Phelps, SAMUEL, the last of the old school of actors, was born 13th February 1804 in Devonport. When seventeen years old he came to London, and was engaged on the Globe and Sun newspapers as reader; among his companions being Douglas Jerrold, then, like himself, a stage-struck youth. After some experience as an amateur, Phelps joined the York circuit in the autumn of 1826, and continued in the provinces for eleven years. On 28th August 1837 he made his début in London as Shylock at the Haymarket, under the management of Benjamin Webster, making a very great success. He was afterwards engaged by Macready, but his genius did not get full scope until the beginning of his famous Sadler's Wells management, one of the most extraordinary achievements in the history of the drama. At an outlying unfashionable and unpopular theatre he for eighteen years produced a constant succession of 'legitimate' plays, attracting around him an excellent company, and educating a rough and unpolished audience to appreciation of the masterpieces of English dramatic literature. He began this apparently unpromising experiment on 27th May 1844, continued as manager till March 1862, and made his last appearance before his Islington friends on 6th November 1862. During his management he produced no fewer than thirty-one Shakespearian plays, as well as works of the other great Elizabethans, and of the dramatists of the 18th century from Congreve to Colman. After leaving Sadler's Wells Phelps did not attach himself to any particular theatre, appearing at Drury Lane, the Queen's, and the Gaiety theatres, and playing regularly in the provinces. On 1st March 1878, when acting Wolsey at the Aquarium (Imperial) Theatre, he broke down, and never played again. He died on 6th November 1878. Although primarily a tragedian, Phelps was an excellent all-round actor, and some of his comedy parts are among his most notable—as, for instance, Malvolio, Bottom, and Shallow. In tragedy he was famous in Wolsey, Lear, Macbeth, Brutus, Luke (City Madam), and Sir Giles Overreach; while among his other chief successes were Richelieu, Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, Bertuccio, Old Dornton, and Job Thornberry.
See Memoirs, by J. and E. Coleman (1886); and Life and Life-work, by W. May Phelps and John Forbes Robertson (1886).