page_title: John Palmer (actor)
section_title: Roles
hierarchical_section_title: John Palmer (actor) / Roles
context_page_description: John Palmer was an actor on the English stage in the eighteenth century. There was also another John Palmer who was known as Gentleman Palmer.
context_section_description: One of the most versatile as well as the most competent and popular of actors, Palmer played an enormous number of characters, principally at Drury Lane. John Genest's list, which is far from complete, and does not even include all Palmer's original characters, amounts to over three hundred separate parts. Except singing characters and old men, there was nothing in which he was not safe, and there were many things in which he was foremost. An idea of his versatility may be obtained from a few of the characters with which he was entrusted.
  These include:
  Welborn in A New Way to Pay Old Debts
  Face in The Alchemist
  Pierre
  Mercutio
  Iachimo in Cymbeline
  Iago
  Bastard in King John
  Slender
  Teague
  Trappanti
  Young Marlow
  Jaques
  Buckingham in Henry VIII
  Ford
  Ghost in Hamlet
  Hamlet
  Colonel Feignwell in A Bold Stroke for a Wife
  Bobadill
  Valentine and Ben in Love for Love
  Comus, Petruchio, Lofty in the The Good-Natur'd Man
  Puff in the Critic
  Lord Foppington in The Relapse
  Lord Townly
  Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV, Part 1
  Touchstone
  Henry VIII
  Inkle
  Macduff
  Macbeth
  Octavian in the Mountaineers
  Shylock
  Prospero
  Doricourt in The Belle's Stratagem
  and innumerable others. Not less numerous are his original characters.
  Of these three stand prominently forth, the most conspicuous of all being Joseph Surface, which seems never to have been so well
  played since; Almaviva in Spanish Barber, and Dick Dowlas.
  Other original characters include:
  Colonel Evans in the School for Rakes
  Captain Dormer in A Word to the Wise
  Dionysius in Arthur Murphy's Grecian Daughter
  Leeson in the School for Wives
  Siward in Matilda
  Sir Petronel Flash in Old City Manners
  Solyman in the Sultan
  Jack Rubrick in the Spleen
  Earl Edwin in the Battle of Hastings
  Granger in Who's the Dupe?
  Sneer in the Critic
  Woodville in the Chapter of Accidents
  Contrast in the Lord of the Manor
  Sir Harry Trifle in the Divorce
  Almoran in the Fair Circassian
  Prince of Arragon in the piece so named
  Lord Gayville in the Heiress
  Don Octavio in the School for Guardians
  Sir Frederick Fashion in Seduction
  Marcellus in Julia, or the Italian Lover
  Random in Ways and Means
  Demetrius in the Greek Slave
  Young Manly in the Fugitive
  Sydenham in the Wheel of Fortune
  Schedoni in the Italian Monk
  Tonnage in the Ugly Club
  In tragedy Palmer was successful in those parts alone in which, as in Stukely, lago, &c., dissimulation is required.
  In comedy, thanks partly to his fine figure, there are very many parts in which he was held perfect. Some of his best parts are:
  Young Wilding in the Liar (perhaps his greatest character)
  Captain Flash
  Face
  Dick in the Confederacy
  Stukely
  Sir Toby Belch
  Captain Absolute
  Young Fashion
  Prince of Wales in the First Part of King Henry IV
  Sneer
  Don John
  Volpone
  Sir Frederick Fashion
  Henry VIII
  Father Philip in Castle Spectre
  Villeroy
  Brush
  James Boaden declares him "the most unrivalled actor of modern times!" and says "he could approach a lady, bow to her and seat himself gracefully in her presence. We have had dancing-masters in great profusion since his time, but such deportment they have either not known or never taught." His biographer says that his want of a "classical education" was responsible for his defects, which consisted of a want of taste and discrimination, and the resort to physical powers when judgment was at fault. His delivery of William Collins's Ode to the Passions was condemned as the one undertaking beyond his strength, and he is charged with unmeaning and ill-placed accents.
  Dibdin says that he was vulgar, and Charles Lamb says that "for sock or buskin there was an air of swaggering gentility about Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman." In Captain Absolute, Lamb held, "you thought you could trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied the handsome fellow in a top-knot, and had bought
  him a commission." In Dick Amlet he describes Jack as unsurpassable. John Taylor condemns his Falstaff as heavy throughout.
  Among innumerable stories circulated concerning Palmer is one that his ghost appeared after
caption: "David Garrick as Abel Drugger in Jonson's The Alchemist" by Johann Zoffany.
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