The Gay Lothario. The Great and Celebrated Amateur of Fashion

William Elmes British

Publisher Thomas Tegg British

Sitter Robert Coates British

Robert Coates (1772-1848) was a famously bad actor. Instead of exiting on cue during one play, he crawled around on his hands and knees, looking for a dropped belt buckle.  He made up lines, took snuff and shared it with audience members during other actors’ parts. He dragged “Juliet” from the tomb like a sack of potatoes. He “died” on request several times a night, always first wiping the stage floor with a handkerchief. “You may laugh” he said, “but I do not intend to soil my nice new velvet dress upon these dirty boards.”

Here’s a bit of funny history for you:

Robert “Romeo” Coates (1772 - 1848) was the son of a wealthy sugar planter, and was completely infatuated with theater, specifically acting in the lead role. According to all descriptions, he was entirely consumed by the glamour and visibility of being on stage in the most important role, and had no talent or skill to speak of. As is typical for most people in any “worst ever”-categories, he was completely convinced he was the best and finest actor in all the land.

This doesn’t mean that he was unpopular, though! People would come and see his plays out, because the ways he butchered well-known plays were amazingly fun entertainment. But he was definitely popular for other reasons than he believed.

Some examples of his, er, genius:

His absolutely favorite play was Romeo & Juliet, which is where he got his nickname, as he always wanted to play Romeo. After a while, no actress wanted to play Juliet because of his embarrassing stage antics.

He would make his own costumes too. Here is a marvelous description of one of his Romeo outfits from the Wikipedia entry:

The costume had a flowing, sky-blue cloak with sequins, red pantaloons, a vest of white muslin, a large cravat, and a plumed "opera hat," according to Captain Rees Howell Gronow - not to mention dozens of diamonds - which was hardly suitable for the part.

He would forget his lines and just make up completely new ones on the spot. 

He would get super fixated on certain dramatic scenes, especially death scenes, and just redo them three or four times, in a row, right then and there. He would draw those death scenes out, with stumbling, falling rolling, wailing, getting up again to do everything some more, and finally slump dramatically - and then get up and restart the scene to do it all over again.

If the audience heckled him on stage, he’d completely break character and yell back at them. One of his glorious threats to a particularly noisy crowd was “If you don’t settle down, I’ll refuse to die in the third act!”

After a while, no director wanted anything to do with him. Being wealthy, he simply began producing plays himself. Still, ultimately people got tired of him and he lost the “you’ve got to see this crazy guy at least once”-appeal. His acting career, such as it was, petered out eventually.

Why February 21st is BRILLIANT

The Celebrated Philanthropic Amateur

Today we want to tell you about Robert Coates. We don't know when his birthday was, but we do know that he died on this day in 1848, after being run over by a Hansom cab outside the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane at the age of seventy-five. Robert was the son and heir of a sugar planter and was born in Antigua some time in 1772. Robert was a most flamboyant amateur actor. He was also a terrible actor, and it made him famous.

Robert was educated in England and became enamoured of amateur dramatics after he returned to Antigua in the West Indies. In 1807, after his father died, he inherited the estate and a huge collection of diamonds, which he also loved. He returned to England and settled in Bath, where he lived as a 'gentleman of fashion'. By 1809, he was acting at the Royal Theatre, Bath, though it seems no one paid him to do so. He particularly loved Shakespeare and made his debut as Romeo. He designed the costume himself. It consisted of a flowing sky blue cloak with sequins, red pantaloons, a muslin shirt worn with a huge cravat, a long wig that Charles II would have been proud of and white hat with ostrich plumes. He also wore diamonds. Lots and lots of diamonds. What's more, he had had his costume made rather too small, which made him move awkwardly and also the pantaloons split part way through the performance. But it wasn't just his costume that was comical. He also forgot his lines, ad-libbed, stopped in the middle of the balcony scene to take snuff, and then offer it to the audience and at the end, he tried to open Juliet's tomb with a crowbar.

This title role was his favourite, it was one he would revisit often. It led to him being given the nickname 'Romeo Coates' His performances were always sell-outs. People went to see him just to see if he was bad as everyone said. He was not above repeating his favourite scenes during a play. As Romeo, he might die three or four times. On one occasion he caused a lot of hilarity when he took out a handkerchief to dust down the stage and arrange his hat as a pillow before he lay down to die. The laughter, the abuse, the cat calls that accompanied his performances often drowned out his actual words. It's hard to say whether he actually knew he was bad and just didn't care or whether he was doing it all on purpose.

