Charles Williams (English actor)
British stage actor (1693-1731)

Charles Williams (1693–1731) was a British stage actor.
Williams joined the company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1718 and remained with it to his death in the year of his 38th birthday.
Selected roles
Lorenzo in Love in a Veil by Richard Savage (1718)
Herbis in The Siege of Damascus by John Hughes (1720)
Alan in The Briton by Ambrose Philips (1722)
Earl of Warwick in Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester by Ambrose Philips (1723)
Ammon in The Fatal Constancy by Hildebrand Jacob (1723)
Duke Frederick in Love in a Forest by Charles Johnson (1723)
Araxes in The Captives by John Gay (1724)
Decius in Caesar in Egypt by Colley Cibber (1724)
Julio in Double Falsehood by Lewis Theobald (1727)
Amyntas in Love in a Riddle by Colley Cibber (1729)
Freeman in The Village Opera by Charles Johnson (1729)
Scipio in Sophonisba by James Thomson (1730)
Dinarchus in Timoleon by Benjamin Martyn (1730)
References
Bibliography
Brean, Hammond (ed.) Double Falsehood. AC & Black, 2010.
Highfill, Philip H, Burnim, Kalman A. & Langhans, Edward A. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800: West to Zwingman. SIU Press, 1973.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q101223632. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1693, 1731, 1718 and 1720.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Williams (English actor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.