William Keasberry (1726 – 15 November 1797), sometimes spelt Keasbury, was an English actor and theatre manager of the 18th century whose career was chiefly in Bath, Somerset.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Mr_Kearsbury.png)
The son of another William Keasberry, by his marriage to Catherine Liddell, he was born in London.[1]
Keasberry was "brought up to the china business in London", but took instead to "the more alluring profession of the stage".[2] He joined the Edinburgh theatre in 1755,[3] and from 1757 to 1795 was associated with the Orchard Street Theatre, Bath, as both actor and manager,[4] taking over as manager in 1760,[3] Outside Bath, he also acted in Bristol, London, and Richmond.[3] a role he shared with William Wyatt Dimond.
In 1760, Keasberry and Richard Griffith established a temporary theatre at Winchester "in consequence of a Camp consisting of eight regiments".[5]
On 30 August 1773, at New Brentford, Middlesex, Keasberry married Henrietta Hamilton (1737–1812), a member of a family of actors. They had several children, William (1760–1797), John Palmer (1773–1840), Catherine Liddell (1763–1845), Henrietta (1768–1797), Julia Maria (1769–1849), and Henry Edward (1771–1847).[1][6]
At the time of his death, Keasberry was described in a brief obituary as "Mr. William Keasbury, in his 71st year, formerly an actor, and late one of the joint patentees and managers of the Bath Theatre."[7]
He was buried at St Thomas à Becket's church, Widcombe, Bath.
Notes
edit- ^ a b William Keasberry at duxburyfamily.com, Retrieved 14 February 2011
- ^ Monthly magazine and British register, vol. 4 (1797), p. 413
- ^ a b c Mita Choudhury, Interculturalism and resistance in the London theater, 1660–1800, p. 99
- ^ Tate Wilkinson, ed. Lyle Larsen, Memoirs of his own life (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998), p. 231
- ^ Terence M. Freeman, Dramatic representations of British soldiers and sailors on the London stage, 1660–1880: Britons, strike home (E. Mellen Press, 1995), p. 30
- ^ Philip H. Highfill, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, vol. 7 (Habgood to Houbert), p. 62
- ^ The European Magazine, and London Review, vol. 32 (1797), p. 359