Isaac Bickerstaffe

Issac Bickerstaffe or Bickerstaff was born around 1735 and died around 1808. He was an Irish playwright. He was in early life a page to Lord Chesterfield when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He arrived in London 1755 and produced many successful comedies and opera librettos. With Thomas Arne he wrote Love in a village, the first English comic opera. His The Maide of the Mill (1765) was also very successful. In 1772 he fled to France, suspected of a homosexual offence. The remainder of his life seems to have been passed in penury and misery, and little is known about his death. (Jonathan Swift once wrote under the same pseudonym).