at the beginning of 1832, but there was delay in producing it. Knowles demanded his manuscript back, and took it to Charles Kemble at Covent Garden. It was produced there on 5 April 1832; Julia was played by Miss Kemble, and Master Walter by the author himself, who thus returned to his early calling. The comedy was a great success, and enjoyed an almost uninterrupted run till the end of the season, but Knowles's acting did not meet with much approval. On taking ‘The Hunchback’ to Glasgow and Edinburgh, he was received with enthusiasm by his former friends and pupils. When his next important play, ‘The Wife,’ was brought out at Covent Garden on 24 April 1833, Charles Lamb wrote both prologue and epilogue; and an article in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ at this date described Knowles as the most successful dramatist of the day.
On 10 Oct. 1837 appeared ‘The Love Chase,’ which, with the exception of ‘The Hunchback,’ has retained more public favour than any of Knowles's plays. With Strickland as Fondlove, and Elton, Webster, Mrs. Glover, and Mrs. Nisbett as Waller, Wildrake, Widow Green, and Constance respectively, the play was a brilliant success, and ran until the end of December.
Knowles, notwithstanding adverse criticism, continued to act up till 1843, and by his own account thus made a fair income. He acted in ‘Macbeth’ and in some of his own plays at the Coburg Theatre, and also in the provinces and in Ireland. After playing with Macready in ‘Virginius’ before an enthusiastic London audience, he paid, in 1834, a very successful visit of nine months to the United States. Between his return from America and 1843 he brought out eight more plays of his own (see list below), besides adapting Beaumont and Fletcher's ‘Maid's Tragedy’ under the name of ‘The Bridal,’ and later on the same authors' ‘Noble Gentleman;’ the latter, however, was not acted. In 1841 he composed the libretto of a ballad-opera, ‘Alexina,’ which after his death was re-arranged and brought out as a play under the name, ‘True unto Death.’ He also wrote tales in the magazines and continued his public lectures. Two novels by him—‘George Lovell’ and ‘Fortescue’—appeared in 1846–7, but neither of them is remarkable. Although he was now in receipt of a comfortable income, his resources were hampered by his ready charity and his chivalrous efforts to discharge his father's debts. In 1848 Knowles was granted a civil-list pension of 200l. He was an original member of the committee formed for the purchase of Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon, and it was reported in 1848, when the purchase was completed, that the custodianship was offered to him. He never filled the office, but at his death the trustees of the birthplace recorded their belief that he had been in receipt of the dividends of 1,500l., invested in the names of Forster and Dickens, ‘for the ostensible purpose of founding a custodianship of the birthplace,’ and inquiries were made into the investment and appropriation of the dividends (extract from Trustees' Minute-book, 31 Dec. 1862).
Knowles had always had strongly religious and philanthropic interests, and had in early days been greatly impressed by the preaching of Rowland Hill at the Surrey Chapel. About 1844 he embraced an extreme form of evangelicalism and joined the baptists, professing that he had hitherto lived ‘without God and without hope in the world.’ He delivered sermons from chapel pulpits and at Exeter Hall. He denounced Roman catholicism, attacked Cardinal Wiseman on the subject of transubstantiation, and wrote two books of controversial divinity; but he avoided preaching against the stage. He was a great believer in the water-cure. In his last years he visited various parts of the kingdom, and in 1862, soon after entering his seventy-ninth year, was entertained at a banquet in his native city of Cork. On 30 Nov. of the same year he died at Torquay. He was buried in the Necropolis at Glasgow. His first wife died in 1841, and in the following year he married a Miss Elphinstone, a former pupil, who had played Meeta in his ‘Maid of Mariendorpt.’ His son by his first wife, Richard Brinsley Knowles, is noticed separately.
There is a portrait of Knowles in the ‘Life’ by his son, Richard Brinsley Knowles, and an outline sketch of him in Maclise's ‘Portrait Gallery.’
Judged by literary tests alone, Knowles's plays cannot lay claim to much distinction. His plots are conventional, his style is simple, and, in spite of his Irish birth, his humour is not conspicuous. Occasionally he strikes a poetical vein, and his fund of natural feeling led him to evolve many effective situations. But he is a playwright rather than a dramatist. As an actor, his style, from a want of relief and transition, was apt to become tedious, but his unmistakable earnestness strongly recommended him to audiences with whom, as a dramatist, he was in his lifetime highly popular (see Westland Marston, Our Recent Actors, ii. 122).
His published works may be conveniently divided into three classes. The dates given are those of first publication.
