John Reeve

John Reeve (1799–1838) was an English comic actor. His early career was based on mimicry: he became a popular favourite, able to continue in highly paid work, despite drinking heavily and not learning his parts.

Early life The son of Thomas Reeve, a hosier and common councillor, and nephew of William Reeve and Robert Waithman, he was born at his father's shop on Ludgate Hill, on 2 February 1799. At school at Winchmore Hill under a Mr. Thompson, he had for companion Frederick Henry Yates. From age 14 behind his father's counter for two years, when his father retired, he was placed with a firm of wholesale hosiers named Nevill or Neville in Maiden Lane, Wood Street, lasting three years there.

As a clerk in Gosling's Bank on Fleet Street, Reeve with colleagues hired every two weeks Pym's Theatre, Wilson Street, off Gray's Inn Road. Finding himself in obscure parts, Reeve hired the house on his own account for £10, and played Othello, with his friend George Herbert Bonaparte Rodwell as Roderigo, and Sylvester Daggerwood, an actor, in a farce based on New Hay at the Old Market George Colman the younger. He repeated "Sylvester Daggerwood" on 8 and 9 June 1819 at Drury Lane, in benefits for Thomas Rodwell and Gesualdo Lanza; and then played it for a few nights at the Haymarket Theatre.

Reeve went on to play at the Surrey Theatre and the Cobourg Theatre, rising high in public estimation. On 17 April 1826, with a salary of £13 a week, he made as Ralph, a comic servant, in Prince Hoare's Lock and Key, what was inaccurately announced as his first appearance at the Haymarket. He had established his position in comedy, and opened the Haymarket season on 15 June 1827 with Paul Pry. On 17 June 1828 he reappeared as Figaro. In 1830 he played his last season at the Haymarket: quarrelling with the management on a question of terms, he played at the Adelphi, on 21 October 1830, Magog in John Baldwin Buckstone's Wreck Ashore, and then went to Covent Garden, where he was considered to have failed. After playing two years at the Queen's Theatre, he went, in 1835, to America, where he was well paid but did not win over the audience.

Reputation Douglas Bannister, biographer of Reeve, said he was just a farceur and droll, a follower of the style of William Oxberry. He was on winking terms with his audience, in a way not seen since George Frederick Cooke: the managers John Baldwin Buckstone and Richard Brinsley Peake fed him with short sentences, bywords, and opportunities for business, instead of speeches, which he would not learn. He remained a favourite with the public, and managers still hired him, knowing full well his drink problem and unreliability.

Family Reeve was twice married. By his first wife, a Miss Aylett, daughter of an upholsterer in Finsbury, and a dancer in Macready's company, whom he married at Bristol in 1820, he left a son John, a burlesque actor; she died at his birth in 1822 at Swansea. By his second wife he had two daughters.