John Hippisley

John Hippisley (14 January 1696 – 12 February 1748)

He remained at Lincoln's Inn Fields until the season of 1732–3, playing among many other characters Sir Francis Gripe in Susanna Centlivre's The Busie Body, Sir William Wisewood in Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, Corbaccio in Ben Jonson's Volpone, Old Woman in John Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Obadiah in Robert Howard's The Committee, and Calianax in Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy, and originating one or two characters, the most important of which was Peachum in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in January 1728.

At Lincoln's Inn Field in 1731 he performed for his benefit his play The Journey to Bristol, or the Honest Welshman, probably first seen in Bristol; it was published that year. (The piece, with some alterations, and under the title of The Connaught Wife, was given in 1767 at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, and printed in London in the same year.)