Alfred Maltby

Persuaded to take a role in one of his own pieces in 1876 he also began an acting career in which he specialised in playing comic, eccentric and usually elderly characters, for which portrayals he also earned enthusiastic reviews.

Outside the West End, Maltby toured in the British provinces and in Australia and New Zealand, maintaining simultaneous acting, designing and writing careers, and sometimes directing.

[2] Maltby was then engaged by F. B. Chatterton at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where he worked on Shakespeare productions together with the scene painter, William Roxby Beverly.

[5][6] In 1876 the actor Charles Collette invited Maltby to write him a one-act farce, suggesting it should be based on the 18th-century comedy A Bold Stroke for a Wife.

[5] In 1877 the actor-manager Charles Wyndham was starring at the Criterion Theatre in The Great Divorce Case, an adaptation of Hennequin and Delacour's farce Le Procès Veauradieux.

He played the part in several revivals of the piece, and in 1896 The Sketch said of him, "No playgoer will ever call to mind the name of Mr. Alfred Maltby without thinking of his wonderful performance of Samuel Dawson, B.A., the private tutor in Betsy".

[10] For the first production, Maltby contributed further by writing a two-act curtain raiser, a "comic drama" called Jilted, [11] which The Era later described as one of his cleverest achievements as a writer".

[10] The Sketch reviewer also noted that Maltby had "severe epidemics as regards the various kinds of old gentlemen he is called upon to portray ... at one time he had a very violent attack of fiery old colonels; at another, it was plausible scoundrels; at another, Members of Parliament.

[13] He was co-author of The Three Hats (1883), an adaptation of Hennequin's Les Trois chapeaux,[14] and author of Old Flames (1884), an English version of 115 Rue Pigalle by Alexandre Bisson.

Maltby appeared with Fred Terry, Weedon Grossmith and Ellis Jeffreys in His Little Dodge (1896), an adaptation of Le Système Ribadier by Feydeau and Hennequin's son Maurice.