12 Perhaps an even more significant milestone had been reached the preceding year, in terms of Weston's “comedic regeneration,” when he played in two of Shakespeare's tragedies at Drury-lane (15 September 1767 in Hamlet; 21 September 1767 in Romeo and Juliet): despite the tragic vehicles, he allowed himself to be cast in roles which suited his low comedy talents. In Hamlet he portrayed Lucianus, the player who histrionically with “Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,” pours the poison which murders Gonzago (a role of only six lines' duration), while in Romeo and Juliet he played the comic servant Peter (The London Stage 1660–1800, IV, 1276Google Scholar). There were no further attempts at Richard III or at serious tragic roles; Weston had experienced enough success in Foote's many comic vehicles, and in similar parts offered by Garrick, that he was no longer tempted to incur audiences' ridicule.

13 Weston acted Dr. Last in Bickerstaffe's play on 31 August 1769 (DNB, LX, 375). Other testimony to Weston's theatrical popularity includes his portrait, by Zoffany, as Billy Button in The Maid of Bath, and a painting of Foote and Weston as President Hellebore and Dr. Last in The Devil Upon Two Sticks, painted by Zoffany and engraved by Finlayson (DNB, LX, 377); Nicoll, Allardyce, The Garrick Stage: Theatres and Audience in the Eighteenth Century (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1980)Google Scholar, argues the degree of Weston's popularity by noting that he was also drawn in a picture by Robert Dighton as Costard in Love's Labour's Lost— yet the play was apparently never performed in the eighteenth century (p. 148). When Weston acted the part of Scrub in The Beaux' Stratagem for Garrick, 1767–68, “their duet became famous and they continued performing the roles up to the mid-seventies” (p. 181). The Gentleman's Magazine (January, 1772) included Weston in an alphabetic encomium of the Drury-lane company: “V was a Vernon, for singing renown'd. W was a Weston, with true humour crowned” (The London Stage 1660–1800, IV, 1566). Forster quotes from the Conversations of Northcote: “‘You should have seen Weston,’ said Northcote to Hazlitt. ‘It was impossible from looking at him, for anyone to say that he was acting. You would suppose they had gone out and found the actual character they wanted, and brought him upon the stage without his knowing it. Even when they interrupted him with peals of laughter and applause, he looked about him as if he was not at all conscious of having anything to do with it, and then went on as before. In Scrub, Dr. Last, and other parts of that kind, he was perfection itself. Garrick would never attempt [Jonson's] Abel Drugger after him” (p. 445); cf. Weston's Memoirs, p. 51.

14 Foote took Weston with him on tour to Edinburgh in the off-season, 1770, where his protégé played Launcelot Gobbo in Shakespeare's, Merchant of Venice (DNB, LX, 376)Google Scholar. Before they left, Foote obtained special permission from the Chamberlain for them to perform The Minor as a benefit for Weston, with Foote as Mrs. Cole but with an older Weston as Transfer (still a simple “little” character, but now clearly an adult: see e.g., Act II [I,40]); “this brought Tom an hundred and eighty pounds, and put him a little on his legs.” The Scottish people determined Weston “the best comedian they had ever seen, and at his benefit they proved their regard for him” (Memoirs, pp. 32–33).

15 In The Patron, Foote also plays Sir Peter Pepperpot, a robust Indian trader (forerunner of Sir Matthew Mite), and in The Devil Upon Two Sticks, the Devil also disguises himself as Squib, “a doctor more interested in politics than medicine” (Trefman, p. 168).

16 Biographical Essays, p. 451.

17 For instance, the 1797 edition of The Mayor of Garratt includes the cast lists for recent independent productions of the play at Drury-lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket (Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, I, 2Google Scholar).

18 Memoirs, p. 47, although the Winston MS Dramatic Register records that “On 31 Dec. (Sunday) died Th. Weston of Drury Lane Theatre [where he had most recently performed following the close of the Haymarket season]” (The London Stage 1660–1800, IV, 1941Google Scholar).

19 Cf. Weston's bequest to Foote's Drury-lane competitor: “I owe some obligations to Mr. Garrick, I therefore bequeath him all the money I die possessed of, as there is nothing on earth he is so very fond of” (Memoirs, p. 54).

20 The Memoirs of J[acob] Decastro, Comedian ed. Humphreys, R. (London: Sherwood, Jones & Co., 1824), p. 8Google Scholar. It is also attributed to Foote in the Memoirs: “SUCH losses as these pray who can withstand?/To lose first my leg, and then my right hand” (p. 60).