This caricature is of Arthur Roberts, who was starring in Bill Adams, the Hero of Waterloo at the Theatre Royal, Hanley, during the week of 25 May 1903. It is one of the many superb caricatures of Edwardian music hall performers that were drawn by the artist George Cooke when he was based at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley. He compiled them in a series of albums.

The performance was produced by Arthur Roberts’s own company. It was described as a ‘new musical play’, although a reviewer noted that it had a plot of ‘remarkable elasticity’ and could hardly justify that description, being more of an ‘extravaganza’. According to the review, Arthur Roberts seemed to play all the parts including Wellington, Napoleon and Blücher, leaving one to wonder ‘how it was that other actors and actresses had been called in at all’.

Born in London in 1852, Roberts was a busker on Yarmouth Sands in Norfolk at the age of 15. By 1871 he was appearing regularly at a music hall in Greenwich, where he established his comic stage character as an immaculate man-about-town. He first appeared in pantomime at Drury Lane in 1881, and in 1891 starred as Captain Coddington in the musical In Town at the Prince of Wales Theatre - a production considered to be the first musical comedy. In 1927 he published his book of reminiscences 'Fifty Years of Spoof'. He died in 1933.