Holcroft, Thomas

Holcroft, Thomas, playwright and novelist, was born in London, 10th December 1745 (o.s.). His father, in whom fondness alternated with fury, was by turns a shoemaker, horse-dealer, and pedlar; and he himself, after three years as a Newmarket stable-boy, then eight as shoemaker, schoolmaster, and servant-secretary to Granville Sharpe, in 1770 turned strolling player. He never was much of an actor, best in low comedy and old men's parts; and, after settling in London (1777), he gradually took to authorship. Alwyn, or the Gentleman Comedian (1780), was the first of four novels; Duplicity (1781), of upwards of thirty plays. Of the latter, The Follies of a Day (1784), adapted from Beaumarchais' Marriage de Figaro, brought him more than £600; and The Road to Ruin (1792), £1300. Between these befell the great sorrow of his life, the death of his eldest son, William (1773-89), who having robbed his father of £40, and been found by him on an American-bound vessel, shot himself: for a twelvemonth the stern, strong man hardly quitted the house. An ardent if peaceable democrat, in 1794 he was tried for high-treason with Hardy, Horne Tooke, and nine others. The proceedings fell through, but the animosity of party spirit entailed a run of ill-luck at the theatres, which, combined with unfortunate speculations, led Holcroft to sell off his books and effects (1799), and to retire for four years to Hamburg and Paris. He died 23d March 1809. See the interesting Memoirs, written by himself, and continued by Hazlitt (1815); also Kegan Paul's William Godwin (1876).