David Garrick is an inviting subject for a biographer. His lifespan (1717–79) demarcates the core of the eighteenth century, and however you define the heart of the period, he was at it. Diminutive in stature, he bestrode the stage as no one has quite done since. An actor-manager who preceded Henry Irving and Laurence Olivier, he operated as his own director before the term was invented. Impresario, playwright, play-doctor, publicist, festival promoter, critic, lyric writer, dramatic coach—he could do it all. He makes Orson Welles look like a one-trick pony.

If the cult of the Bard has a single originating sponsor, it must be Garrick. He had a fine collection of early editions of Shakespeare before you needed a large foundation grant to afford a copy. He built a private shrine to the dramatist at his Thames-side home. More than anyone else, he gave a boost to Stratford as the home of the Swan of Avon, and helped to launch it on its journey from a fairly anonymous country town in the English Midlands to its modern standing as a cultural and tourist center. It has also become, with the Folger Library in Washington, D.C., the symbolic headquarters of the Shakespeare industry. On top of this, Garrick had himself painted in Shakespearian getup by William Hogarth, and then by the two great portraitists of the age, Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.

All this sprang, of course, from Garrick’s phenomenal success as a stage performer, beginning