biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1791–1852)
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| biography:
| Actor, playwright and composer, born in New York City, New York, USA. Enamoured of the stage as a youth, he debuted as an actor in 1809 and enjoyed a string of successes that included being the first American to play Hamlet (1809). He spent the years 1813–32 mainly in England and France, where he had only modest success as an actor and playwright. Among his many plays and adaptations were some 10 collaborations with Washington Irving, including Charles the Second; or, The Merry Monarch (1824). It was for one of his operettas, Clari (1823), that he wrote the only words (to the music of Henry Rowley Bishop) for which he would be remembered, ‘Home, Sweet Home’. Always fighting off his creditors (he spent a short time in an English debtor's prison), he returned to the USA and undertook a variety of projects, including a campaign to help the Cherokee. With his theatrical career at a standstill, friends arranged his appointment as US consul to Tunis (1842–5, 1851), where he died in 1852. |
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