Elizabeth Farren

Elizabeth Farren began her career as an actress, and ended up Countess of Derby. Along the way, her life was a pretty wild ride.

She was born in 1759 to an Irish father from Cork and an English mother from Liverpool. Her father was an apothecary, but he gave up medicine for the stage. As a girl, Farren was said to have beat a drum for his troupe of traveling players as they went from town to town.

After her father died, the family tried to support themselves with Elizabeth and her sister Peggy taking small roles on the stage. By the time she was 15, Elizabeth Farren was playing the role of Rosetta in Love in a Village, a ballad opera by Isaac Bickerstaffe and Thomas Arne.

In 1777, Farren appeared at the Haymarket Theatre in London as Kate Hardcastle in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. She lodged near the theatre with her mother. George Colman the Elder, who managed the Haymarket, allegedly gave her mother the nickname "Tin Pocket" after she gave her daughter a pocket lined with tin to hold hot boiled beef.

According to C.J. Hamilton, the turning point in Farren's career came when she was invited to perform at some private theatricals held by the Duke of Richmond. She acted together with the Earl of Derby, who was married at the time. Though the Earl was struck with Farren, she made a point of never being in his company unless in the presence of a third person for respectability's sake.

When Frances Abington retired in 1782, Farren took her place as the most prominent actress in London for depicting ladies of fashion. She played Mrs. Euston in Elizabeth Inchbald's comedy I'll Tell You What, and took on numerous Shakespearean roles, including Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Hermione in The Winter's Tale. All the while, Lord Derby followed her, now unhappily separated from his wife.

Lady Derby died in 1797, and the Earl proposed to Farren. She gave her farewell performance as Lady Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's A School for Scandal. She and Lord Derby had three children together, though only one daughter survived to adulthood.

Perhaps Farren's most famous legacy, though, was a portrait painted of her by Thomas Lawrence, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

London's 1782-83 Season

I was recently asked to give a presentation on the London theatre season for 1782-1783. This was the season that Sarah Siddons returned to the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane and revolutionized British acting.

Even before Siddons made her return, the public was primed for great things. All three London patent houses--Drury Lane, Covent Garden and the summer theatre at the Haymarket--had been redecorated, welcoming audiences to grander, more opulent interiors.

Covent Garden's renovation had been the most extensive. A contemporary account in Universal Magazine claimed that "Nothing remains of the old structure but the outside walls." Seating was increased, and boxes replaced the side doors to the stage, finally moving side entrances fully behind the proscenium.

The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden benefited from something else, as well. Frances Abington, the previous leading lady at Drury Lane, left in 1782 for Covent Garden, where she continued to perform until her retirement. When Drury Lane opened its season with a production of The Clandestine Marriage, a comedy David Garrick co-wrote with George Colman the Elder, the female lead was played by Priscilla Brereton, who was never considered a particularly strong actress. The receipts that night only totaled 200 pounds and four shillings.

By contrast, Covent Garden opened its season with Susanna Centlivre's comedy The Busy Body. That evening brought in a whopping 314 pounds and 18 shillings. While you might expect a theatre's opening night of the season to be a hit, Covent Garden continued to perform well for the rest of the month, too. They followed up their initial success with a production of Isaac Bickerstaff's musical drama The Maid of the Mill. That play brought in more than 270 pounds, easily beating out anything Drury Lane put on that month, including on its opening night of the season.

Drury Lane tried to draw audiences in with a production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which they had not done for three years, and featuring a new actress making her Drury Lane debut in the role of Viola. In spite of a strong cast that included Elizabeth Farren as Olivia, and the novelty of a new actress making her debut, receipts only totaled 144 pounds and 11 shillings. The next week Drury Lane brought out a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Receipts were better, but still couldn't break above 200 pounds. Only on its opening night had Drury Lane managed that feat.

The next month, though, Drury Lane scored a palpable hit with Siddons. The actress was returning to London after a long absence, having performed principally at Bath following her inauspicious debut at Drury Lane in 1775. In Bath, Siddons had honed her craft and developed a devoted following for her dramatic style. When she reappeared on the stage of Drury Lane in October 1782, this time in the title role of Isabella in Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage, she was an immediate sensation.

