Battle of the Juliets

In 1750, the patent theatres at Drury Lane and Covent Garden went head-to-head, producing rival productions of Romeo and Juliet in what came to be known as the Battle of the Romeos. According to Chelsea Phillips' article in the latest issue of Theatre Survey, however, perhaps the incident should be known as the Battle of the Juliets instead.

David Garrick had adapted Shakespeare's play for performances at Drury Lane with Spranger Barry playing Romeo and Susannah Cibber as Juliet. Cibber left the company in 1749, however, giving birth to her last child. When she returned to the stage the next year, it was not to Drury Lane, but to the rival company at Covent Garden, and joining her was none other than Barry.

What made Cibber switch houses? We can't be sure, but Phillips points out that in the spring of 1749 Cibber became ill, possibly as a result of her pregnancy or possibly due to a persistent stomach problem that plagued her until her death in 1766. The playwright Aaron Hill wanted Cibber to play the lead in his new play Merope, and she was a natural choice, since Cibber had launched her career as a tragic actress with Hill's previous play Zara in 1736. Cibber said she wanted the role, but didn't want to perform it until the following season. Garrick, however, scoffed at the idea of a delay, and Hannah Pritchard went on in the title role instead.

Cibber's move to Covent Garden led Garrick to poach another tragic actress from that theatre to join his own company at Drury Lane. George Ann Bellamy had been the leading tragic actress at Covent Garden. In 1749, Bellamy gained notoriety when she left in the middle of a performance to run off to Yorkshire with her lover, George Montgomery Metham. The reason for the flight north might have been Bellamy's own pregnancy, for after her child was born, she returned to Covent Garden, where she played many of the same roles Cibber was known for, including the heroines in Thomas Otway's tragedies Venice Preserved and The Orphan.

With Cibber now at Covent Garden, Bellamy was looking at the prospect of losing some of her choicest roles. She had also recently expanded her repertoire, taking on the role of Juliet at Covent Garden opposite Henry Lee. She had previously played the role in Dublin, but this was the first time the Covent Garden company had mounted Romeo and Juliet, and Bellamy had shined in the play. Now she was facing losing that role to Cibber, too. By July of 1750, both Cibber and Barry were contracted to appear at Covent Garden and Garrick had managed to snag Bellamy for Drury Lane. The two leading ladies had effectively swapped companies, and Cibber had taken her Romeo with her.

Garrick himself took on the role of Romeo opposite Bellamy's Juliet. Though he was considered too short to play such a romantic leading role, he was determined to go head-to-head against the new Romeo and Juliet at Covent Garden, which Garrick saw as for all intents and purposes his play. It was his adaptation of Shakespeare's text that they used, and he had personally coached both Cibber and Barry in their roles. Garrick made further revisions to the play, including adding an elaborate funeral procession for Juliet that became a staple well into the nineteenth century. Perhaps the most important addition to Drury Lane's new Romeo and Juliet, though, was Bellamy, who like Juliet had herself precipitously forsaken everything for her lover, as audiences well knew.

After twelve nights of both patent theatres producing rival productions of the same play, Cibber announced she was ill and would not be able to continue as Juliet. Most audiences had already concluded that Drury Lane had the better production, anyway. History has recorded the event as a victory for Garrick, but Phillips hints that the credit might belong more to Bellamy.

The Rise of the English Actress

I just finished reading Sandra Richards's book The Rise of the English Actress. By its nature, the book is a rather general study, but it gives a wonderful history of women on the British stage.

Women appeared on stage during the middle ages, but by the Renaissance they were official banned from taking part in the public performances of plays in England. There were some exceptions, such as the infamous "Moll Cutpurse" who acted illegally, and the French actresses who were hissed at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1629.

It wasn't until the Restoration that actresses became the norm in England, and they quickly became an attractive novelty. Richards points out that in 1664 Thomas Killigrew staged an all-female performance of his play The Parson's Wedding. All-female casts were still being used a decade later when John Dryden's Secret Love was revived with only women on the stage.

By the early eighteenth century actresses were using playwrights to pen works especially for them. Richards cites Henry Fielding's Deborah and The Intriguing Chambermaid, written for Kitty Clive, and Colley Cibber's The Careless Husband and The Provok'd Husband, both vehicles for Anne Oldfield. Such collaborations did not always go well, though. Samuel Jonson blamed the failure of his play Irene on a sub-standard performance by Hannah Pritchard.

