William Edward Love

At the age of twelve, while still at school, he commenced imitating the noises occasioned by the action of machinery and inanimate objects, and soon proceeded to mimic the sounds made by musical instruments, beasts, birds, and insects.

In the latter year he appeared for a benefit in a solo entertainment, entitled 'The False Alarm,' and his success led him to become a public performer.

In this, as in all his later entertainments, he was the sole performer; he represented various characters, making very rapid changes of dress while talking, singing, and displaying his remarkable powers of mimicry and ventriloquism.

He went to Scotland in 1830, where he brought out 'Love in a Labyrinth, or the Adventures of a Day,' and in 1833 he opened at Oxford with a piece called 'Ignes Fatui.'

The names of other entertainments produced by Love were: 'Love in all Shapes;' 'Love's Labour Lost;' 'A Voyage to Hamburg;' 'A Reminiscence of Bygone Times;' 'Love's Lucubrations;' 'Love's Mirror;' 'A Traveller's Reminiscences,' by Charles Forrester; 'A Christmas Party;' 'The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing,' by H. Ball, and 'Dinner at Five precisely.'