William Leman Rede
Encyclopedia
William Leman Rede was one of the many prolific and successful playwrights who composed farces, melodramas, burlettas (light musical and comedies), and travesties
, primarily for theatres such as the Olympic
, Strand
, and Adelphi
, in the early nineteenth century. He proudly proclaimed himself a follower of Thomas Frognall Dibdin
, W. T. Moncrieff, James Robinson Planché, Douglas William Jerrold
, and John Baldwin Buckstone
-writers who established the "minor drama." This term referred to plays that were produced at venues other than Covent Garden
, Drury Lane
, and the Haymarket
, the "patent theatre
s" that had a legal monopoly on the presentation of serious, non-musical productions. The minor dramas did so well, however, that the patent theatres soon augmented their own bills with the same type of fare.
and member of the Inner Temple. He was also a newspaper writer, and the author of several works, including Studies of Nature (1797)-an abridged translation of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
's three-volume Études de la nature (1784–1788)-and Anecdotes and Biography (1799), and the compiler of the 1789 edition of the Bibliotheca Americana. Plagued with debts, Leman Thomas Rede moved his family from London
to Hamburg
, Germany
. William Leman Rede was born there on 31 January 1802. After his father's death in 1810, his mother (d. 29 September 1835) moved back to London
with her five children. Rede briefly considered a career as a boxer
and held an office job with a solicitor
but was soon drawn, like his older brother Leman Thomas Tertius Rede, to acting. He excelled in light comedy roles and frequently played with the eminent actor Edmund Kean
. In 1821 he married a teenager, Frances Lucy Mellor; they had three children, all of whom died young. His first play, Sixteen String Jack, a fictionalized account of the famous highwayman
of that name, premièred at the Royal Coburg Theatre on 18 February 1823. After bearing three children Frances Rede died in 1824 and after her death Rede became a travelling player, acting in barns, inns and impromptu venues. Rede married Sarah Cooke, an actress, in 1830 or 1832.
Rede was prolific though not disciplined in his approach to writing, and at various times produced song lyrics, novels, magazine articles, reference works and plays. He sometimes worked with his elder brother, Leman Thomas Tertius Rede; the two were known in theatrical circles as "the inseparables". He was often short of money but was remembered as sociable, witty and always ready to contribute his time towards a 'benefit' for a fellow actor. Habitually an early riser, fit and a 'plain liver', he died unexpectedly of apoplexy
at home on 3 April 1847, leaving a widow and son. He was buried in Clerkenwell
cemetery in the same grave as his brother, who had died in 1832.
Professionals Puzzled, or, Struggles at Starting (1832)
The Rake's Progress(1832)
The Old Stager and the New (1835) written as a vehicle for comedian John Liston to introduce the new recruit Charles James Mathews; the former was shown as a traditional kind of coachman and the latter as his son.
Flight to New York (1836), written as a vehicle for Thomas D. Rice
and incorporating his 'Jim Crow' persona.
Life's a Lottery (1842)
Our Village (1843)
The Old House of West Street (1844) (Withdrawn from the licensing process on advice from the lord chamberlain's examiner of plays because of its excessive violence.)
The Boyhood of Bacchus (1845), probably Rede's last play.
His most successful play, The Rake's Progress(1832), which later opened at the New York City Theatre on 23 January 1833, is based on William Hogarth
's A Rake's Progress
(1735), a cautionary series of eight prints depicting Tom Rakewell, a middle-class aspirant to aristocratic status who inherits a fortune from his miserly father, seduces and impregnates his maid, indulges in debauchery, is arrested, marries an unattractive but wealthy older woman, gambles away her fortune, goes to debtor's prison, and ends up in a madhouse. Catering to popular tastes, Rede converted the ugliness of Hogarth
's world to light comedy, modernized the story, added songs, and included episodes of sentimentality; he admits in the preface to the published version (1833) that "I knew that to realize Hogarth
's pictures was an impossibility." The Rake's Progress was his first drama to be printed, although allegedly nothing of the production was written down until it was revised for publication by John Duncombe.
The Royal Rake, and the Adventures of Alfred Chesterton (privately printed, 1842, and serialized in the Sunday Times, 1846): a satire on George IV.
Travesties
Travesties is a play by Tom Stoppard.The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the...
, primarily for theatres such as the Olympic
Olympic Theatre
The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street, and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout much of its existence...
, Strand
Royal Strand Theatre
The Royal Strand Theatre was located in Strand in the City of Westminster. The theatre was built on the site of a panorama in 1832, and in 1882 was rebuilt by the prolific theatre architect Charles J. Phipps...
, and Adelphi
Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre is a 1500-seat West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiving house for a variety of productions, including many musicals...
, in the early nineteenth century. He proudly proclaimed himself a follower of Thomas Frognall Dibdin
Thomas Frognall Dibdin
Thomas Frognall Dibdin , English bibliographer, born at Calcutta, was the son of Thomas Dibdin, the sailor brother of Charles Dibdin....
, W. T. Moncrieff, James Robinson Planché, Douglas William Jerrold
Douglas William Jerrold
Douglas William Jerrold was an English dramatist and writer.-Biography:Jerrold was born in London. His father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby near Cranbrook in Kent. In 1807 Douglass moved to Sheerness, where he spent his childhood...
, and John Baldwin Buckstone
John Baldwin Buckstone
John Baldwin Buckstone was an English actor, playwright and comedian who wrote 150 plays, the first of which was produced in 1826....
