"....the fourth son ... of Samuel Foote (1678-1754), a lawyer and magistrate and MP for Tiverton, and his wife, Eleanor Dinely, the daughter of Sir Edward Goodere, bt, of Hereford. ... Samuel Foote attended the grammar school at Truro and Worcester College, Oxford, but was dismissed from Oxford on 25 February 1740 'after a course of many irregularitys' ....
"About 1740 or 1741 Foote published The Genuine Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Dinely Goodere, Bart., an account of the murder of his maternal uncle, Sir John Dinely Goodere, by his brother, Captain Samuel Goodere; young Foote received only £20 for his efforts. His next business venture, a partnership with a Mr Price to make and sell small beer, failed. On 10 January 1741, at St Clement Danes in London, Foote married Mary Hickes (bap. 1724), the daughter of John and Chastity Hickes. A pretty neighbour of sixteen or seventeen from Truro, she brought a good dowry, which Foote quickly squandered. Besieged by creditors, including his mother and Frances Wandesford, Viscountess Castlecomer (the sister of Henry Pelham and the duke of Newcastle), he was confined in the Fleet debtors' prison on 13 November 1742, where his wife joined him-although thereafter she disappears from his life. Released after a few months, he was soon recommitted on the same charges until finally released on 7 September 1743, following the passage of the bill for the relief of insolvent debtors.
"About 1740 or 1741 Foote published The Genuine Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Dinely Goodere, Bart., an account of the murder of his maternal uncle, Sir John Dinely Goodere, by his brother, Captain Samuel Goodere; young Foote received only £20 for his efforts. His next business venture, a partnership with a Mr Price to make and sell small beer, failed. On 10 January 1741, at St Clement Danes in London, Foote married Mary Hickes (bap. 1724), the daughter of John and Chastity Hickes. A pretty neighbour of sixteen or seventeen from Truro, she brought a good dowry, which Foote quickly squandered. Besieged by creditors, including his mother and Frances Wandesford, Viscountess Castlecomer (the sister of Henry Pelham and the duke of Newcastle), he was confined in the Fleet debtors' prison on 13 November 1742, where his wife joined him-although thereafter she disappears from his life. Released after a few months, he was soon recommitted on the same charges until finally released on 7 September 1743, following the passage of the bill for the relief of insolvent debtors.
[Foote turned to acting and then writing his own material.]
"After receiving instruction from the veteran actor Charles Macklin, Foote appeared at the Haymarket on 6 February 1744, as Othello, to 'Universal Applause' .....
[Success in his acting career was uneven]
"Essentially, because Foote did not excel in standard repertory roles he could not obtain a permanent position with either company, and, on account of that, he assumed an entrepreneurial role and devised innovative theatrical modes......
"The resourceful Foote rented the Haymarket, assembled an acting company during the 1746-7 season, and created the dramatic form that became the staple of his career, the satirical revue effected through mimicry of well-known persons. His first entertainment was The Diversions of the Morning, or, A Dish of Chocolate on 22 April. To conform to the Licensing Act, the performance was given gratis, following a concert. To avoid conflict with the patent theatres Foote soon scheduled performances for 12 noon. Diversions met with immediate success and was acted thirty-five times, drawing great crowds through its exaggerated imitations of popular performers such as .... David Garrick. ......
"Essentially, because Foote did not excel in standard repertory roles he could not obtain a permanent position with either company, and, on account of that, he assumed an entrepreneurial role and devised innovative theatrical modes......
"The resourceful Foote rented the Haymarket, assembled an acting company during the 1746-7 season, and created the dramatic form that became the staple of his career, the satirical revue effected through mimicry of well-known persons. His first entertainment was The Diversions of the Morning, or, A Dish of Chocolate on 22 April. To conform to the Licensing Act, the performance was given gratis, following a concert. To avoid conflict with the patent theatres Foote soon scheduled performances for 12 noon. Diversions met with immediate success and was acted thirty-five times, drawing great crowds through its exaggerated imitations of popular performers such as .... David Garrick. ......
...... On 18 April 1748 Foote retitled ...[the] revue An Auction of Pictures, exploiting the current popularity of auctions. The new orientation allowed him to pretend to auction detailed portraits of his favourite satiric targets. ....On 3 April he introduced his own two-act comedy, The Knights, featuring a duet of Italian cats, an overt attack on Italian opera.
