David Garrick (actor)

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Angelika Kauffmann : Portrait of David Garrick , 1764, Stamford, Burghley House

David Garrick (born February 19, 1717 in Hereford , England , † January 20, 1779 in London ) was a famous actor of the 18th century , the Age of Enlightenment . He was particularly successful both as a comedian and in serious roles on the London stages . He also made a name for himself as a theater director and writer of plays.

Life

William Hogarth : Portrait of the Actor David Garrick and His Wife, 1757

David Garrick was born on February 19, 1717 in Hereford , England , the grandson of a Huguenot refugee named Garric or Garrique from Bordeaux and the third son of officer Peter Garrick and Arabella Clough, the Irish daughter of a clergyman. It was after the age of eleven short time in the trading branch of his uncle in Lisbon had been working at a private school in Lichfield , among others, Samuel Johnson brought up, went with his teacher Johnson in 1737 to London , devoted himself first to the Jura -Studies was then worked for a while as a merchant and opened a wine shop with his brother. But none of this satisfied him, as he actually felt called to the art of acting, which is why, in addition to his work in the wine shop, he appeared as an amateur actor for several years.

Since 1741 he was finally able to indulge his real inclination, because that year he first appeared in Ipswich under the name "Lyddel", then in London in a Shakespeare performance staged by Colley Cibber at the theater in Goodman's Fields as Richard III. took the stage and immediately received extraordinary applause as a mime. After a short time in 1742 in Dublin had occurred, he returned to London and played with overwhelming success to 1745 at the Drury Lane Theater , then went back to Dublin with Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788) the management of the theater in Sinock Ally to take over, but followed a call to the Covent Garden Theater in London in 1746 and bought the Drury Lane Theater in 1747 with James Lacy (1696–1774). He especially tried to revive the taste of Shakespeare's poetry.

Thomas Gainsborough: David Garrick, 1770

In 1749 Garrick married the dancer Eva Maria, née Veigel. She was born on February 29, 1724 in Vienna and came to London in 1748, after having enjoyed success as a dancer in Florence and Vienna under the stage name "Violette" , who was also praised for her virtue.

After Garrick had stayed in France , Italy and Germany in the years 1763-65 , he was the sole director of the Drury Lane Theater until 1776 after Lacy's death. Both in 1763 and in 1765 he regularly attended the coterie holbachique ("Holbach'sche clique"), the meeting in the house of Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, with whom he was personally connected throughout his life and through a lively correspondence. In 1765 he was visited by d'Holbach in London. In 1776 he retired to his country house near London, where he died on January 20, 1779. This country house was badly damaged in a fire at the end of October 2008. Garrick left a fortune of approximately £ 140,000. His body was buried in the "Poet's Corner" in Westminster Abbey at the foot of the monument dedicated to Shakespeare. His wife outlived him by several decades. She died in London on October 16, 1822, at the age of 97.

Garrick had his facial expressions and his organs of speech in the most admirable control. He was able to express any passion he wanted, so that on stage he was almost as great in the tragic as in the comic. He was friends with numerous great minds of the 18th century, such as the author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson , the painter William Hogarth , the writer Oliver Goldsmith and the French enlightener Denis Diderot . Garrick was also a member of Johnson's Literary Club . The German Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was one of his admirers . Garrick's face is passed down through numerous portraits painted by William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds , Angelika Kauffmann , Pompeo Batoni , Nathaniel Dance-Holland and Thomas Gainsborough, as well as a bust of Louis-François Roubiliac . In 1831, in memory of the great mimes, the Garrick Club was founded, which mainly consists of actors and artists.

Others

The Thames island of Garrick's Ait is named after him and is the only island in the United Kingdom to be named after an actor. He is multi-layered with the singer Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld geb. Garrigues (1825-1904) related.

Works

Some of Garrick's 27 comedies are:

  • The Lying Valet (1741),
  • Miss in her Teens (1747),
  • Catherine and Petruchio and the opera The Tempest ( 1756 ),
  • that with George Colman the Elder machined piece The Clandestine Marriage (1766)
  • The Irish Widow (1772)
  • Bon Ton, or, High Life above Stairs (1775).
  • His Dramatic Works in three volumes were published in London in 1768, a collection of his prologues, epistles and poems appeared in the Poetical Works of David Garrick (2 volumes, London 1785).
  • His correspondence was first published in 1831 (more recent edition: David M. Little / George M. Kahrl: The Letters of David Garrick , 3 volumes, London 1963),
  • his diaries were published by RC Alexander in 1928.

literature

  • Jean Benedetti: David Garrick and the birth of modern theater . Methuen, London 2001, ISBN 0-413-70600-1
  • Kalman A. Burnim: David Garrick, director . Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Ill. 1973, ISBN 0-8093-0625-5
  • Nicholas D. Smith: An actor's library. David Garrick, book collecting and literary friendships . Oak Knoll Press, New Castle, Delaware 2017, ISBN 978-1-58456-362-4 (English, illustration of David Garrick's book collecting activities and his library).
  • Frank A. Hedgcock: A cosmopolitan actor. David Garrick and his French friends . Blom, London 1969; Reprint of the New York 1912 edition
  • George M. Kahrl: David Garrick. A critical biography . Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale IL 1979, ISBN 0-8093-0931-9
  • Alan Kendall: David Garrick. A biography . Harrap, London 1985, ISBN 0-245-54252-3
  • Carola Oman: David Garrick . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1958
  • Jan Seewald: Theatrical Sculpture. Sculpted portraits of famous English actors (1750–1850), in particular David Garrick and Sarah Siddons . Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8316-0671-9
  • George W. Stone: David Garrick. A critical biography . Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale IL 1979, ISBN 0-8093-0931-9
  • Arthur Murphy (1727-1805). Vie de David Garrik, suivie de deux lettres de M. Noverre
  • Garrick, David . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 11 : Franciscans - Gibson . London 1910, p. 475 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : David Garrick  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charles Brayne: Lacy, James (1696-1774). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004, accessed August 18, 2019.
  2. ↑ Philipp Blom: Evil Philosophers: A Salon in Paris and the Forgotten Legacy of the Enlightenment . Hanser, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23648-6 , p. 225 ff.
  3. ↑ telegraph.co.uk
personal data
SURNAME Garrick, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1717
PLACE OF BIRTH Hereford , England
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1779
Place of death London