William Farren - Life

Life

Raised on Gower Street in London, he was raised in comparative affluence, supported not only by his father's wealth but also by a large gift from surgeon Percival Pott. He attended school in Soho and may have apprenticed as an attorney in Wolverhampton; by 1806, however, he had joined his brother Percy's troupe in Plymouth. His first appearance on the stage was at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth in Charles Macklin's Love à la mode. From the beginning he specialized in comic old men and Irish parts. A decade of provincial apprenticeship followed in southern England and in Dublin (where he married); his first roles included Adam Contest in Elizabeth Inchbald's The Wedding Day and Lovegold in Henry Fielding's translation of Molière's The Miser; however, his name is associated with a wide variety of roles.

His first London appearance was in 1818 at Covent Garden as Sir Peter Teazle (in Sheridan's The School for Scandal), a part with which his name was always associated: he was an instant popular and critical success. He succeeded also in Colman and Garrick's The Clandestine Marriage.

He played at Covent Garden every winter until 1828, and began in 1824 a series of summer engagements at the Haymarket which also lasted some years. At these two theatres he played an immense variety of comedic characters. After 1821, he separated from his first wife and began living with Harriet Elizabeth Savill, who was at the time married to John Saville Faucit. After an unsuccessful attempt to annul the marriage, Farren and Savill lived together under common law marriage, though they did not marry formally until Saville's death in 1853. Farren and his brother played important roles in training Savill's daughter, Helen Faucit, for her successful acting career.

From 1828 until 1837 he was at Drury Lane, where he essayed a wider range of characters, including Polonius and Caesar. He was again at Covent Garden for a few years, where he continued to expand his repertoire. Apart from an unsuccessful turn as Shylock, he attempted female roles such as Meg Merrilies in a dramatization of Scott's Guy Mannering.

In fall of 1837 he joined the troupe run by Lucia Elizabeth Vestris at the Olympic Theatre, and he stayed with Vestris during her management of Covent Garden, ending in 1842. His most notable new role during this period was as Lord Ogelby in Dion Boucicault's London Assurance.

He next joined Benjamin Webster at the Haymarket as stage-manager as well as actor. Now nearly sixty, he succeeded in two notable old-men roles by Mark Lemon: the title characters in Grandfather Whitehead and Old Parr. His performance as Thomas Parr was praised by The Times as a breakthrough in English acting. He was performing in that role in 1843 when he suffered an on-stage stroke. He was, however, able to reappear the following year, and he remained at the Haymarket ten years more, though his acting never again reached its former level; Edward Dutton Cook recalls an 1851 performance in which Farren, though "acting admirably", did not utter a single intelligible word.

For a time he managed the Strand, and between 1850 and 1853, was lessee of the Olympic. During his later years he confined himself to parts portraying old men, in which he was unrivalled. In 1855 he made his final appearance at the Haymarket, as Lord Ogleby in a scene from the Clandestine Marriage.

With Faucit, he left two sons, Henry (1826–1860) and William (1825–1908), both actors. The former was the father of Nellie Farren, long famous for boy's parts in Gaiety musical burlesques, in the days of Edward Terry and Fred Leslie. As Jack Sheppard, and in similar roles, she had a unique position at the Gaiety, and was an unrivalled public favourite. In 1892 her health failed, and her retirement, coupled with Fred Leslie's death, brought to an end the type of Gaiety burlesque associated with them.