John Rich (1692 - 1761) was an important director and theater manager in 18th century London. He opened the New Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields (1714) and began putting on ever more lavish productions. He introduced pantomime to the English stage and played a dancing and mute Harlequin himself from 1717 to 1760 under the stage name of "Lun." His theater specialized in what contemporaries called "spectacle." Today we might call them "special effects." His stagings would endeavor to present actual cannon shots, animals, and multiple illusions of battle.

By 1728, Rich was synonymous with lavish (and successful) productions. Lewis Theobald was working for Rich on writing pantomimes. When Alexander Pope wrote the first version of The Dunciad, and even more in the second and third editions, Rich appears as a prime symptom of the disease of the age and debasement of taste. In his Dunciad Variorum of 1732, he makes John Rich the angel of the goddess Dulness: :Mid snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease; :Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm." (III l. 257-260) The battle between Cibber's Drury Lane and Rich's Lincoln's Inn Fields Pope summarizes as, :Contending Theatres our (Dulness's) empire raise, Yet, at the same time, 1728 was the year that Rich produced John Gay's Beggar's Opera, and the play ran so successfully that it was famously said the play "made Gay rich and Rich gay." John Gay was a long time friend of Pope's and a frequent collaborator of his. In 1732, Rich opened the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, the first of three theatres on the site, now known as the Royal Opera House.

Rich received a 75% share in the Lincoln's Inn Fields theater from his father, Christopher Rich, upon his death in 1714. By that point, Rich had already begun acting in plays and taking a hand in the theatrical management. His father had set the reputation and direction of the Lincoln's Inn Theatre during the War of the Theatres in the 1690s, and John Rich continued it. In particular, John Rich exaggerated the theatricality of the Restoration spectacular by creating a new form of hireling drama designed strictly to generate opulent stagecraft. After becoming majority owner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, his control grew as he sought to get the rest of the shares. It was the success of Beggar's Opera that allowed him, in the end, to open the new theater at Covent Garden.

During his time as producer and director, Rich had multiple battles with his acting companies and rival managers, including Colley Cibber. In Cibber's Apology, he blames the degradation and skyrocketing costs of play productions on Rich. The general opinion of satirists was that Cibber was thoroughly as guilty as Rich, and the Cibber children went on to carry forth the habits of their father, just as John Rich carried forth and exaggerated the habits of his. Cibber's Drury Lane and Rich's Lincoln's Inn (and then Covent Garden) theaters were in competition throughout Rich's lifetime. Indeed, the two theaters twice put on the same play at the same time, with Romeo and Juliet and King Lear in 1756-7. Rich's company also staged a number of rarely-seen Shakespearean plays, among them Cymbeline.

John Rich (born January 7, 1974 in Amarillo, Texas) is an American country music artist. From 1992 to 1998, he was a member of the country music band Lonestar, in which he played bass guitar and alternated with Richie McDonald as lead vocalist. After being fired from the band in 1998, Rich embarked on a solo career on BNA Records in the late 1990s. Eventually, he and Big Kenny formed the duo Big & Rich, who have recorded four studio albums to date and charted multiple singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. In addition to his work in Big & Rich, John has co-written singles for multiple artists, including Keith Anderson, Cowboy Troy, and Gretchen Wilson, as well as producing records for several other artists.

John Rich is a film and television director. He directed such television shows as The Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, Good Times, Barney Miller, Newhart, Benson, The Brady Bunch, and Gilligan's Island. His feature film credits include Wives and Lovers, Boeing, Boeing, and Roustabout (starring Elvis Presley). He also participated in the live telecast of the opening day ceremonies of Disneyland in 1955. He won an Emmy for The Dick Van Dyke Show, two Emmys for All in the Family, and two Golden Globes for All in the Family.

Professor John Rich is one of the academic staff in the department of Classics at The University of Nottingham. He is also head of the School of Humanities. He graduated with an MA and MPhil from Oxford University, before gaining a PhD from Nottingham.

His research has focused mainly on Roman history of the Republican and early imperial periods, and in particular on three aspects, namely war, imperialism and international relations; Roman historiography; and the transition from Republic to monarchy under Augustus. These themes have been explored in his monography on Declaring War in the Roman Republic (Brussels, 1976), his edition with translation and commentary of Cassius Dio: The Augustan Settlement (Roman History 53-55.9) (Warminster, 1990), and numerous articles and book chapters.

He is currently completing a book on War, Expansion and Society on Early Rome, as well as articles and conference papers. He is a member of a group of UK scholars preparing a new edition of The Fragments of the Roman Historians, to which his contributions include the sections on Valerius Antias and the Annales Maximi.