The Norwich Company of Comedians was an acting company based in Norwich

Norwich

Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...

, England during the 18th and 19th centuries.

They were a professional, respected and comfortably-off band with better than average wages and popular headquarters at the White Swan inn. The company was treated with deference in every town it visited. Unusually, a good relationship had matured between the Norwich Theatre manager and the local magistrate

Magistrate

A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...

s, who under normal circumstances had little time for players. At some towns, when the season was drawing to a close, the town clerk would even send a note of congratulation to the troupe; and by 1804, relations had progressed along such a friendly path that Lord Chedworth was recorded as having left legacies of between £13 000 and £14 000 to members of the company. Norwich owed its place among the top five provincial circuits in England to its dramatic tradition.

White Swan Inn

The White Swann Inn, near St Peter Mancroft Church, was the company's permanent home from 1731–1757 and soon became known as the White Swan Playhouse. The first reference to the group of actors who were to form the main part of the Norwich circuit appears in 1726. For a decade, they went by the name of "The Duke of Grafton

Duke of Grafton

Duke of Grafton is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1675 by Charles II of England for his 2nd illegitimate son by the Duchess of Cleveland, Henry FitzRoy...

's Servants, a patron

Patrón

Patrón is a luxury brand of tequila produced in Mexico and sold in hand-blown, individually numbered bottles.Made entirely from Blue Agave "piñas" , Patrón comes in five varieties: Silver, Añejo, Reposado, Gran Patrón Platinum and Gran Patrón Burdeos. Patrón also sells a tequila-coffee blend known...

 of the company in the early eighteenth century. In 1736 they assumed the cumbersome title of "The Norwich Company of Comedians, Servants to His Grace, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain to His Majesty's Household".

The Plays

The Company were careful to perform plays soon after their London première, reinforcing their professionalism by presenting the most recent plays possible. For instance, "King Charles I" by William Harvard appeared in the same month in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and Norwich in 1737. John Gay

John Gay

John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...

's "The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...

", new to London in January 1728, was performed to Norwich audiences three months later and taken soon after to Bury St Edmunds, Colchester

Colchester

Colchester is an historic town and the largest settlement within the borough of Colchester in Essex, England.At the time of the census in 2001, it had a population of 104,390. However, the population is rapidly increasing, and has been named as one of Britain's fastest growing towns. As the...

 and Ipswich.

Thomas Ivory

The real era of prosperity began in 1758 when local architect Thomas Ivory

Thomas Ivory

-Life:He was admitted a freeman of Norwich as a carpenter 21 September 1745, and lived in the parish of St. Helen.He obtained a license for his company of actors, the Norwich Company of Comedians, to perform in Norwich in 1768, and in the same year sent competition drawings for the erection of the...

 became proprietor of the circuit. In 1758, Ivory built Norwich its first proper theatre, a miniature Drury Lane Theatre.

The Actors

• Benjamin Plim Bellamy
  Benjamin Plim Bellamy
  Benjamin Plim Bellamy was an English actor.He was baptised at St. Mary Magdalene, Bridgnorth, Shropshire on 27 September 1782, son of William and Ann Bellamy. For some 30 years was a favourite actor on the Norwich circuit. In 1810 the Suffolk Chronicle hired a corrosive new critic, up to which...
  
  
• George Bennett, father of George John Bennett
  George John Bennett
  George John Bennett was for nearly 40 years a Shakespearian actor on the London stage, notably Covent Garden and Drury Lane. He was the son of the eminent popular comedian George Bennett and , the daughter of an ancient family in Westmorland...
  
  
• Harriet Bennett (née Morland)
• Harriet Faucit