Author: Marshall, Thomas
Biography:
MARSHALL, Thomas (fl 1781-1808)
In 1806 Marshall was able to describe himself as “late of the theatre, Covent Garden.” No reliable birth record has been found but according to contemporary reports he was a Londoner, the son of a respectable “master taylor” who gave him a “liberal” education. He made his debut on the London stage in 1781 at the Haymarket, and married or began cohabiting with a fellow actor about the same time (no marriage record has been found and her name is not known except as “Mrs. Marshall”). There followed years at theatres outside the capital—Edinburgh, Hull, Norwich, Dublin, Manchester, etc.—until Marshall returned alone and secured a three-year contract with Covent Garden in 1790. He was not typically given leading roles but performed gentlemanly lesser parts. He and his first wife are said to have had a daughter in 1789 but nothing more is known of her and her mother died in North Shields, Tyneside, in 1791. The second “Mrs. Marshall” was the former Miss Webb, her first name possibly Lydia. In 1793 she accompanied Marshall to America, where they remained for almost ten years. Though Marshall left the US about 1801, she stayed on to become, as Mrs. Wilmot, “the favorite American actress of her day” (Highfill). Marshall returned to perform at Covent Garden (1804), then in the provinces, and finally at Drury Lane, where he was on the payroll from 1808 to 1819, but was reportedly blind and drawing on a charitable fund for the last few years. He may be the Thomas Marshall who died, aged 57, in the workhouse and was buried on 24 Jan. 1818—although that would mean that the Drury Lane accountants continued to pay something after his death. His poem on the death of Nelson did not attract much attention: the MR reviewer commented that the author had “yielded to patriotic feelings, which several writers besides himself have mistaken for poetic inspiration.” (Highfill; findmypast.com 26 Mar. 2023; ancestry.com 26 Mar. 2023; MR 49 [1806], 97-8) HJ