Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/318

 confinement in Dublin, he reached the Euston Hotel, London, and was removed to a furnished house, 4 Mornington Crescent, Hampstead Road, where on 21 June 1842 he died, and was buried on the 26th in the vaults of the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. His son Edmund Yates [q. v.] is separately noticed.

In his early career Yates took a place among regular comedians, and even essayed tragic characters. After he came into the management of the Adelphi he chose more eccentric parts. The chief feature in his acting was versatility. Oxberry, always grudging in recognition, called him a mere mimic, and in that capacity far inferior to Mathews. Unconsciously contradicting himself, he praised him in Cornet Carmine and in other parts; and, while denying him any claim to be a tragedian, said that in romantic and ‘undefined’ parts he stood nearly alone. ‘Give Mr. Yates an excrescence upon nature and he is at home. Nothing could be more vivid than his Berthold. His Ranald of the Mint, too, was a beautiful performance.’ In his management of the Adelphi he took any part that was vacant. Macready speaks of Yates in a disparaging tone not uncommon with him in dealing with associates or rivals. Yates was, however, a sound actor in a line of parts extending from Richard III and Shylock through Falstaff to Moses and Mordecai. He was about five feet seven inches in height, light-haired, with a Jewish cast of face, and limped a little through his accident at Vauxhall. As a manager he was full of tact and resource, but was extremely irritable.

A portrait by Lonsdale is in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club; a second by Ambrose, and a watercolour sketch by Deighton, belonged to his son Edmund Yates [q. v.]; and a portrait once in the Evans gallery of ‘Paddy Green’ was afterwards in the possession of J. C. Parkinson.

[The life of Yates should be read beside the notices of his wife, of Charles Mathews, Daniel Terry, and others with whom he was associated. A list of characters, not complete, but the first attempted, has been compiled from Genest's Account of the English Stage, Webster's Acting National Drama, and the printed plays of Fitzball, Reynoldson, Buckstone, Leman Rede, and others. Biographical particulars are supplied in Edmund Yates's Recollections and Experiences, Oxberry's Dramatic Biography, Dramatic and Musical Review (1842, vol. i.), Georgian Era, Mrs. Mathews's Tea-table Talk, Dibdin's Edinburgh Stage, Pollock's Macready, and Doran's Annals of the Stage, ed. Lowe. Era newspaper (26 June 1842) and Era Almanack (various years) have been consulted.] 

YATES, JAMES (fl. 1582), poet, describes himself in the dedication of his only known volume as a ‘serving man,’ and no further details of his biography have been discovered. Park conjectured that he came from Suffolk on the ground that ‘he addressed verses to “Mr. P. W.” who visited Ipswich and wrote an epitaph on Mrs. Pooley of Badley.’ Mrs. Pooley was ‘sister to my lady Wentworth,’ who may have been one of the wives of Thomas, second baron Wentworth [q. v.], though there were many knights in the Wentworth family. Most of them, however, belonged to Suffolk, and it is possible that ‘Mr. P. W.’ may have been Peter or Paul Wentworth [q. v.] Yates has also been associated with Warwickshire on the grounds that he dedicates his work to one Henry Reynolds, who is assumed to be identical with Henry Reynolds (fl. 1630) [q. v.], and that Drayton, who was a Warwickshire man, also dedicated his epistle ‘Of Poets and Poesie’ to Reynolds. Upon this flimsy evidence is also based the theory that the ‘verses written at the departure of his friend W. S. when he went to dwell in London’ included in Yates's volume refer to Shakespeare. It is more probable that Yates's patron was the Henry Reynolds of Belstead who married Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund Withipol of Ipswich, and that ‘Mr. P. W.’ was Edmund's brother, Paul Withipol (, Suffolk Collections, vol. xciii. f. 341).

All Yates's poems are included in one volume, which was entered on the ‘Stationers' Register’ on 7 June 1582 (, Stationers' Reg. ii. 412), and published at London in the same year (black letter, 4to) ‘by John Wolfe, dwellinge in Distaffe lane, neere the signe of the Castle.’ The title is given by Corser as ‘The Castell of Courtesie. Whereunto is adioyned the Holde of Humilitie; with the Chariot of Chastitie thereunto annexed. Also a Dialogue between Age and Youth, and other matters herein conteined.’ In Collier's ‘Extracts from the Register of the Stationers' Company’ (ii. 166) and in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (1840, i. 385) the order of the first two titles is reversed, and Collier states that the ‘Castell of Courtesie’ is a ‘separate publication of which we have no copy nor any other record.’ This is apparently an error, for, though each of the three parts has a separate title-page, all three titles are given in the entry in the ‘Stationers' Register’ of 7 June 1582. The volume is chiefly interesting by reason of its rarity; George Steevens possessed an imperfect copy which he believed to be unique, and refused on that