Actors - David Garrick

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	Actors - David Garrick

David Garrick (February 19, 1717 – January 20, 1779) was an English actor, dramatist, theatrical producer and theatrical manager, and a friend and pupil of Samuel Johnson. Garrick is considered one of the most influential and popular figures in the history of British theatre.

David Garrick was born in Hereford, England and educated, like Johnson, at Lichfield in Staffordshire, 14 miles north of Birmingham and 110 miles northwest of London. (The Garrick family name is a corruption of Garrigues, his grandfather, David Garric, having fled France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.) Johnson later taught Garrick the classics, and in 1737 Garrick travelled to London to seek his fortune. Finding no success in a legal career, he decided on the stage, and by 1741 Garrick was the talk of the theatrical scene for his performance in William Shakespeare's Richard III. He went on to manage the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane and enjoyed a thirty-year career at the top of his profession.

Garrick tried to portray characters as real people, rather than melodramatic caricatures. He encouraged fellow actors to act as they would in everyday life and avoid posing.

David Garrick died in London, England and was interred in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. A monument to him in Lichfield Cathedral bears Johnson's famous comment:

I am disappointed by that stroke of death that has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

A carved stone medallion, a metre or more in diameter, showing Garrick is on display at Birmingham Central Library.

Major works

Lethe: or, Esop in the Shades (1740)
The Lying Valet (1741)
Miss in Her Teens; or, The Medley of Lovers (1747)
Lilliput (1756)
The Male Coquette; or, Seventeen Fifty Seven (1757)
The Guardian (1759)
Harlequin's Invasion (1759)
The Enchanter; or, Love and Magic (1760)
The Farmer's Return from London (1762)
The Clandestine Marriage (1766)
Neck or Nothing (1766)
Cymon (1767)
Linco's Travels (1767)
A Peep Behind the Curtain, or The New Rehearsal (1767)
The Jubilee (1769)
The Irish Widow (1772)
A Christmas Tale (1773)
The Meeting of the Company; or, Bayes's Art of Acting (1774)
Bon Ton; or, High Life Above Stairs (1775)
The Theatrical Candidates (1775)
May-Day; or, The Little Gypsy (1775)

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Actors - David Garrick

Major works

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