His wife's name stands opposite some important parts, including Lady Anne in ‘Richard III.’ Spiller separated from her, however, and formed other ties.
Spiller is credited with ‘performing all his parts excellently well in an unfashionable theatre, and to thin audiences.’ He had remarkable skill in transforming himself into whatever character he represented, and one night, as Stockwell in the ‘Artful Husband,’ is said to have completely deceived his special patron the Duke of Argyll, who, taking him for a new hand, recommended him to Rich as deserving encouragement. According to Louis Riccoboni, the historian of the stage, Spiller ‘acted the old man in a comedy taken from Crispin Medicine [sic] with such a nice degree of perfection as one could expect in no player who had not had forty years' experience. … I made no doubt of his being an old comedian, who, instructed by long practice and assisted by the weight of years, had performed the part so naturally; but how great was my surprise when I learnt that he was a young man about the age of twenty-six! … The wrinkles of his face, his sunk eyes, and his loose yellow cheeks, were incontestable proofs against what they said to me. I was credibly informed that the actor, to fit himself for the part of the old man, spent an hour in dressing himself, and disguised his face so nicely and painted so artificially a part of his eyebrows and eyelids that at the distance of six paces it was impossible not to be deceived’ (cf. Victor, Hist. of the Theatre, ii. 70).
Steele, in the ‘Anti-Theatre’ on 29 March 1720 (No. 13), published a letter signed ‘James Spiller,’ and addressed to the worshipful Sir John Falstaff, knight, in which Spiller advertises his benefit, which took place on the 31st. He talks humorously about his creditors, who pay their compliments every morning and ask when they shall be paid. He continues: ‘Wicked good company have [sic] brought me into this imitation of grandeur. I loved my friend and my jest too well to get rich; in short, Sir John, wit is my blind side.’ On this letter Nichols, the editor, noted that Spiller was ‘a comedian of great excellence, who may be considered as the Shuter of his day … a man of dissipated and irregular life; always in difficulties, and by these means lost the advantages of considerable talents.’ Nichols also says that he had but one eye, the loss being probably due to smallpox, of which he had a bad attack. Such of Spiller's jokes as are preserved are not very brilliant. They were collected in ‘Spiller's Jests, or the Life and Pleasant Adventures of the late celebrated Comedian, Mr. James Spiller,’ &c., London, n. d. [1729], 8vo (the chief recommendation of the volume is its scarcity).
[The Life of Mr. James Spiller, the late famous Comedian, by George Akerby, Painter, London, 1729, 8vo, ante-dated and rare, with portrait; The [fictitious] Comical Adventures of the late Mr. J. Spiller, Comedian, at Epsom in England, &c., Stirling, 12mo, n. d. [1800]; Genest's Account of the English Stage; Nichols's Theatre, by Richard Steele; Cibber's Apology, ed. Lowe; Doran's Dramatic Annals, ed. Lowe.]
SPILSBURY, JONATHAN (fl. 1760–1790), engraver, practised chiefly in mezzotint, and between 1759 and 1789 produced many excellent plates, mainly portraits, which included Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, after Sadler; Lord Camden, after Hoare; Miss Jacob and the Earl of Carlisle, after Reynolds; Inigo Jones, after Vandyck; John Wesley, after Romney; and George III and Queen Charlotte, from his own drawings. He also engraved some subject-pieces after Murillo, Rembrandt, Rubens, Metzu, A. Kauffman, &c. For his print of Miss Jacob, which is a very fine work, Spilsbury was awarded a premium by the Society of Arts in 1761, and for that of the Earl of Carlisle another in 1763. He exhibited original portraits and a few biblical compositions with the Society of Artists in 1763, 1770, and 1771, and at the academy from 1776 to 1784. He contributed a picture of ‘The Widow of Zarepta’ to the British Institution in 1807, and this is the last record of him.
He has been confused with his brother, John Spilsbury (1730?–1795?), also an engraver, in consequence of the similarity of christian names; some of the work executed by one or other of the brothers is also ascribed to a fictitious ‘Inigo’ Spilsbury. John Spilsbury, who is said to have been born in 1730, kept a print-shop in Russell Court, Covent Garden, where he published some of his brother's plates; but, according to a statement made by himself to the Rev. James Granger (Granger Correspondence, p. 403), his own work was confined to maps, ornaments, &c. He, however, executed a set of fifty etchings from antique gems, published by Boydell in 1785, and was probably the author of a set of twenty-four plates of heads etched in the manner of Rembrandt, and portraits of Queen Charlotte, J. W. Fletcher of Madeley, and Benjamin La Trobe, but these, being signed only ‘J. Spilsbury,’ may be the work of his brother. He was drawing-master at Harrow school, and died about 1795.
Maria Spilsbury, afterwards Mrs. Taylor
