Elizabeth Griffith

Elizabeth Griffith (née Griffith) (1720 – 5 January 1793), sometimes also credited Elizabeth Griffiths, was an 18th-century Irish dramatist, fiction writer, essayist and actress, best known for her edition of Shakespeare's comedies published in 1775. Griffith was born in Glamorgan, Glamorganshire, Wales to Dublin theatre manager Thomas Griffith and his wife Jane Foxcroft Griffith sometime in the 1720s, though more recent scholarship suggests she was born in 1727. Very little about Griffith's early life is known. Her father, who had doted on her, died in 1744. The family was rocked by sudden financial insecurity and the seventeen-year-old Griffith began seeking means to earn her own keep, likely taking small provincial acting jobs. She...