Charles Mayne Young (10 January 1777 – 1856) was an English actor. He was born to a respected London surgeon (doctor). His first stage appearance was in Liverpool on 20 September 1798, where he played a Young Norval[1] in Home's blank verse tragedy Douglas. Young's first London appearance[2] was in 1807, as Hamlet with his friend Charles Mathews playing Polonius. "With the decline of John Philip Kemble, and until the coming of Kean and Macready, he was the leading English tragedian".[3] He retired in 1832 in a farewell performance playing Hamlet with, as a special honour to him, Mathews as Polonius and Macready as the Ghost.[4]
- ^ "Charles Mayne Young" by Harold G. Henderson in Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United States:The Kembles and Their Contemporaries, eds. Brander Mathews, Lauren Hutton, 1886, Cassell & Co., NY
- ^ The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 1996, eds. Phyllis Hartwell & Peter Found
- ^ Chisholm 1911, p. 939.
- ^ Knight 1900, p. 367.