On the nights Siddons appeared on stage at Drury Lane, receipts were frequently over 200 pounds more than they were on evenings when she did not appear. Given that during the month of September, Drury Lane only just made it to collecting 200 pounds on opening night, and then never made that amount again for the rest of the month, we can see that the presence of Siddons more than doubled the amount the theatre took in on a given night.

Covent Garden collected nearly 36,000 pounds for the season as a whole, though, while Drury Lane took in something closer to 34,000 pounds. While Covent Garden's box office returns were larger, both houses had introduced substantial alterations to their physical buildings. Those investments were not included with ordinary expenses, and were made with an eye toward the long-term success of the ventures.

We might look at the introduction of Siddons in a similar way that we view the capital improvements to the theatre buildings themselves. Though in the short run, Siddons was unable to make Drury Lane more profitable than Covent Garden, she was laying the groundwork for Drury Lane to become a more prestigious, and hopefully more profitable theatre in future seasons.

Stooping to Conquer

In a famous essay in 1772, the author Oliver Goldsmith tried to make a comparison between laughing and sentimental comedy.

Borrowing the definition from Aristotle, Goldsmith called comedy "a picture of the frailties of the lower part of mankind, to distinguish it from tragedy, which is an exhibition of the misfortunes of the great."

The problem was, in Goldsmith's view, British comedy had taken to detail the calamities of people in the middle classes rather than poking fun at their foibles, as had been done by comic writers of the Restoration, such as Colley Cibber and John Vanbrugh.

He also claimed to have history on his side. Though the Roman playwright Terence sometimes had his comedies approach the quality of tragedy, Goldsmith observed that Terence always stopped short of rendering his characters truly pathetic. In Goldsmith's opinion, the only advantage of sentimental comedy was its novelty.

More importantly, he warned of what we might be losing in giving up the genre of laughing comedy for a comedy of sentiment:

It is true that amusement is a great object of the theater, and it will be allowed that these sentimental pieces do often amuse us; but the question is, whether the true comedy would not amuse us more? The question is, whether a character supported throughout a piece, with its ridicule still attending, would not give us more delight than this species of bastard tragedy, which only is applauded because it is new?

Goldsmith tested this hypothesis with his own play, She Stoops to Conquer, which opened the following year at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. George Coleman the Elder was manager of Covent Garden at the time, and he did not particularly care for the piece. Neither did David Garrick, who had turned down the play for Drury Lane.

On the advice of Samuel Johnson, though, Coleman put the play into rehearsal with the actress Mary Bulkley in the leading role of Kate Hardcastle. It ended up a success, and the theatre even chose to use it for their season closer later that year.

At the end of his essay, Goldsmith had written:

It is not easy to recover an art when once lost; and it will be but a just punishment, that when, by our being too fastidious, we have banished humor from the stage, we should ourselves be deprived of the art of laughing.

Fortunately for us, no such calamity occurred, and She Stoops to Conquer continues to delight audiences to this very day.

The Age of Garrick

Though the Licensing Act of 1737 kept politics off the stage in Britain for much of the eighteenth century, British theatre continued to make tremendous artistic strides, particularly in acting.

The provincial actor David Garrick moved to London the very year the Licensing Act was passed, and had the good fortune to be coached by Charles Macklin, an actor renowned for his performances as Shylock in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. At first, Garrick performed at a theatre of dubious legality known as Goodman's Fields, but in 1742 he made his debut at Drury Lane, one of the two patent theatres with a near monopoly on drama in London.  He soon began a long and productive artistic partnership with Peg Woffington, the leading actress with the Drury Lane company. Such was his success, that in 1747 Garrick took over the management of Drury Lane and instituted a number of reforms.

The most important of these reforms came in 1762, when Garrick banned spectators from the stage. Wealthy patrons had traditionally paid extra to sit on the stage itself and be seen as well as watch the actors. The practice was common before the English Civil War, and while it abated during the Restoration period when expensive new scenery was being introduced, theatres at the beginning of the 18th century placed benches onstage for the audience. Garrick abhorred the practice and eliminated the onstage benches. This allowed for greater realism, both in scenery and in acting. He also raised ticket prices to pay for the fancy new sets he was commissioning.

