29 Facts About David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson.

David Garrick appeared in a number of amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III, audiences and managers began to take notice.

David Garrick remained with the Drury Lane company for the next five years and purchased a share of the theatre with James Lacy.

David Garrick's acting delighted many audiences and his direction of many of the top actors of the English stage influenced their styles as well.

David Garrick sought reform in production matters, bringing an overarching consistency to productions that included set design, costumes and even special effects.

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David Garrick's influence extended into the literary side of theatre as well.

David Garrick was born at the Angel Inn, Widemarsh Street, Hereford in 1717 into a family with French Huguenot roots in the Languedoc region of Southern France.

David Garrick's father, a captain in the army, was a recruiting officer stationed in Gibraltar through most of young Garrick's childhood.

David Garrick showed an enthusiasm for the theatre very early on and he appeared in a school production around this time in the role of Sergeant Kite in George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer.

Playwright Samuel Foote remarked that he had known David Garrick to have only three quarts of vinegar in his cellar and still called himself a wine merchant.

David Garrick was supposedly a pupil at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School.

David Garrick made his debut as a professional actor on a summer tour to Ipswich with Giffard's troupe in 1741, where he played Aboan in Oroonoko at the theatre in Tankard Street.

David Garrick appeared under the stage name Lyddal to avoid the consternation of his family.

David Garrick had been coached in the role by the actor and playwright Charles Macklin and his natural performance, which rejected the declamatory acting style so prevalent in the period, soon was the talk of London.

David Garrick's success led Alexander Pope, who saw him perform three times during this period, to surmise, "that young man never had his equal as an actor, and he will never have a rival".

That same month, David Garrick played King Lear opposite Margaret "Peg" Woffington as Cordelia and his popular Richard III.

David Garrick's writings led Garrick to exclaim that it must have been the reason he was "more caressed" in Dublin.

Five years after joining the acting company at Drury Lane, David Garrick again travelled to Dublin for a season where he managed and directed at the Smock Alley Theatre in conjunction with Thomas Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

David Garrick met Eva Marie Veigel, a German dancer in opera choruses who emigrated to London in 1746.

The union was childless but happy, David Garrick calling her "the best of women and wives", and they were famously inseparable throughout their nearly 30 years of marriage.

David Garrick's increasing wealth enabled him to purchase a palatial estate for Eva Marie and himself to live in, naming it David Garrick's Villa, that he bought at Hampton in 1754.

David Garrick indulged his passion for Shakespeare by building a Temple to Shakespeare on the riverside at Hampton to house his collection of memorabilia.

David Garrick would manage the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, until his retirement from management in 1776.

The Camp satirised the British response to a threatened 18th-century invasion by France, leading some to jokingly claim that David Garrick was the only casualty of the ultimately abandoned invasion.

David Garrick died less than three years after his retirement, at his house in Adelphi Buildings, London, and was interred in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

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Mrs David Garrick survived her husband by 43 years, living to the age of 98.

David Garrick's great-grand-niece was the famous soprano Malvina Garrigues and her first cousin, the Danish-American doctor Henry Jacques Garrigues.

David Garrick was not a large man, only standing 5'4", and his voice is not described as particularly loud.

From his first performance, David Garrick departed from the bombastic style that had been popular, choosing instead a more relaxed, naturalistic style that his biographer Alan Kendall states "would probably seem quite normal to us today, but it was new and strange for his day.