Robert Wilks

Biography

Robert Wilks (c. 1665 – 27 September 1732) was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its heyday of the 1710s. He was, with Colley Cibber and Thomas Doggett, one of the "triumvirate" of actor-managers that was denounced by Alexander Pope and caricatured by William Hogarth as leaders of the decline in theatrical standards and degradation of the stage's literary tradition. The family was based for many generations in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. His great-uncle, Judge Wilks, had served Charles I of England during the English Civil War, for whom he raised a troop at his own expense. After Oliver Cromwell won the civil war, Wilks' father moved to Dublin, where Robert Wilks was born. He was a clerk to Robert Southwell until he joined the Williamite army. As soon as he was discharged from the army, he worked in the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin from 1691 to 1693. According to Wilks's version of the story, he had first acted when his army company put on an amateur Othello, and he was so successful that he took up acting as a career. In 1693, Christopher Rich, manager of Drury Lane, hired him to work in London. The same year, he married Elizabeth Knapton. In 1698, he was back in Dublin to perform in George Etherege plays, and he was so popular that he, according to his story, had to escape to London, and the next year he began his collaboration of George Farquhar. Farquhar and Wilks were close friends, and the two traveled from Dublin to London together. In 1699, Wilks appeared in Farquhar's The Constant Couple as Harry Wildair. It was a role that became Wilks's signature, and it made him a heartthrob among the young ladies of London. For the rest of his life Harry Wildair would be Wilks's alter ego, and Wilks would appear in the starring roles in Farquhar plays. At Drury Lane, Christopher Rich ruled the theater with a Machiavellian hand. In 1702, Rich had to choose between Wilks and George Powell

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