Let me post my caveat first regarding this entry....Robert Coates may not have left any progeny, but I simply could not resist posting this. My wife is an inveterate collector of trivia and in the course of this mania of hers, she picked up a book and I found this article only last night(and please don't ask for the title...you might get the wrong idea about me<g>): "THE WORLD'S WORST ACTOR" Robert "Romeo" Coates. Background: born in Antigua, Coates had dark, exotic looks that stood out in a British crowd. But he didn't rely on nature to attract attention--he dressed in costumes covered with diamonds and feathers. In 1807, a few days before his stage debut in Bath, England, he arrived in town--in a diamond-studded carriage shaped like a seashell. Claim to fame: Coates became wildly popular in England for butchering Shakespeare. As Margaret Nicholas writes in THE WORLD'S GREATEST CRANKS AND CRACKPOTS: 'He constantly forgot his lines, invented scenes as he went along, and turned to address the audience whenever he thought it was getting out of hand. If he enjoyed playing a scene, he would quite happily repeat it three or four times. He loved dramatic death scenes and had no qualms about "breathing his last" several times over. Exasperated playgoers would yell, "Why don't you die?" One night during ROMEO AND JULIET, Coates dashed off stage and returned with a crowbar...which he used to pry open Juliet's tomb. He considered it an improvement on Shakespeare. At another performance, someone hurled a fighting cock on stage (in "tribute" to Coates' motto, "while I live, I'll crow.")The bird pecked at Coates' feet, but the actor delivered his romantic speech without missing a beat. Coates proved that bad acting can be very profitable. Nicholas writes: 'His fame spread and soon he was playing to packed houses. People would travel great distances to see if he really was as bad as everyone reported. He became such an attraction that even the Prince Regent went to see him. When he played the part of Lothario in Rowe's THE FAIR PENITENT at London's Haymarket Theater, at least a thousand people had to be turned away....At another performance....his acting was so poor that several people laughed themselves ill and had to be helped outside into the fresh air and treated by a doctor.' Eventually the rowdy crowds became a problem. No actress, for fear of injury, would play Juliet opposite Coates' Romeo(his favorite role). And theater owners became less willing to risk damage to their property. He often had to bribe them just to get a part in their plays. Without the income from acting to support his lavish style, Coates went bankrupt. He was killed in 1848, at age 75, when he was run down by a hansom taxi." Well, folks, I was a little appalled when I read this. I teach a considerable amount of Shakespeare in my Honors/AP English classes. Moreover, I also handle Theatre Arts classes and our school's One-Act Play productions. I can certify to you, therefore, that this Robert Coates is NOT in my particular lineage! :-) ) OK, Charlotte, you may beat me for wasting bandwidth or being off-topic, but I couldn't resist this one. I mean, if it weren't for the occasional oddball, crazy, or lunatic, wouldn't genealogy get to be boring??!! <g> And.... my apologies to The Bard for having brought to light the wholesale mangling of his work! Regards to all, -- Larry D. Hamilton Coats P.O. Box 823 Aspermont, TX 79502