In the glittering world of 19th-century theatre, where talent was prized and ridicule could end a career, one man defied convention and became a legend—not for brilliance, but for flamboyant failure. His name was Robert Coates, a wealthy amateur who believed that he was destined for the stage. And while audiences came in droves to see him, it wasn’t for his skill. They came to witness the greatest bad actor who ever lived.
Born in Antigua in 1772, Robert Coates was the only surviving child of a prosperous sugar planter. He was educated in England, and on returning home took part in amateur dramatics. When he inherited his father's estate and a large collection of diamonds in 1807, he moved to England, where he gained notoriety for his eccentric dress sense, diamond-studded wardrobe, and peculiar behaviour. But nothing prepared society for his foray into the world of acting.
In 1809, Coates made his theatrical debut in Bath, playing Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—a performance that would set the tone for the rest of his unlikely career. He arrived onstage wearing a flashy costume of his own design with a flowing, sky-blue cloak with sequins, red pantaloons, a vest of white muslin, a large cravat, a plumed "opera hat”, and dozens of diamonds. His lines were improvised. And his death scenes were repeated multiple times because he felt he hadn't died correctly the first time. The audience roared with laughter, some booed, others applauded. A legend was born.
Dubbed the “Amateur of Fashion,” Coates was convinced of his own genius. He often invented new scenes and dialogue on the spot. He loved dramatic death scenes and would repeat them—or any other scenes he happened to take a fancy to—three to four times over. He routinely broke character to engage directly with his audiences. During his first performance of Romeo & Juliet, he pulled out his snuff box in the middle of a scene and offered some to the occupants of a box. During Romeo's death scene, Coates carefully placed his hat on the ground for a pillow and used his dirty handkerchief to dust the stage before lying on it. He once returned to the stage after dying, opened Juliet’s tomb with a crowbar, and collapsed again with even more flair. Once, when he dropped a diamond buckle when he was going to exit the stage, he crawled around the stage looking for it. His costumes were often too tight, causing him to move stiffly, and during one performance, his tights burst at the seams.
Coates believed he was improving the classics. The audience believed they were witnessing comic genius of the unintentional variety. Reactions ranged from applause and hysterical laughter to brutal heckling, catcalls, jeers, and, at times, volleys of oranges and vegetables. During a performance in Paris, while Coates was lying “dead” on the stage, he was reportedly raised to life by “a terrific blow on the nose from an orange.”
Reporting on Coates’s first provincial tour after his notorious Bath début, The Times sneered at the “rose-coloured silks, silver tissue, nodding plumes, and a profusion of jewellery,” then demolished the performance itself:
“His delivery was uncouth, his attitude most awkward, and his emphasis uniformly misplaced… he alternately whined and bellowed like a Methodist preacher… the curtain was dropped. The hero, still undaunted, paraded to the front… and was at length carried off by force.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, the ridicule, Coates became a sensation. Theatre managers booked him for the sheer spectacle. Crowds packed venues to revel in the hilarity onstage. The Prince Regent himself attended one of his performances. In 1811, Coates appeared in The Fair Penitent at London’s Haymarket Theatre, playing Lothario. It was sold out in advance, and the theatre had to turn thousands of would-be spectators away.
After another uproarious performance as Lothario at the Haymarket Theatre, the Morning Chronicle delivered a brutal sermon:
To witness the senseless tricks of a mountebank at Bartholomew Fair is humiliating enough… but this successful candidate for contempt is committing a crime little short of sacrilege upon the productions of one of our best poets.
In response to the criticism of his acting or behaviour, Coates felt compelled to respond. He wrote a long letter to the Morning Herald, where he declared in part:
In regard to the innumerable attacks that have been made upon my lineaments and person in the public prints, I have only to observe, that as I was fashioned by the Creator, independent of my will, I cannot be responsible for that result, which I could not control.
Coates mostly performed for charity, especially during the early part of his stage “career.” His debut in Bath was explicitly billed as a charitable event, where Coates offered to perform Romeo and Juliet to raise money for local causes. This was a key justification he offered for many of his appearances, and likely one reason why theatre managers and audiences initially tolerated his antics. However, critics gradually came to suspect that Coates’s real motive was ego and spectacle, with charity serving more as a social alibi.
While many publications were unfriendly towards Coates, the European Magazine took exception to this form of ridicule and made a special effort to defend the Amateur in March 1813:
Most men have their peculiarities, some latent, others more apparent; but surely, when the latter are neither immoral nor offensive to society, they can scarcely be deemed, however obnoxious, fair subjects of ridicule, the toleration of which . . . seems a degradation of human nature, and is, in itself, a travestie of the best passions of the human heart.
While the European Magazine acknowledged that Coates’s acting was less than laudable in terms of talent and execution, the editors recognized that “if he chooses to make his humour subservient to a charitable purpose, to engraft virtue upon his whims, and give the solid worth of a benevolent act to harmless eccentricity, who is to prohibit or blame him” and then concluded: “Mr. Coates deserves very great credit for the motive of his performances, whatever difference of taste may exist as to their merit.”
Romeo Coates was as much a character in real life as he was on stage. He would habitually ware his flamboyant stage outfits in public. He also designed his own carriage, in the shape of a kettledrum and driven by white horses. It was decorated with a crowing cock and the motto, “While I live, I’ll crow.”
Coates’s peculiar fame, however, was short-lived. By 1816, the novelty had worn off, and theatres began to reject his offers to perform. Facing mounting debts, he moved to Boulogne and spent several quiet years abroad. In 1823, he married Emma Anne Robinson and returned to London in his later years. But his eccentricity never quite faded.
On February 15, 1848, after attending a performance at Drury Lane, Robert Coates was struck by a Hansom cab. He died six days later at the age of 76. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in an unmarked grave.
References:
# Robert Coates: The Greatest of Bad Actors, Strange Company
# Rick On Theater
# The Amateur of Fashion: Robert "Romeo" Coates, Folger
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