Pregnancy and Performance on the British Stage in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1689-1807

Home , Aaron Hill (writer), Actor Rebellion of 1733, Anne Oldfield, Charlotte Charke, Douglas (play), Eustace Budgell

“Carrying All Before Her:” Pregnancy and Performance on the British Stage in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1689-1807

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Chelsea Phillips, MFA

Graduate Program in Theatre

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Lesley Ferris, Advisor; Dr. Jennifer Schlueter; Dr. Stratos Constantinidis; Dr. David Brewer

Chelsea Lenn Phillips

2015

ABSTRACT

Though bracketed by centuries of greater social restrictions, the long eighteenth century stands as a moment in time when women enjoyed a considerable measure of agency and social acceptance during pregnancy. In part, this social acceptance rose along with birth rates: the average woman living in the eighteenth century gave birth to between four and eight children in her lifetime. As women spent more of their adult lives pregnant, and as childbearing came to be considered less in the light of ritual and more in the light of natural phenomenon, social acceptance of pregnant women and their bodies increased.

In this same century, an important shift was occurring in the professional British theatre. The eighteenth century saw a rise in the respectability of acting as a profession generally, and of the celebrity stage actress in particular. Respectability does not mean passivity, however—theatre historian Robert Hume describes the history of commercial theatre in eighteenth century London as a “vivid story of ongoing competition, sometimes fierce, even destructive competition.”1 Theatrical managers deployed their most popular performers and entertainments strategically, altering the company’s repertory to take advantage of popular trends, illness or scandal in their competition, or to capitalize on rivalries. When celebrity actresses became pregnant, actresses and managers faced both challenges and opportunities.

My dissertation seeks to recover seven eighteenth-century celebrity actresses’

1 Hume “Theatre History,” 16. ii

professional experiences while pregnant. I examine the repertoires and reputations of

Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen (1666-1703); Anne Oldfield (1683-1730); Susannah

Cibber (1714-1766); Hannah Pritchard (1711-1768); George Anne Bellamy (c.1727-

1788); Sarah Siddons (1755-1831); and Dorothy Jordan (1761-1816). Using archival material and more recent scholarship, it investigates how the pregnant body influenced public perception of these women, the onstage roles they performed, and the economics of the commercial theatre. Unlike earlier studies, which, if aware of these pregnancies, argue that they were hidden and/or detrimental to actresses’ stage careers, I argue that pregnancy enhanced the demand for these women, and their economic viability, by placing their private lives on public display and winning them popular sympathy and support. Actresses, adept at managing their public personas, used motherhood and pregnancy to distance themselves from Restoration-era associations of acting with prostitution, and to justify their lucrative stage careers at a time when domesticity was still considered the feminine ideal.

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DEDICATION

This document is dedicated to my family for their love and support, and especially to Andrew, who understands.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the guidance and expertise of my advisor, Lesley Ferris, without whose faith in this project and endless professional and personal encouragement it would not have been possible. Thank you for the many years of unwavering support.

To my committee: Jennifer Schlueter, thank you for always providing clear and grounded perspective, thoughtful provocation, and constant support for this project and my professional development; to Stratos Constantinidis, for many years of advising and insightful questions; to David Brewer, for the reading, questioning, brainstorming, and contextualizing that helped to shape this project.

I also wish to extend my thanks to the many archivists and administrators who enabled my research and the completion of this document. My thanks to Gayle

Richardson and Molly Gipson (Huntington Library, California); Marcus Risdell (Garrick

Club Library, London); Anne Buchanan (Bath Central Library); Heather Romaine

(Kathleen Barker Collection, University of Bristol); innumerable members of the staff of the British Library (London) and the Folger Shakespeare Library, especially Georgianna

Ziegler (Washington, D.C.); the incredible Maggie Reilly (Hunterian Museum,

Glasgow); the reading room staff at the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh); and

Julie Crocker and Thomas Gray (Royal Archives, Windsor, UK). To the last, I add my thanks to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for permission to use material from the Royal

Archives in this document.

I also wish to acknowledge the generous research support offered by The Ohio

State University Graduate School and the Department of Theatre, and the Folger

Shakespeare Library. Finally, to Dan Gray, Damian Bowerman, Savenda Fulton, Eric

Mayer, and Beth Simon for help with paperwork and reimbursements.

VITA

2001...... Greenwood Laboratory School

2005...... B.A. English, Bryn Mawr College

2009...... M.F.A. Dramaturgy, Mary Baldwin College

2009-present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate and

Presidential Fellow, Department of Theatre,

The Ohio State University

Publications

“‘Unsex me Here:’ Bodies and Femininity in the Performance History of Lady Macbeth.” Testi e Linguaggi. Volume 7. Salerno, Italy: University of Salerno, 2014.

“‘I Have Given Suck:’ The Maternal Body in Sarah Siddons’ Lady Macbeth.” Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Edited by Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kathryn R. McPherson, and Sarah Enloe. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2013.

“Sport and Spectacle: The Olympics as a Theatrical Event”; “A Dramaturg’s Point of View.” Contributor to “Theatrical Spaces Throughout History.” The Art of the Now. Columbus, OH: Digital First for The Ohio State University Department of Theatre, 2012.

Fields of Study

Major Field: Theatre.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...... II DEDICATION ...... IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... V VITA ...... VII TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... VIII LIST OF TABLES ...... XII LIST OF FIGURES ...... XIII PROLOGUE: PREGNANCY AND THE RESTORATION STAGE ...... 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...... 7 Problem ...... 9 Argument ...... 11 Scope ...... 13 Methodology and Sources ...... 16 1.1.1 THE ACTRESS IN SOCIETY ...... 20 Marriage and Virtue ...... 21 Motherhood and Childbearing ...... 24 Royalty and the Aristocracy ...... 29 1.1.2 THE ACTRESS ON STAGE: THEATRICAL CELEBRITIES ...... 34 1.1.3 VERISIMILITUDE, ACTING STYLES, AND THE BODY ON STAGE ...... 40 The Body in Repertoire ...... 42 1.1.4 CHANGING FASHIONS AND THE VISIBLE BODY ...... 45 1.2.1 LONDON THEATRE HISTORY, 1689-1800 ...... 48 1.2.2 THE LICENSING ACT, SENSIBILITY, AND CHANGING REPERTOIRES AT MID-CENTURY ...... 50 1.2.3 UPHEAVAL AND REVOLUTION AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY ..... 57 1.3 CHAPTER BREAKDOWNS ...... 59 Chapter Two: Susanna Percival Mountfort Verbruggen and Anne Oldfield ...... 59 Chapter Three: Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, George Anne Bellamy ...... 60 Chapters Four and Five: Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan ...... 62 CHAPTER TWO: SUSANNA PERCIVAL MOUNTFORT VERBRUGGEN AND ANNE OLDFIELD ...... 64

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2.1.1 SUSANNA PERCIVAL MOUNTFORT VERBRUGGEN (1666-1703): OVERVIEW ...... 64 2.1.2 REPERTOIRE AND REPUTATION ...... 66 2.1.3 SUSANNA AS RELICT, 1692-93 ...... 70 2.1.4 “HER LAST INDISPOSITION:” 1703 ...... 74 2.1.5 SUSANNA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GROTESQUE ...... 78 1690/91 or 1691/2: Abigail in The Scornful Lady ...... 79 1691/92: Mrs. Wittwoud in The Wives’ Excuse ...... 80 2.1.6 CONCLUSION ...... 84 2.2.1 THE CELEBRATED MRS. OLDFIELD (1683-1730): OVERVIEW ...... 86 2.2.2 REPERTOIRE AND REPUTATION ...... 89 2.2.3 1709: ARTHUR MAYNWARING, JR...... 93 2.2.4 THE 1712-13 SEASON ...... 96 The Distrest Mother ...... 96 Addison’s Cato ...... 101 2.3.1 CONCLUSION ...... 102 CHAPTER THREE: SUSANNAH CIBBER, HANNAH PRITCHARD, GEORGE ANNE BELLAMY ...... 106 3.1.1 SENSATION: SUSANNAH CIBBER’S EARLY CAREER (1733-1738) ...... 107 3.1.2 DOWNFALL: MRS. CIBBER’S SCANDAL (1738-1739) ...... 117 3.1.3 REDEMPTION AND TRIUMPH: 1741-1750 ...... 129 3.1.4 ABSENT PRESENCE: SUSANNAH CIBBER IN 1750 ...... 132 3.2.1 HANNAH PRITCHARD (NEÉ VAUGHN): EARLY CAREER TO 1739 ..... 135 3.2.2 LEADING LADY: PRITCHARD IN THE 1740S ...... 140 Pritchard’s Celebrity ...... 142 3.2.3 MRS. PRITCHARD’S 1748-51 SEASONS ...... 145 3.2.4 MATERNAL PERFORMANCE: MRS. PRITCHARD AND HANNAH MARY PALMER ...... 148 3.3.1 BELLAMY THE BEAUTIFUL ...... 152 3.3.2 BATTLE OF THE ROMEO AND JULIETS: BELLAMY IN 1749-50 ...... 157 3.3.3 BELLAMY IN 1753-54 ...... 161 3.3.4 “HEARTFELT ANGUISH:” BELLAMY’S MATERNAL DISTRESS ...... 163 3.3.5 MRS. BELLAMY’S APOLOGY ...... 167 3.4.1 CONCLUSION ...... 170

CHAPTER FOUR: “THE MATERNAL CHARACTER:” SARAH SIDDONS 1775- 1794...... 176 4.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 176 4.2 SIDDONIAN IDOLATRY ...... 183 Saleable Celebrity: Siddons as Wife, Mother, and Tragic Queen ...... 185 4.3 SIDDONS IN 1785: PREGNANCY AND THE PRESS ...... 186 Offstage ...... 188 Backstage ...... 189 Onstage ...... 194 Lady Macbeth ...... 197 4.4 SIDDONS IN 1794 ...... 200 4.5 SIDDONS AND LADY MACBETH ...... 207 4.6 CONCLUSION ...... 215 CHAPTER FIVE: THE WIFE METAMORPHOSED: DOROTHY JORDAN (1761-1816) ...... 218 5.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 218 5.2 “THE MOST VALUABLE ACQUISITION:” MRS. “FORD’S” SUCCESS ..... 222 1787: Dodee Ford ...... 225 1789: Lucy Hester Ford ...... 229 Economics and Repertoire in 1788 and 1790/91 ...... 232 5.3 THE “PROSTITUTE ACTRESS:” 1791 ...... 237 Mrs. Pickle’s Mistake ...... 249 5.4 “ALL THE DEAR CHILDREN:” PREGNANCY AND PATRIOTISM 1792-1798 ...... 252 5.5 CONCLUSION: “THE BEST OF WOMEN” ...... 259 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION ...... 264 6.1 WIDER APPLICATIONS FOR NON-CELEBRITY PERFORMERS ...... 266 6.2 PREGNANCY, HEALTH, AND REPERTOIRE ...... 268 6.3 READING THE BODY, THE ROLE, AND THE BODY-IN-ROLE ...... 274 6.4 PREGNANCY, CELEBRITY, AND REPUTATION ...... 276 6.5 PREGNANCY AND SOCIAL CLASS ...... 280 6.6 PREGNANCY, NARRATIVE, AND THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION ...... 283 6.7 OPPORTUNITIES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ...... 285 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 289 APPENDIX A: REPERTORIES DURING PREGNANCY ...... 306

APPENDIX B: DOROTHY JORDAN’S CHILDREN ...... 320 APPENDIX C: THE LANGUAGE OF PREGNANCY ...... 322

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1 SUSANNA MOUNTFORT VERBRUGGEN’S REPERTOIRE, JANUARY-MAY 1693 ...... 72

TABLE 2 SUSANNA MOUNTFORT VERBRUGGEN 'S REPERTOIRE, 1702-1703 ...... 75

TABLE 3 CONTRACTS FOR SUSANNAH CIBBER, HANNAH PRITCHARD, AND GEORGE ANNE BELLAMY 1736-1770 ...... 107-08

TABLE 4 EARNINGS AT DRURY LANE BEFORE AND AFTER JORDAN'S ABSENCE IN NOVEMBER, 1788 ...... 235

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1 THE CESTINA WAREHOUSE (1793) ...... 45

FIGURE 2 THE MAN OF BUSINESS (1774)...... 46

FIGURE 3 ANNE OLDFIELD (N.D) ...... 86

FIGURE 4 SUSANNAH CIBBER (1749)...... 110

FIGURE 5 DAVID GARRICK AND HANNAH PRITCHARD (1747) ...... 136

FIGURE 6 GEORGE ANNE BELLAMY (1790)...... 154

FIGURE 7 MRS. SIDDONS AND HER SON (1786)...... 177

FIGURE 8 DOROTHY JORDAN (1786)...... 218

FIGURE 9 “THE LUBBER’S HOLE” (1791)...... 244

FIGURE 10 “FORDING THE JORDAN” (1791)...... 244

FIGURE 11 “PHYSICIAN EXAMINING A URINE SPECIMEN” (1826) ...... 245

FIGURE 12 “MRS. PICKLE’S MISTAKE” (1791)...... 250

FIGURE 13 “LA PROMENADE EN FAMILLE” (1797)...... 257

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PROLOGUE: PREGNANCY AND THE RESTORATION STAGE

In 1664, playwright Sir Robert Howard found himself having to explain a personnel issue to Secretary of State Henry Bennet. The issue involved Elizabeth Farley

Weaver, an actress with the King’s Company:

Mrs. Weaver’s three weeks agoe and above of her owne accord brought in all her parts and warn’d the Company that after such A day which is expird shee woud act noe more, I my selfe spoke with her twice about it and shee continu’d her resolution to goe and then all her parts were given out; since indeed Shee has appeard big with Child and now knowne to be shamefully soe for wch many women of quality have protested they will never come to thee house to see A woman acting all parts of vertue in such A shamefull Condition. This Sr has been the cause that wee are not troubled for the losse of her, but the first cause of her leaving the house came from her selfe and truly Sr wee are willing to bringe the stage to be a place of some Creditt and not an infamous place for all persons of honour to avoide… (SP 29/109 f.19)

Howard’s testimony protests that Mrs. Weaver left of her own accord, suggesting that trouble arose based on the assumption she was forced to leave. The company does not regret her departure, however, as her “shamefull” pregnancy would have caused problems with “many women of quality” had she remained. These problems arise not necessarily from her visible body, though this is an issue, but from the cause of Mrs.

Weaver’s condition—she was pregnant with an illegitimate child—and the disconnect this circumstance would cause between the actress and any “parts of virtue” she might play. Weaver had been with the company since 1660, and according to Mrs. Knepp, Mrs.

Weaver was first “spoiled” by the King (Fisk). Howard’s letter came about because he

had been unable to speak to the King directly, indicating that Charles II had made inquiries personally about why Weaver was no longer in the company.

In this particular situation, an actress’ illegitimate pregnancy was problematic for both managers and audiences. The managers, while insisting that they did not force her to leave, claimed that her presence would materially damage the company, and backed this up with testimony from audience members—specifically women of quality—who would object to seeing an unmarried pregnant woman (clearly not virtuous in their minds) performing virtue on stage. It is unclear whether or not a legitimate pregnancy would cause the same reaction. We have no testimony from Weaver about why she felt the need to resign her parts in the first place—it may have been a personnel issue unrelated to pregnancy, or a preemptive move on her part to hide her condition and/or avoid censure.

She did return to the company after the birth, but played smaller parts than she had previously owned (ibid).

Weaver’s case is particularly useful because we know the identity of the woman involved. More general commentary on pregnancy on stage in the late seventeenth century, however, can still offer useful insight into audience response. The overwhelming attitude is one of mockery or incredulity, and pregnancy is most often associated with hypocrisy as the woman either plays virgins onstage, or attempts to maintain a reputation for virtue offstage in the face of clear evidence of her sexual activities. Thomas Brown complained, “Hypocrisie has infected the Stage too, where Whores with great Bellies wou’d thrust themselves off for Virgins, and Bully the Audience out of their sight and

understanding…” (Works 1707; 2:61).2 Dorilant in Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) associates the pregnant actress with shamelessness, complimenting Horner for having

“most theatrical impudence; nay, more than the orange-wench show there, or a drunken vizard-mask, or a great-bellied actress…” (6). Dorilant places the “great-bellied actress” in a continuum with the prostituting orange-wenches and vizard-masks. Like them, she delights in displaying her sexualized body. Combined, Brown and Wycherley suggest that the pregnant actress is a hypocritical whore: whether playing the virgin on stage or off, the pregnant body is problematic: undeniable, un-ignorable evidence of sexual activity. While this display is bad, failed concealment of their condition makes the hypocrisy worse.

