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Thomas Morton
1764–1838
Best remembered for lively comic drama and sharply observed stage characters, this English playwright helped entertain Georgian audiences with works such as Speed the Plough. Trained first for the law, he found his real success in the theater and became a familiar name on the London stage.
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About the author
Born in Durham in 1764, he was educated at Winchester and later studied at Lincoln's Inn, originally preparing for a legal career. Theater drew him away from law, and he went on to build a reputation as a successful English dramatist.
His plays were especially popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The best known is Speed the Plough (1798), a comedy that helped fix his place in theatrical history, and he also wrote A Cure for the Heart Ache and other stage works enjoyed by London audiences.
He died in 1838. A surviving portrait from the early 1800s reflects the period in which his work flourished, when the British stage prized brisk dialogue, comic energy, and memorable supporting characters.