Biography

James Cawdell (1749-1800)

The son of a cooper, James Cawdell was born in 1749 in Baldock, Hertfordshire. He had been indentured to a shopkeeper, but abandoned this to become an actor, making his premiere as Cupid in Garrick’s Cymon with the Durham theatre company at North Shields in May 1769. The company was managed by his uncle Thomas Bates and he took over the management in the 1780s. Cawdell’s volume Miscellaneous Poems published in 1785 provides many personal observations of the quotidian life of his company, comments on specific actors, performances and stagecraft, while also providing insights into the central role that actors played within provincial social life.

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