He certainly bore the abuse he received in good humour. Even when he received an invitation to a ball given by the Prince Regent. He dressed in his finest clothes and presented himself at Carlton House, only to find that the invitation had been a forgery and he had to go away again. The Prince felt terrible about it when he heard and really felt that Robert ought to have been let in anyway because everyone would have enjoyed his company. In fact, he felt so bad that he invited Robert to come along afterwards and have a look at the decorations which were still up. Robert was delighted and said that he would love to see the preparations that had been made for the honoured guests, of whom he had almost been one. The forger turned out to be Theodore Hook, who we mentioned several weeks ago as the perpetrator of the Berner's Street Hoax. The joke fell rather flat in this case and probably even Theodore thought he'd been quite mean, because he was always quite apologetic when ever it was mentioned.

After moving to London, he soon became a well recognised figure. Particularly as he used to go about in furs, whatever the weather. But it was really the carriage he had made for himself that truly made him stand out. No one else had anything quite like it. It is described as shaped like a scallop shell and 'a beautiful, rich lake colour' which we can only assume means crimson lake, a dark pinkish red. It had his own heraldic device on the side, a crowing cockerel, with the motto 'While I live, I'll crow'. It also had at least one silver plated crowing cockerel on it. It was drawn by two white horses.

Of course, he acted in London. He appeared frequently at the Haymarket Theatre. He usually appeared as part of a benefit performance. For this he earned, or perhaps gave himself, his preferred nickname 'The Celebrated Philanthropic Amateur'. The manager knew he would be guaranteed a full house when Romeo Coates was on the bill. In fact, they would often have to turn people away. At one of his performances, several audience members had to be treated for 'excessive laughter'. People who had to act with him had a difficult time, because they had to work round what ever he happened to do.  Once, when his Romeo was about to die a third time, Juliet had to put an end to it by stepping up and saying. “dying is such sweet sorrow, that he will die again until tomorrow.” His tour of the provinces proved equally popular, as were the impersonations given of him by comedians. Sadly, his popularity declined and he was forced to retire from acting, in public at least, around 1816.

Robert Coates (1772-1848) was a famously bad actor. Instead of exiting on cue during one play, he crawled around on his hands and knees, looking for a dropped belt buckle.  He made up lines, took snuff and shared it with audience members during other actors' parts. He dragged "Juliet" from the tomb like a sack of potatoes. He "died" on request several times a night, always first wiping the stage floor with a handkerchief. "You may laugh" he said, "but I do not intend to soil my nice new velvet dress upon these dirty boards."

(sticks available in the gallery of Stanford Harvest)

Coates was convinced he was the best actor in business – or at least that is what he claimed. He forgot his lines all the time and invented new scenes and dialogue on the spot. He loved dramatic death scenes and would repeat them – or any other scenes he happened to take a fancy to – three to four times over.

Coates claimed that he wanted to improve the classics. At the end of his first appearance as Romeo he came back in with a crowbar and tried to pry open Capulet's tomb. In another of his antics he made the actress playing Juliet so embarrassed that she clung to a pillar and refused to leave the stage. Eventually no actress would agree to play the part with him.

The audience usually answered with angered catcalls and embarrassed jeering – and loads of laughter. His fellow actors would try to make him leave the stage. If Coates thought the audience was getting out of hand, he turned to them and answered in kind.

Coates went on with his antics. Once, when he dropped a diamond buckle when he was going to exit the stage, he crawled around the stage looking for it. During his first performance of Romeo & Juliet, he pulled out his snuff box in the middle of a scene and offered some to the occupants of a box. Then, during Romeo's death scene, Coates carefully placed his hat on the ground for a pillow and used his dirty handkerchief to dust the stage before lying on it. Finally, at the invitation of the audience, he acted out Romeo's death twice—and was about to attempt a third before his Juliet came back to life and interrupted him. The amusement of the audience was enormous. There is some question as to whether Coates believed he was a great actor as he professed to, or if his performances weren't brilliant parody.