In 1771, Garrick hired the French-born artist Philippe de Loutherbourg to design sets at Drury Lane. De Loutherbourg also made numerous innovations in lighting, which made his sets even more impressive. His sets moved as well, so clouds could drift across the sky, and miniature ships could appear to sail through the water in the distance. Eventually, de Loutherbourg created a miniature stage he called the Eidophusikon, which controlled the lighting and scenery to an extreme degree, but had no room for actors. People paid money simply to watch the brilliant moving pictures, and the Eidophusikon attempted to compete with the theatre itself. Fortunately, the Eidophusikon never put Drury Lane out of business.

Garrick wasn't satisfied with the new plays being written, however, so he began writing his own. He collaborated with the playwright George Coleman the Elder (best known for his hilarious but misogynistic comedy The Jealous Wife) to write The Clandestine Marriage, which was based loosely on a series of satirical pictures by William Hogarth. Garrick's plays might not have been terribly original, but they were entertaining and remained popular well after his retirement. In 1769, Garrick held a massive celebration of William Shakespeare in the Bard's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. Though it was a little late for the bicentennial of Shakespeare's birth five years earlier, Garrick spared no expense in arranging a Jubilee celebration, which featured a pageant of Shakespeare's most popular characters. Unfortunately, heavy rains flooded a special tent for the occasion, and all Stratford was covered with mud. Not to be put out, Garrick wrote a play about the event, called it The Jubilee, and performed it at Drury Lane along with the procession of characters.

Garrick's most important contribution, however, came in raising the standards of acting in the eighteenth century, not just in England, but on the European continent as well. The French philosopher Denis Diderot after seeing Garrick wrote a famous essay called "The Paradox of the Actor" in which he tried to determine what made a great actor's performances so engaging. According to Diderot, great actors like Garrick display the illusion of feeling without feeling strong emotions themselves. The paradox is that the more emotional an actor becomes, the less able he is to convey emotions consistently on stage, while the more rational he is, the better he is to show different emotions night after night. Intelligence was what a great performer needed, not feeling.

Though Drury Lane dominated London's theatre scene under Garrick, the rival theatre at Covent Garden scored a palpable hit in 1773 with a play by Oliver Goldsmith called She Stoops to Conquer. Goldsmith loathed the sentimental comedies that had become popular in the eighteenth century and considered his play a "laughing comedy" since the crazy antics of the characters provoked outright guffaws rather than the knowing smiles of earlier works.

Though not as bawdy as Restoration comedy, She Stoops to Conquer captures much of the energy of earlier comic works, and it helped to pave the way for another playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In 1775, Covent Garden produced Sheridan's play The Rivals, about a man who creates an alter-ego for himself to be his own rival for the love of the woman he wants to marry. The play features a duel, which had special interest for the audience, since Sheridan himself had fought two widely publicized duels over the honor of his fiancée and later wife, the singer Elizabeth Ann Linley.

In 1776, Garrick retired from the stage, and the newly successful Sheridan bought his stake in Drury Lane. He soon took over the theatre, and tailored his next play, The School for Scandal, to perfectly suit the strengths of the actors in the Drury Lane company. The play was a massive hit, and Sheridan later used his fame to launch a successful bid for parliament. From 1780 onward, he enjoyed a dual career as both a theatre manager and a politician. The mild-mannered Age of Garrick was over, and increasingly the theatre was becoming politically charged.

Mary Warner

The eminent tragedian of the Victorian era, William Charles Macready, was often paired with an equally skilled leading lady, Helen Faucit. After Faucit went her own way, however, another actress stepped up to Macready's side. She was Mary Warner, and also an important performer of note.

Born Mary Amelia Huddart, she came from a family of thespians and began acting when she was around 15 years old. By 1829, she was making appearances in Dublin, and the following year Macready discovered her talents and began casting her whenever possible. She made her Drury Lane debut on November 22, 1830 in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved playing Belvidera opposite Macready's Pierre.

Initially, there seems to have been some romantic attraction between the two. Macready, however, was married, and a devoted husband and father. While he and Miss Huddart were performing together in Manchester, the actors were fortunately able to fall into a purely professional relationship, with Macready recording in his diary that he was relieved to be set free from a temptation.

As Miss Huddart, she frequently played secondary female roles to Macready's regular leading lady, Helen Faucit. For instance, she took the role of Paulina to Faucit's Hermione in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Around 1836 or 1837 (it's unclear which) she married the tavern keeper Robert Warner, and as Mrs. Warner she took on increasingly strong roles, such Regan in Macready's production of King Lear.

