William Gill (dramatist)

After this he briefly managed a repertory theatre in Salt Lake City where a scandal involving copyright infringement brought Gill to the attention of the American press in February 1875.

Gill ultimately arrived in New York City as a member of Colville's Folly Company; making his Broadway debut as an actor at the Eagle Theater as the lead male comic in Oxygen, or Gas in a burlesque metre in December 1877.

William Gill's first entirely original work to reach Broadway was Horrors, or the Rajah of Zogobad in 1879 which received positive if not enthusiastic reviews, and ran for a respectable 48 performances at the Union Square Theater.

From 1882 through 1886 he had a prolific partnership with the Irish playwright George H. Jessop with whom he co-authored many plays of which In Paradise (1882), Facts, or His Little Hatchet (1883), A Bottle of Ink (1884), and Mam'zelle, or the Little Milliner (1885) all had successful Broadway runs and tours.

The original production broke records at that time for both financial profits for a play and longest-running Broadway shows, and Dixey repeatedly returned to the role for revivals and national tours through 1899.

He later penned the Broadway plays The Alderman (1897, for the actor Odell Williams), The Honest Blacksmith (1901, for the boxer-turned-actor Bob Fitzsimmons), and Mrs. 'Mac,' The Mayor (1905, for the drag artist George W. Munroe).

In addition to writing several plays starring himself and his wife, Gill also created stage works for the husband and wife performing duo William J. and Malvina Pray Florence; actors Jefferson De Angelis, Richard Golden, John T. Raymond, Harry St. Maur, and Francis Wilson; actresses Hattie Starr, Eliza Weathersby, and mother and daughter Jennie and Corinne Kimball; and sopranos Marie Aimée, Ida Mülle and Dora Wiley.

[5] Janet Bird Gill was the daughter of Scottish Royal Navy officer and steamship inventor and captain Sir William Bain who was knighted by Queen Victoria on 20 March 1844.

[16] After this he performed in a minstrel show at a music hall in Melbourne called the Varieties organized by Edward Harvey that was a starring vehicle for the American actress Rollin Howard.

[22] The company's repertoire in this first season included Caste, The Green Bushes, Black-Eyed Susan, Leah, The Child of the Regiment, The Octoroon, Aladdin, Arrah-na-Pogue, The Ticket of Leave Man, and The Flying Scud (with Gill as Nat Grosling).

[34] However, their stay in Sydney was brief, and in March 1872 the couple relocated to Hill End, New South Wales, then another Gold Rush boom town, where Gill established a theatre of sorts entitled the 'Great Varieties Hall'.

While the prospective theatre company started off well, the venture ultimately failed when the gold boom dried up, and the town shrank back to its normal size in a matter of months.

The theatre's season included many popular contemporary plays of the period, and also a well-received original Christmas pantomime penned by Gill, Harlequin Man in the Moon, or Luna the Lovely, Phaeton the Fair and the Haggravating Hag of the Hupper Hatmosphere, which utilized music taken from Offenbach's Geneviève de Brabant and contained a great deal of local humor parodying Sydney's politicians and other contemporary public figures of this city.

During this season the theatre staged two more original plays by Gill: the comedy Ups and Downs, or Uncle Thomas's Money and the burlesque Mephistopheles DDD, or Faust and his Fair Marguerite.

[41] William Gill and his wife and children left Australia for California on 12 May 1874; boarding a vessel operated by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company,[42] and ultimately arriving in the United States via the port city of San Francisco.

When audiences arrived for the opening night of the planned performances of The Guilded Age, Deputy U.S. Marshall A. K. Smith enforced the court's injunction and the event was canceled at the very last moment.

[51] The following month, William but not Waddie, had been offered a place in Colville's Folly Company with whom he made his New York City and Broadway debut as the lead male comic in Oxygen, or Gas in a burlesque metre at the Eagle Theater, on 15 December 1877.

; a pastiche work co-adapted by William Gill and Willie Edouin which premiered on Broadway on Christmas Eve 1877; playing for a total of 25 performance at the Eagle Theatre.

[59] Rice's troop then toured the work to Haverly's Theatre in Chicago, followed by performances in San Francisco and Philadelphia before it reached Broadway's Union Square Theater on 28 May 1879 where it was received favorably if not enthusiastically by the New York press.

The cast also included the actor Francis Wilson as Alfred Comstock Silvermine of Leadville, Amy Gordon as Tillie St. Aubyn, and Augustus J Bruno as Octavius Longfellow Warbler.

[77] This second play was tremendously profitable and became the greatest success for the Florences in their acting careers; remaining in their regularly performed repertoire for the next six years including multiple runs at Broadway theatres.

[79] The pair rebounded from this failure later that year with a popular success, writing the libretto for the musical A Bottle of Ink which premiered in late 1884 in Boston before reaching Broadway's Comedy Theater in January 1885.

The work received critical reviews but was financially profitable, and it starred soprano Ida Mülle, the comic actor Jefferson De Angelis, and the actress Hattie Starr.

This work premiered on 5 September 1884 in Kingston, New York and toured to Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, and Brooklyn before finally settling in for a profitable run at Broadway's Fifth Avenue Theater.

[82] In reality, the work contained a significant portion of material authored by Gill earlier for his 1884 musical flop Two Bad Men which he had created in collaboration with the composer Gustave Kerker for the American stage.

These works included the burlesque Little Heindrick Hudson or, the Merry Dutch of Manhattan which ran at Tony Pastor's Music Hall in January 1884, and Distinguished Foreigners which premiered at the Globe Theatre in Boston in 1883 in conjunction with a production of Joseph Derrick's Confusion which had alterations made to its script for the American stage by Gill.

This work had been thrown together rapidly for the husband and wife performing team of actor Richard Golden and soprano Dora Wiley, and was a poor imitation of Gill's earlier A Bottle of Ink.

Theatre critic Earl Marble wrote in the Boston Mirror, "The Piper of William Gill was one of the best bits of acting in the whole affair which affords a new illustration of the old fact that a man may be a bad playwright and a good actor.

It premiered to good reviews at the opera house in Bangor, Maine, on 22 April 1889 and successfully toured New England and to Philadelphia, before reaching New York's Union Square Theater on 13 May 1889.

[94] Gill adapted Charles Clark Munn's short story'Uncle Terry-a Story of the Maine Coast (1900), into the play Uncle Terry which toured throughout New England in 1901 but never reached Broadway.