Hope! thou nurse of young desire.
Love in a Village (1762), Act i, scene 1.
There was a jolly miller once, Lived on the river Dee;He worked and sung from morn till night: No lark more blithe than he.
Love in a Village (1762), Act i, scene 2.
And this the burden of his song Forever used to be,—I care for nobody, no, not I, If no one cares for me.
Love in a Village (1762), Act i, scene 2. Compare: "If naebody care for me, I'll care for naebody", Robert Burns, I hae a Wife o' my Ain; "I envy none, no, no, not I, And no one envies me", Charles Mackay, The King and the Miller.
Young fellows will be young fellows.
Love in a Village (1762), Act ii, scene 2.
By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.
The Maide of the Mill (1765), Act i, scene2.
Fine feathers, they say, make fine birds.
The Padlock|The Padlock (1768).
Ay, do despise me! I'm the prouder for it; I like to be despised.
The Hypocrite (1768), Act v, scene 1.
Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,But - why did you kick me downstairs?
An Expostulation (1789).
Health is the greatest of all possessions; a pale cobbler is better than a sick king.
Reported in Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), p. 221.
Isaac Bickerstaffe or
Bickerstaff (26 September 1733 - 1812?) was an
IrishThe Kingdom of Ireland refers to the country of Ireland in the period between the proclamation of Henry VIII as King of Ireland by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 and the Act of Union in 1800. It replaced the Lordship of Ireland, which had been created in 1171...
playwrightA playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and Librettist.
Early life
Isaac John Bickerstaff was born in
Dublin, on 26 September 1733, where his father John Bickerstaff held a government position overseeing the construction and management of sports fields including
bowlsBowls is a sport in which the objective is to roll slightly asymmetric balls so that they stop close to a smaller "jack" or "kitty". It is played on a pitch which may be flat or convex or uneven...
and tennis courts. The office was abolished in 1745 and he received a
pensionIn general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
from the government for the rest of his life.
In his early years Isaac was a
pageA page or page boy is a traditionally young male servant, a messenger at the service of a nobleman or royal.-The medieval page:In medieval times, a page was an attendant to a knight; an apprentice squire...
to
Lord ChesterfieldPhilip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield PC KG was a British statesman and man of letters.A Whig, Lord Stanhope, as he was known until his father's death in 1726, was born in London. After being educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he went on the Grand Tour of the continent...
, the
Lord Lieutenant of IrelandThe Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was the British King's representative and head of the Irish executive during the Lordship of Ireland , the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
which allowed him to mix with fashionable Dublin society. When Chestefield was replaced in the position in 1745 he arranged for Issac to be given a commission in the army. In October 1745 Bickerstaff joined the 5th Regiment of Foot known as the Northumberland Fusiliers. He served as an
EnsignAn ensign is a national flag when used at sea, in vexillology, or a distinguishing token, emblem, or badge, such as a symbol of office in heraldry...
until 1746 when he was promoted to
LieutenantA lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
. The regiment, under the command of Alexander Irwin, was on the Irish Establishment and was based in
KinsaleKinsale is a town in County Cork, Ireland. Located some 25 km south of Cork City on the coast near the Old Head of Kinsale, it sits at the mouth of the River Bandon and has a population of 2,257 which increases substantially during the summer months when the tourist season is at its peak and...
in Ireland. In March 1755 the regiment was moved to
BristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Having recently come into some money, Isaac resigned his commission in August and went on
half-payIn the British Army and Royal Navy of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, half-pay referred to the pay or allowance an officer received when in retirement or not in actual service....
.
He intended to become a writer, but his first work was published but not performed and he soon ran into financial difficulties. By March 1758 he was so short of money that he joined the Marine Corps as a Lieutenant stationed at
PlymouthPlymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
and served through the Seven Years War. In 1763 following the
Treaty of ParisThe Treaty of Paris, often called the Peace of Paris, or the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763, by the kingdoms of Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal in agreement. It ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War...
he was honourably discharged as the Corps was reduced in size.
Success
Bickerstaff had first arrived in London in 1755 and worked as a playwright. His years growing up in Dublin, a cultural hub at the time, had greatly influenced his views on writing and the arts. He developed a view that the
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
was totally unsuited for singing operas in, however skilled the composer, and that
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
was the natural language. Later in life, he was to challenge this view.
In London he initially struggled and his first work
LeucothoéLeucothoé is a 1756 dramatic poem by the Irish playwright Isaac Bickerstaff. It was Bickerstaff's first published work. The plot was based on the story of the Greek Goddess Leucothea....
, a dramatic poem, was a failure. While critically well received by two reviewers it had not been set to music and performed and was widely ignored. Bickerstaff also hurt his chances of success by publicly criticising
David GarrickDavid Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
, the leading actor-manager of the era, for "barbarity" in his recent attempts to set
ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
plays to music. These setbacks forced him to return to military service.
