Payne, John Howard (1791–1852)

US actor, playwright, and composer. He wrote the words to the song ‘Home, Sweet Home’ (to the music of Henry Rowley Bishop) for one of his operettas, Clari (1823).

Born in New York, he debuted as an actor in 1809 and enjoyed a string of successes that included being the first American to play Hamlet (1809). He spent the years 1813–32 mainly in England and France where he had only modest success as an actor and playwright; among his many plays and adaptations were a number of collaborations with Washington Irving, such as Charles the Second; or, The Merry Monarch (1824). Always fighting off his creditors (he spent a short time in an English debtor's prison), he returned to the USA and undertook a variety of projects, including a campaign to help the Cherokee. He was US consul to Tunis 1842–45 and in 1851, and he died there the next year.