In The Comparison Between the Two Stages (1702), the Critic describes the failed strategies women use to maintain their public reputations while pregnant:

Ramb[ler]. There are some that wou’d be thought honest. Crit[ic]. Yes, tho’ they are Mothers and never were marry’d; ’tis an old trick…They Trade like our East-India Ships, they take in their Lading the beginning of Winter, and having calculated the Voyage just for Nine Months, it falls out very opportunely for ‘em to unlade again in the long Vacation. Sull[en]. …a ramble into the Country for six Weeks brings it all about: The Lady lies in, the Child goes to Nurse, every thing is husht up, and she returns to Town again, and fancies no body knows anything of the Matter. Ramb. …‘fore gad I never heard any thing so whimsical. Crit. …I have seen one of ‘em cramp her Belly so confoundedly with her Stays, to hide it from the Audience, that when the Child has been born, the Jade had mawl’d it into such a deform’d condition, that the good Women have been frighted out of their Wits, and the Midwife…has mistaken it for a false Conception. Sull. Why shou’d they use so much inhumane art to hide what in time must of necessity be discover’d?

2 Brown died in 1704, and the earliest printed edition available that I find is dated 1700 (Early English Books Online). The references in this section do not appear until the publication of his Works, which includes his Letters from the Living to the Dead (where this quotation appears) sometime before 1707 (when the title page claims the works have been newly compressed into two volumes). 3

Crit. They think not and to this Day, after such an exploit as I have been telling you, one of ‘em wou’d perswade the Town that she’s an immaculate Virgin. Sull. Ridiculous and foolish! Crit. So that upon the whole I tell you, what for the Players, the Dancers, the Poets and the Masters, it’s easier matter for an honest young Fellow of the Town, to lose his own good Name, than to fix a scandal on one of theirs. (19-21)

The Comparison contains several helpful hints about the medical aspects of pregnancy on stage, satirical though they may be. The actress who attempts to maintain her virgin reputation risks her health and that of the child by lacing her stays tightly to hide her condition. This is a fruitless labor, however, because the pregnancy cannot remain hidden; the men acknowledge this fact, even if the women do not. Timing is the woman’s best weapon—timing the birth and lying-in period (approximately four weeks) for the summer gives her the best chance of escaping notice or minimizing the time her figure is compromised during the season. The woman who engaged in the specific “exploit” of which the Critic speaks is not only “inhumane,” but now attempting to brazen out her deception despite the fact that it is an open secret. Though their wiles are judged largely unsuccessful, the opacity of the pregnant body and the power of the theatre as public platform are strong enough that some women get away with it. This speaks to the power of celebrity, a major issue when considering reactions to the pregnant body on stage.

The quotations have several features in common. First, the pregnant body in each instance marks the woman as either a whore, or shameless, or both; second, the criticism focuses as much on the woman’s failed attempt to conceal it as it does on the body itself—her naïve and unsuccessful performance of virginity on or off the stage is the larger problem, because it implies a lack of intelligence and understanding on the part of

the audience. It seems that in the Restoration, the verisimilitudinous buck stopped with pregnant women playing virgins on or off the stage; while it might not ruin a career, it did open the women to censure and ridicule. In Weaver’s case, it possibly resulted in a loss of status in the company.

Despite the vehemence of these complaints, however, pregnancy was not an equal problem for all women. In his discussion of Congreve’s The Way of the World (1699),

Brown mentions a “Mrs. Abigail” who “can be brought to bed of a Living Child without any Manner of notice taken of her” (Works 3:39). This “Mrs. Abigail” is either adept at concealment, or performs while pregnant openly without arousing censure. That she gives birth to “a Living Child” would suggest the woman did not damage the child by tightening her stays to conceal her condition. There is no attendant or actress named

Abigail in Congreve’s play, so Brown is using the name as a common term for a ladies’ maid and referring to either Mrs. Prince or Mrs. Willis, who played the two maid characters in the play. We do not know much about Mrs. Prince. Mrs. Willis, however, was the mother of two daughters, the younger born in 1699, sometime in the year before

The Way of the World premiered. She played secondary parts in comedy and was married to a fellow player. Perhaps her marriage, and her less prominent place in the company, allowed her to perform without censure.

Mrs. Weaver’s story contains many of the questions and issues addressed in this project. Along with more generic references to pregnancy on the Restoration stage, it provides a marker by which the experiences of women in the long eighteenth century can be measured. First, the question of verisimilitude: could a pregnant woman play virginal women on stage, or would her body be too distracting or offensive? Are there fictional

situations in which pregnancy aids rather than complicates verisimilitude? Second, economic considerations: did the managers have to choose between supporting a member of the company and losing audiences? Third, how did perceptions of women, of pregnancy, and of actresses play into audience and management response: for example, the “hypocrisy” of a pregnant woman playing a virgin raises familiar tropes and anxieties about women’s duplicity, actresses’ unrestrained sexuality, and the opacity of the pregnant female body (is she pregnant, with what, who is the father?). Fourth, how did the social class of both actress and audience influence her experience? The King got involved in Mrs. Weaver’s case in his capacity as the company’s patron (and perhaps as her former lover), as did wealthy female spectators. As professional actresses came to be seen as having more in common with wealthy, upper-class women than orange-wenches and vizard masks, how did perceptions of their pregnancies, and their ability to control those perceptions, change?

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

If you want to know what any culture thinks of women, read its representations. Read the theatre…Read the body. —Carol Chillington Rutter Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare’s Stage (2001), 26

Eighty-four years after Mrs. Weaver’s career was cut short by her pregnancy, another woman was making her London debut just weeks before giving birth. On the night of 3 October 1748, Mrs. Sarah Ward (neé Achurch), stepped onto the boards at

Covent Garden. It was her London debut, and she was playing Cordelia opposite James

Quin’s King Lear.3 She was a strikingly beautiful woman; she was also heavily pregnant.

Ward performed for about seven weeks before having her child sometime at the end of

November or the beginning of December.4

In her Apology (1785), George Anne Bellamy tells us that she joined the Covent

Garden company for the 1748-49 season in part as “a happy corps de reserve” (1:199) to

Mrs. Ward. Though they were both new to the company, Ward’s debut was to be prioritized, “her pregnancy rendering such a step necessary” (2:3). When Ward left,

Bellamy’s novelty would help boost the company’s drawing power. The company accommodated Ward’s pregnancy in a systematic way: 1) manager John Rich assigned

3 This was the Nahum Tate version, which remained popular throughout the eighteenth century; in this version, Cordelia is in love with Edgar, so does not marry at the beginning of the play. She remains a virgin throughout, despite Edmund’s plan to abduct and rape her. She and Lear both survive, and she becomes Queen and marries Edgar at the end of the play. 4 She was off stage between 23 November and 28 January, about nine weeks total. There was no birth announcement this year as there would be in 1751. 7

her a part that would show her talents safely,5 2) he prioritized the production of King

Lear so that she might perform as many nights as possible before the birth, and 3) he planned to use his other beautiful new company member to attract audiences when Ward lay-in. Rich evinced no concern for the lack of verisimilitude Ward’s body created in the part, though Bellamy was critical of it: “…her situation, as well as her figure, being against her, she did not conclude the part of Cordelia, with any degree of credit” (ibid).

Bellamy, however, separates Ward’s figure (a permanent condition) from her pregnant body, which is temporary: she “had one of the most beautiful faces I ever beheld. But her figure was vulgar to a degree. By the stoop and magnitude of her shoulders, it might be imagined that she had formerly carried milk-pails…” In Bellamy’s mind, Ward’s figure rendered her incapable of playing the genteel Cordelia regardless of pregnancy, but the pregnancy made the “dissimilitude” between her body and that of a princess worse (1:199). Regardless of Bellamy’s opinion, and in marked contrast to earlier commentary on pregnancy on stage, no audiences or critics labeled Ward a hypocrite or a whore for playing the virginal Cordelia while visibly pregnant. Ward was married to a fellow actor, Henry Ward, also in the company, and she was coming in as a leading lady, both of which likely made a difference. There are a number of other reasons for this change in perception, tied to the position of women, actresses, and pregnancy/motherhood in the public imagination, and expectations surrounding verisimilitude on stage. Public response to pregnancy on stage is shaped by complex and overlapping conditions, and the implications of these responses extend outward, touching

5 This is a supposition based on the fact that the part was recommended to Sarah Siddons during her 1785 pregnancy when her emotive playing style raised health concerns in her audience. 8

on larger questions of celebrity, the body, and gender, sexuality, and studies in the history of medicine.

Problem

Sarah Ward had nine children while maintaining an active career that took her to theatres throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. This birth rate was not atypical for women in the long eighteenth century. In the words of France’s Queen Consort Marie

Leczinska (1703-1768), women were “always going to bed, always pregnant, always giving birth” (qtd. Flandrin 217). Over the course of the century, birth rates increased.

Aristocratic women averaged about four births in the first quarter of the eighteenth century (Pollock 4). Post-1760, they averaged eight births in their adult lives and middle class women averaged seven (Lewis 123; Davidoff and Hall 222-23). Working women had slightly lower birth rates, likely because of breastfeeding practices (McLaren 22-27).

The women in my study adhere more or less to these trends for birth rates, and occupied a variety of domestic arrangements: Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen (1666-

1703) had five children in the course of two marriages; Anne Oldfield (1683-1730) had three, all illegitimate; Susannah Cibber (1714-1766) had four, two legitimate children and two illegitimate; Hannah Pritchard (1711-1768) had four, all within marriage; George

Anne Bellamy (c.1727-1788) had three, all illegitimate; Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) had seven children and a total of ten pregnancies, all with husband William Siddons; Dorothy

Jordan (1761-1816) fourteen children, all illegitimate, and possibly as many as twenty pregnancies. Though women in the audience form only a small part of this project, we should remember that, statistically speaking, it would not be uncommon for a pregnant performer’s audience to include pregnant women. Despite the enormous part pregnancy, 9

childbirth, and childrearing played in the public and private lives of many professional actresses (and their audiences), pregnancy on stage in the eighteenth century has never formed the basis of a major study.

I will show that this is a problematic silence that reinforces rather than complicates assumptions about actresses specifically, and women generally, in the long eighteenth century. Avoiding or minimizing personal circumstances like pregnancy as a context for a professional career leads to poor historiography. It also perpetuates a separation between public and private life that rarely existed, and disrupts potentially valuable connections that can be made between working pregnant women in the long eighteenth century and working pregnant women today.

Though pregnancy on stage in the long eighteenth century is largely invisible in theatre history scholarship, it is not exclusively so. When it is mentioned, however, one of several assumptions tends to guide its handling: 1) that there is “very little” evidence on which we might build a study of pregnancy on stage (Donkin 329). Linked to that belief is 2) the assumption that audiences were unaware of actresses’ pregnancies (for example, arguing that costuming could effectively hide a baby bump throughout most or all nine months of a pregnancy) and the related belief that women would go to great lengths to conceal their condition.6 The final and most damaging assumption is 3) that visible pregnancy would hinder a woman’s career—either by forcing her to leave the stage (because of the managers’ or audiences’ objections to her condition), curtailing the

6 See Lafler 70. 10

number or kind of parts she could play during pregnancy and after, or by damaging her reputation to such an extent that she lost public support for her career.7

The above assumptions come from the same few sources, the case of Elizabeth

Farley Weaver in 1664, Tate Wilkinson’s criticism of George Anne Bellamy in 1753, a letter from David Garrick about Sarah Siddons in 1775, and a reference to a Mrs. Smith in James Boaden’s 1831 biography of Dorothy Jordan. While important evidence, these comments are too often taken at face value and assumed to reflect universal opinions.

None, in fact, reflects a universal view of pregnancy on stage. In each case, the response to the pregnant body is highly specific to the woman under consideration and the immediate context of her pregnancy. I will address each of these comments throughout this dissertation, offering considerable evidence to complicate and revise the above assumptions while offering a newer and more nuanced understanding of the pregnant body on the eighteenth-century stage.

Argument

My primary goal with this project is to present clear, historically grounded evidence on which additional, future inquiry can be built. I will present theories that emerge from my research, especially those that focus on pregnancy’s capacity to generate both narrative and affect. When Carol Chillington Rutter advocates reading the body on stage as a way of reading the position of women in society, she focused on depictions of women on the page in theatrical texts. As Felicity Nussbaum, Joseph Roach, and Laura

Engel have argued, the physical body and personality of the performer who inhabits that

7 See, for example, Joanne Lafler (70, 138), Nussbaum Rival Queens (49), Perry, et al. The First Actresses (114). 11

character in performance has the ability to alter the story. A woman’s personality might create tension, for example, between a character’s self-sacrificing passivity and the agency the actress might wield in private life. When a pregnant body appears on stage, yet another narrative is created. In critiques of female performers, pregnancy can bolster negative claims about a celebrity’s personal or private life. In other cases, it can be used as evidence of a woman’s good character or professional dedication. The question becomes who is writing or controlling the narrative at any given time, and how did women exercise the power of their celebrity to narrativize their pregnancies in positive, rather than negative, ways.

I contend that celebrity actresses in the long eighteenth century found ways of using their changing physical condition to their advantage; in Joseph Roach’s terms, to make pregnancy a charismatic force when it has long been considered a stigmatic one. In manipulating the pregnant body as signifier, actresses could garner audience sympathy and support, periodically (and perhaps paradoxically) expunge accusations of licentiousness or wrongdoing, and further their lucrative stage careers. In the latter case, pregnancy could inspire protective behavior from audiences, while temporary absence provided a clear opportunity for a woman and her followers to underscore her economic importance to the company for which she worked. Pregnancy, and more directly the subsequent lying-in period, also impacted repertoire and company management strategies, a factor that can bring new understanding to repertory studies.

Pregnancy’s impact, therefore, extended far beyond the individual woman: substitutes for star actresses might find opportunities for career advancement during pregnancy-related absences, as these absences could require significant shuffling of

company personnel. In this shuffling, managers had to decide how to fill the repertoire— would another actress temporarily take over some of the pregnant woman’s parts? If so, in what parts would an audience accept a substitute, and which were better left out of the repertory entirely (i.e., which plays were popular on their own or for other performers vs. which were popular primarily because of the now absent woman)? When Anne Oldfield lay-in in 1709, 1713, and 1720, for example, other actresses took on some of the roles she played, but none ever appeared as Lady Betty Modish in The Careless Husband, written specifically for her in 1704.

Further questions related to company management ask how the theatre best used the actress before and after her absence to maximize profits, and how, if at all, concerns about verisimilitude or the actress’ health were addressed. Sarah Siddons, for example, told the managers she could play only comedy late in her 1785 pregnancy, while John

Rich assigned Sarah Ward a debut part that would not over-tax her physically and planned to use the drawing power of George Anne Bellamy during Sarah Ward’s confinement in 1748. In no case addressed in this study, or that I found during my research, did a woman’s pregnancy result in automatic dismissal from the company, despite the economic challenges pregnancy might present for women and their managers.

Scope

There are inevitable gaps and limitations to the scope of the project. The first is chronological. In focusing on the long eighteenth century, which for this project reaches from 1689-1807, I am neither implying that women did not perform while pregnant in the seventeenth century (as evidence in the prologue clearly shows), or that they suddenly

stopped in the first decade of the nineteenth century.8 As it is a time period in which sweeping changes in perceptions of actresses are often theorized to have taken place, however, the long eighteenth century is a productive site of inquiry for a project intrinsically tied to women’s sexuality, celebrity, and participation in the professional theatre.

I look at seven case studies: Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen (1666-1703), Anne

Oldfield (1683-1730), Susannah Cibber (1714-1766), Hannah Pritchard (1711-1768),

George Anne Bellamy (c.1727-1788), Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), and Dorothy Jordan

(1761-1816), between 1689 (Susanna Mountfort’s first pregnancy) and 1807 (Dorothy

Jordan’s last). I am only considering celebrity performers: those who commanded large salaries, were widely known and recognized inside and outside the theatre, who could count on a loyal public to support their continued careers, and who built and maintained identifiable celebrity personas with which their changed bodies might adhere or conflict.

