Джон Лоуренс Тул: Англияның комедиялық актерінің өмірі мен мансабы

English comic actor

John Lawrence (J. L.) Toole (12 March 1830 – 30 July 1906) was an English comic actor, actor manager and theatrical producer. He was famous for his roles in farce and in serio comic melodramas, in a career that spanned more than four decades, and the first actor to have a West End theatre named after him.

Toole was born in London, the younger son of James Toole and his wife, Elizabeth. His father was a messenger for the East India Company and for some years an usher at the Old Bailey, who for many years in the 1840s acted as toastmaster in the City of London. He was educated at the City of London School from 1841 to 1845, and started work as a clerk in a wine merchant's office.

Toole began his acting career by training as an amateur with the City Histrionic Club, beginning in 1850 and by performing in other amateur theatricals and in comic sketches. He earned good notices, particularly as Jacob Earwig in Boots at the Swan, and soon met Charles Dickens, who had heard of him and came to see him act. His role as Simmons in The Spitalfields Weaver by Thomas Haynes Bayly at the Haymarket Theatre, on 22 July 1852 was billed as his "first appearance" on stage. Encouraged by Dickens, he appeared later that year at the Queen's Theatre in Dublin, under the management of Charles Dillon, and by 1853 became the principal "low comedian" at the Theatre Royale in Edinburgh. His older brother, Francis, acted as his manager throughout his early career. Toole made his first professional appearance in London at the St. James's Theatre, acting as Samuel Pepys in The King's Rival, by Tom Taylor and Charles Reade, and Weazel in My Friend the Major by Charles Selby. He returned to the provinces, but by 1856 was engaged in London at the Lyceum Theatre, including as Hilarion Fanfaronade in Belphegor, in which Marie Wilton made her first London appearance. Thereafter, he frequently performed with Wilton. Augustus de Rosherville in The Willow Copse by Boucicault, in Birthplace of Podgers, Tom Dibbles in Good for Nothing by J. B. Buckstone, and in Bengal Tiger. Peter Familias in The Census by William Brough (among many pieces by Brough), Milwood in George de Barnwell by H. J. Byron (1862), Caleb Plummer in Dot (1862), by Dion Boucicault, and Prudent in The Fast Family by B. Webster, Jr. His other great successes there were as Mr. Tetterby in an adaptation of Dickens' The Haunted Man and of a frightened servant in Boucicault's The Phantom. the Irishman Brulgruddery in John Bull by George Colman the Younger; Bob Acres in The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, together with Charles James Mathews and Samuel Phelps; the title role in a Robert Reece burlesque called Don Giovanni in Venice; another title role in Guy Fawkes by H. J. Byron, and created the role of the barrister Hammond Coote in Wig and Gown by James Albery. Toole's fame was at its height in 1874, when he went on tour to America, but he failed to reproduce there the success he had found in England. In 1878, Toole created the role of Charles Liquorpond in A Fool and his Money by H. J. Byron. Liquorpond was a retired footman unexpectedly overtaken by wealth, and Toole's affectedly superior pronunciation, particularly of his own name, was a tremendous success. In his prime, Toole achieved wide popularity as a comic actor, being noted for his comic delivery of words, but he did not confine himself exclusively to comedy. He also excelled in domestic melodramas (adaptations by Dion Boucicault and others of Charles Dickens and similar writers), playing "tender hearted victims of fate", where he was famously able to combine humour and pathos. The Times said of his performance in Dearer than Life by Henry James Byron: