George Farquhar

Playwright, born in Londonderry, Co Londonderry, NW Northern Ireland, UK. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and became an actor in a Dublin theatre, but soon left the stage and joined the army. His first comedy, Love and a Bottle (1699), proved a success, as were several other plays, notably The Recruiting Officer (1706). His best work, The Beaux' Stratagem (1707), was written during his last illness.

His career was blossoming, when an accident on stage during a performance of The Indian Emperor by John Dryden, in which he wounded a fellow actor in a sword fight, caused him to quit the stage.

He left Dublin for London in 1697, and his play, Love and a Bottle, was performed at Drury Lane theatre in the following year.

The Constant Couple was written when he was only twenty. The unexpected success of the production convinced him to try his hand at writing again with Sir Henry Wildair and The Inconstant, or the Way to Win Him. Farquhar was rapidly gaining a following, and in 1702 married someone he believed would be a wealthy patroness. It was in this period that he produced The Stage Coach and The Twin Rivals. He remained impoverished, and decided to enter the army, which provided material for one of his best-known plays, The Recruiting Officer (1706). Soon afterwards came The Beaux' Stratagem, which was written while Farquhar lived in Lichfield, Staffordshire. It was in The Twin Rivals, however, that his most frequently quoted line, "Necessity, the mother of invention," appears.