he keeps his audience in a roar whenever he is on the stage". Toole was then engaged in 1868 at the Gaiety Theatre by Hollingshead, appearing in many pieces there including Thespis (1871), the first Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, and as John Lockwood, in a drama called Wait and Hope. In 1872–74, among other successes, he portrayed Tom Larkin in Good News by H. J. Byron, the Irishman Brulgruddery in John Bull by George Colman the Younger; Bob Acres in The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, together with Charles James Mathews and Samuel Phelps; the title role in a Robert Reece burlesque called Don Giovanni in Venice; another title role in Guy Fawkes by H. J. Byron, and created the role of the barrister Hammond Coote in Wig and Gown by James Albery. Toole's fame was at its height in 1874, when he went on tour to America, but he failed to reproduce there the success he had found in England. He remained based mostly at the Gaiety until the end of 1877, when he moved to the Globe Theatre under his own management for two years. In 1878, Toole created the role of Charles Liquorpond in A Fool and his Money by H. J. Byron. Liquorpond was a retired footman unexpectedly overtaken by wealth, and Toole's affectedly superior pronunciation, particularly of his own name, was a tremendous success. In his prime, Toole achieved wide popularity as a comic actor, being noted for his comic delivery of words, but he did not confine himself exclusively to comedy. He also excelled in domestic melodramas (adaptations by Dion Boucicault and others of Charles Dickens and similar writers), playing "tender-hearted victims of fate", where he was famously able to combine humour and pathos. The Times said of his performance in Dearer than Life by Henry James Byron: Later years In 1879, Toole realised a lifelong ambition by taking over the management of the Folly Theatre in London. He renovated the building and renamed it Toole's Theatre in 1881, becoming the first actor to have a West End theatre named after him. He was often away in the British provinces, but he produced a number of plays in London: H. J. Byron's A Fool and His Money (1879) Arthur Wing Pinero's Hester's Mystery (1880) Byron's Upper Crust (1880) and Auntie (1882) A. W. Pinero's Girls and Boys: a Nursery Tale (1882) starring Toole as