This leaves out scores of less prominent women who faced the same struggle of maintaining a career during and after pregnancy, and who might feel pressure to conceal or end a pregnancy. It also leaves out women whose careers fell mostly outside the capital (e.g., Mrs. Ward, or the Mrs. Long whose eight children toured with her); and women whose lives have not yet received sustained scholarly exploration (e.g., Ann

Catley, who worked in London and Dublin and had eight children).

Though pregnant characters appear in eighteenth-century drama, I have not explored the fictional creation of pregnant bodies on stage. As an initial observation,

8 Definitions of the long eighteenth century vary: 1660-1830 or 1832 (Restoration of the Stuarts to Accession of William IV or the Reform Act of 1832) is the most inclusive, while the slightly narrower 1688-1815 (the Glorious Revolution to the battle of Waterloo) is also used in some studies. My definition of the century is bounded by the first and last pregnancies of the women in the study. 14

however, only very rarely, and usually outside of London, did the women in my study perform a pregnant character while they themselves were visibly pregnant. Knowing more about how the illusion of pregnancy on stage was created through language, gesture, or costume, might offer useful information for the study of actual pregnancy on stage.

Another gap in this study is a fully-fledged understanding of how pregnancy impacted competition between the patent houses. Pregnancy-related absences of star performers created challenges for the producing house and opportunities for the competition that influenced the repertoires at both houses. With the exception of portions of Chapters 3 and 4, the fierce, daily competition between the houses is a background condition, not a primary focus, of this study, though it is a logical and exciting avenue for the project’s expansion.

Within the case studies, further restriction is sometimes necessary. When considering pregnancy’s impact on repertoire, I will largely be restricting my examination to roles performed in the last trimester or so of each pregnancy, when a woman’s physical condition is most likely to have been obvious to the audience. This analysis will sometimes explore the relation of the pregnant body to the fictional character, but will also consider any changes to repertoire that might indicate either the management, a playwright, the public, or the actress’ response to the changing female body. Exceptions will be made of course, when there is clear evidence that audiences were aware of the pregnancy prior to the third trimester. Within this network of information, I am attempting to locate any identifiable “rules” about the pregnant body on

stage, most of which can only be determined and applied within a narrow set of circumstances.

Methodology and Sources

This project is historical, archival, historiographic. It relies on a variety of primary sources: biography, memoir, autobiography, correspondence, private journals, receipt and commonplace books, public advertisements, reviews, bon mots, social commentary, medical texts, theatrical documents (contracts, promptbooks, financial records, play texts), anecdotes, and visual representations (portraits, engravings, satirical cartoons).

Though highly subjective, many of these sources provide invaluable information if used correctly. George Anne Bellamy’s Apology contains a notoriously problematic chronology of events, and contemporaries accused her of misrepresenting a variety of situations. Still, with diligent fact-checking and sufficient contextualization, the Apology is a valuable source. For example, it is unnecessary to follow Highfill, et. al.’s assertion that Bellamy referenced Sarah Ward’s 1759 pregnancy instead of her 1748 pregnancy in the quotations that began this chapter. They have done so because Bellamy mentions

David Garrick’s reputation as King Lear before she mentions James Quin, Ward’s 1748 partner, and perhaps because there was no birth announcement. Yet every other circumstance Bellamy mentions (her own newness to the company, conversation with

Rich about the season plan, the fact that Ward did play Cordelia in 1748 but not in 1759, and Ward’s otherwise unexplained nine-week absence during the winter) can be confirmed as applying to the 1748-49 season.

A not-inconsiderable portion of the evidence I draw upon is anecdotal, and for good reason: as Thomas Postlewait bluntly states, “Anecdotes defined the age and the 16

archive” (65). This is both a blessing and a curse; it is a thing that makes eighteenth- century studies compelling to writers and readers, but that often challenges standards of scholarly rigor:

even the most diligent scholars have recognized that the distinction between facts and anecdotes (or records and legends) is impossible to maintain consistently in any examination of historical documents; many records are not factual; many anecdotes not only contain a kernel of factuality but also express representative truths (ibid).

I have followed Postlewait’s advice of testing the anecdotes in this project for possibility, plausibility, probability, and certainty. While I have tried to make it clear when an anecdote is more or less likely to be based in fact, I have not excluded those that failed from the study. If nothing else, they often tell us how pregnancy functioned in tandem with celebrity in the popular imagination, and in the creation of biography.9

In her essay, “Theatre History, Historiography, and Women’s Dramatic Writing,”

(2000) Susan Bennett calls historiography “both a road block and a means of reinvigorating theatre history” (56). She locates the writing of women’s history in theatre in a state of tension between creating something new (new approaches, new methodologies), and using historiographical methods, which “inevitably pulls our history—even our alternative histories—back into the trajectory of what has always already been known” (53). I am engaged in the same struggle, attempting to find pregnancy’s place in existing narratives of eighteenth-century theatre and social history while sometimes troubling and resisting those same narratives.

9 For example, only one biography of Anne Oldfield includes an anecdote about the actress bringing her child onstage after a performance, so I consider it unlikely to be literally true, though it speaks to the affective power the biographer believed this mother-son relationship would hold for the reading audience. 17

Amanda Vickery has provided a good evaluation of the dominant discourses that long shaped the study of women’s lives from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

The first is the notion of separate, gendered spheres that increasingly confined women’s lives to the “private” realm of the home, while men enjoyed access to “public” life.

Didactic literature and the lack of women’s legal status have tended to drive this narrative. The second discourse is of women’s slow exclusion from the labor force with the rise of industrialization and capitalism. Vickery argues two things: first, if we take the evidence for notions of gendered spheres as accurate in the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, then it has been accurate for nearly all of human history. But women’s writings in the long eighteenth century showed that they enjoyed great access to public life as they defined it: attending the theatre, opera, public gardens, assemblies and other events. Tied to the notion of the public seems to be the idea of paying for access; invitational events, on the other hand, are private, even if they involve hundreds of people. Second, Vickery argues that the removal of women from the labor force and the glorification of male breadwinners is mostly a narrative that holds true for the merchant classes and higher, and that the figure of the “leisured woman” may be a function of increasing wealth. Even elite women, however, combined the work of household management with leisure in their daily lives, a thing that complicates narratives that suggest that bourgeois women at the end of the seventeenth century were primarily engaged in labor and women in the nineteenth century in leisure. Ultimately, Vickery advocates for close exploration of individual women as the best method to test and develop larger theories about their lives.

Actresses obviously already present a challenge to notions of gendered spheres and of women’s exclusion from economic labor: they were public figures capable of

drawing enormous salaries. In the case of the women in this study, they were often an invaluable, if not the sole, means of financial support for their families. Their status as breadwinners was not considered incompatible with their duties as mothers: economic provision for children was a form of good mothering. Just as women in Vickery’s work saw no inconsistency in occupying both public and private spaces, or engaging in economic labor and leisure in the same day, neither actresses nor audiences found professional engagements incompatible with domestic ideals. While this might be more obvious at the end of the century, the greater availability of evidence about the women in this study may also create the false impression that it became more important over the course of the century.

While Vickery emphasizes the importance of getting the facts right, Tracy C.

Davis asks us to go beyond recovering women’s stories to consider why and how they were suppressed initially. In the conclusion, my project will also question why their stories have been rewritten to excise or minimize their maternal status both in the immediate aftermath of their lives and in more recent scholarship. For example, James

Boaden claimed in his biography of Sarah Siddons that the public could have no interest in her private life, a claim sometimes taken as indicative of a hard and fast separation between the two (1:xv). In a more recent case, Roy Porter’s Flesh in the Age of Reason

(2004) contains precisely zero references to pregnancy, childbirth, or reproduction in nearly 500 pages. The excision of women’s maternity from biography and medical studies, perhaps directly the result of prejudice or lack of interest on the part of the author, comes, through its reiteration, to mean a wider and more accepted separation of

the public and private lives of women that continues the narrative of separate spheres troubled by Vickery and others.

To further introduce this project, I begin with an overview of women in society, especially their identities as wives and mothers. I then move to trace general issues of the pregnant body on stage, offering a review of relevant issues of celebrity, fashion, and verisimilitude, as well as the position of actresses in the social and cultural imagination.

The final section of the introduction presents specific contextual information of relevance to each time period, 1689-1720 for Chapter Two; 1734-1754 for Chapter Three; 1774-

1794 in Chapter Four; and 1782-1807 for Chapter Five. I save my move into backstage life (actresses’ status within the theatrical company, the strategies management might use to accommodate pregnancy, and the impact of pregnancy on the shaping of theatrical history) for the individual chapters.

1.1.1 THE ACTRESS IN SOCIETY

Pregnancy on stage marries sex and sensibility within a public female body. As such, it is equally capable of falling into either narrative depending on public perceptions of the woman involved. In this study, careful attention will be paid to where, when, and why perceptions of pregnant women vary. As wider context, understanding the place of motherhood in larger society is helpful.

While many of the nuances in the expectations of and restrictions on women’s place in society in the long eighteenth century are under evaluation and, often, reconsideration, there is no doubt that women occupied an inferior position to their husbands and male relations under English law. As a married woman, Sarah Ward had no right to divorce; if her husband was excessively cruel, she might be able to obtain a 20

divorce a mensa et thoro, which would give her the legal right to live separately, though this could be a prohibitively expensive option.10 While a woman’s adultery was grounds for a court trial (and so Henry could have sued actor West Digges for the seven-year affair he had with Ward), a man’s adultery was not formally legislated, though as Joanne

Bailey shows, it could be used evidence of a failure to provide in conjunction with other complaints.

Understanding women’s legal and social position brings greater context to their onstage performances, particularly when those performances touched on questions of appropriate behavior during pregnancy, expectations of women as mothers, or the challenges women faced as wives and mothers with few individual rights. As I will show, women often deployed notions of good womanhood as part of their celebrity, something that helped to justify and further their careers. Legal position and social performance also offer context to women who elected to enter into relationships outside of marriage and thereby legally retained the ability to control their considerable salaries and enjoy other individual rights. Anne Oldfield, for example, was praised for preserving the inheritance of her first son, Arthur Maynwaring, Jr., by not marrying her second long-term lover,

Charles Churchill.

Marriage and Virtue

Joanne Bailey’s Unquiet Lives (2003) focuses on evidence from 1400 families of the “middling sort” and wage laborer classes between 1660-1800 to reconstruct “a set of

10 Lit. “from bed and board.” “Cessation of conjugal cohabitation, either by mutual consent of the parties or imposed by a judicial decree granted at the suit of one of them” (OED). This type of divorce could be sought by husband or wife, and could only be granted on the basis of adultery and/or life-threatening cruelty (“Divorces” National Archives). 21

national expectations about married life [and show] how these altered in a period of great social, economic and cultural change” (2). She ultimately proposes a model of co- dependency in which both partners were to meet social expectations of provisioning for the family. Legal complaints against husbands frequently charge them with not contributing their proper share to provisions for the family—while it was explicitly the husband’s duty to provide for his wife and children, the wording of these cases makes it clear that women also expected to contribute both money and labor to provisioning. A complaint against a husband for failing to provide (or locking away food or money) materially damaged a man’s reputation and was seen as indicative of laziness and neglect, which could in turn impact his standing in a community: “male credit depended upon both wider community trust and the individual reputations of the household” (75).

When Theophilus Cibber published apocryphal, doting letters to his wife in advance of a criminal conversation trial, he attempted to show that he had fulfilled his obligations to protect, care, and provide for her. In reality, he was a spendthrift and gambler who spent most of his time outside the theatre in brothels or taverns and actively encouraged the affair between his wife and her lover. His performance of good husbandhood failed, and his wife received public sympathy for leaving him. Though she could not obtain a full divorce, Susannah Cibber eventually gained financial independence from her husband, which enabled her to continue her career. The marital ideals Bailey finds in her study help to explain public reactions to the Cibbers’ relationship.

Bailey also productively expands our understanding of how women’s honor was created and defined beyond a focus on their sexual activity—a useful perspective when considering the myriad domestic arrangements in which the women in this study lived:

the sexual double standard was not rigidly applied in everyday life. Husbands were subjected to criticism for infidelity from their wives and peers and their personal sexual behavior had an impact on their reputation. Equally, women’s honour was defined by their labour, household position and charitable works, as well as by their sexual reputation. (195)

As reactions to Theophilus and Susannah Cibber’s marital breakdown show, both men and women could be taken to task for their sexual activity, and social expectation surrounding marriage could be advantageous for the women in this study. Sarah Siddons and Hannah Pritchard were both praised for their remarkable prowess as performers, while their private lives, particularly their status as wives and mothers, were seen as further evidence of their worth and the respect owed to them by their audiences. Both

Dorothy Jordan and Anne Oldfield were considered wives in all but name despite being unmarried because of their adherence to social expectations for married women and mothers. The various forms Bailey suggests women’s honor might take align closely with

Felicity Nussbaum’s concept of “exceptional virtue,” which enabled female performers to use charitable acts, devotion to their family, and a genuine love for their profession to create an aura of virtue that did not rely on sexual integrity. Anne Oldfield’s beneficence,

Susannah Cibber’s participation in benefit performances for the Foundling Hospital, and

Dorothy Jordan’s in benefits for naval widows are all examples of the charity in which actresses publicly participated, though it could take more private forms as well.

In 1783, shortly after her arrival in London, Siddons wrote to Lord Stanley after a visit from the widow of a Thomas Jackson, asking that her support might induce Stanley

to pass on information about the family to the King, who could provide some form of relief. In Bellamy’s memoir, she writes that her gift of money to a widow and her family led other friends and companions to make similar gifts, including Henry Fox. Compelling onstage performances of femininity and maternity could make these prominent public women intercessory figures, especially for women and children. In turn, their participation in charitable acts marked them as virtuous in ways that left aside concerns about their living arrangements or sexual relationships.

Motherhood and Childbearing

Just as performances of “good” wifely behavior benefitted actresses regardless of their marital status, performances of good maternity became a form of charismata, of positive affect, in their public performance of identity, especially as maternity came to take on national importance.

Lisa Forman Cody’s Birthing the Nation (2005) traces the political implications of maternity throughout the eighteenth century. She contends “a paradigm shift occurred in the eighteenth century that placed the social significance of sex and birth centre stage in British thought” (23). Though Cody speaks little of theatrical performance, her wording is fortuitous considering the prominence of celebrity performers in late eighteenth-century British society. Cody creates a narrative that sees the rise of the formally trained man-midwife as an important component to turn-of-the-nineteenth- century conceptions of procreation and childrearing as of interest to both genders, and of urgent national importance. For example, population studies up to 1720 often focused on mortality rates and saw the reproducing poor, especially, as a drain on the nation’s economic resources. Post-1750, however, as Britain began to compete with France, 24

Spain, and other colonial powers, population growth became a tool by which Britain could flood the globe and assert its dominance. In 1759, Gregory Sharpe’s sermon for the

City of London Lying-in Hospital for Married Women asserted: “war consumes us; and if it were possible, according to the waste should be the growth.” (qtd 20). Visual representations of women began to “[valorize] maternity as a primary social bond to hold families and nations together” (27). Cody concludes that, “… late eighteenth-century

British culture valued motherhood and treated the successfully reproductive body as an aesthetic, cultural, and political ideal” (306). The care for these bodies, then, became of central importance to a healthy and expansive empire.

Instead of increasingly separate spheres where men and women were assumed to have little in common (socially and in sex models such as those outlined by Thomas

Laqueur), Cody argues that the figure of the man-midwife became a locus around which the mutual interests of both sexes, procreation and the raising of children, intersected.

The behavior of these men, then, particularly toward their female patients, created a model of sympathetic behavior to which husbands could aspire and helped to make domesticity both a female and a male ideal, thereby driving public interest in pregnancy and parenthood as it took on wider national importance.

Siddons’s and Jordan’s procreative lives were certainly in keeping with desires to expand the British population, and both had audience members advocating for their health in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Celebrity actresses were valuable economic commodities, but they were valuable in part because of the emotional bonds that existed between women and their audiences. The health of these women, then, could be of vested interest to audience members, especially during pregnancy. If William

Hunter, prominent anatomist, accoucheur to Queen Charlotte, and friend to David

Garrick, were in the audience for any of Sarah Ward’s performances during pregnancy, he might find himself judging her condition based on external signs. From an approximation of when she might be due based on her size, to her overall health and level of energy, Hunter and subsequent accoucheurs relied on primarily external signs to determine the health of pregnant women and the children they carried.

