John Palmer (actor) - Acting Career

Acting Career

Returning in the summer to the Haymarket, Palmer was on 2 July 1767 the original Isaacos in the mock tragedy of the Tailors, and acted Ben Budge in the Beggar's Opera, Morton in Hartson's Countess of Salisbury, imported from Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, to the Lord William of Miss Palmer from Dublin, apparently no relation, and Young Rakish in the School-boy. Back at Drury Lane, he was on 23 Oct. 1767 the original Wilson in Garrick's Peep behind the Curtain, or the New Rehearsal; Furnival, a worthless barrister, in Kenrick's Widow'd Wife; on 23 Jan. 1768 Sir Harry Newburgh in Kelly's False Delicacy, and, 21 March, Captain Slang in Bickerstaffe's Absent Man, and played also Young Wilding in the Liar, and Colonel Tamper in The Deuce is in him.

The death of "Gentleman Palmer" in 1768 was followed by the engagement of John Palmer for four years, at a salary rising from forty to fifty shillings a week. The parts assigned him increased in number and importance. The death of Charles Holland and the secession of other actors also contributed to his advancement. It was, indeed, while replacing "Gentleman Palmer" as Harcourt in the Country Girl, in about 1767, that Jack Plausible, as the second Palmer was generally called, established himself in Garrick's favour. He offered to play the part, with which he was quite unfamiliar, the following day. 'Read it, you mean,' said Garrick, who held impossible the mastery of such a character within the time accorded. When at rehearsal Palmer read the part, Garrick exclaimed: "I said so! I knew he would not study it." At night Palmer spoke it with more accuracy than was often observable when better opportunities had been afforded him. Garrick also engaged Mrs. Palmer, who had never been upon the stage, and who, having through her marriage with an actor, forfeited the wealth she expected to inherit, was glad to accept the twenty shillings a week which, together with friendship never forfeited, Garrick proffered. Mrs. Palmer's appearances on the stage appear to have been few, and are not easily traced. The initial J. was dropped in 1769-70 from the announcements of Palmer's name in the playbills. The omission gave rise to Foote's joke, that Jack Palmer had lost an I. Palmer was disabled for some months in consequence of an accident when acting Dionysius in the Grecian Daughter, to the Euphrasia of Ann Street Barry. The spring in her dagger refused to work, and she inflicted on him in her simulated fury a serious wound. In 1772 Palmer relinquished his summer engagement at the Haymarket in order to succeed Thomas King at Liverpool, where he became a great favourite, and established himself as a tragedian. One circumstance alone militated against his popularity. He was said to ill-treat his wife. Alarmed at this report, he sent for that long-suffering lady, who came, and hiding, it is said, the bruises on her face inflicted by her husband, who was both false and cruel, walked about Liverpool with him and re-established him in public estimation. Not until 1776 did he reappear at the Haymarket, which, however, from that time remained his ordinary place of summer resort. The retirement of Smith gave Palmer control all but undisputed over the highest comedy. Tribute to his special gifts is involved in his selection for Joseph Surface on the first performance of The School for Scandal, 8 May 1777, a character in which he was by general consent unapproachable. Himself addicted to pleasure, for which he occasionally neglected his theatrical duties, he had a pharisaical way of appealing to the audience, which exactly suited the character, and invariably won him forgiveness. This it was, accompanied by his "nice conduct" of the pocket-handkerchief, that secured him the name of Plausible Jack, and established the fact that he was the only man who could induce the public to believe that his wife brought him offspring every two months. She brought him, in fact, eight children. After a quarrel with Sheridan, Palmer, approaching the dramatist with a head bent forward, his hand on his heart, and his most plausible Joseph Surface manner, and saying, "If you could see my heart, Mr. Sheridan", received the reply, "Why, Jack, you forget I wrote it." On 30 Aug. of the same year, at the Haymarket, he further heightened his reputation by his performance of Almaviva.