-writers who established the "minor drama." This term referred to plays that were produced at venues other than Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
, and the Haymarket
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
, the "patent theatre
Patent theatre
The patent theatres were the theatres that were licensed to perform "spoken drama" after the English Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Other theatres were prohibited from performing such "serious" drama, but were permitted to show comedy, pantomime or melodrama...
s" that had a legal monopoly on the presentation of serious, non-musical productions. The minor dramas did so well, however, that the patent theatres soon augmented their own bills with the same type of fare.
Family
Rede's father, Leman Thomas Rede, was a barristerBarrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
and member of the Inner Temple. He was also a newspaper writer, and the author of several works, including Studies of Nature (1797)-an abridged translation of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was a French writer and botanist...
's three-volume Études de la nature (1784–1788)-and Anecdotes and Biography (1799), and the compiler of the 1789 edition of the Bibliotheca Americana. Plagued with debts, Leman Thomas Rede moved his family from 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...
to Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. William Leman Rede was born there on 31 January 1802. After his father's death in 1810, his mother (d. 29 September 1835) moved back to 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...
with her five children. Rede briefly considered a career as a boxer
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
and held an office job with a solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
but was soon drawn, like his older brother Leman Thomas Tertius Rede, to acting. He excelled in light comedy roles and frequently played with the eminent actor Edmund Kean
Edmund Kean
Edmund Kean was an English actor, regarded in his time as the greatest ever.-Early life:Kean was born in London. His father was probably Edmund Kean, an architect’s clerk, and his mother was an actress, Anne Carey, daughter of the 18th century composer and playwright Henry Carey...
. In 1821 he married a teenager, Frances Lucy Mellor; they had three children, all of whom died young. His first play, Sixteen String Jack, a fictionalized account of the famous highwayman
John Rann
John "Sixteen String Jack" Rann was an English criminal and highwayman during the mid-18th century. He was a prominent and colourful local figure renowned for his wit and charm, he would later come to be known as "Sixteen String Jack" for the 16 various coloured strings he wore on the knees of his...
of that name, premièred at the Royal Coburg Theatre on 18 February 1823. After bearing three children Frances Rede died in 1824 and after her death Rede became a travelling player, acting in barns, inns and impromptu venues. Rede married Sarah Cooke, an actress, in 1830 or 1832.
Rede was prolific though not disciplined in his approach to writing, and at various times produced song lyrics, novels, magazine articles, reference works and plays. He sometimes worked with his elder brother, Leman Thomas Tertius Rede; the two were known in theatrical circles as "the inseparables". He was often short of money but was remembered as sociable, witty and always ready to contribute his time towards a 'benefit' for a fellow actor. Habitually an early riser, fit and a 'plain liver', he died unexpectedly of apoplexy
Apoplexy
Apoplexy is a medical term, which can be used to describe 'bleeding' in a stroke . Without further specification, it is rather outdated in use. Today it is used only for specific conditions, such as pituitary apoplexy and ovarian apoplexy. In common speech, it is used non-medically to mean a state...
at home on 3 April 1847, leaving a widow and son. He was buried in Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell is an area of central London in the London Borough of Islington. From 1900 to 1965 it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. The well after which it was named was rediscovered in 1924. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance...
cemetery in the same grave as his brother, who had died in 1832.
Plays
Sixteen-String Jack (1823)Professionals Puzzled, or, Struggles at Starting (1832)
The Rake's Progress(1832)
The Old Stager and the New (1835) written as a vehicle for comedian John Liston to introduce the new recruit Charles James Mathews; the former was shown as a traditional kind of coachman and the latter as his son.
Flight to New York (1836), written as a vehicle for Thomas D. Rice
Thomas D. Rice
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was a white performer and playwright who used African American vernacular speech, song, and dance to become one of the most popular minstrel show entertainers of his time.-Background:...
and incorporating his 'Jim Crow' persona.
Life's a Lottery (1842)
Our Village (1843)
The Old House of West Street (1844) (Withdrawn from the licensing process on advice from the lord chamberlain's examiner of plays because of its excessive violence.)
The Boyhood of Bacchus (1845), probably Rede's last play.
His most successful play, The Rake's Progress(1832), which later opened at the New York City Theatre on 23 January 1833, is based on William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
's A Rake's Progress
A Rake's Progress
A Rake's Progress is a series of eight paintings by 18th century English artist William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732–33 then engraved and published in print form in 1735...
(1735), a cautionary series of eight prints depicting Tom Rakewell, a middle-class aspirant to aristocratic status who inherits a fortune from his miserly father, seduces and impregnates his maid, indulges in debauchery, is arrested, marries an unattractive but wealthy older woman, gambles away her fortune, goes to debtor's prison, and ends up in a madhouse. Catering to popular tastes, Rede converted the ugliness of Hogarth
Hogarth
-People:* Burne Hogarth, American cartoonist, illustrator, educator and author* David George Hogarth, English archaeologist* Donald Hogarth, Canadian politician and mining financier* Paul Hogarth, English painter and illustrator...
's world to light comedy, modernized the story, added songs, and included episodes of sentimentality; he admits in the preface to the published version (1833) that "I knew that to realize Hogarth
Hogarth
-People:* Burne Hogarth, American cartoonist, illustrator, educator and author* David George Hogarth, English archaeologist* Donald Hogarth, Canadian politician and mining financier* Paul Hogarth, English painter and illustrator...
's pictures was an impossibility." The Rake's Progress was his first drama to be printed, although allegedly nothing of the production was written down until it was revised for publication by John Duncombe.
Novels
The Wedded Wanderer, or, The Soldier's Fate (1827)The Royal Rake, and the Adventures of Alfred Chesterton (privately printed, 1842, and serialized in the Sunday Times, 1846): a satire on George IV.