Of course, external signs of pregnancy were also available to the audience, who might also become judges of a woman’s health. As we will see, audiences often took on the role of protector for pregnant women, applying their social/medical understandings of maternal health to the socially pregnant bodies of performers. Letters to the press expressed fears about overexertion, suggested repertory changes that might better accommodate their bodies, and warned managers that inattentiveness to women’s health during pregnancy would result in longer absences for recovery. It was generally agreed, both in medical texts and in the less formal advice passed in correspondence, that women who remained active during pregnancy, barring those with complications like hemorrhaging, were the healthiest. Therefore, continuing a theatrical career was not a problem, though performing too frequently or in particularly arduous roles could inspire fear for the performer. When Sarah Siddons lay in longer than originally thought in

1785/86, one paper announced her death at the hands of cruel managers who had worked her too hard. The solicitude of audiences toward female performers during pregnancy was one way that Cody’s suggested model of sympathetic behavior was put into practice in eighteenth century society.

Beyond an awareness of healthy behavior during pregnancy, audiences were aware of the class implications of various customs surrounding birth and lying-in arrangements. These customs enabled professional actresses to perform worth on a material level beyond the more abstracted worth they might claim as domestic figures.

Though the vast majority of women were still delivered by female midwives, by the

1770s, upper-class women began to follow Queen Charlotte’s example and engage male accoucheurs (man-midwives) to attend them at the births of their children. These men were formally trained, and often of a higher social class than female midwives, part of their appeal to upper class women. They also demanded higher fees. The use of male accoucheurs might be a matter of health to some women, but it was also a clear performance of social class, wealth, and community. Sarah Siddons, George Anne

Bellamy, and Dorothy Jordan all used male birth attendants. The same physicians assigned to the royal family, in fact, attended Siddons and Jordan. Performances of social class surrounding birth placed celebrity actresses on a level with prominent aristocratic and royal women, which in turn emphasized their value as women and as performers.

Mrs. Siddons could afford to hire the Queen’s accoucheur; the Queen’s accoucheur agreed to attend this prominent actress; both parties benefitted, Siddons was worth his attention (and worth the salary that allowed her to pay for his attention), and he was worth hers.

In “The Ceremony of Childbirth and its Interpretation,” Adrian Wilson reorients his previous understanding of seventeenth-century childbirth rituals to incorporate the work of Natalie Zemon Davis, who emphasizes the rituals as part of women’s community-making. This reorientation prompts Wilson to assert that childbirthing rituals

of the seventeenth century, many of which continued into the eighteenth, were

“constructed and maintained by women because it was in the interests of women; and it represented a successful form of women’s resistance to patriarchal authority” (87-88, emphasis his). These rituals rewarded women’s reproductive labor with a designated recovery period during which they might be freed from daily physical labor, as well as their husbands’ assertion of conjugal rights. The large, omnipresent female community surrounding the mother helped to reinforce the social expectation of rest and recovery.

Such rituals of female-centered community led by a female midwife, we can speculate, would be engaged in by the earlier actresses in this study: Susanna Mountfort

Verbruggen, Anne Oldfield, Susannah Cibber, and Hannah Pritchard. By the 1750s, however, George Anne Bellamy was using male accoucheurs, and shortly after this, more men began to enter the birth chamber, both as medical professionals and as supporters and observers. The shift taking place in this gendered space, Judith Schneid Lewis argues, prompted a turn away from ritual.

As birth was de-ritualized, Lewis argues, an inconsistent but discernable move to incorporate childbirth into daily life as much as possible arose. Birth began to be seen as the beginning of lifelong motherhood to the child, and less as simply the completion of a marital duty or social rite. Both this shift, and the sheer amount of time women spent “in the family way” encouraged women to remain socially active almost until the moment of labor. It also encouraged motherhood and childrearing to become a central concern of family life. As conceptions of women’s inherent sexuality also changed, the meaning of the pregnant body shifted, becoming a signifier of coming motherhood, and perhaps mitigating associations with past sexual activity. This is crucial in understanding how

actresses, or their supporters or detractors, might narrate the conditions around the pregnant body to valorize or condemn the actress.

Despite Lewis’ argument about de-ritualization, however, for much of the latter half of the eighteenth century wealthy families were still setting up a designated household in London for the birth. Like the use of a male accoucheur, a London birth came with performances of social class. Laying straw outside the home of the parturient woman and announcing the sex of the child with colored ribbons on door knockers, popular rituals between the 1760s and late 1780s, called attention to what was ostensibly a private event, becoming a public performance of social class and economic power. Both

Sarah Siddons, in London in 1785, and Dorothy Jordan, in Edinburgh in 1787, reportedly engaged in these rituals, aligning them with members of the aristocratic community.

Performances of social class surrounding birth continued through the lying-in period and the baptism of the child. After four to six weeks of confinement, the elite women in

Lewis’ study returned to regular life, usually coinciding with the child’s baptism.11

Siddons and Jordan also adhered to this schedule during their pregnancies in London, furthering associations between themselves and elite women, and showcasing the economic resources that enabled them to temporarily suspend their careers.

Royalty and the Aristocracy

Queen: Lady Townsend came to see me this evening. King: Yes? Queen: Wanted to know if she could sit during the drawing room.

11 This was quite a change and by no means widely practiced, as baptism had formerly taken place quite shortly after birth. In cases when the infant seemed sickly, of course, the baptism might still take place immediately, or only a few days, after birth. The Pritchards baptized Hannah Mary four days after Mrs. Pritchard last appeared at Drury Lane, signaling a swift baptism in the first half of the century (1739). In 1794, though, Siddons arranged Ceclia’s baptism for about two weeks after her birth on 25 July (10 August). 29

King: Sit—what on earth for? Queen: She is about to give birth. King: So? You gave birth fifteen times… If everybody who is having a child starts sitting the next thing it’ll be everybody with gout, and before long the place’ll look like a Turkish harem, what, what. —Alan Bennett, The Madness of George III (1992) 10

The position and behavior of eighteenth-century British royal families may appear indirectly tied to this study. As Judith Schneid Lewis points out, however, “The ultimate arbiter of morality during this century [1760-1860] was the royal court” (125). More than this, royal family members and the aristocracy clearly set trends for the behavior during pregnancy and performances of good mothering.

Royal pregnancies reveal the entire gambit of fears and hopes that might surround a pregnant body. Fears of a Catholic succession and the ambitions of James II’s daughters, Mary and Anne, lead rumors that Mary of Modena was faking her pregnancy in 1688. Ladies of the court with access to the royal body were particularly good witnesses to the unlikelihood that she was truly pregnant—the Earl of Danby reported to

William of Orange that Mary of Modena’s ladies in waiting had assured him “that the

Queenes great belly seemes to grow faster than they have observd their own to do,” so she was probably not really pregnant. Princess Anne, meanwhile, thought that Mary was

“too healthy” to be pregnant (Barclay). Each of these observations relied on the other women’s personal experiences, as there was no consistent standard for what a healthy pregnancy looked or felt like at the time. Mary of Modena’s body, like the bodies of

Mary I and others before her, highlighted the unknowability of pregnancy—until a child was born, there was no definitive way of knowing that a woman was with child, even if she displayed all the expected physical symptoms. One thing that visibly pregnant

actresses offered the public was sustained access to the pregnant body. For women, these bodies might serve as a point of comparison with their own experiences; for men, they offered at least some access to the process of physical, external change during pregnancy beyond what might be observable in their private homes.

Royal reproductive bodies were much more abstracted than those of pregnant performers. Few people would ever have direct physical or visual access to these royal bodies, though they might be very aware of their existence through public prayers and printed matter. Pregnant royal bodies also encode more specific and arguably more important meaning than the pregnant bodies of actresses: dynasty, inheritance, and national stability, for example, rather than sexual activity or stable domesticity. It was not until George III and Queen Charlotte that dynasty and domesticity were successfully and wholly linked together in the bodies of the royal couple. William and Mary were clearly barren when they gained the throne in 1688. Princess Anne, their successor, had no trouble getting pregnant: she was pregnant seventeen times in seventeen years, but only five of her children were born alive. Of the five, only one, William, lived past infancy and he died at age eleven in 1700, virtually ensuring a Hanoverian succession. Neither

George I or George II were particularly interested in family life, and both preferred

Hanover to London. During one of George II’s many absences, a note was pinned to the gates of St. James’ Palace:

Lost or strayed out of this house, a man who has left a wife and six children on the parish; whoever will give any tidings of him to the churchwardens of St James’s Parish, so that he may be got again, shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward. N.B. This reward will not be increased, nobody judging him to be worth a crown. (qtd Van der Kiste 150).

The note suggested that George was no better than a common man who abandoned his wife and children, and consequently unworthy of being king. After Frederick, the Prince of Wales died unexpectedly in 1751, George III inherited the throne directly from his grandfather in 1760. For the first time in over a century, Britain had a young monarch who married while on the throne and successfully reproduced. George III and his queen,

Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, produced fifteen healthy children, nearly all of who survived infancy and grew to be healthy adults.12 Despite the myriad social problems during George III’s reign, questions of the order of succession were not among them.

It was not merely the fecundity of George and Charlotte’s union that marked a change in the direction of the monarchy, but the image of English domesticity that went with it. Unlike his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, George III had been born in

England. His marriage involved no divorces, mistresses, or domestic scandals until

George’s first acute attack of porphyria in late 1788. Even then, the attack was short and the public celebrations in April of 1789 presented the public with the image of a restored and happy domestic unit.13 Despite military failures and Regency crises, “farmer George” largely succeeded in presenting himself as a father figure to the country, one to whom loyalty was owed regardless of political affiliation:

The glare of the press meant that monarchy was never beyond criticism. However, the fact that by the end of the 1780s Charlotte and the princesses

12 George IV (1762–1830), Frederick, afterwards duke of York (1763–1827), and William, duke of Clarence, eventually William IV (1765–1837), Charlotte (1766–1828), Edward (1767–1820), Augusta (1768–1840), Elizabeth (1770–1840), Ernest Augustus (1771–1851), Augustus Frederick (1773–1843), Adolphus Frederick (1774–1850), Mary (1776–1857), Sophia (1777–1848), Octavius (1779–1783), Alfred (1780–1782), and Amelia (1783–1810). 13 A disease that causes the overproduction and build up of porphyrins in the body. Depending on type and severity, it can have acute neurological symptoms. The “madness” of George III was the result of his disease. He had his first severe attack in 1788 but recovered. More frequent attacks in later life led to the Regency period (1811-1820), when the Prince of Wales was given control of the country because George III was declared unfit to rule. 32

almost always accompanied the king on visits and at state occasions helped provide supporters of the monarchy with an image of apparently unimpeachable domestic probity. (Cannon)

Charlotte crafted her identity as queen around her procreative success, emphasized in many of her portraits. She used male accoucheurs, and maintained an active social and political life during her many pregnancies:

With Ernest Augustus, the eighth child, we find the Queen…attending the King’s birthday ball at night and being delivered at 4:45 a.m. the following morning. So quick was her eleventh confinement that, in her own words, ‘I was taken ill and delivered within fifteen minutes.’ (Dewhurst 93)

Scores of other women followed her example, including Siddons and Jordan. Not only did they remain publicly active during pregnancy, use male accoucheurs, and engage in aristocratic birth rituals, they also allowed a level of public access to their maternity not dissimilar to that of the queen. Private information about their families and the health of their children was reported in the press, especially when it caused disruptions to their careers. In both women’s cases, paintings of their children, or them with their children, displayed at the royal society or in artists’ studios, provided an additional forum for public performances of their maternity.

Female celebrities, on and off stage, tested and helped define social norms, including those surrounding pregnancy and birth. While the Queen might set a trend, the aristocracy made it available for wider emulation. It was also in the aristocracy that debates about breastfeeding were most prominent, becoming closely tied to concepts of the best and most natural ways to mother. Celebrity stage actresses, like aristocratic women, merged public and private by maintaining a recognizable domestic ideal of

femininity while actively participating in the creation and perpetuation of their own celebrity. Drawing on conceptions of good mothering and good womanhood enabled celebrity performers to attain both wealth and respect.

1.1.2 THE ACTRESS ON STAGE: THEATRICAL CELEBRITIES

“the private Character of an Actor, will always, more or less, affect his Publick Performance…I have seen the most tender Sentiment of Love, in Tragedy, create Laughter, instead of Compassion, when it has been applicable to the real Engagements of the Person, that uttered it. I have known good Parts thrown up, from a humble Consciousness, that something in them, might put an Audience in mind of—what was rather wish’d might be forgotten: Those remarkable Words of Evadne, in the Maid’s Tragedy-----A Maidenhead, Amintor, at my Years?—have sometimes been a much stronger Jest, for being a true one.” —Colley Cibber, Apology… (1740), 145

“I remember a virtuous Actress (or one reputed so) repeating two Lines in King Lear, at her Exit in the Third Act, Arm’d in my Virgin Innocence I’ll fly, My Royal Father to relieve, or die, Receive a Plaudit from the Audience, more as a Reward for her reputable Character, than, perhaps, her Acting claim’d; when a different Actress in the same Part, more fam’d for her Stage-Performance than the other, at the Words Virgin Innocence, has created a Horse-laugh…and the Scene of generous Pity and Compassion at the Close turn’d to Ridicule. Here the Audience are disconcerted, and the Reality of the Subject before them loses much of its Force…” —William Chetwood, A General History… (1749), 28

Like the idea of separate spheres or the diminishment of women’s economic labor, work on professional actresses in the long eighteenth century tends to adhere to or be heavily informed by notions of a shift from the actress as whore, to the actress as artist.14 The narrative tells us that, in exposing her body for visual consumption in exchange for remuneration, the actress’ body implied availability for physical/sexual

14See for example, Kimberly Crouch, “The Public Life of Actresses: Prostitutes or Ladies?”; Felicity Nussbaum, Rival Queens; and Shearer West, “Body Connoisseurship” in Notorious Muse. 34

consumption in exchange for compensation in the form of gifts, money, and/or patronage.

As the position of actresses and theatre professionals generally attained a greater social acceptance and respectability throughout the long eighteenth century, women were able to move away from this automatic association.15

Recent work focused on celebrity provides a much more nuanced view of the ways women on stage were perceived. It has also emphasized the strategies by which performers could manipulate audience perception through the creation of public personas.

To create celebrity personas, women wrote new stories and new identities from the edge of the stage. These personas could range from flirtatious to regal to joyful innocence, but typically related to the “line of business” the woman performed in the theatre. The stage facilitated the creation of these personas in several ways: when women spoke “as themselves” in epilogues and addresses to the audience; when the performance of a fictional role was endowed with the power to reveal the “real” woman behind the fiction; and through the circulation of personal information about the women. This information could include gossip or scandal, but also mundane details about changing diapers

(Dorothy Jordan) or doing laundry (Sarah Siddons) that served to humanize the women— a sort of eighteenth-century equivalent of US Weekly’s “Stars: They’re just like us!” photo spreads in which famous people buy groceries and walk their dogs.

Some key terms coming out of eighteenth-century celebrity studies that I will use are Joseph Roach’s “public intimacy,” and Felicity Nussbaum’s related idea of the

15 Scholars disagree about when exactly this automatic association began to break down, but generally agree that by the end of the century, when Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan were performing, women in theatre could be viewed as both professional artists and as respectable individuals in private life. Robyn Aselon dates this trend to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, while Crouch dates it from 1725; Gill Perry and Kristina Straub name the end of the eighteenth century as a time by which the separation was palpable. 35

“interiority effect.” Nussbaum sums up Roach’s concept as “performing within the public realm with the express intent to expose private matters and to generate affect around one’s own person in order to kindle celebrity” (Rival Queens 44). Onstage, audiences invest in the illusion that they can see the real person behind the fictional performance, driving a belief in a correlation between character and performer. Savvy celebrities consciously manipulate this tendency to their advantage, as when Sarah Siddons starred with her young son Henry in a play about a self-sacrificing mother, implying there was no distinction between her fictional portrayal of maternal devotion and her private life.

Nussbaum’s “interiority effect” reflects the created persona of the celebrity back on to fictional performance, potentially enabling a gap to open between actress and role.

