John Emery (English actor)

John Emery (1777–1822), was an English actor.

Emery was born at Sunderland, 22 September 1777, and obtained a rudimentary education at Ecclesfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Mackle Emery (died 18 May 1825), was a country actor, and his mother, as Mrs. Emery, sen., appeared 6 July 1802 at the Haymarket Theatre as Dame Ashfield in Morton's Speed the Plough, and subsequently played at Covent Garden Theatre.

Emery was brought up for a musician, and when twelve years of age was in the orchestra at the Brighton Theatre. At this house he made his first appearance as Old Crazy in the farce of Peeping Tom by O'Keeffe.’ John Bernard says that in the summer of 1792 Mr. and Mrs. Emery and their son John, a lad of about seventeen, who played a fiddle in the orchestra and occasionally went on in small parts, were with him at Teignmouth, again at Dover, where young Emery played country boys, and again in 1793 at Plymouth. Bernard claims to have been the means of bringing Emery on the stage, and tells an amusing story concerning the future comedian. After playing a short engagement in Yorkshire with Tate Wilkinson, who predicted his success, he was engaged to replace T. Knight at Covent Garden, where he was first seen, 21 September 1798, as Frank Oatland in Morton's A Cure for the Heart Ache.

Lovegold in Miser and Oldcastle in the Intriguing Chambermaid (both by Fielding), Abel Drugger in the Tobacconist (an alteration by Francis Gentleman of Jonson's The Alchemist) and many other parts followed. On 13 June 1800 he appeared for the first time at the Haymarket as Zekiel Homespun in The Heir at Law by Colman, a character in the line he subsequently made his own. At Covent Garden, 11 February 1801, he was the original Stephen Harrowby in Colman's Poor Gentleman.

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