George Farquhar
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For more information on George Farquhar, visit Britannica.com.
Farquhar, George (?1677-1707), dramatist. Born near Derry, he attended TCD from 1694. Encouraged by Robert Wilkes, he left for London, taking with him the text of his first play, Love and a Bottle (1698), which was produced at Drury Lane. His next, The Constant Couple (1699), ran for fifty three nights, and led to a sequel, Sir Harry Wildair (1701). In the interim he produced The Inconstant (1699). The Twin Rivals (1702) was the last of his plays to première at Drury Lane. In 1704 he joined the army, and went on duty as a recruiting officer in the Shrewsbury region. From October 1704 to July 1705 he was in Ireland recruiting in Kildare and Dublin. The Recruiting Officer (1706) was not successful, and Farquhar was reduced to borrowing from Wilkes while writing The Beaux' Stratagem (1707).
Bibliography
See his complete works (ed. by C. A. Stonehill, 1930); studies by E. Rothstein (1967) and E. James (1972).
Irish playwright of the Restoration whose comedic works include The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux' Stratagem (1707).
Quotes:
"I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale."
"When the blind lead the blind, no wonder they both fall into -- matrimony."
"Money is the sinews of love, as of war."
"Those who know the least obey the best."
"Poetry is a mere drug, Sir."
"There's no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty."
See more famous quotes by
George Farquhar
George Farquhar (1678 – April 29, 1707) was an Irish dramatist. Born in Derry, the son of a clergyman, he attended Trinity College, Dublin, but left without any qualifications, possibly to join a roving troupe of actors. His career was blossoming, when an accident on stage during a performance of The Indian Emperor by John Dryden, in which he wounded a fellow actor in a sword fight, caused him to quit the Dublin stage.
He left Dublin for London in 1697, and his play, Love and a Bottle, was performed at Drury Lane theatre in the following year.
The Constant Couple was written when he was only twenty. The unexpected success of the production convinced him to try his hand at writing again with Sir Henry Wildair and The Inconstant, or the Way to Win Him. Farquhar was rapidly gaining a following, and in 1702 married someone he believed would be a wealthy patroness. When it turned out, however, that she was poor too, he set himself to work to support his new family. It was in this period that he produced The Stage Coach and The Twin Rivals. He remained impoverished, and decided to enter the army, which provided material for one of his best-known plays, The Recruiting Officer (1706). Soon afterwards came The Beaux' Stratagem, which was written while Farquhar lived in Lichfield, Staffordshire. But the author was in poor health, and died two months after its first production. The last work, completed as he was dying, is considered by many to be Farquhar's best. It was in The Twin Rivals, however, that his most frequently quoted line, "Necessity, the mother of invention," appears. He was buried in St. Martin in the Fields, London.
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