"Following a continental sojourn Foote returned to London with another of his own plays, a farce, Taste, which he maintained in the 'Preface' was genuine comedy. Even with Garrick dressed as an auctioneer, delivering his Prologue, the play failed on 11 January 1752 at Drury Lane, but, slightly altered, it was successfully brought back the following week. Foote's The Englishman in Paris was unsuccessful at Covent Garden on 24 March 1753, with Charles Macklin as Buck, but when the author took that role at Drury Lane the following season, the play achieved great popularity.
"Foote again produced Tea during the 1753-4 season, and on 3 February 1756 he brought out The Englishman Return'd from Paris, a sequel to his Englishman in Paris, having stolen the idea from Arthur Murphy, who had confided in him that he was working on such a play. Foote's next play, The Author, which satirized an uncle of Foote's friend Francis Delaval, a Mr Apreece, was soon withdrawn from the repertory after pressure exerted on Garrick by the influential Apreece.
......
"Back in London he appeared at the Haymarket on 9 November 1759, promising Comic Lectures, but angered the audience by presenting only himself on a darkened stage reading aloud parts of his next play, The Minor. He quickly left for Dublin, where The Minor failed at Crow Street.... When Foote returned to London he succeeded with the play, which he enlarged from two acts to three and brought out at the Haymarket on 28 June 1760, with a group of virtually unknown performers. An uncompromising satire on George Whitefield and the Methodists, The Minor was both a theatrical and personal success for Foote, who played three roles-those of Shift, Smirk, and Mother Cole. As a virulent paper war of letters, essays, and tracts, both for and against the Methodists, flooded London, Garrick's interest was aroused, and the play, with excisions made by the lord chamberlain under pressure from the archbishop of Canterbury and George Whitefield's patroness, Selina Hastings, countess of Huntingdon, opened at Drury Lane on 22 November 1760.
....
"[B]y 28 April 1762 he had leased the Haymarket to institute a 'Course of Lectures on English Orators'. The Orators exploited his considerable talent in topical satire and mimicry for thirty-eight performances. Two of Foote's most successful satiric attacks were on Thomas Sheridan and George Faulkner, the one-legged Dublin printer whom Foote mocked as Peter Paragraph. .... On 10 June 1765, as Zachary Fungus in his new comedy The Commissary, Foote brought his career to its high point: he had finally attained theatrical recognition and financial independence.
"But, however successful, Foote's career had always been marked by his continual feuding with London personalities, among them Henry Fielding, Henry Woodward, Charles Macklin, and Arthur Murphy. As far back as 1748, after Foote targeted Fielding in his 18 April Auction, the latter responded by presenting, in Panton Street, a satiric puppet show, which he called Madam de la Nash's Breakfasting Room. Foote and Fielding continued their quarrels through broadsides for several months, to the delight of Londoners. The next year Foote reignited a feud with Woodward, which had been simmering since March 1748, when both actors were performing in Dublin. Woodward, at the Crow Street theatre, had written Coffee, an obvious satire on Foote's Tea. During a performance of Auction of Pictures at the Haymarket on 7 January 1749 Foote mimicked Woodward's performance in Lethe, which he was acting at Drury Lane. The contentious Foote further publicly twitted Woodward in the General Advertiser of 10 March. Woodward retaliated with his own afterpiece Tit for Tat, or, One Dish of his Own Chocolate, on 18 March at Drury Lane. He drew a large crowd and enjoyed 'uncommon applause' ..... at Foote's expense....
"Foote's life-acting, writing, and feuding-was irrevocably changed in February 1766, when he was a guest of John Savile, first earl of Mexborough, and his countess, Sarah Delaval, at Cannon Park in Hampshire at a reception honoring Edward, duke of York, the brother of George III. The Delavals and the duke of York shared a passion for the theatre, and the countess's father was the dedicatee of Taste. Foote allowed himself to be teased by several of the socially renowned guests about his horsemanship and to be challenged to ride the duke of York's spirited horse. He accepted the challenge and in a very short time was thrown from the horse, fracturing his leg in two places; it was soon clear that his leg had to be amputated. Refusing to allow this tragedy to dominate his life, the resilient and practical-minded Foote requested that the duke of York obtain for him a patent for the Haymarket Theatre. The patent was granted on 5 July 1766, allowing Foote to operate the Haymarket from 15 June to 15 September. Although Foote had requested a patent for year-long performance, he accepted the shorter summer one and proceeded to have two wooden legs crafted, one a simple stick and the other decorated with a silk stocking and a gold-buckled polished shoe, to be used on stage. He also obtained a gold crutched cane to aid his walking.
