Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/356

 (26 Oct.), and as the original Kruitzner in Miss Lee's ‘Three Strangers’ (10 Dec.) In 1826 (January–March) he was Prospero, Rolla in ‘Pizarro,’ Faulkland, Ford in ‘Merry Wives,’ and Honeywood in a revival of the ‘Good-natured Man’ to the Croaker of Farren. On 3 April he played Macbeth for the first time at Covent Garden, and he was on 20 May Oliver Cromwell in ‘Woodstock.’ During the next season he was (2 Oct.) seen as Cassius (one of his best impersonations), as Hubert in ‘King John,’ as Jaffier and Macbeth, Jaques in ‘As you like it,’ and the Duke in the ‘Honeymoon.’ At Covent Garden again, during 1827–8, he created several parts in inferior pieces, and was seen as Richmond in ‘Richard III,’ and as Edgar to Charles Kean's ‘Lear.’ The following season saw him as Hotspur, Appius in ‘Virginius,’ Bolingbroke in ‘Richard II,’ Sir Brian de Boisgilbert in ‘Ivanhoe,’ and also (on 27 April 1829) as King John. In October he was Richard Burbage in Somerset's ‘Shakespeare's Early Days,’ and he played the title-part in ‘Henri Quatre’ for his own benefit on 4 June 1830. The class of plays produced at Covent Garden was now declining, and the finances were in a state of hopeless confusion, reaching a climax in 1833, when inability to obtain his salary drove Warde to seek refuge at the Olympic, and afterwards at the Victoria Theatre, under the management of Abbott and Egerton. But the decay of the old ‘legitimate’ drama to which he was accustomed minimised the opportunities of an actor whose powers were already beginning to decline. He was engaged at Covent Garden during Macready's brief lesseeship of 1837–8, but was only entrusted with quite second-rate parts, such as Williams in ‘Henry V.’ He is said to have fallen ‘a prey to bad habits, engendered by actual want from the impossibility of getting a remunerative employment,’ and, constantly in debt and under arrest, was habitually ‘escorted to and from the theatre by bailiffs.’ He died unfriended and in penury, in a lodging in Manchester Street, on 9 July 1840, at the age of forty-eight. According to Genest he was a seldom great but eminently pleasing actor. Leigh Hunt thought poorly of his Jaffier, but Forster has a good word for his Cominius to the Coriolanus of Macready (Dram. Essays, 1896, p. 65). He was full of promise at the time of his first appearance in London; latterly, however, he developed an ‘unfortunate whining drawl,’ which prevented him from ever emerging completely from the ranks of ‘utility’ performers.

A drawing of Warde as Cassius, by Thurston, is in the Charles Mathews collection of theatrical portraits at the Garrick Club.

[Era, 12 July 1840; Gent. Mag. 1841, i. 439; Genest's Hist. of the Stage, 1832, vols. viii. and ix. passim; Macready's Reminiscences, 1875, ii. 79.]

 WARDE, LUKE (fl. 1588), sea captain, was with (Sir) Martin Frobiser [q. v.] in his first and second voyages to the north-west, 1576–7. In April 1578 he is mentioned as having brought into Southampton a quantity of goods taken from pirates. In May 1578 he sailed again with Frobiser in his third voyage, being received as an adventurer ‘gratis,’ in consideration of his service. Luke Sound marks a place at which he landed. In December 1581 he was engaged in fitting out the Edward Bonaventure, in which in 1582–3 he was vice-admiral under Edward Fenton [q. v.] in the expedition for China, which did not get further than the coast of Brazil. Warde afterwards wrote the account of the voyage which was published by Hakluyt (Principal Navigations, iii. 757). In 1587–9 he commanded the queen's ship Tramontana against the Spanish armada and in the narrow seas. In 1590, still in the Tramontana, he was admiral, or, as it would now be called, senior officer, in the Narrow Seas. In 1591 he commanded the Swallow in the narrow seas. His name does not occur in the accounts of any of the numerous expeditions during the rest of the war, so that it is probable that he died shortly after 1591. The name, commonly written Ward, is shown by his signature (Cotton. MS. Otho, E. viii. freq.) to be Warde.

[Cal. State Papers, Dom.; Defeat of the Spanish Armada (Navy Records Soc.); notes kindly supplied by Mr. M. Oppenheim.]

 WARDEN, WILLIAM (1777–1849), naval surgeon and author, was born at Alyth in Forfarshire on 1 May 1777. From the parish school, in which he received his early education, he was sent to Montrose, where he served some years with a surgeon, being a fellow-pupil of [Sir] William Burnett [q. v.] and Joseph Hume [q. v.] He studied also for some time at Edinburgh, and in 1795 entered the navy as surgeon's mate on board the Melpomene frigate, one of the ships implicated in the mutiny at the Nore. The story is told that the men demanded that the surgeon should be sent on shore and Warden appointed in his stead, but that Warden, on the advice of his captain, refused the promotion. He was, however, promoted in the following year, was surgeon of the Alcmène at Copenhagen on 2 April 1801, and of the Phœnix, when she captured the Didon on 10 Aug. 1805. In this engage-