William Pinkethman

William Pinkethman (c.1660–1725) was an English comic actor in the droll style. He was considered an imitator of Anthony Leigh.

Pinkethman overcame a weakness for overacting and playing to the crowd to become a steady performer. He is first heard of at the Theatre Royal, in 1692, in Thomas Shadwell's Volunteers, or the Stock-jobbers, in which he played Taylor, an original part of six lines. After the departure in 1695 of Thomas Betterton and his associates, Pinkethman was promoted to a better line of parts. In 1702 he was the original Old Mirabel in George Farquhar's Inconstant. He also recited what was known as "Pinkethman's Epilogue". He was known for his ad libs. It was at this period that Charles Gildon, in his Comparison between Two Stages, spoke of him as "a fellow that overdoes everything, and spoils many a part with his own stuff."

In 1703 Pinkethman created Squib in Thomas Baker's Tunbridge Walks, Maggothead (mayor of Coventry) in Thomas D'Urfey's Old Mode and the New, and Whimsey in Richard Estcourt's Fair Example. At the booth in Bartholomew Fair, which he held with William Bullock and Thomas Simpson, he played on 24 August 1703 Toby in Jephtha's Rash Vow, a droll. After the merger of the Haymarket and Drury Lane companies in 1708, fewer original characters came to Pinkethman, who, however, was assigned important parts in standard plays. On 4 April 1707, for his benefit, he spoke with Jubilee Dicky (Henry Norris) a new epilogue. The two actors represented the figures of Somebody and Nobody. At the Haymarket Theatre he created, on 12 December 1709, Clinch in Susannah Centlivre's Man's Bewitched, and on 1 May 1710 Faschinetti in Charles Johnson's Love in a Chest.

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