Nussbaum’s argument challenges Lisa Freeman’s assertion that any agency women gained when admitted to the stage was curtailed through the passive female characters they portrayed. When reading performance, not only the fictive character, but the actual woman, was available for evaluation and emulation. While the two might merge in some moments, in others the actress could comment on the character they played (as Brecht so wished his performers to do) through gesture and intonation. They might even provide such commentary simply by being “themselves” on stage, bringing their celebrity personas into juxtaposition with the character. Nussbaum’s ultimate argument is that women on stage offered an alternative model of subjectivity to that created through reading literature. This subjectivity incorporated ideas about sensibility, domesticity, and motherhood. Actresses’ on and offstage performances of these ideals can be read in relation to each other in just the way personality might be read against a fictional performance.

Celebrity, then, works both ways: a performer can use their repertoire to help foster a desired public image; once done, that image is available to be read in support of or against future performances, onstage or off. Roach suggests that any time an audience watches a celebrity there is a constant oscillation between the fictional world and our knowledge of the celebrity as a person. The quotations from Cibber and Chetwood above showcase this oscillation. They suggest that Cordelia’s claim to “virgin innocence” was alternately bolstered or undermined by the audience’s understanding of the performer’s private life, while Evadne’s comment became more comic because the audience recognized that it applied equally to the character and to the actress.

What Roach, Nussbaum, and others find as the core of celebrity is a drive to feel intimacy with a figure who none the less remains unknowable. David Marshall describes celebrities as “the production locale for an elaborate discourse on the individual and individuality that is organized around the will to uncover a hidden truth.” (4) This urge to

“uncover” the performing celebrity leads to a desire for private information and a tendency to read fiction as reality. Felicity Nussbaum’s work finds the same tendency:

“the woman player acting on stage joined the virtual body of the character she represented with her actual body as a person. These dual bodies were not easily separated” (44). Separated no, in tension, yes. In Theatre Audiences (1997) Susan

Bennett usefully draws on Karen Gaylord’s concept of “double consciousness” to refer to the audience’s (and actors’) ability to be simultaneously aware of multiple “frames,” such as the actor/character body, or the fiction of the play/reality of theatre. As we will see, pregnancy could impact the relationship between those frames in a variety of ways.

Much work has emphasized celebrity’s two-sided nature. Joseph Roach calls the strengths of the individual (Sarah Siddons’s voice, Susannah Cibber’s figure) charismata, and the vulnerabilities of the individual (age, infirmity) stigmata. Balance is required to maintain celebrity status, and it can be lost if stigmata overwhelms charismata. New information about the celebrity and/or their body can disrupt the stability of the identity, becoming a form of stigmata: “The moving signifier of the celebrity is spawned by new configurations of information known about the celebrity’s professional life and personal life. New temporary gestalts are formed concerning the celebrity” (68). New information could become a crisis moment for actors and actresses. Such crises include the revelation of Dorothy Jordan’s relationship with the Duke of Clarence, or any number of cases in which audiences forced a performer to apologize for missing performances or in some other way violating the unwritten rules of the patron/performer relationship.

It is these unwritten rules that Kristina Straub explores in Sexual Suspects:

Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology (1992):

Perhaps no eighteenth-century profession was as subject to public monitoring as acting…The curiosity of eighteenth-century ‘fans’ is not dissimilar to that of their twentieth-century counterparts…Usually, however, the desire to know the player personally focuses specifically on his or her sexuality. (12-13)

Straub argues that interest in performers’ sexuality made it increasingly necessary for women or their biographers to reframe, or domesticate, their sexual transgressions.

Increasingly, this domestication involved emphasizing the actress’ status as a mother as a kind of antidote to her sexual transgressions. Though Straub does not address pregnancy directly, the visible maternal body also became a powerful tool for scripting and re- scripting celebrity identity.

Lesley Ferris’ Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre (1990) details another way audiences might exercise control over the celebrity, one that uses conflations of fiction and reality to deny women’s creative agency. These conflations suggested that women could only ever be themselves on stage, and hence no art or craft lay behind their performances. Audiences used this conflation to exert a measure of control—the actress is herself only so far as the audience is willing to imagine her as a self, and their imagining is tied to her public display. Ferris’ work, when combined with that of

Nussbaum, provides a helpful frame for considering the significance of assumed identity, both in terms of an onstage fictional role and offstage celebrity. Where Nussbaum suggests women exercised some agency in the creation of celebrity personas, Ferris suggests that the audience’s conflation of actress and character worked to negate the perception of creative agency. Reading both together allows for an interrogation of the strategies behind, and limits of female creative agency in the long eighteenth century, specifically focused in this project on the pregnant body. Dorothy Jordan’s career will provide a particularly fruitful exploration of these issues.

Pregnancy both causes the body to physically change and reveals, by virtue of that change, something of the private life of the actress. The physical changes are drastic but temporary, while implications about sexual activity and potential availability could have more permanent consequences depending on how those implications converged or conflicted with previous understandings of the woman’s private circumstances.

Ultimately, I will show that pregnancy is capable of being a stigmatic or charismatic force depending on context, and that when celebrity actresses learned to harness pregnancy’s charismatic force, it furthered their careers.

1.1.3 VERISIMILITUDE, ACTING STYLES, AND THE BODY ON STAGE

The long eighteenth century did not have the strictest standards of verisimilitude as we understand it, but neither did it disregard verisimilitude entirely. Aaron and John

Hill, unrelated but both theatrical critics, emphasized physical verisimilitude in performing, with John charging actors to “never select a character to appear in, which is remarkable for any particular striking singularity which is not in himself” (228). Such

“remarkable” differences would interfere with the audience’s investment in the illusion.

Bodily verisimilitude depended largely on an actor’s natural appearance, though wigs and costuming could help. Critics and commentators were clear about the need for men and women to be physically attractive, especially women. There was also a concern for overall aesthetics—John Hill noted that Spranger Barry and Mrs. Cibber looked very well together as Romeo and Juliet, whereas audiences would “think Juliet mad” to profess a passion for the actor Mr. Arthur, presumably less attractive than stud-muffin

Spranger Barry (ibid 210-11).

Despite these considerations, however, theatrical customs such as ownership of parts (which could extend for an entire career—forty or more years), made some disjunction between actor body and character body not uncommon. In practice, therefore, it was fortunate that there were ways for performers to overcome the physical dissimilarities between themselves and the parts they played. Charles Churchill’s Rosciad declared:

when perfections of the mind break forth… When the pure genuine flame, by Nature taught, Springs into Sense, and ev’ry action’s Thought; Before such merit, all objections fly; PRITCHARD’s genteel, and GARRICK six feet high. (23)

David Garrick managed Drury Lane while also being a principal performer for nearly thirty years (1747-1776). He had a profound impact on acting styles, his powerfully emotive performances overcoming physical attributes that were at first a form of stigmata. He was famous for lover characters such as Benedick and Romeo, despite the fact that, as Anne Donnellan wrote to Elizabeth Montague: “he looks the part of the Old

Testy Madman better than the Hero” (17 November 1747). Chapter Three will show how

Hannah Pritchard’s vocal performances contributed to overcoming the physical liability of her weight gain in later life.

In both Pritchard and Garrick’s case, the intellectual understanding of their characters and ability to correctly convey emotion enabled them to overcome the physical. Changing understandings of how emotion was created and transmitted also impacted acting style and audience response, the central argument of The Player’s

Passion (1985). At mid-century, experiments proving the innate responsiveness of dead flesh suggested that physical response existed separately from the soul. “Sensibility” became a discourse that explained emotional response as “nervous,” and sensitivity to stimuli was valued. Emotional displays in the audience and on stage became part of theatrical performance—sensibility, like electricity, could move outward from the performer to the sensitive bodies of the audience and cause tears, fainting, and hysterics as well as joy and laughter. Aaron Hill prophesied:

The Time shall come—(nor far the destin’d Day!) When Soul-touch’d Actors shall do more, than PLAY: When Passion, flaming, from th’asserted Stage, Shall to taught Greatness fire a feeling Age: Tides of strong Sentiment sublimely roll, Deep’ning the dry Disgraces of the Soul: (1746:8)

The fire of actors’ passions had the potential to improve the emotional capacity of its audience and thereby bring human society into a new and better age. The idea of enraptured audience places primacy on the emotional experience of the performance, but also suggests a greater investment in stage fiction that may require greater attention to the body.

The Body in Repertoire

I will argue that pregnancy has the capacity to create narrative independently of a woman’s celebrity persona, or a stage fiction she is enacting, though it often intersected with one or both. My research suggests that there were three possible ways audiences might read the pregnant body in relation to fictional character: 1. the body could be ignored in favor of the fictional character’s, 2. the body could disrupt or override the fictional character’s, or 3. the actress’ body could be conflated with that of the fictional character. The genre of a performance, the actress’ known line of business, and her cultivated celebrity persona influenced these readings.

In the interest of setting possible boundaries for the study of specific actresses, it is useful to understand what about a part might make it more or less likely that an audience can ignore a performer’s pregnant body. One large consideration, of course, is genre. In her excellent study of early English actresses, Elizabeth Howe speaks to the importance of genre in defining audience expectations regarding casting: comedy, which was meant to be drawn from everyday life, might lead the audience to have greater expectations about consonance between an actress’ reputation and the character she played, whereas tragedy’s heightened nature could allow greater leeway. As her example,

she compares the comic and tragic repertoires of Elizabeth Barry. In comedy, Barry tended to play lascivious wives and mistresses that audiences would associate with her private life, whereas in tragedy, Barry often played wronged noblewomen and faithful wives. Howe argues that tragedy allowed Barry to overcome her reputation in ways comedy did not.

Virginal characters in comedy or tragedy obviously present the largest disjunction between actor body and character body. Commentary on the character’s purity or innocence could interfere with the audience’s ability to ignore the body as this language specifically calls attention to the presumed sexual integrity of the character body.

Chetwood’s story about the “horse-laugh” when an actress referred to her “virgin innocence” is one example when the language of the play moved the fictional and actual bodies into a humorous and textually inappropriate juxtaposition.

In some cases, however, the disjunction between fiction and reality may in fact make it easier to ignore the pregnant body. When Sarah Siddons played Rosalind while heavily pregnant, an observer noted her condition but separated it entirely from his account of her performance. Years later, George III had Siddons play a nun by royal command when eight months pregnant—clearly evincing no concern about her body’s relationship to the role. Of course, the kind of virginal character also makes a difference.

A pregnant woman playing an older virgin who is comically lusty or prudish, for example, might find that her body heightens the comedy if audiences conflate the two, as may have been the case for Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen.

Most wife characters in comedy or tragedy could be pregnant in the world of the play even if they are not explicitly pregnant in the text. In these cases, audiences might

read the pregnancy as existing within the fiction or not as they chose. As with virginity, however, specific references to a lack of children, a very recent wedding date, impotence, or other special circumstance that belies the possibility of pregnancy, might prompt an audience to find the body temporarily disruptive. In comedy, this might make for added humor (with attendant negative or positive results depending on the story), in tragedy, it might distract. Pregnancy in pathetic comedies such as Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife or

Congreve’s The Way of the World, which showcase a wife unhappy in her marriage, may become quite loaded, raising questions of infidelity and/or heightening audience sympathy for the character mistreated by her husband.

Wives in tragedy are frequently widows or newlyweds. In the former case, pregnancy can heighten pathos by implying their plight is particularly dire, especially in stories emphasizing the difficulty of providing for their remaining family. Widows who have been widows for a significant period of time raise questions of chastity, but unless the play makes a specific issue out of her potential sexual activity, the body can be ignored. Wives with still-living husbands raise a new set of questions if an actress is pregnant: Monimia in The Orphan dies the day after her wedding, and Desdemona and

Othello are married for less than a week when they die. Socially, though, premarital sex was not uncommon, and in general couples that married before the birth of their first child were not ostracized. In a case like Othello, when a husband murders his wife after suspecting her of infidelity, anxieties around the opacity of the pregnant body, and specifically the unknowability of paternity, might be brought to the fore in audiences’ minds.

Tragic wives who could easily be pregnant in the world of the play (have been married some time, are not explicitly said to be childless or barren), are an interesting subset. Depending on the text, a pregnant performer’s body can add or change much of the play (Lady Macbeth, for example, explored in Chapter Four). The suicide or madness of a character, common ends for many fictional wives, might raise questions about infanticide and maternal care entirely independent of the play’s text, demonstrating the narrative potential of these bodies.

16 1.1.4 CHANGING FASHIONS AND THE VISIBLE BODY

A clear issue to address when considering pregnancy on stage is how fashions in the period impacted pregnancy’s visibility. Over the course of the century, fashions

evolved rather drastically. The

century began with a silhouette of

relatively narrow skirts and a cone-

shaped torso, and expanded

drastically in the 1740s with the

use of hoops and panniers to create

width at the hips. After 1780, an

“s-shaped” figure emphasized the Figure 1 Isaac Cruikshank, "The Cestina Warehouse, or Belly Piece Shop" (1793). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. breasts, a narrow waist, and a padded derriere. By 1795 neoclassical styles and columnar or natural shapes predominated. Some women stopped wearing stays, and fabrics became thinner and

16 I am indebted for this section on evolving clothing styles to the research of Linda Baumgarten, especially What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America (2002). 45

lighter. Just prior to this change, a short-lived fad in 1793 had women who were not pregnant wearing cork bellies under evolving neoclassical gowns in order to appear pregnant. In the cartoon, “The Cestina Warehouse” (1793), women select from padding representing each month of pregnancy; the smaller pads are tied at the waist below the stays of the woman on the left, while the woman on the right in the back wears a bigger piece that begins immediately below her bosom (Figure 1).

In the course of the century, there was rarely a decade when women were not using stays, hoops, panniers, and/or cork or cloth padding alone or in combination to create a fashionable shape. During pregnancy, most women wore their existing clothing, making alterations as needed to accommodate their changing bodies. In a 1774 cartoon,

“The Man of Business” a

man’s wife appears to be

asking him to confront a bevy

of women he has impregnated.

Each woman wears the basic

outfit of the day, including

stays of some kind, with the

Figure 2 “The Man of Business” (1774). addition of scarves or aprons, Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT. though they do little to hide their condition (Figure 2). Very few designated maternity garments existed, but surviving artifacts include stays that laced at the sides and were easier to adjust around a growing belly, and gowns with slits or flaps might be used for nursing mothers. During one of her

pregnancies (sometime between mid-1770s and 1780s), Elizabeth Leathes wrote to thank her parents for securing her a larger pair of stays:

[they] have relieved me from a deal of pain which I suffered by wearing the others. I suppose you will be surpris’d to find that I am so much increased in size since my return from Town, as to be obliged to leave them open three inches behind notwithstanding I let them out as much as they will allow on each side. This makes me apprehensive that I shall be confined sooner than I first expected. (qtd Joanne Bailey, “‘Breeding’ a ‘little stranger’”)

Leathes’ stays lace at the sides and at the back, allowing for further expansion as well as making them functional for post-partum wear. Elizabeth’s letter also shows that she is calculating her due date by the expansion of her stays—her husband also used her size, and attendant sound effects, as the primary indicator of her progress. In another letter, he jovially announced that, “Betsey is arrived as a certain period called a Grunter which as the Old Women term is the certain forerunner of a Groaning” (qtd ibid).

On stage, determining exact costuming for a certain production or role is often difficult, as contemporaneous paintings and engravings of actresses in character cannot be relied for accuracy. Costume was to some degree conventionalized: black velvet for queens and wives was a generally accepted trope; flashier, brighter clothing was acceptable for young virginal characters and comedy. An increase in portraiture in the last quarter of the century seems to reflect at least a more personal approach to style and costume, if not necessarily a literal stage to canvas depiction. For example, William

Henry Harlowe’s paintings of Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth from the 1800s reflect the general description of costume recorded in newspaper accounts, and most certainly the

empire-waist style Siddons preferred for its ease of movement.17 An earlier painting of

Kemble and Siddons as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth by Thomas Beach, however, shows her in a van Dyke dress with lace points and a profusion of teased and curled hair.

Neither Siddons nor Kemble liked the painting, and the style in which she is painted reflected the current vogue for van Dyke fashion in painting and had little to do with the wearable fashions of the time. Around this same time, Gainsborough did a series of paintings inspired by Dutch style of the last century, including his Blue Boy. These visual resources are compelling but, like any other source, are most useful in concert with other evidence.

