Isaac Bickerstaffe
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- This article is about the Irish playwright; for the pseudonym used by Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, and Jonathan Swift, see Isaac Bickerstaff.
Issac Bickerstaffe or Bickerstaff (1733? - 1808?) was an Irish playwright. He was in early life a page to Lord Chesterfield when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He arrived in London in 1755 and produced many successful comedies and opera librettos. With Thomas Arne he wrote Love in a Village, the first English comic opera. His The Maide of the Mill (1765, with music by Samuel Arnold and others) was also very successful. Bickerstaffe also wrote bowdlerized versions of plays by William Wycherley and Pedro Calderon de la Barca.
In 1772 Bickerstaffe fled to France, suspected of a homosexual offense. (The actor-producer David Garrick was implicated in the scandal by the lampoon Love in the Suds by W. Kernick.) 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 Dibdin was frequently accused of plagarizing his songs.
Selected Works
- Love in a Village (1762)
- The Maide of the Mill (1765)
- The Padlock (1768)
- Lionel and Clarissa (1768)
- The School for Fathers (1772)