Author: Gentleman, Francis
Biography:
GENTLEMAN, Francis (1728-1784: ODNB)
Francis Gentleman was born in York Street, Dublin, on 23 Oct. 1728, the eldest child of Patrick Gentleman (d 1745), a captain in the 35th regiment of foot, and his wife, Sarah Savage (d after 1754), a daughter of Patrick Savage of Portaferry Castle. From 1738 to 1743, he was educated at the Digges Street grammar school, Dublin, where he was a schoolfellow of John Dexter (1726-1764) and, his particular friend, Henry Mossop (1729-1773). They, like he, would become actors. In 1744, his father purchased for him a second lieutenancy in the 35th regiment. At the conclusion of the Austrian War of Succession (1748), his regiment was disbanded and he was placed on half-pay. He then became, in the 1748-49 and 1749-50 seasons, a member of the acting troop in Theatre Royal, Smock Alley, Dublin. In about 1751, he made the acquaintance of David Garrick (q.v.) who, in after years, supplied him with a subvention but with whom, in 1770, he had a falling out. With an £800 legacy from an uncle, and £700 from the sale of freehold land willed to him by his father, in about 1751 he emigrated to England. Ambitious to be a man of letters, in 1751, while he was resident in Richmond, he published his first work, Sejanus, an alteration of Ben Jonson’s play. About fifteen other plays followed. In 1764, he settled in New Malton, Yorkshire, where, on 23 Jan. of that year, he married Ruth Addinall (d 1773). Together they had seven children: Francis (b 1765), Robert (b 1766), and Sarah (b 1768), baptized in New Malton; and Patty (b 1769), William (b 1771), John (b 1772), and Jerome (b 1773), baptized in London. Ruth died a few weeks after Jerome’s birth. An influential drama critic, in The Dramatic Censor (1770) he criticized several dozen contemporary actors and plays. Alexander Chalmers called his “acting edition” of Shakespeare (1773) “unquestionably the worst edition that ever appeared of any English author.” He died, in great penury, in George Lane, Dublin, on 21 Dec. 1784. (ODNB 1 May 2023; R. Trimen, Historical Memoir … 35th … Regiment [1873], 22, 201; C. Dalton, George the First’s Army [1910] 1:362, 2:316; G. F. Savage-Armstrong, Savage Family of Ulster [1906], 137, 138; Biographical Dictionary of Actors [1978], 6:138-53; J. C. Greene, Theatre in Dublin [2011]) JC