1.2.1 LONDON THEATRE HISTORY, 1689-1800

As Robert Hume notes, there is an essential difference between the “dearth” of evidence in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century theatre history, and the

“plentitude” of evidence available by the end of the eighteenth century (Hume, “Theatre

History…” 34). The former requires extrapolation from limited evidence—George Anne

Bellamy is the only direct source for Sarah Ward’s 1748 pregnancy, for example; the latter requires us to “reduce bewildering floods of detail to compassable scale and intelligibility” (ibid). We have a far from clear picture of the London theatrical repertories until after 1700, for example. In The London Stage 1660-1800, Part One

(1660-1700), the editor provides the following comments on the 1689-1690 season from

Langhans “New Restoration Theatre Accounts:”

17 Siddons is depicted in a long, flowing white dress with a wimple in the sleepwalking scene and in a gown of black velvet in the letter scene. When sitting for Joshua Reynolds in the 1780s, she wrote that he approved her dislike of stays; later, she remarked on the inappropriateness of light fabrics in tragedy (see Ribeiro). 48

Between 13 May and 7 December 1689 the company acted on 91 days. It then played regularly through 8 Feb. 1689/90, and acted on 83 days (out of a possible 84) between 10 Feb. and 7 June, on 8 days from 13 June through 4 July 1690. (1:376)

For these approximately 222 performing days (182 listed plus 40-odd more from 7

December to 8 February), we have records of only eighteen performances by the United

Company. Added to these are twenty-three more plays that editor William van Lennep suggests might have been revived during the season based on publication dates of new print editions. Milhous and Hume’s “Dating Plays from Publication Data 1660-1700”

(1974) provides helpful revisions to standard lapses between performance and publication used in The London Stage 1660-1800, part one, and therefore offers new performance dates for some plays. Even so, without specific evidence from printed texts, we often do not know how long the play ran, and rarely have any information about repeat performances later in the season. Revivals are another challenge: we rarely know how successful they were, or on what kind of schedule they might be performed. We are, then, woefully short of a complete understanding of theatrical repertoire and casting for the historical moment at which this project begins.

Post-1700 repertory information becomes much more complete as first Drury

Lane and then other houses begin to advertise regularly in the Daily Courant. By about

1705, we have a nearly-complete repertoire for London’s major theatres. It is not until the latter half of the century, however, that detailed newspaper accounts of performance become regular features of London papers. Though these sources are far from being non- partisan, the wealth of perspectives offered by the end of the century enables a much

more balanced view of women, their performances, and their pregnancies, than the isolated references dominant in the first two thirds of the century.

Hume calls eighteenth-century theatre history a “vivid story of ongoing competition, sometimes fierce, even destructive competition” (“Theatre History” 16).

When John Rich started a rumor to steal Hannah Pritchard from David Garrick, or

Frances Abingdon thought to capitalize on Siddons’s absence, or the balance of power between the houses could be altered by the decision of a single performer, pregnancy was a high stakes situation. Managers had to maximize profits while minimizing health risks to their star performers, plan for alternate ways of bringing in audiences during a lying-in, and be prepared for the unpredictability of exactly when a birth might take place.

Chapters Three and Four provide some insight into the ways managers handled pregnancy within the confines of the repertory system.

1.2.2 THE LICENSING ACT, SENSIBILITY, AND CHANGING REPERTOIRES AT MID-CENTURY

Audience tastes changed in response to performers but also to playwrights who wrote skillfully for them. Colley Cibber’s entrée into playwriting is often considered the advent of more sentimental than satiric comedy. Love’s Last Shift, Cibber’s 1696 comedy, appealed to Restoration traditions of farcical sexual exploits, but ended the play with a sentimental repentance and reconciliation scene between Loveless, the unworthy husband, and Amanda, his virtuous and perseverant wife. Clearly there was no overnight change, but Cibber’s play contains important elements of sentimental comedy, which held a place in the repertoire for much of the century.

Governmental pressures also shaped repertory. In 1737, Walpole’s government passed the Licensing Act, which remained in place until the 1960s. The Act outlawed all 50

non-patent theatres and required that new plays be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for approval before performance. Theatres that failed to do this were subject to hefty fines and could have their licenses to perform permanently revoked. The Act also strengthened the vagrancy laws that had plagued theatre personnel for the previous two centuries: those not attached to a licensed house could be arrested for attempting to perform.18 The

Licensing Act is often seen as a hallmark of political and moral censorship and a harsh punishment meted out to theatres and playwrights who had dared to satirize Walpole and his government on stage in the preceding decade. While the Act certainly allowed the

Lord Chamberlain to keep works in the vein of Henry Fielding’s “Aristophanic” satire

(which represented recognizable public figures in propia persona) off the stage, Matthew

J. Kinservik traces its much broader and deeper influences.

Drawing on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Kinservik aims to understand the disciplinary effects of the Licensing Act as productive—that is, as encouraging

“sympathetic” satire while discouraging other forms. “Sympathetic” satire, “does not single out malefactors for the mass of spectators to scorn; instead, it encourages a process of sympathetic identification with the wrongdoer that individualizes each spectator as the object of satiric discipline” (Kinservik 126). The process of identification with character was one encouraged by a larger cultural shift at mid-century, the increasing emphasis on

“sensibility” as a noble virtue. The timing of the shift holds particular importance for actresses at mid-century: Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, and George Anne Bellamy.

Janet Todd’s Sensibility (1986) traces the development of a “cult of sensibility,”

(4) which infused art and literature from the 1740s to the 1770s: “‘Sensibility’…little

18 Judith Milhous’ observations on the actor’s rebellion of 1743 illustrate the damage this provision of the Licensing Act did to actors’ ability to bargain. 51

used before the mid-eighteenth century…came to denote the faculty of feeling, the capacity for extremely refined emotion and a quickness to display compassion for suffering” (7). This cult of sensibility encouraged open displays of emotion from both sexes and emphasized pathos in fiction as the way to inspire these emotions. In John

Hill’s The Actor, he lists sensibility, along with understanding, as the two essential qualities for a star actor, for the actor must feel the emotions he or she seeks to convey before they can transmit them to the audience:

By working up his own imagination to the scene he is to play, he commands also ours, and we are affected with him: not equally, but more strongly. The contagion is like that of many diseases, which shew themselves more powerfully in those who receive them, than in the person who has communicated the infection. (192)

The Licensing Act encouraged playwrights to find new avenues for their satire and comedy at a time when the “sentimental impulse” (Todd 3) was increasingly important to stage representation.

Over time, however, “sympathetic” plays, the cult of sensibility, and a renewed emphasis on theatre’s obligation to provide moral instruction, altered audience expectations of drama by creating new standards for successful performances. By limiting the tide of new plays entering the repertoire for the first few years of its existence, the Act refocused audience attention on the actor. With both patent theatres relying heavily on older plays with which the audience was already familiar, attention shifted from playwrights and their work to the actor’s craft. Critical and popular texts proposing theories of acting,

[began] to assert that the performer must possess a ‘sympathetic imagination’ that allowed the actor intuitively to feel and behave as would

the character being represented…to be ‘transformed’ into the character. (Kinservik 107)

The question for my study is this: if the goal was total transformation into the character and complete identification with that character’s “age, condition, and situation” (Hill

225), how did these actresses reconcile their pregnancies with such demands? Did this interest in verisimilitude play into, for example, Susannah Cibber and George Anne

Bellamy’s decisions not to appear on stage while pregnant at certain points in their careers? Cibber and Bellamy benefited greatly from the increasing importance of

“sensibility” in theatrical representation. Cibber especially benefited from these theories as she was known for her deeply pathetic style of tragic acting, which involved weeping, trembling, and blushing, all physical signs of emotion. Both her playing style, and her repertoire, helped to insulate her from the effects of the Licensing Act.

Hannah Pritchard’s repertoire at the time of the Licensing Act primarily consisted of second leads in comedy: witty maids and servants, flamboyant wives and shameless manipulators. With few new comedies entering the repertoire, her chances of moving up in the company were restricted, especially as the patent theatres absorbed popular performers from the newly closed unlicensed theatres. Susannah Cibber’s absence from the stage between 1738-1742 because of a public scandal involving an illegitimate pregnancy, helped to create a vacuum in the upper tiers of the company and caused the managers to restructure. By the time Cibber returned to London, Pritchard was playing most of the tragic roles Cibber had been known for, creating the potential for rivalry between the two women.

As new parts decreased, particularly in comedy, actors and managers looked to revivals of plays long out of the London repertoire as opportunities to provide their own interpretation of a part without competing with a fellow actor or actress. Such a focus on interpretation from both actor and audience could operate to tie an actor into a particular

“line” of business, as they were seen as inherently suited to certain types of performance.

Hill cautions young actors to chose their parts carefully so that their line of business compliments their mental and physical strengths. These strengths led to lines of business that, in turn, created the recognizable public personas that helped them maintain celebrity status. When viewed over the course of the century, lines of business also fed into the seriality so integral to celebrity identity. Far from being a matter of individuality, celebrity is a product of “the next” in a series of models—the “transferable title” (Roach

7) of the ‘it’ girl, for example.19 When popular tragedienne Anne Oldfield died in 1730, audiences set about finding her replacement. Jane Johnson and Hannah Pritchard were both seen as potential heirs to Oldfield’s greatness, just as Siddons was eventually seen as

Pritchard’s heir, and Dorothy Jordan one of Kitty Clive’s. The mid-century changes to playing style and repertoire helped to create the star system, which emphasized the interpretation of text over its content, and legible patterns of celebrity.

In all of the repertory changes prompted by the Licensing Act, it was important that actors maintain traditional rights to the roles for which they were known, a practice tested just prior to the passing of the Licensing Act. The “Polly Wars” took place in the

1736-7 season, when a series of publications in newspapers and pamphlets detailed

19 I am indebted to Joseph Roach’s It (2007) for this argument about seriality, but also to Kevin Bourque and his work on courtesan Kitty Fisher. Bourque demonstrates the way Fisher’s image was used, with minor variations, to represent a variety of other courtesans and even aristocratic women. 54

Theophilus Cibber and Charles Fleetwood’s attempts to give the part of Polly in John

Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera to Susannah Cibber, taking it from Kitty Clive. The Beggar’s

Opera would be grandfathered in under the Licensing Act, which only applied to new plays, but the prospect of a dearth of new parts entering the repertoire made retaining as many parts as possible crucial. Each woman had her vocal supporters. Clive’s defended her on the grounds that she “owned” the part; Cibber’s on the grounds that Polly’s pathos made her better suited to Cibber’s natural style, while Clive’s sprightly wit made her more suited for the second lead of Lucy. Though Clive had, in fact, not been a great success as Polly, her skillful press campaign, which emphasized the public’s role in enforcing theatrical tradition and protecting vulnerable performers from unscrupulous managers, succeeded in ensuring she retained the part for many years to come.20 Clive’s success provided a model to other performers who might face similar treatment, while discouraging such behavior from the managers and other performers in the future.21

Susannah Cibber refused to play Ophelia in 1737-38 because the part had been one of

Clive’s the preceding season. After the Polly Wars, she may have anticipated another contest and preferred the £5 fine for refusing a part to another public squabble.

Despite the strong feelings surrounding ownership of parts, actors and actresses might be temporarily replaced in a role during illness or sudden indisposition without any notable objections. George Anne Bellamy replaced Hannah Pritchard as Mrs. Sullen in

The Beaux’ Stratagem in January 1751 during a brief illness, and Pritchard replaced

20 Clive performed the part successfully at first, but the introduction of Miss Norsa as her rival Polly at Covent Garden dominated for the next few years. Clive had, in fact, not played the part at all in the two seasons prior to the Polly Wars. 21 Jane Rogers attempted something similar when Anne Oldfield was given the part of Andromache in The Distrest Mother in 1712, but was unsuccessful. 55

Cibber in The Provok’d Wife and The Stratagem in the spring of 1749. At the beginning of the century, several actresses helped to cover for Anne Oldfield during illness or pregnancy. As the century progressed, however, ownership of parts, particularly in tragedy, could mean that a woman’s absence drastically altered the repertory. When

Sarah Siddons lay-in in 1785, tragedy retired with her.

Part assignments were entirely under the purview of the management. Once a year, however, actors had the chance to lobby for a part they wished to inherit. This chance came during the benefit season, which ran from mid-March to May. At benefit time, an actor could select almost any play and part they wished (including parts held by other members of the company) for their benefit night, which allowed them to take home the box office, less house charges. It was an opportunity to exert some control over repertoire or reach greater prominence in the company; Hannah Pritchard scored a hit with Mrs. Ruth in The Committee at her 1737 benefit, and was given the part permanently in the following season. At the height of her career in the 1740s-60s, Susannah Cibber secured sole and complete control over her repertoire, an unprecedented thing for an actor not sharing in the management. She could refuse parts without penalty, or add comic roles (to which, it was universally agreed, she was quite unsuited) to her repertoire without the management preventing her. Cibber bent her celebrity to its most profitable use: controlling her public image through her onstage performances.

Fiona Ritchie has made a compelling argument that the need for new parts after the Licensing Act was a crucial factor in the Shakespearean revival of 1740-41. Though often depicted as a revival that began with Charles Macklin’s groundbreaking portrayal of Shylock in February 1741, Ritchie shows that The Merchant of Venice was, in fact, the

third in a series of Shakespearean revivals that season to feature Hannah Pritchard and

Kitty Clive as Shakespeare’s cross-dressing heroines. Pritchard and Clive first appeared as Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It and quickly mounted Twelfth Night with Pritchard as Viola and Clive as Olivia. The Merchant of Venice, with Clive as Portia and Pritchard as Nerissa, may be better remembered for Macklin today, but should, in context, be seen as part of a series of Shakespeare revivals to take advantage of cross-dressing parts for popular actresses.

1.2.3 UPHEAVAL AND REVOLUTION AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

In Spectacular Politics (1993), Paula Backscheider argues that the rise of Gothic drama in the 1780s and 1790s as a (perhaps the first) form of mass culture was in direct response to fears about threats to the existing social order. These threats came in myriad forms, from the Gordon Riots and George III’s madness to the events of the French

Revolution and the proliferation of literature advocating for women’s rights. The dramas of the 1790s in particular drew on tropes of tragedy and melodrama and frequently centered on mad or unbalanced authority figures. Backscheider writes,

To some extent, all monarchs provide stability to a nation, and George’s firm adherence to such traditional institutions as the Church of England, the family, and a strong, patriarchal monarchy increased the illusion of security that his people drew from him. His illness…threw the entire nation into distress. (161)

Gothic drama enabled the public to explore and exorcise fears about a monarch whose self, like that of gothic protagonists, was divided and unpredictable. While Gothic drama does not have place in my analysis of Siddons’s and Jordan’s careers, the political condition of the country that prompted its popularity is important.

Of greater direct importance is the domesticating force women exercised in these plays. The women were often passive victims, representing “house, social values, and human relationships,” everything under threat from potential abuses of authority and foreign invasion (228). When Backscheider equates the position of women in gothic drama to the position of women generally, it is against the backdrop of claims that “By this time, women and women writers had learned that their acceptance and even authority—at least what authority they were permitted—depended upon their conforming to a female script” (150-51). This “script” included doing their duty to birth and raise the next generation of English men and women within the confines of legitimate marriage.22

Their adherence to this script is rewarded in gothic drama when the heroine’s virtue triumphs over the protagonist’s sexual aggression and turns male desire instead toward familial and domestic love. The approbation of the audience, like that of mobs on stage, reinforced this script both in the fictional world of the play, as Backscheider notes, but also beyond it as audiences expressed support or censure for individual performers.

Dorothy Jordan’s relationship with the Duke of Clarence followed this narrative as she was increasingly seen as a domesticating influence on the royal prince throughout the

1790s, particularly when they set up house together with their children at the royal estate of Bushy Park.

22 Joanne Bailey’s and Ingrid H. Tague’s work, of course, complicates the assertion that it was only toward the end of the century that women learned to manipulate social expectations for their benefit. 58

1.3 CHAPTER BREAKDOWNS Chapter Two: Susanna Percival Mountfort Verbruggen and Anne Oldfield

Chapter Two begins in 1689, the year after the Glorious Revolution. While most of the country’s leaders were rejecting James II and his newborn son and welcoming the childless William and Mary from the continent, a young comedienne in the United

Company was preparing for the birth of her first child. Susanna Mountfort would have one child a year, always in the spring, from 1689-1693 with her husband, William

Mountfort. The pair acted together in comedy, and William, who was a playwright, wrote several parts for his wife. After his death, Susanna supported their two surviving children alone until her remarriage in 1695 to another actor, John Verbruggen. She died in childbirth in 1703, and many of her parts passed to young Anne Oldfield, another comic beauty. Oldfield became hugely popular in both comedy and tragedy, and had three children during two long-term relationships with political figures. Like Mountfort

Verbruggen, Oldfield was in the position of sole provider for her children in 1712/13 when her lover Arthur Maynwaring died. In both cases, audience knowledge of personal circumstances enabled the women to garner support for their continued careers during pregnancy, and points to larger considerations of the maternal body’s affective possibilities.

