Isaac Bickerstaff
Isaac Bickerstaff was an Irish playwright and composer born on September 26, 1733, in Dublin. He began his career associated with the military, receiving an army commission at a young age due to the patronage of the Earl of Chesterfield. After resigning his commission in 1755, he pursued a career in theater, where he became renowned for his comic operas, collaborating notably with composer Thomas Arne. Bickerstaff's works, such as "Thomas and Sally" and "Love in a Village," marked a significant contribution to the genre of comic opera, revitalizing it during a time when ballad opera was in decline. His style involved creatively adapting existing works by authors like Molière and Samuel Richardson, showcasing his talent for theatricality and lyrical composition. Despite his success, Bickerstaff faced challenges, including a controversial exile in 1772 following accusations of homosexuality, which was a capital offense at the time. After this period, he spent the remainder of his life in relative obscurity, primarily in France, with little known about his later years or the exact date of his death, which is believed to have occurred sometime after 1808.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Isaac Bickerstaff
Playwright
- Born: September 26, 1733
- Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
- Died: After 1808
Biography
Born in Dublin, Ireland, on September 26, 1733, Isaac Bickerstaff was the son of John Bickerstaff, supervisor of the city’s tennis courts and bowling greens, a position which the lord lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Chesterfield, abolished in 1744. In recompense, Lord Chesterfield appointed John’s eleven-year-old son, Isaac, as a page in his household. The next year, thanks again to Lord Chesterfield, young Bickerstaff received an army commission, and he served for nearly ten years. Much of his early life, then, was associated with the military. He resigned his commission in 1755 when he came into a small inheritance that permitted him to move to London and try his hand in the theater. Three years later, very nearly broke, he joined the Marines as a second lieutenant and remained an officer until 1763, when he was given an honorable discharge and a pension for life.
Even during this time, Bickerstaff was writing. He collaborated with his fellow countryman, the composer Thomas Arne, in creating the comic opera Thomas and Sally, which had such success that the two worked together again to produce another popular comic opera, Love in a Village.
Peter Tasch titled his study of Bickerstaff The Dramatic Cobbler (1971). It is an apt description of the man. Bickerstaff’s comic operas, comedies, and farces are almost all cobbled together from other works. He borrowed or stole liberally from such authors as Molière, William Wycherley, Samuel Richardson, Jean-François Regnard, and Pedro Calderon de la Barca. However, he drew upon his keen sense for theatricality and his knack for writing lively and engaging lyrics to create novel adaptations of other author’s works.
Bickerstaff’s greatest claim to fame comes from his enormously popular comic operas. He arrived in London at a time when the ballad opera, using popular tunes with new lyrics in the manner of The Beggar’s Opera, was very much on the wane. Bickerstaff filled the void with something new and entertaining: the comic opera, using new lyrics set to music in the continental style, often provided by Arne. Indeed, Bickerstaff and Arne might be called the Gilbert and Sullivan of the eighteenth century. Among their successes were Thomas and Sally (1760), Love in a Village (1763), The Maid of the Mill (1765), Lionel and Clarissa (1768, later revised in 1770 as School for Fathers), and The Padlock (1768). The only failure among his comic operas was Love in the City (1767), in which his satirical treatment of a family of striving middle-class merchants met with a very negative response. Bickerstaff’s comedies and farces include three plays that derived from Molière: The Hypocrite, derived from Tartuffe; >The Plain Dealer, from The Misanthrope; and Doctor Last in His Chariot, from The Imaginary Invalid.
In 1772, Bickerstaff went into self-imposed exile, reportedly because of accusations of homosexuality, then a capital crime. The rest of his life is veiled in obscurity. He lived abroad, mostly in France, in abject poverty. No one even knows the date of his death, which occurred sometime after 1808.