Joe Miller (actor)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other persons named Joe Miller, see Joe Miller (disambiguation).

Joe Miller (Joseph or Josias) (1684 - August 16, 1738), English actor, first appears in the cast of Sir Robert Howard's Committee at Drury Lane in 1709 as Teague.

Trinculo in The Tempest, the First Grave-digger in Hamlet and Marplot in The Busybody, were among his many favourite parts. He is said to have been a friend of Hogarth.

[edit] Joe Miller's Jests

After his death, John Mottley (1692-1750) brought out a book called Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wits Vade-Mecum (1739), a collection of contemporary and ancient coarse witticisms, only three of which are told of Miller.

Owing to the quality of the jokes in Mottley's book, their number increasing with each of the many subsequent editions, any time-worn jest, somewhat unjustly, came to be called "a Joe Miller."

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.