HOLCROFT, THOMAS (1745-1809)

—Dramatist, s. of a small shoemaker in London, pa ed his youth as a pedlar, and as a Newmarket stable boy. A charitable person having given him some education he became a schoolmaster, but in 1770 went on the provincial stage. He then took to writing plays, and was the first to introduce the melodrama into England. Among his plays, The Road to Ruin (1792) is the best, and is still acted; others were Duplicity (1781), and A Tale of Mystery . Among his novels are Alwyn (1780), and Hugh Trevor , and he wrote the well-known song, Gaffer Gray . H. was a man of stern and irascible temper, industrious and energetic, and a sympathiser with the French Revolution. HOLINSHED, or HOLLINGSHEAD, RAPHAEL or RALPH d. (1580?). —Belonged to a Cheshire family, and is said by Anthony Wood to have been at one of the Univ., and to have been a priest. He came to London, and was in the employment of Reginald Wolf, a German printer, making translations and doing hack-work. His Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande , from which Shakespeare drew much of his history, was based to a considerable extent on the collections of Leland, and he had the a istance of W. Harrison, R. Stanyhurst, and others. The introductory description of England and the English was the work of Harrison, Stanyhurst did the part relating to Ireland, and H. himself the history of England and Scotland, the latter being mainly translated from the works of Boece and Major. Pub. in 1577 it had an eager welcome, and a wide and lasting popularity. A later ed. in 1586 was ed. by J. Hooker and Stow. It is a work of real value—a magazine of useful and interesting information, with the authorities cited. Its tone is strongly Protestant, its style clear.