Dan Rolyat

After an apprenticeship with a touring company he was engaged by the impresarios George Edwardes and Robert Courtneidge to play comic roles in musical comedy.

Rolyat's greatest success was probably in the double role of John Smith and Simplicitas in The Arcadians (1909), first in the West End of London and then in the British provinces.

[2] He made his stage debut at Coutts's Theatre, Birmingham, in 1896, and joined a touring company playing in From Scotland Yard and Sentenced for Life.

Rolyat played Joe Mivens; The Times thought him as funny as the show's star comedian, Walter Passmore, and The Observer considered him to be the funnier of the two.

[1] The Dairymaids had been produced by the impresario Robert Courtneidge, who engaged Rolyat to create the double role of John Smith and Simplicitas in the long-running musical The Arcadians in 1909.

[1] In 1912, while touring in The Arcadians, he fell from his horse in Act II at the Tyne Theatre and Opera House and suffered such severe injuries to his back that there was doubt whether he would ever be able to appear on stage again.