John Palmer (actor) - Roles

Roles

One of the most versatile as well as the most competent and popular of actors, Palmer played an enormous number of characters, principally at Drury Lane. John Genest's list, which is far from complete, and does not even include all Palmer's original characters, amounts to over three hundred separate parts. Except singing characters and old men, there was nothing in which he was not safe, and there were many things in which he was foremost. An idea of his versatility may be obtained from a few of the characters with which he was entrusted.

These include:

• Welborn in A New Way to Pay Old Debts
• Face in The Alchemist
• Pierre
• Mercutio
• lachimo
• lago
• Bastard in King John
• Slender
• Teague
• Trappanti
• Young Marlow
• Jaques
• Buckingham in Henry VIII
• Ford
• Ghost in Hamlet
• Hamlet
• Colonel Feignwell
• Bobadill
• Valentine and Ben in Love for Love
• Comus, Petruchio, Lofty in the Good Natured Man
• Puff in the Critic
• Lord Foppington in The Relapse
• Lord Townly
• Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV, Part 1
• Touchstone
• Henry VIII
• Inkle
• Macduff
• Macbeth
• Octavian in the Mountaineers
• Shylock
• Prospero
• Doricourt inThe Belle's Stratagem

and innumerable others. Not less numerous are his original characters. Of these three stand prominently forth, the most conspicuous of all being Joseph Surface, which seems never to have been so well played since; Almaviva in Spanish Barber, and Dick Dowlas.

Other original characters include:

• Colonel Evans in the School for Rakes
• Captain Dormer in A Word to the Wise
• Dionysius in Murphy's Grecian Daughter
• Leeson in the School for Wives
• Siward in Matilda
• Sir Petronel Flash in Old City Manners
• Solyman in the Sultan
• Jack Rubrick in the Spleen
• Earl Edwin in the Battle of Hastings
• Granger in Who's the Dupe?
• Sneer in the Critic
• Woodville in the Chapter of Accidents
• Contrast in the Lord of the Manor
• Sir Harry Trifle in the Divorce
• Almoran in the Fair Circassian
• Prince of Arragon in the piece so named
• Lord Gayville in the Heiress
• Don Octavio in the School for Guardians
• Sir Frederick Fashion in Seduction
• Marcellus in Julia, or the Italian Lover
• Random in Ways and Means
• Demetrius in the Greek Slave
• Young Manly in the Fugitive
• Sydenham in the Wheel of Fortune
• Schedoni in the Italian Monk
• Tonnage in the Ugly Club

In tragedy Palmer was successful in those parts alone in which, as in Stukely, lago, &c., dissimulation is required.

In comedy, thanks partly to his fine figure, there are very many parts in which he was held perfect. Some of his best parts are:

• Young Wilding in the Liar (perhaps his greatest character)
• Captain Flash
• Face
• Dick in the Confederacy
• Stukely
• Sir Toby Belch
• Captain Absolute
• Young Fashion
• Prince of Wales in the First Part of King Henry IV
• Sneer
• Don John
• Volpone
• Sir Frederick Fashion
• Henry VIII
• Father Philip in Castle Spectre
• Villeroy
• Brush

James Boaden declares him "the most unrivalled actor of modern times!" and says "he could approach a lady, bow to her and seat himself gracefully in her presence. We have had dancing-masters in great profusion since his time, but such deportment they have either not known or never taught." His biographer says that his want of a "classical education" was responsible for his defects, which consisted of a want of taste and discrimination, and the resort to physical powers when judgment was at fault. His delivery of Collins's Ode to the Passions was condemned as the one undertaking beyond his strength, and he is charged with unmeaning and ill-placed accents.

Dibdin says that he was vulgar, and Charles Lamb says that "for sock or buskin there was an air of swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman." In Captain Absolute, Lamb held, "you thought you could trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow in a top-knot, and had bought him a commission." In Dick Amlet he describes Jack as unsurpassable. John Taylor condemns his Falstaff as heavy throughout. Among innumerable stories circulated concerning Palmer is one that his ghost appeared after his death. He was accused of forgetting his origin and giving himself airs. He claimed to have frequently induced the sheriff's officer by whom he was arrested to bail him out of prison. In his late years Palmer's unreadiness on first nights was scandalous.

The authorship is ascribed to him of Like Master, Like Man, 8vo, 1811, a novel in two volumes, with a preface by George Colman the younger.

Portraits of Palmer in the Garrick Club include one by Russell, which was engraved by J. Collyer in 1787, a second by Arrowsmith as Cohenberg in the Siege of Belgrade, a third by Parkinson as lachimo, and a fourth, anonymous, as Joseph Surface in the screen scene from the School for Scandal, with King as Sir Peter, Smith as Charles Surface, and Mrs. Abington as Lady Teazle. A fifth, painted by Zoffany, representing Palmer as Face in the Alchemist, with Garrick as Abel Drugger and Burton as Subtle, is in the possession of the Earl of Carlisle.