Both women’s pregnancies may also have prompted repertory shifts that ultimately benefitted their careers. As Elizabeth Howe has noted, the history of late

Restoration theatre is in some ways the history of the women in theatre generally (90).

The actresses available to playwrights and companies at any given time influenced the kind of parts that were written for them, and hence the kinds of drama popular with 59

audiences. Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen’s particular gifts for grotesque comic parts made those parts popular with authors and audiences in the 1690s. Her death marked a move away from this type of comedy since other actresses did not hold this line of business. Anne Oldfield began as a “fine lady” in comedy, but when fewer new comic parts were being written around 1710, made a successful transition into she-tragedy, where her maternal status played an important part in her career.23

Chapter Three: Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, George Anne Bellamy

Chapter Three attempts to tell a story of pregnancy’s impact on three women and the theatres in which they worked. I explore pregnancy’s impact on each woman individually, as well as collectively. It covers the approximate years 1736-1760, focusing on Susannah Maria Cibber (1714-1766), Hannah Pritchard (1711-1768), and George

Anne Bellamy (c.1727-1788), three celebrity actresses who worked at both Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres in the mid-eighteenth century. In this chapter, I establish each woman’s public persona and line of business in order to discern how pregnancy shaped their repertoire and reputation.

Beginning with Susannah Cibber, I detail the way her pregnant body figured in two trials for criminal conversation in 1738 and 1739, and failed to figure in defenses of her printed after the trials. Upon resuming her career several years later, Cibber used onstage performance to reconstitute the celebrity identity she held before the trials, and the way this necessitated rigid control of not simply her repertoire, but also her body.

23 John Vanbrugh, a major source for new comedy, wrote no new plays after 1705, and George Farquhar had died in 1707. 60

Next, I look at Hannah Pritchard’s life and career, comparing her early pregnancies with her 1750 pregnancy, which came much later in her career after she was an established celebrity, and demonstrate how Susannah Cibber’s absence enabled

Pritchard to establish herself as a leading lady in tragedy in the early 1740s. As a coda, I look briefly at the career of Pritchard’s daughter, Hannah Mary Palmer, who performed with her mother and quarreled with David Garrick over part assignments during a pregnancy.

Finally, I look at George Anne Bellamy’s performances of maternity on stage and in her memoir, An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy (1785). Bellamy’s onstage performances of maternity in the 1750s were popular, but ultimately undermined by claims about her offstage behavior. When considering the Apology, I compare her claims to the way pregnancy impacted the 1753-4 Covent Garden repertoire to what we know of the repertoire from other sources. I also focus on the way her writings showcase the affective possibilities of that body at key moments in her narrative, and aid in her performance of social class.

At the end of each woman’s section, I offer an evaluation of pregnancy’s impact on the patent theatre repertoires of 1749-50, when each actress was pregnant. In this year,

Hannah Pritchard performed a regular season, giving birth in June 1750; Susannah

Cibber was absent, removing to Bath for her pregnancy, and George Anne Bellamy missed half the season, appearing in late January at Covent Garden after giving birth in

December. The problems and challenges of this season offer immediate but unrecognized context to the famous rival Romeo and Juliets of 1750.

Chapters Four and Five: Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan

Chapters Four and Five explore the lives of two remarkably successful and remarkably fertile celebrity performers at the end of the century. One, Sarah Siddons, was a married woman and mother who attained her celebrity with powerful performances in tragedy. The other, Dorothy Jordan, never married but was a mother to fourteen children and attained celebrity with her sprightly and earnest performances in comedy.

In the Siddons chapter, I argue that reactions to her 1785 pregnancy in London demonstrate the way her condition supported her public performances of social class and celebrity, while underscoring her economic importance to the theatres. With the use of private correspondence, moreover, we get a glimpse of how the management reacted to her condition and altered the repertoire to accommodate her needs. In and before 1794, private correspondence and writings again offer a window to Siddons’s private experiences with pregnancy, while her associations with maternity take on national importance in light of the war with France and the violence of the Revolution. Ultimately,

Chapter Four is a portrait of Siddons’s successful self-fashioning of a maternal persona that served her well throughout her thirty-year career in London.

The chapter on Jordan perhaps best showcases the flexible narratives and complex semiotics of the pregnant body. At the start of her London career, Jordan was generally accepted to be the wife of a lawyer, and her children with him legitimate. When she left that relationship for one with the Duke of Clarence amidst pregnancy rumors, she faced public censure and ridicule in satirical prints and the popular press. Jordan’s strategies for overcoming this scandal and regaining her respected position as a private woman involved the careful dissemination of private information, drawing on notions of good

mothering to prevent accusations of sexual misconduct or unprofessional behavior. As with Sarah Siddons, the political context of a country at war is important to Jordan’s story, especially in her capacity as a royal mistress.

CHAPTER TWO: SUSANNA PERCIVAL MOUNTFORT VERBRUGGEN AND ANNE OLDFIELD

The Play-House is an Inchanted Island, where nothing appears in Reality what it is, nor what it should be. —Thomas Brown, Amusements both Serious and Comical (1700), 48

2.1.1 SUSANNA PERCIVAL MOUNTFORT VERBRUGGEN (1666-1703): OVERVIEW

The records surrounding the life, performances, and pregnancies of Susanna

Percival Montfort Verbruggen are scant. She was certainly not the first woman to appear on the public stage while pregnant, but she is one of the earliest who appears to have done so successfully (i.e., for the entirety of her pregnancy without raising public censure), as well as having a celebrity persona that can be verified in multiple sources.

Most of her career precedes the placement of advertisements and reviews in London newspapers, and the exact date of many of her performances are unavailable. The sixty- two roles we know Susanna played in her career are likely far from the full picture, for most are parts she originated. She would also have performed in stock plays and revivals, more frequently after the United Company split in 1695 and stock parts were divided between the remaining company members. Despite these difficulties, Susanna’s known roles, the epilogues she performed, dedications in print, and the autobiography of Colley

Cibber, enable us to define the line of business and onstage persona with which she was identified. In the early 1690s, I argue, her pregnancies enabled her career instead of

hampering it, prompting the development of a unique line of business that Elizabeth

Howe has called the “grotesque,” and which became integral to her celebrity.

Susanna Percival was born in the summer of 1666 to a minor member of the

Duke’s Company, Thomas Percival, and his wife, Anne Terry. She first performed with the King’s Company in 1681, playing Winifred in Thomas D’Urfey’s Sir Barnaby Whig, a Tory satire. She was a promising young comedienne by 1686, when she married playwright and fellow actor William Mountfort (occasionally Montfort, Mumford or

Munford) on June 22 at St. James, Duke’s Palace, Aldgate (Heddon). The Mountforts specialized in portraying a “gay couple,” with the male partner reluctant to enter into marriage and his witty love interest eventually winning him over, a type originally popularized by Charles Hart and Nell Gwynn in the mid-1660s. They worked well together until his death in December 1692, and William wrote parts for her in The

Successful Strangers (1690) and Greenwich Park (1691). They had four children total, one each spring from 1689/90-1693.24 It was during these early pregnancies that she began developing her specialty in grotesque characters, playing women much older and less attractive than herself. At William’s death, she became sole parent to their one living child and was pregnant with second. She performed throughout this pregnancy and gave birth in late March or April 1693. Susanna remarried, to fellow actor John Verbruggen, in the early spring of 1694. They had some success performing together (namely in

24 The Biographical Dictionary records the birth and christening dates as follows: Susanna, April 27, 1690 (christened May 11); Edward, April 1, 1691; Elizabeth, March 22, 1692; and Mary, born after her father’s death, in March or April 1693 (christened April 27, 1693). Of the four children, Susanna and Mary lived to adulthood, and Susanna later became an actress. 65

Vanbrugh’s 1696 The Relapse), but from 1697 were in different companies.25 Their only known child, Lewis, was born in May 1703; Susanna died of complications from the birth in late summer and Lewis was buried in October.26

2.1.2 REPERTOIRE AND REPUTATION

Actor and adventurer Anthony Aston, who knew Susanna in the late 1690s described her as “the most pleasant Creature that ever appear’d…she was a fine, fair

Woman, plump, full-featur’d; her Face of a fine, smooth Oval, full of beautiful, well- dispos’d Moles on it, and on her Neck and Breast” (92). She was a popular performer, and many playwrights wrote parts for her, including Thomas Southerne, Thomas

D’Urfey, John Vanbrugh, George Farquhar, and Colley Cibber.27 She never acted tragedy, but undertook a wide variety of comic parts and found success in them all, from young girls and jilts to aging spinsters and crones. Susanna was also popular in breeches roles. Colley Cibber credits her as the first actress to play Bayes in George Villier’s The

Rehearsal as a travesty role; he writes that she played the part by popular demand, probably in the late 1680s. He further testified that, “while her Shape permitted, was a more adroit pretty Fellow, than is usually seen upon the Stage: Her easy Air, Action,

25 In 1695, Susanna signed a petition on behalf of a group of actors who, discontented with the management of the United Company at Drury Lane, wanted to move to Lincoln’s Inn Field with Betterton, Barry, and Bracegirdle. Before the change took place, however, Queen Mary II died and the theatres were closed. When they reopened, the Verbruggens had elected to stay at Drury Lane for higher salaries and better parts, now vacated by the actors leaving with Betterton. In 1696, Verbruggen’s temper lead to an altercation with one of Charles II’s illegitimate sons, during which he hit the man and called him a son of a whore. He was forced to publicly apologize and afterward he was given permission to move to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. 26 There is some confusion about possible other Verbruggen children; Anne Oldfield supposedly played a benefit for the “orphan daughter of Mrs. Verbruggen” in 1707 (Lee 43). Another child was baptized John George Verburggen on 23 November 1708, after the deaths of both John and Susanna, and named their child in the register (BDA). 27 At her death, Cibber put away The Careless Husband in despair of finding another actress who could do the part of Lady Betty Modish justice, until young Anne Oldfield proved her mettle to him. In its final form, Lady Betty Modish is credited with being an exact portrait of Oldfield herself, but it was first meant for Susanna. 66

Mien, and Gesture, quite chang’d from the Quiof [sic], to the cock’d Hat, and Cavalier in fashion” (Cibber 99).28 Despite the caveat Cibber makes about her figure, she performed breeches parts until she died in 1703.

More than her physical attractions, Cibber praised her for the variety of characters she was willing to undertake:

she would make no scruple of defacing her fair Form, to come heartily into it… In a Play of D’urfey’s, now forgotten, call’d, The Western Lass, which Part she acted, she transform’d her whole Being, Body, Shape, Voice, Language, Look, and Features, into almost another Animal; with a strong Devonshire Dialect, a broad laughing Voice, a poking Head, round Shoulders, an unconceiving Eye, and the most be-diz’ning, dowdy Dress, that ever covered the untrain’d Limbs of Jane Trot. (Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber 98)

Gillian Homebread, the character to which Cibber refers, was one of Susanna’s

“grotesque” characters, a line of business that she first developed in the early 1690s. That

Susanna, whom Thomas Davies called the “female Proteus” (Dramatic Miscellanies,

3:310), could and did alter her appearance—and specifically her shape—for the sake of character was both novel and popular. That she would appear on stage less attractive than she was in life showed her merit as a professional performer—instead of luring suitors from stage’s edge, she attended to her business and showed herself a consummate comedienne whose popularity was based in skill. Her ability and willingness to transform became a key charismatic component of her celebrity.

28 Both Cibber here, and Anthony Aston in his supplement to Cibber, suggest that at some point Susanna’s figure interfered with her success in breeches parts. Aston wrote, that she “was very loath to accept of the Part of Weldon in Oroonoko…having thick Legs and Thighs, corpulent and large Posteriours;—but yet the Town (that respected her) compounded, and receiv’d her with Applause” (92). Despite these assertions she continued to act and add new breeches parts throughout her career. Perhaps, as Aston suggests, the audience was willing to forgive an aging figure for the sake of her performances. 67

Epilogues written for Susanna hint at the persona she held in audience’s minds.

Elizabeth Howe, Felicity Nussbaum, and others have pointed to prologues and epilogues as places where audiences were most actively encouraged to see the woman’s onstage performance as indicative of her offstage life, personality, and behavior. Usually written by men, epilogues teased the audience with personal information and gossip about the company, the town in general, or the person delivering the address. In epilogues attributed to Susanna, she continues to appear the gay young lady, often lamenting the constraints of marriage and the folly of the female characters in tragedy whose codes of honor are not so sophisticated (i.e., sexually permissive) as are those of London ladies. In the epilogue to The Fatal Marriage, after the heroine commits suicide upon learning she inadvertently committed adultery, the newly-remarried Mrs. Verbruggen queried:

Now, tell me, when you saw the lady die, Were you not puzzled for a reason why? A buxom damsel, and of play-house race, Not to out-live th’ enjoyment of a brace! (Southerne, 2:175)

Thomas Southerne teases the audience with an opening quatrain that could apply equally to the character in the play, and to the woman delivering the epilogue. Susanna was a

“buxom damsel” of the “play-house race” who had recently remarried, and so had enjoyed a “brace” of husbands.

Knowing lines to the ladies about hiding sexual transgressions or the hardships of marriage were common epilogue fare. Despite this, Susanna herself is never depicted as sexually available to the audience. The epilogue to Sir Anthony Love (1690), delivered by

Mrs Butler29 finds Butler exasperated that some will play only “your Half Crown” to see

29 Misprinted “Botelar” in the 1690 edition. 68

a play in which they may watch “The Female Montfort bare above the Knee” (257).

Butler is describing an onstage display, not an offstage one; there is no suggestion that patrons might purchase Susanna’s pleasures privately, though Mrs. Butler cheerfully offers her own. In contrast, after The Generous Enemies (1672), Mrs. Boutell warned her audience that, “’Tis worth Money that such Legs appear, / These are not to be seen so cheap elsewhere” (qtd Howe 57). While Boutell and Butler’s epilogues hint at purchased pleasures, Susanna’s do not.

The limits to Susanna’s perceived availability in epilogues were reinforced by her offstage behavior. Aston claimed that Susanna, “was the best conversationalist possible: never captious or displeased at anything but what was gross or indecent; for she was cautious lest fiery Jack [Verbruggen] shou’d resent it as to breed a Quarrel…” (20). This, as well as playboy George Etherege’s testimony that she was a virgin when married and remained a “discreet” woman, stand in contrast to an early smear on her character in A

Satyr on the Players c. 1682/4:30

Su: Percivall so long has known the Stage, She grows in Lewdness faster than in Age: From eight or Nine she there has frigging been, So calls that nature which is counted Sin. Her Coffee Father too so basely poor, And such a hireling that’ll hold the door Be pimp himself, that she may play the Whore. (qtd Bush-Bailey 60)

The Satyr paints both men and women of the stage with a broad, sexually explicit and condemnatory brush. Though it is often quoted, the lack of corroborating evidence suggests that Aston’s and Etherege’s judgments were more indicative of Susanna’s public

30 Etherege in a letter to William Jephson, March 1688. His comment is clearly a reply to one of Jephson’s about actresses or the theatre generally; without Jephson’s letter the exact context is unknown. (qtd Lee 4) 69

reputation. If so, her reputation as a respectably married woman might also be considered a form of charismata working for her with audiences.

Susanna, then, was a popular comedienne known for her versatility who appears to have maintained a respectable image offstage. She was pregnant while performing on at least five occasions, though we only know of two, 1692-93 and 1703, when she performed in her third trimester. Each of her pregnancies took place within the confines of marriage, and none inspired gossip about her sexual activities. Robert Hume and

Judith Milhous, Gilli Bush-Bailey, and Elizabeth Howe all suggest, however, that

Susanna’s pregnancies impacted the repertoire she was given. In tracing her repertoire during the 1692/3 and 1703 pregnancies, I investigate the degree and variety of impact pregnancy had on the types of roles she played.

