Barton Booth was one of the most famous dramatic actors of the first part of the 18th century.
Booth was the son of The Hon and Very Revd Dr Robert Booth and was educated at Westminster School, where his success in the Latin play Andria gave him an inclination for the stage. He was intended for the church, and to attend Trinity College, Cambridge; but in 1698 he ran away and obtained employment in a theatrical company in Dublin, where he made his first appearance as the title character in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko.
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“True as the needle to the pole,
Or as the dial to the sun.”
Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "True as the dial to the sun, Although it be not shin’d upon", Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part iii, Canto ii, line 175.
