William Leman Rede

William Leman Rede (31 January 1802 – 3 April 1847) was one of the many prolific and successful playwrights who composed farces, melodramas, burlettas (light musical and comedies), and travesties, primarily for theatres such as the Olympic, Strand, and Adelphi, in the early nineteenth century. He proudly proclaimed himself a follower of Thomas Frognall Dibdin, W. T. Moncrieff, James Robinson Planché, Douglas William Jerrold, and John Baldwin Buckstone-writers who established the "minor drama." This term referred to plays that were produced at venues other than Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Haymarket, the "patent theatres" that had a legal monopoly on the presentation of serious, non-musical productions. The minor dramas did so well, however, that the patent theatres soon augmented their own bills with the same type of fare.

Rede's father, Leman Thomas Rede, was a barrister and member of the Inner Temple. He was also a newspaper writer, and the author of several works, including Studies of Nature (1797)-an abridged translation of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's three-volume Études de la nature (1784–1788)-and Anecdotes and Biography (1799), and the compiler of the 1789 edition of the Bibliotheca Americana. Plagued with debts, Leman Thomas Rede moved his family from London to Hamburg, Germany. William Leman Rede was born there on 31 January 1802. After his father's death in 1810, his mother (d. 29 September 1835) moved back to London with her five children. Rede briefly considered a career as a boxer and held an office job with a solicitor but was soon drawn, like his older brother Leman Thomas Tertius Rede, to acting. He excelled in light comedy roles and frequently played with the eminent actor Edmund Kean. In 1821 he married a teenager, Frances Lucy Mellor; they had three children, all of whom died young. His first play, Sixteen String Jack, a fictionalized account of the famous highwayman of that name, premièred at the Royal Coburg Theatre on 18 February 1823. After bearing three children Frances Rede died in 1824 and after her death Rede became a travelling player, acting in barns, inns and impromptu venues. Rede married Sarah Cooke, an actress, in 1830 or 1832.

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