Background
Charles Dibdin was born at Southampton on or before the 4th of March 1745, the son of a parish clerk.
Charles Dibdin was born at Southampton on or before the 4th of March 1745, the son of a parish clerk.
He studied at Winchester School.
He was placed in a music warehouse in Cheapside, but he soon abandoned this employment to become a singing actor at Covent Garden.
Other works followed, his reputation being firmly established by the music to the play of The Padlock, produced at Drury Lane under Garrick's management in 1768, the composer himself taking the part of Mungo with conspicuous success.
He continued for some years to be connected with Drury Lane, both as composer and as actor, and produced during this period two of his best known works, The Waterman (1774) and The Quaker (1775).
A quarrel with Garrick led to the termination of his engagement.
In three years he lost this position owing to a quarrel with his partner.
In 1788 he sailed for the East Indies, but the vessel having put in to Torbay in stress of weather, he changed his mind and returned to London.
A series of monodramatic entertainments which he gave at his theatre, Sans Souci, in Leicester Square, brought his songs, music and recitations more prominently into notice, and permanently established his fame as a lyric poet.
It was at these entertainments that he first introduced many of those sea-songs which so powerfully influenced the national spirit.
During this period he opened a music shop in the Strand, but the venture was a failure.
Besides his Musical Tour through England (1788), his Professional Life, an autobiography published in 1803, a History of the Stage (1795), and several smaller works, he wrote upwards of 1400 songs and about thirty dramatic pieces.
He also wrote the following novels:- The Devil (1785); Hannah Hewitt (1792); The Younger Brother (1793).
An edition of his songs by G. Hogarth (1843) contains a memoir of his life.