When Macready took over the management of Covent Garden in 1837, Warner joined his company, and she followed him when he moved to the Haymarket Theatre two years later. It was at the Haymarket that Warner originated the role of Lady Arundel in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's play The Sea Captain.

Eventually, Warner rose to performing Lady Macbeth with Macready. In 1844, she took on the management of Sadler's Wells, along with Samuel Phelps and T.L. Greenwood. Her final performance in England came in 1851 at Sadler's Well, acting the title role of Mrs. Oakley in George Colman the Elder's The Jealous Wife. After that, she departed for America, where British actors frequently thought they could make their fortunes.

Unfortunately, Warner had developed cancer, and she eventually returned to London, where the retired Macready kindly gave her some financial assistance. In 1853, she filed for bankruptcy, and the following year she died. Macready saw to the upbringing of her son, while the wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts took charge of her daughter.

Throughout her career, many actors and critics paid tribute to Warner's considerable talents.  One appreciation came in the form of this anonymous acrostic, which appeared in the Theatrical Journal of 1839:

M ild in your natural character, thou art
A n able actress of the fiery mood;
R ebundant action, frequent strut and start,
Y our judgement wisely tells should be subdued.

W ell do your death-black eyes their part fulfill,
A nd flash to fury, or in scorn strike awe;
R ich in Evadne's portraiture of ill.
N o critic e'er condemned it; all who saw
E steemed it noble, thrilling, awful, grand.
R evived and cleansed by great Macready's hand!

Helen Faucit

The famed Shakespearian actress Helen Faucit was born in 1814, during the Regency, and died in 1898, at the end of the Victorian era. In many ways, her life reflects the tremendous social changes at work during that period.

I recently finished Carol Jones Carlisle's biography, Helen Faucit: Fire and Ice on the Victorian Stage. She corrects some of the errors made by Faucit's original biographer, her husband, Sir Theodore Martin. Sir Theodore made his wife younger than she really was, claiming she was born in 1817, a year after him. He also glossed over some rather unpleasant business with her family.

Faucit (who was baptized Helena, but always went by Helen) came from a family of actors, a profession not generally known for their chaste sensibilities (especially during a time when the Prince Regent was running around with assorted mistresses, including the actress and poet Mary Robinson). Her mother, Harriet Diddear, eloped with John Faucit when she was only 16, a fact she would use later on when she tried to sue her husband for an annulment.

John Faucit took to theater management while his wife took to the stage, famously playing Gertrude in Hamlet. She could not compete, however, with the brightest star of the Regency stage, Eliza O'Neill. After a couple of years, the talented but impetuous woman took up with a new man, William Farren, who already had a wife of his own. This was the Regency, though, so that mattered very little. The two set up house, undeterred by Mrs. Faucit's unsuccessful attempt in 1821 to terminate her first marriage.

Young Helen stayed with her mother, and Farren became a stepfather to her, in spite of the fact he was still married to another woman. While he might not have been a paragon of family values, he did have a keen business sense, and he helped Helen successfully navigate her early career on the stage. According to legend, the family was at the King's Theatre in Richmond when Helen and her elder sister Harriet decided to act out the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet upon an empty stage. The new manager, Willis Jones, overheard them, and decided to put the young Juliet in front of a live audience.

On September 30, 1833, Helen Faucit made her debut as Juliet, listed in the program simply as "A Young Lady". She was so nervous that she crushed the glass vial holding Juliet's potion, slicing open her hand and fainting in earnest. Still, she went on with the show, and the audience applauded her heartily. She repeated the performance the next night, this time using a wooden vial. The following month, she went on as Julia in James Sheridan Knowles' play The Hunchback, a part made famous by Fanny Kemble. In November, she appeared as Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, Benjamin Thompson's adaptation of a play by August von Kotzebue.

At the end of 1835, Faucit was given an opportunity to make her London debut on the stage at Covent Garden. Originally, she was supposed to play Juliet, but George Bennett, her prospective Romeo, was deemed too old for her, and Knowles himself was available to play the title role in The Hunchback. At the last minute, the play was switched, and Faucit found herself making her debut as Julia, not Juliet. On January 5, Twelfth Night, Faucit made her London debut. After a rocky start, she was a smash in the role, writing afterward in her diary, "Again and again, thank God it is over!"