"Foote returned for his first performance since the accident to a large and enthusiastic audience on 18 June 1766, acting Mother Cole in The Minor. Soon he performed in The Orators, The Commissary, and The Credulous Husband, proudly advertising his theatre as 'the Theatre Royal' on the bills and describing his company as 'His Majesty's Company of Comedians'. John O'Keeffe recalled in his Memoirs how Foote 'looked sorrowful' as a servant attached his stage leg before a performance, but then how he 'hobbled forward, entered the scene, and gave the audience what they expected-their plenty of laugh and delight' .....
"In 1767 Foote purchased the Haymarket from the executors of John Potter, the original builder, and improved and enlarged it by adding an upper gallery. He also purchased a house on Suffolk Street which he used for living and wardrobe space. In May the following year his satire on the medical profession, The Devil upon Two Sticks, in which he played a lame devil, was very successful at the Haymarket and later at Smock Alley, where he brought it in November.
"In November 1770 Foote took his Haymarket company to Edinburgh, where he had leased the Theatre Royal from David Ross for three years. He presented The Commissary, Garrick's The Lying Valet, and The Minor, the last of which upset the local clergy with its satire on George Whitefield; Foote also acted the roles of Shylock and Fondlewife. James Boswell wrote to Garrick, 'We have been kept laughing all this winter by Foote, who has made a Very good Campaign of it here' .....
"Foote's next play, originally titled The Siege of Calais, was an overt attack on Elizabeth Chudleigh, duchess of Kingston, an influential figure who was currently facing trial on charges of bigamy. Foote dramatized Chudleigh as Lady Crocodile, but the lord chamberlain rejected his play during the summer of 1775. The feud between Foote and the duchess heated up as Foote first threatened to publish the play, then rejected a bribe from her, and later claimed he had lost £3000 by the work's suppression. Determined to silence the persistent and obstreperous Foote, William Jackson, publisher of the Public Ledger and a supporter of the duchess, initiated and printed rumours that Foote was homosexual. Although Foote hurriedly tried to clear his name, the attacks continued: in August 1775 the duchess declared in the public press that she would 'prostitute the term of manhood by applying it to Mr. Foote'......On 8 July, John Sangster, a servant of Foote, charged the actor with an attempted homosexual attack, a capital offence. Foote's sense of personal security collapsed under the repeated and vicious attacks. His case came to trial on 9 December 1776 and he was quickly acquitted, but his spirit was broken. His biographer noted that, when Arthur Murphy, who acted as Foote's attorney, visited the actor to tell him he had been acquitted, Foote collapsed on the floor 'in strong hysterics'.....
[The stress of these events hastened Foote's death]
"Foote's will had been drawn up in 1768, and, although some of its provisions were invalidated by changing circumstances, it demonstrated the depth of his regard for Jewell and his concern for his relatives. To Jewell he bequeathed 'my Theatre Royal in the Haymarket and all my buildings thereto belonging' and various privileges pertinent to the theatre. To others he made several small sentimental gifts. The remainder of the estate was bequeathed to his two illegitimate sons, Francis and George Foote, equally upon their reaching their majority. Foote also made provision for his mother (by then deceased) ....
"Foote died as a controversial and celebrated public figure, an actor, playwright, wit, and brilliant conversationalist. The usually urbane Garrick commented that he 'had much wit, no feeling, sacrific'd friends & foes to a joke, & so has dy'd very little regretted even by his nearest acquaintance' ..... Dr Johnson once said of him, 'Foote is quite impartial, for he tells lies of everybody' ....but he later wrote to Mrs Thrale that 'he was a fine fellow in his way' ..."
We conclude Samuel Foote was a fine fellow and more: his life as a play would be called unlikely. It would have been nice if the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography had glossed the reference to Italian cats.
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