William Bodham Donne

He was educated at Bury St Edmunds Grammar School, taught for two years by Benjamin Heath Malkin.

[2] There he formed lasting friendships with James Spedding, Edward FitzGerald, and John Mitchell Kemble, the Anglo-Saxon scholar.

[6] He spent time at Mattishall in Norfolk, on Anne Bodham's estate; she was his great-aunt, and a cousin of William Cowper.

Other friends were William Taylor, Henry Crabb Robinson, Bernard Barton, Thomas Manning, and George Borrow.

[1] From 1865 the Examiner of Plays, in company with the Inspector of Theatres (an appointed architect) began to visit backstage areas, which were found in some cases to be nasty and insanitary.

[13] He defended, to the parliamentary enquiry, the permission granted to perform certain operas, considered "unsuitable", on the grounds that the words were not very audible, and in a foreign language.

[14] It has been found surprising that he did not object to the song The Wearing of the Green, in a Dion Boucicault play set during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

[15] In fact Donne cited the play, Arrah-na-Pogue, in a short list of contemporary works he thought were likely to last, along with others by Edward Bulwer, Sheridan Knowles, John Westland Marston, Thomas Noon Talfourd, and Tom Taylor.

[1] He wrote the volumes Euripides and Tacitus for the series Ancient Classics for English Readers (William Blackwood and Sons).

As a theatre critic, Donne expressed reservation about contemporary trends, in the direction of historical accuracy, and towards concrete representation rather than relying on imagination.