Faucit later appeared as Belvidera in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved, but predictably she suffered in comparisons to Eliza O'Neill, the standard in that role ever since the Regency. A few nights later she appeared on stage as Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, another role played by O'Neill. This time, however, she did something remarkable that set her apart. Instead of allowing the adulterous Mrs. Haller to be reconciled to her estranged husband at the end, she had the unfortunate woman embrace her children, then fall to the feet of her husband, spurned and rejected to the end.

Such a change, just a year before Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne, marks a shift in attitudes toward women, marriage, and sexual morality. During the Regency, Mrs. Haller could do her penance and reunite with her husband. In Victorian England, that would no longer be possible. Faucit, painfully aware of her own family's history, might have had personal reasons for making the change as well. After her mother's scandalous behavior, she herself wanted to be beyond reproach, and that meant no apologies for fallen women.

Faucit appeared as Lady Margaret in Joanna Baillie's The Separation. Then in March, she was at last allowed to go on as Juliet in London. The performance attracted some attention, and Faucit later found herself being invited to act with her hero, William Charles Macready in Thomas Noon Talfourd's tragedy Ion. Faucit worshipped Macready, but he remained cold toward her throughout their professional relationship. Still, she acted opposite him in a number of Shakespeare productions, including Othello, and Macready's landmark King John.

Amazing to me, Faucit originally did not want to play Cordelia in Macready's 1838 production of King Lear. She felt the part had too few lines and not enough opportunities for making a grand effect. Macready's production revolutionized the play, however, getting rid of the silly love story and happy ending introduced during the Restoration, and bringing back the part of the Fool. Critics rewarded Faucit for taking the role, praising her sweetness in the part. They complained, however, that she spoke too softly, perhaps another effect of her Victorian worldview.

Faucit had to play her fair share of unsuitable roles, including Mrs. Oakley in George Coleman the Elder's The Jealous Wife. However, the same year as Macready's Lear, she was given the part that would grant her the most fame, Pauline in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons. The same author who had once begun a novel with the infamous line "It was a dark and stormy night" this time hit pay dirt for Faucit, and she would perform the part of Pauline over and over again for the rest of her career.

Later, Faucit appeared opposite Macready in Bulwer's play Richelieu, but that play was more of a vehicle for her costar. She found more success in Shakespearean roles, playing Rosalind in As You Like It, Miranda in The Tempest, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, as well as a formidable Lady Macbeth opposite Macready. Faucit's Lady Macbeth was not power mad, though, but rather ambitious only for her husband's sake. Victorianism strikes again.

When Macready left to tour America, the 28-year-old Faucit was left to develop her craft on her own. She toured the provinces, becoming a success in Dublin, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. In 1844, she reunited with Macready in Paris, playing Desdemona to his Othello. Returning to Dublin, she appeared as Antigone, and was later painted as "The Greek Muse" by Sir Frederick William Burton.

In 1851 Faucit married Theodore Martin, whom Queen Victoria later knighted for completing a grand biography of Prince Albert. They set up house in London, neighbors to the Thackerays, and had a second home in Wales to boot. Still, Faucit didn't give up acting, and she kept her maiden name for billing purposes.

She did not perform as frequently after marriage, but Faucit kept acting until 1879, and even after her retirement from the stage, she took part in numerous fundraisers and public readings, often reading aloud multiple parts in scenes from Shakespeare.

At the instigation of her friend Geraldine Jewsbury, she began a series of published "letters" on characters she had played. These were later collected under the title: On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters. A typical passage on Desdemona goes like this:

Making so small a part of her father's life, and missing the love, or the display of it, which would have been so precious to her, she finds her happiness in dreams of worth more exalted than any she has known, but which she has heard and read of in the poets and romancers...

So, too, did Helen Faucit, a child of a broken home from an earlier, more permissive era, dream of happiness. Only her happiness was one bound up in the stability and tranquility of wedded life. And fortunately for her, she found it.

The Jealous Wife

I recently read The Jealous Wife by George Colman the Elder. Coleman was an eighteenth-century playwright whose son of the same name also wrote plays, hence his title as "the elder." Here's a portrait of him done in the style of Joshua Reynolds, though apparently not by that great artist.

