the Lyceum Theatre, including as Hilarion Fanfaronade in Belphegor, in which Marie Wilton made her first London appearance. Thereafter, he frequently performed with Wilton. In 1857, having had a great success in London as Paul Pry in John Poole's farce of that name, he made his first of many successful provincial summer tours and often repeated the character thereafter. During this first tour, he met and acted together with Henry Irving, and the two remained close friends over their long careers. In 1858, he scored a notable hit creating the role of Tom Cranky in John Hollingshead's farce The Birthplace of Podgers. Peak years In 1858, at the suggestion of Dickens, Toole joined Benjamin Webster's company at the Adelphi Theatre and established his popularity as a farceur, creating, among other parts, Joe Spriggins in Ici on parle français by T. H. Williams, Augustus de Rosherville in The Willow Copse by Boucicault, in Birthplace of Podgers, Tom Dibbles in Good for Nothing by J. B. Buckstone, and in Bengal Tiger. He remained at the Adelphi as principal low comedian for nine years, frequently partnering with Paul Bedford, whose sedate comic style complemented his own contrasting energetic style. His most successful roles there included Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol (1859), the title role in Asmodeus in 1859, Peter Familias in The Census by William Brough (among many pieces by Brough), Milwood in George de Barnwell by H. J. Byron (1862), Caleb Plummer in Dot (1862), by Dion Boucicault, Pitcher in The Area Belle (1864), and Prudent in The Fast Family by B. Webster, Jr. His other great successes there were as Mr. Tetterby in an adaptation of Dickens' The Haunted Man and of a frightened servant in Boucicault's The Phantom. He played a season in 1867 with the impressive new company at Queen's Theatre that included Irving, Henrietta Hodson, Lionel Brough and Charles Wyndham, where he appeared in such works a H. J. Byron's Dearer Than Life, as Michael Garner, and W. S. Gilbert's La Vivandière, as Sergeant Sulpizio. Frederick Waddy wrote of Toole in 1873 that as Harry Coke in Off the Line, "Mr. Toole makes one of those perfect pictures of everyday life of the lower class in which he has so often proved himself a consummate artist. But in low comedy and broad farce it would be difficult to find an actor of equal merit.... As Paul Pry