Perhaps the most celebrated eighteenth-century role created for a specific actress was Lady Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal. According to Richards, Sheridan wrote the part especially for Frances Abington. It was Abington who made the mob cap fashionable after she wore it on stage in James Townley's two-act farce High Life Below Stairs. The role she played, Kitty, was originally played by Kitty Clive, but Abington used it to create a fashion sensation that came to be known as the Abington Cap.

Women were instrumental in the creation of the benefit performance, and their earnings could top those of male actors. Richards notes that in 1792 the top-grossing benefit night belonged to Dora Jordan. That year, Jordan earned 540 pounds, while the tragic actress Sarah Siddons earned 490 pounds, and the leading male actor, John Philip Kemble, earned only 480 pounds. The Jordan-Siddons rivalry mirrored a debate over whether comedy or tragedy was the superior genre. The Dramatic Magazine in 1788 sided with Jordan, declaring she "fairly beat Melpomene out of the field."

The late eighteenth century also saw the remarkable career of Mary Robinson, the actress who in 1775 began publishing her poems under the patronage of the Duchess of Devonshire. Unfortunately, her 1794 play Nobody struck a nerve, and was hissed off the stage when it exposed the gambling habits of a number of prominent society ladies. Robinson allegedly dictated her poem "The Maniac" while under the influence of opium. As one might expect, Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw a kindred spirit in her and in 1800 declared Robinson "a woman of undoubted genius."

Robinson was famously painted by the major artists of the day, and as Richards puts it, it was in the eighteenth century that actresses "now became a means of establishing a painter's reputation when they allowed themselves to be portrayed." Portraits of actresses "were offered to the market by painters satisfying a public demand, and reflected how audiences saw female players." Richards specifically cites Thomas Lawrence, whose 1790 portrait of Elizabeth Farren catapulted the painter into fame and royal favor.

The great tragic actress of the late eighteenth century was of course Sarah Siddons, and Richards devotes an entire chapter to her. Drawing on Siddons's biography by Thomas Campbell, Richards points out that Siddons strove to be "natural" but by "natural" she meant credible for the character, rather than what we today might consider naturalistic. Siddons famously studied Egyptian and Greek sculpture, using it to help her achieve the exact poise and muscle tension she wanted to have.

In spite of her generally acknowledged superiority over her brother, John Philip Kemble, Siddons could not always enjoy her stardom. While Kemble was given a public dinner at the occasion of his farewell performance, Siddons received no such honor. She remarked to Samuel Rogers, "Well, perhaps in the next world women will be more valued than they are in this." Still, she left her mark on plays, and Richards notes that "Siddons's personality and bearing unquestionably informed and determined the role" of Jane de Monfort in Joanna Baillie's play De Monfort, which premiered in 1800.

Eliza O'Neill succeeded Siddons as the great British tragedienne of the early nineteenth century. O'Neill retired from the stage in 1819, though, and in the early Victorian period actresses like Helen Faucit and Siddons's niece Fanny Kemble took the reins. In 1837, Fanny Kemble wrote An English Tragedy, but William Charles Macready refused to stage the play, in spite of recognizing that it was "full of power, poetry and pathos."

The most famous Victorian actress was Ellen Terry, and Richards gives Terry her own chapter. Terry was most renowned for playing Lady Macbeth, wearing "a gown of soft green silk and blue tinsel edged with rubies and diamonds, draped by a heather velvet cape and decorated with flaming griffins and real beetle wings of green to achieve a metallic dazzle.” John Singer Sargent painted a portrait of Terry wearing the dress, helping it to become, in Richards's words, "the most famous costume in stage history."

Sybil Thorndike was one of the great British actresses of the early twentieth century. Richards considers her production of Percy Shelley's The Cenci in 1922 to be one of the most important of the actress's career. According to Richards, "Sybil's Beatrice established her firmly as a great tragic actress and Shelley as a great dramatist." At the time, George Bernard Shaw was trying to determine who should play the title character in his new play Saint Joan. After seeing Thorndike as Beatrice Cenci, Shaw informed his wife, "I have found my Joan." Thorndike later became closely associated with the role of Joan of Arc, which she did indeed originate in Shaw's play.

Richards continues the story of the English actress past Thorndike, writing for instance about Peggy Ashcroft, who played Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson in Othello. She goes right up to the present, discussing Harriet Walter, who I just saw play Prospero in an all-female production of The Tempest. All in all, this is a wonderful book for anyone interested in the history of British acting.

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.