Isaac Bickerstaffe

Issac Bickerstaffe or Bickerstaff (1733 - 1808) was an Irish playwright. He was in early life a page to Lord Chesterfield when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He arrived in London in 1755 and produced many successful comedies and opera librettos. With Thomas Arne he wrote Love in a Village, the first English comic opera. His The Maide of the Mill (1765, with music by Samuel Arnold and others) was also very successful. Bickerstaffe also wrote bowdlerized versions of plays by William Wycherley and Pedro Calderon de la Barca.