Edward Knight (English actor)

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Edward Knight (1774–1826), commonly known as “Little Knight,” was an English actor from Birmingham. He started as a sign-painter and, after seeing a provincial company, first appeared on stage in Newcastle, Staffordshire as Hob in Hob in the Well. He was frightened and ran off the stage, but a year later at Raither in North Wales he played the same part more confidently. He then played Frank Oatland in A Cure for the Heartache and was noticed by Nunns, the manager of the Stafford Theatre, where he worked for several years.

Around 1803 Tate Wilkinson recruited him for the York circuit, where he was well received. Knight wrote a two-act musical farce called The Sailor and Soldier, or Fashionable Amusement; it was produced for his benefit in Kingston upon Hull in 1805.

Richard Wroughton hired him for Drury Lane Theatre for three years, and Knight moved with his wife and children to London—only to find the theatre burned down. He made his London debut at the Lyceum on 14 October 1809, as Timothy Quaint in The Soldier’s Daughter and as Robin Roughhead in Fortune’s Frolic. He soon found success in The Prize (Label) and created the role of Jerry Blossom in Hit or Miss by Isaac Pocock on 26 February 1810, which he helped save with Charles Mathews.

Knight stayed with the company as it moved to the new Drury Lane Theatre and remained there until his death. In the 1812 season he is traced as Simple in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and he also played the Clown in Twelfth Night and Little John in Robin Hood in his first season. He usually portrayed domestics, rustics, and farm laborers. Among his original parts were Tom in The Intrigue and Farmer Enfield in The Falls of Clyde.

He retired in the 1825–26 season because of illness and died on 21 February 1826 at his home in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He was buried on 27 February in a vault at St. Pancras New Church.

Family life: in Stafford he married Miss Clews, daughter of a wine merchant; she died in Leeds. Knight then married in 1807 Susan Smith, who had followed her sister Sarah Bartley as leading lady in the company. John Prescott Knight was his son by his first wife.