Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Odingsells, Gabriel
ODINGSELLS, GABRIEL (1690–1734), playwright, son of Gabriel Odingsells of London, was born in 1690, and matriculated from Pembroke College, Oxford, on 23 April 1706. He left Oxford without a degree, and essayed to obtain the reputation of a wit in London. In 1725 appeared his first comedy, ‘The Bath Unmasked’ (London, 4to), in which he attempted with indifferent success to describe the humours of the city of Bath. It was acted on 27 Feb. and on six subsequent occasions at Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was followed, at the same theatre, on 8 Dec. by ‘The Capricious Lovers’ (London, 1726, 4to), a poor comedy, relieved, however, by one humorous character, Mrs. Mince-Mode, who ‘grows sick at the sight of a man, and refines upon the significancy of phrases till she resolves common conversation into obscenity.’ In March 1730 his third and last piece, ‘Bays' Opera’ (London, 1730, 4to), was acted three times, twice more than it deserved, at Drury Lane. Odingsells shortly afterwards developed symptoms of lunacy, and on 10 Feb. 1734 he hanged himself in his house in Thatched Court, Westminster. In 1742 was published, posthumously, ‘Monumental Inscriptions; or a Curious Collection of Near Five Hundred of the most Remarkable Epitaphs, serious and humourous. Collected by the late ingenious Gabriel Odinsells [sic],’ London, 4to. The copy of this rare work in the British Museum Library is imperfect, many of the coarser epitaphs having been effaced.
[Baker's Biographia Dramatica, i. 547; Genest's History of the Stage, iii. 167, 177; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Doran's Annals of the Stage; Rawlinson MSS. in Bodleian Library, vi. 35, xxi. 50; Odingsells's Works in the British Museum Library.]