[2] During the next two years, he performed widely in Ireland and Scotland, gaining a reputation for sunny extemporaneous comedy, humorous expressions and a uniquely comic voice, freedom with his texts, and an engaging rapport with audiences.

[1] In 1858, at the suggestion of Dickens,[5] Toole joined Benjamin Webster's company at the Adelphi Theatre and established his popularity as a farceur, creating, among other parts, Joe Spriggins in Ici on parle français by T. H. Williams,[12] Augustus de Rosherville in The Willow Copse by Boucicault,[13] in Birthplace of Podgers, Tom Dibbles in Good for Nothing by J.

[1] His most successful roles there included Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol; or, Past, Present, and Future (1859), the title role in Asmodeus in 1859,[14] Peter Familias in The Census by William Brough (among many pieces by Brough),[15] Milwood in George de Barnwell by H. J. Byron (1862),[16] Caleb Plummer in Dot (1862), by Dion Boucicault,[11] Pitcher in The Area Belle (1864),[17] and Prudent in The Fast Family by B. Webster, Jr.[18] His other great successes there were as Mr. Tetterby in an adaptation of Dickens' The Haunted Man and of a frightened servant in Boucicault's The Phantom.

[10] He played a season in 1867 with the impressive new company at Queen's Theatre that included Irving, Henrietta Hodson, Lionel Brough and Charles Wyndham, where he appeared in such works a H. J. Byron's Dearer Than Life, as Michael Garner, and W. S. Gilbert's La Vivandière, as Sergeant Sulpizio.

But in low comedy and broad farce it would be difficult to find an actor of equal merit.... As Paul Pry he keeps his audience in a roar whenever he is on the stage".

[10] Toole was then engaged in 1868 at the Gaiety Theatre by Hollingshead, appearing in many pieces there including Thespis (1871), the first Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, and as John Lockwood, in a drama called Wait and Hope.

He also excelled in domestic melodramas (adaptations by Dion Boucicault and others of Charles Dickens and similar writers), playing "tender-hearted victims of fate", where he was famously able to combine humour and pathos.

[1] He was often away in the British provinces, but he produced a number of plays in London: By the 1880s Toole suffered frequently from gout, which made it difficult for him to walk and affected his ability to perform.

[1] His health declined further following a string of family tragedies that left him disconsolate: his son died in 1879 after a football injury, his daughter in 1888 of typhoid fever, and his wife three months later in 1889.

[4][1] By this time, his acting had become unfashionable: he began to be seen as the last of the line of old-fashioned low comic actors who had been popular earlier in the century, including Buckstone, John Liston and Edward Richard Wright.