It is perhaps fitting that his portrait should just be "in the style of" a great artist. I think few people would argue that Coleman himself was a great artist, even though he did sometimes capture the style of superior writers.

The Jealous Wife appears to be Coleman's second play, produced in 1761, the year after his first dramatic work, Polly Honeycomb.  Though genuinely funny, The Jealous Wife is reminiscent of Henry Fielding's work, particularly Tom Jones. It also might have benefited from suggestions and cuts made by Coleman's friend, David Garrick. In any case, after the play premiered at Drury Lane, it made Coleman famous.

The first act sets up Mrs. Oakly as the titular jealous wife. She intercepts a letter intended for her husband, at first suspecting that it is a love note from a woman, in spite of the fact that the address is written in a man's handwriting. Mr. Oakly reads the letter and finds out it is a complaint by Henry Russet, whose daughter has eloped. Mrs. Oakly madly claims that he husband has run off with the girl, while the more likely culprit is Charles, an orphaned nephew of Mr. Oakly's. As it turns out, Charles was in love with Miss Russet, but he is innocent of this particular offense. She did not elope with anyone, but rather ran away from her father to avoid a forced marriage to Sir Beagle. (Got all that?) Young Harriet Russet makes the unwise decision to take refuge with her aunt, Lady Freelove. The woman's name alone should have been a hint she was not of good character!

Act II begins with Mrs. Oakly again complaining that her husband must be intriguing to have an affair. She pretends to make up with him, but she becomes enraged whenever she hears anything about Harriet. Mrs. Oakley sends her servant, the unfortunately named Toilet, to let the porter know she will not see anyone for the day. Mr. Oakly comments that she will sit all day feeding on her own suspicions. Exercising her prerogative to change her mind, however, Mrs. Oakly then orders a chariot so she can go out.

The second scene of Act II takes place at the home of Lady Freelove, who has been trying to arrange a match between Harriet and Lord Trinket. When Lady Freelove leaves her niece together with the lord, he tries to force himself upon her, and she is only saved by the timely arrival of Charles, who draws on Lord Trinket. Harriet escapes, but Charles looks bad, having arrived unannounced at Lady Freelove's house and promptly getting into a brawl. The situation is made worse when Mrs. Oakly arrives. Lady Freelove sees that her visitor is a jealous type, and takes advantage of the situation, planting hints that Mr. Oakly is having an affair with the girl, though this is clearly so she can get Charles out of the way.

In the third scene of Act II, we return to Oakly's home, where Harriet has fled, hoping to find some protection from Lord Trinket. Mrs. Oakly returns to find her husband speaking with this beautiful young woman and decides to hide and listen in on their conversation. Unfortunately, she only half-hears what they say. Mr. Oakly tries to arrange for a place for Harriet to stay without being under the same roof as Charles, but to Mrs. Oakly it sounds like he is setting her up to be a kept woman. Mr. Russet arrives, and Harriet collapses into Mr. Oakly's arms. Russet drags his daughter out of the house as the curtain falls.

The first scene of Act II shows Mrs. Oakly in her dressing room giving contradictory orders to the unfortunately named Toilet. Her suspicions of her husband are stronger than ever, and she resolves not to see him for three days. Given how many different things she has claimed she will do, however, the audience knows that this is not going to last.

In the final scene, Russet learns that Sir Beagle has decided he does not want a loveless marriage and has agreed to swap Harriet to Lord Trinket in exchange for a brown horse named Nabob. Mr. Oakly's brother manages to explain the whole mess to Russet, who agrees to allow his daughter to marry Charles. All that remains is for Mr. Oakly to stand up to his wife and cure her of jealousy. Taking his brother's advice, Oakly rails at his wife and cowers her into submission. His patriarchal supremacy reestablished, everything ends happily, and Mrs. Oakly proclaims that she has not merited her husband's kindness.

This play is not exactly a model of feminist enlightenment, but it does have some funny moments, and Mrs. Oakly is a great part for a comic actress, provided she's willing to partake in what is clearly a chauvinistic play. Hannah Pritchard originally played the role acting opposite Garrick, who played Mr. Oakly. In 1855, Charles Kean famously revived the piece with himself as Oakly and the actress Ellen Tree, by that point Mrs. Kean, in the title role.