Samuel Foote was a mimic and playwright whose caricatures of London life gained him a reputation as the English Aristophanes and the Hogarth of the stage. Sometimes writing two or three parts for himself in a single comedy, Foote regularly played the predatory wit opposite the sorts of dullards he must have despised in real life. A modern purveyor of "old comedy," he mimicked friend and foe alike, and his contemporaries seem to have longed for him to imitate them, even though they feared the result. Acting in his own plays at the theater in the Haymarket, Foote successfully competed with the Drury Lane and Covent Garden patent houses for nearly thirty years. His antics were immensely popular, and many greater literary voices testified to his brilliance. When James Boswell argued that Foote would seem merely foolish in the company of Thomas Betterton, Samuel Johnson disagreed: "Foote, Sir...