In 1760, while still serving in the marine corps, Bickerstaff collaborated with Thomas Arne, the leading British composer, on a light opera
Thomas and SallyThomas and Sally is a dramatic pastoral opera in two acts by the composer Thomas Arne with an English libretto by Isaac Bickerstaff...
which was an enormous success. It is possible that Bickerstaff simply wrote the play and approached Arne with it or sent it to the Covent Garden Theatre where he was working. It had its opening night at Covent Garden on 28 November 1760. The play was performed repeatedly in London and soon spread around Britain and across the British Empire. It was also performed in
Dublin, Philadelphia and
Kingston, JamaicaKingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island...
. They subsequently worked together on
JudithJudith was an oratorio written by Thomas Arne and Isaac Bickerstaff. It was first performed at Drury Lane Theatre on 27 February 1761. It is based on the Book of Judith....
, an
oratorioAn oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
first performed at Drury Lane in February 1760. He went on to produce many successful comedies based on Marivaux and other French playwrights and opera librettos.
In 1762 he and Arne wrote
Love in a VillageLove in a Village is a ballad opera in three acts that was composed and arranged by Thomas Arne. A pastiche, the work contains 42 musical numbers of which only five were newly composed works by Arne. The other music is made up of 13 pieces borrowed from Arne's earlier stage works, a new overture...
considered the first English
comic operaComic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
.
His
The Maide of the Mill (1765), with music by
Samuel ArnoldSamuel Arnold was an English composer and organist.Arnold was born in London , and began writing music for the theatre in about 1764. A few years later he became director of music at the Marylebone Gardens, for which much of his popular music was written...
and others, was also very successful. Bickerstaffe also wrote
bowdlerizedThomas Bowdler was an English physician who published an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare's work, edited by his sister Harriet, intended to be more appropriate for 19th century women and children than the original....
versions of plays by
William WycherleyWilliam Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.-Biography:...
and
Pedro Calderon de la BarcaPedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño usually referred as Pedro Calderón de la Barca , was a dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest...
. His
Love in the City (1767),
The Padlock (1768), based on "The Jealous Husband" in Cervantes' Novelas (this included the character Mungo, a negro servant played by Dibdin, one of the earliest comic black roles in English drama). He also wrote
The Life of Ambrose Guinet (1770).
Exile
In 1772 Bickerstaffe fled to France, suspected of homosexuality. The actor-producer
David GarrickDavid Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
was implicated in the scandal by the lampoon
Love in the Suds by
William KenrickWilliam Kenrick was an English novelist, playwright, translator and satirist, who spent much of his career libelling and lampooning his fellow writers.- Life and career :Kenrick was born at Watford, Hertfordshire, son of a stay-maker...
. The remainder of his life seems to have been passed in penury and misery, and little is known about his death.
Long after Bickerstaffe's disappearance, his colleague
Charles DibdinCharles Dibdin was a British musician, dramatist, novelist, actor and songwriter. The son of a parish clerk, he was born in Southampton on or before 4 March 1745, and was the youngest of a family of 18....
was frequently accused of plagiarizing his songs.
Selected works
- Leucothoé
Leucothoé is a 1756 dramatic poem by the Irish playwright Isaac Bickerstaff. It was Bickerstaff's first published work. The plot was based on the story of the Greek Goddess Leucothea....
(1756)
- Thomas and Sally
Thomas and Sally is a dramatic pastoral opera in two acts by the composer Thomas Arne with an English libretto by Isaac Bickerstaff...
; or, The Sailor's Return (1760)
- Judith
Judith was an oratorio written by Thomas Arne and Isaac Bickerstaff. It was first performed at Drury Lane Theatre on 27 February 1761. It is based on the Book of Judith....
(1761)
- Love in a Village
Love in a Village is a ballad opera in three acts that was composed and arranged by Thomas Arne. A pastiche, the work contains 42 musical numbers of which only five were newly composed works by Arne. The other music is made up of 13 pieces borrowed from Arne's earlier stage works, a new overture...
(1762)
- Daphne and Amintor (1765)
- The Maide of the Mill (1765)
- The Plain Dealer (1766)
- The Padlock
The Padlock is a two-act 'afterpiece' opera by Charles Dibdin. The text was by Isaac Bickerstaffe. It debuted in 1768 at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, England, as a companion piece to The Earl of Warwick. It partnered other plays before a run of six performances in tandem with "The Fatal...
(1768)
- Lionel and Clarissa (1768)
- The Recruiting Serjeant
The Recruiting Serjeant is a burletta by composer Charles Dibdin and playwright Isaac Bickerstaff. It premièred on 20 July 1770 at Ranelagh Gardens, London.-Roles:-Synopsis:...
(1770)
- He Wou'd If He Cou'd; or, An Old Fool Worse Than Any (1771)
- The School for Fathers (1772)
- The Sultan; or, A Peep into the Seraglio (1775)
External links