31 2.1.3 SUSANNA AS RELICT, 1692-93

During her first three pregnancies, there is no evidence that Susanna Mountfort continued to perform into her third trimester when pregnancy would be most visible on stage. As only cast lists and performances of new plays were generally recorded (and even then must often be extrapolated through licensing lists or publications), it is only possible to say that she did not appear in any new plays during the final stages of her pregnancies. This, we could speculate, might be because the birth could be a hazard to the run of a new play, or because manager Christopher Rich was unwilling to try a new part for the first time with a pregnant performer.32 In the spring of 1693, however, Susanna

31 A thing that survives; a widow (see OED). 32This is the justification Hume and Milhous use in their discussion of casting in The Wives’ Excuse (1691) in Producible Interpretation (1986). Later in the century, George Anne Bellamy’s labor stopped the run of a new play; the same was true for Anne Oldfield, and one of Sarah Siddons’s miscarriages had a similar effect in 1788. 70

appeared in four new plays, two before and two after the birth of her daughter. The change from her earlier pattern was probably because her husband’s murder left her the sole provider for her family.

The circumstances of William Mountfort’s death are sensational and spawned a variety of poems, odes, songs, and a short novella entitled The Player’s Tragedy, in which the circumstances were generally made even more sensational. In brief, Mountfort was attacked and stabbed by Captain Richard Hill, aged 15, on 9 December 1692. Hill was obsessed with the actress Anne Bracegirdle, who starred opposite Mountfort in tragedies and some comedies at Drury Lane. Hill believed that Mountfort was

Bracegirdle’s lover off stage as well as on. Believing Mountfort to be a hindrance to his suit, and having already failed in an abduction attempt of the actress that night, a drunken

Hill attacked Mountfort, running him through while Mountfort was in conversation with

Charles Lord Mohun, Hill’s companion. Mountfort survived long enough to write a will leaving everything to his “Deare Wife Susanna,” their daughter Elizabeth, and the child

Susanna was then pregnant with before dying the next afternoon (Borgman 140).

After William’s death, Susanna offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of Captain Hill. She did not testify at Mohun’s trial, but initially planned to challenge the not-guilty verdict though she was apparently dissuaded from doing so. She returned to the stage in January to support her young family; at the time, she was making

50s. per week.33 The child, Mary, was baptized on 27 April and most likely born between the latter half of March and the latter half of April based on Susanna’s repertoire that spring, summarized below.

33 Conversions are inexact, but this is between $500-$2000 today depending on what criteria are used. 71

2 January 1693 Prudentia A Duke and No Duke34 Late February 1693 Lady Susan Malepert The Maid's Last Prayer35 Early March 1693 Belinda The Old Bachelor April 1693 Annabella A Very Good Wife May 1693 Catchat The Female Virtuosos. Spoke Epilogue. Table 1 Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen’s repertoire, January-May 1693

Susanna played in Thomas Southerne’s The Maid’s Last Prayer in February, creating the memorable character part of Lady Susan Malepert, described as, “that youthful virgin of five and forty, with a swelling rump, bow legs, a shining face, and colly’d eye-brows…”

(2:13). Gilli Bush-Bailey believes Susanna’s pregnancy is vital when considering the play’s original cast:

The Maid’s Last Prayer provides an unusual array of colourful characters for the company’s leading actresses. Elinor Leigh plays the exotic Siam, while Mary Betterton is unusually cast as Wishwell, a bawd. Susannah Mountfort was heavily pregnant, which may explain her casting as Lady Susan Malepert, the maid of the title and a character part of a foolish old woman—probably a useful disguise to cover her pregnancy and accommodate any restriction of movement. (Bush-Bailey 93)

Bush-Bailey’s reasoning that the part was a useful disguise for Susanna’s body relies on a complex set of assumptions: 1) that disguising Susanna’s pregnancy would be a priority, which in turn may be based in an assumption that a) the audience (or managers, or both) would object to her pregnant body, or b) that she would fail in a role that required the appearance of youth and beauty, presumably because of i) concerns about verisimilitude or, ii) the assumed unattractiveness or indecorousness of the pregnant form; 2) that

Susanna’s pregnant body, more so than her abilities, dictated the casting of the play,

34 On 2 January, Susannah may have played in a revival of A Duke and No Duke for the King and Queen. She had held the part of Prudentia since her early days with the company in 1684; now a leading lady, however, it is possible she had given this part up to another performer. 35 Hume and Milhous note that the play was published particularly quickly, in about two weeks, as it was advertised as published on 13 March. 72

which returns us to several of the assumptions above. Bush-Bailey’s assumptions may not be without foundation, but she has failed to note that Lady Susan is, in fact, the kind of grotesque character part for which Susanna was becoming—if she was not already— incredibly popular (discussed in more detail below).

In addition, a look at the other new part she played before the birth belies many of the above assumptions. In early March, after creating Lady Susan, Susanna starred as

Belinda in William Congreve’s very successful The Old Bachelor, which ran for fourteen nights straight.36 Belinda is typical of Susanna’s other specialty: witty young women who profess to detest marriage and love for most of the play, only to end happily with their faithful gallants at the end. That Susanna was given the part so late in her pregnancy suggests there were no insurmountable objections to her body from the management or the public, and that she was perfectly capable of playing a beautiful, virginal character despite her gravid body.

Before she lay in, then, Susanna created two new parts. If Lady Susan took advantage of or attempted to conceal her pregnancy behind the age and unattractiveness of the character, no such disguise was present in The Old Bachelor. No managerial or audience disapproval prevented Susanna from appearing onstage while pregnant or prevented the success of either play. Given that the sight of “big-bellied” actresses was regarded with considerable cynicism in sources such as Wycherley’s The Country Wife and A Comparison Between the Two Stages, I suggest that Susanna’s circumstances made the difference.

36 The Old Bachelor was almost certainly done after The Maid’s Last Prayer because The Maid’s Last Prayer was mentioned as on its third performance in the January issue of The Gentleman’s Journal (not published until March), while Congreve’s play was to be “acted in a little time” (qtd LS 1:418-19). There is also a reference to Lent in the epilogue. 73

Mountfort’s death and the trial of Charles Lord Mohun (and the subsequent printing of the proceedings) made her financial and personal situation highly public.

More than a thousand people attended Mountfort’s funeral and Henry Purcell accompanied choristers from Whitehall during the ceremony (Borgman 145). The audience, furthermore, knew she would only be paid for playing, so must work in order to provide for her family. Necessity, not impudence, was the reason this “big-bellied” actress appeared before them. The semiotics of her pregnant body were radically different in the spring of 1693 than in previous years. If her earlier pregnancies signaled a happy or successful marriage, acceptable sexual activity, or even economic stability (as Susanna did not need to continue performing), her 1693 pregnancy was a sign both of her loss, and the burden she would carry as a single parent. The specific potential of the body to generate affect, and to perform independently of stage fiction are themes to which this project will return again and again.

After Mary’s birth, she created another grotesque, Catchcat, in The Female

Virtuosos, followed by the new breeches role of Annabella in A Very Good Wife—her repertoire of new parts immediately before and after the birth of her daughter was essentially the same: two plucky young heroines, two older comic women. This consistency of repertoire is also reflected during her final pregnancy in 1703.

2.1.4 “HER LAST INDISPOSITION:” 1703

Susanna gave birth to Lewis Verburggen on 17 May 1703. During her last pregnancy, Susanna performed the full range of her comic types. Charlotte in Oroonoko was a breeches part, as was Hellena in The Rover and the new part of Hypolita in She

Wou’d and She Wou’d Not. Achmet was a travesty part. Lady Lurewell is a slightly older, 74

18 September Bellemante^ Emperor of the Moon 20 October Achmet Ibrahim 23 October Lurewell Constant Couple 26 October Louisa Love Makes a Man 13 November Berintha The Relapse 14 November Panura^ The Island Princess 26 November Hypolita She Wou'd and She Wou'd Not 8 December Gillian The Bath, or the Western Lass 1 January Panura^ The Island Princess 2 January Charlotte Oroonoko Early/mid-January37 Hillaria Tunbridge Walks 3 February38 Lurewell Constant Couple 12 February Hillaria Tunbridge Walks 18 February Hellena The Rover39 10 April Mrs. Whimsey The Fair Example 12 April Mrs. Whimsey The Fair Example 13 April Mrs. Whimsey The Fair Example 19 April Bellemante^ Emperor of the Moon 27 April Charlotte Oroonoko * 15 or 18 May Berintha The Relapse * 28 May Lady Brumpton The Funeral* Table 2 Susanna Mountfort’s repertoire, 1702-1703

^ Bellemante and Panura were parts of Susanna’s from the late 1680s; it is unclear if she was still performing them or if they had passed to other company members.

*Given that Susanna seems to have stopped playing breeches roles around her third trimester, she may not have performed Charlotte in Oroonoko on 27 April. She may have played Berintha if the performance was on 15 May, but she gave birth on 17 May, so is unlikely to have played on this date. If she did play on 28 May in The Funeral, this would be an indicator of financial need.

but still very attractive woman, Mrs. Whimsey a wife, while Louisa, Berintha, and

Hillaria are in the tradition of her early gay heroines. According to Colley Cibber, her

37 Hume corrects LS’s dating of 27 January in his revised LS, part 2, 85. 38 Based on Hume, Revised LS, part 2, page 88. 39 Though Genest records Anne Oldfield on the basis of an unspecified advertisement in the part, the editors of LS list Mrs. Verbruggen. Hume notes that Susanna was specifically advertised with the play on 16 February in Daily Courant. 75

appearance as Gillian Homebread in The Western Lass was a stroke of genius; this would be a role in her grotesque line.40

Susanna remained on stage throughout her final pregnancy, despite being married again, which may have enabled her to stop performing for a time during her first three pregnancies. She continued to perform the full range of her parts throughout pregnancy, with the possible exception of resigning her breeches roles around the start of her third trimester.

If she continued to perform throughout pregnancy because of financial necessity in 1693, we might speculate that a similar necessity existed during this pregnancy.

Perhaps competition between Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Field meant that Christopher

Rich needed Susanna to remain onstage during pregnancy to help bolster the company’s finances. There might also be a personal reason why she kept performing: her family’s financial situation, or simply her or her husband’s preferences. What is clear is that audiences did not react badly to Mrs. Verbruggen’s condition or continued performances.

The last new part she played in the 1702-03 season may have actually included a joke about her condition.

Richard Estcourt’s The Fair Example premiered about a month before Susanna gave birth. Susanna played Mrs. Whimsey, who plots with her best friend to reform their husbands’ strict and niggardly behavior. Each woman arranges an assignation with the other’s husband, and secures lavish gifts of money and jewels. Before the assignations

40 Though I have included stock parts in the table from late April and May, Susanna may have stopped after The Fair Example, letting others take over the stock parts of Bellemante (from 1687), Charlotte in Oroonoko (from 1695), Berintha in The Relapse and Lady Brumpton in The Funeral. If so, this would align with later actresses who left the stage approximately one month before the births of their children unless exceptional circumstances arose. 76

take place, both husbands drink to excess and fall unconscious. The next day, they wake to find themselves in bed together and their wives prepared to blackmail them for better treatment. Whimsey and Symons agree to mend their ways and be grateful for what they have:

Whim. Well, Spouse, give me thy Hand. Sym. And me thine, Duck. Whims. We have no Children. Sym. Nor we. Whim. Nor are we like to have any. Sym. Pray Heaven our Wives mayn't. (69-70)

This commentary on children is largely unnecessary as there is no inheritance plot in this play. From a practical standpoint, though, it reinforces the idea that the men have no need to continue their penny-pinching ways; there is no next generation for which they are saving their estates. Symons’ comment, though, points to the very real possibility that these witty wives could have children quite independent of their curmudgeonly husbands.

Susanna’s “big-bellied” Mrs. Whimsey, then, had the potential to provoke considerable humor at an otherwise flat exchange. Her body, by virtue of its visible presence, implies this is not the first time Mrs. Whimsey has been able to dupe her husband and get what she wants. Whimsey’s blindness to her as an individual, as well as her needs as a wife, is the crux of the play, and Susanna’s body both reinforces his blindness, and the agency that enables her to reshape her life within the confines of marriage to better suit her needs and desires.

In both 1693 and 1703, Susanna maintained much of her usual repertoire during pregnancy. She does not seem to have faced censure from audiences or managers, or to have been penalized for her condition. These facts are crucial when considering her

pregnant body’s role in the development of the grotesque, for much of the commentary on these parts fails to adequately contextualize her body and her repertoire.

2.1.5 SUSANNA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GROTESQUE

Susanna’s versatility inspired Thomas Davies to label her “the female Proteus in acting” (Dramatic Miscellanies 3:310), while the author of A Comparison Between Two

Stages called her “A Miracle” (200). Elizabeth Howe argues that,

comic drama throughout the period was constantly affected by the actresses for whom it was written…the history of Restoration drama must be seen as partly the history of its female players. Such drama can never be properly understood unless we take account of which actresses were available at each and every stage of its development. (90)

Considering the changing female body during pregnancy is a logical extension of Howe’s call. Howe demonstrates that Susanna’s expertise in gay young lovers, breeches roles, and grotesque characters spurred public interest in these types of characters, and inspired a variety of playwrights to create with her in mind. Susanna’s talents undeniably contributed to shaping the repertoire of the theatres at which she performed.

Lady Lurewell, for example, the female protagonist of Farquhar’s The Constant

Couple (1699), is not a young virgin who wins a love match at the end of the play, but a jilted older heroine bent on revenging herself on her many suitors, inventing complex plots to tease and humiliate them. Despite being older, she is far from unattractive, having no less than five suitors paying her homage during the play. Susanna first played the part at thirty-two, four years before she died, and last played the part while six months pregnant in 1703.

As the attractive and popular comedienne aged, so did some of the newer heroines added to her repertoire. These parts, however, did not usurp her existing oeuvre, so we 78

must consider these innovations and changes in the context of her total repertoire.

Similarly, an examination of her early pregnancies show a clear pattern in the development of Susanna’s grotesque line of characters that begins far earlier than her age alone might explain. While Bush-Bailey, and Milhous and Hume, have suggested that

Susanna’s body might have impacted casting during her pregnancies, none have placed their assertions in a wider context where the clear pattern might be seen, nor have they considered the nuances revealed in a consideration of her larger repertoire.

1690/91 or 1691/2: Abigail in The Scornful Lady

Susanna’s first pregnancy came in the 1689-90 season. At the time, she was known for her witty virgins and cross-dressing roles. She played two breeches parts in the fall and winter, but is not listed in the casts of either of the new plays in the spring. In

1690-91, again pregnant, she acted Sir Anthony Love in the fall, written for her by

Thomas Southerne. She may also have played Abigail in Beaumont and Fletcher’s The

Scornful Lady, described as a “skin full of lust” and a “foul familiar” (6, 21).41 This part,

I contend, was the beginning of the development of her grotesque line of business, and showcased the comic potential her changing body might offer. Abigail has agreed to help the Elder Loveless get back into his Lady’s good graces so they can marry. Meanwhile, she pitches her woo at any man who crosses her path. Young Loveless declares:

she offered me once to know her: to this day she loves Youth of Eighteen…She lov’d all the Players, in the last Queen’s time, once over: She was struck when they acted Lovers, and forsook some when they played Murtherers (2)

41 The presumptive date of this production is given as fall 1690 in The London Stage, based on the entry of the play in the Term Catalogues for November 1690-91. 79

Not only is Abigail lustful, she is imperceptive: she neither sees the repulsion she causes nor the difference between fiction and reality. In the end, though, she is happily repentant and marries Sir Roger, the curate whom she loves but spurns throughout the play.

Perhaps it was her success as Sir Anthony combined with her performance as Abigail that prompted Thomas Southerne to write for her the lecherous older woman Mrs. Wittwoud in The Wives’ Excuse the following year when she was, once again, pregnant.

1691/92: Mrs. Wittwoud in The Wives’ Excuse42

Southerne’s Mrs. Wittwoud, “an old blown-upon She-wit” (1:346), has a married lover that never appears in the play. She helps to arrange her cousin Fanny’s first debauch and airily declares that husbands can be found within a month if Fanny ends up pregnant

(which she knows from corrupting Fanny’s older sister). She plays the bawd for her friends and tricks Friendall, a husband who married for money and to ease his way into ladies’ beds, into sleeping with her during a party. When they are found, Friendall, originally played by Susanna’s husband William, is only put out that she was not a more desirable woman.

The play closed after the first night, which Southerne attributed to unwarranted audience objections:

some of the Criticks, who were affronted at Mrs. Friendall: for those Sparks, who were most offended with her Virtue in publick, are the Men that lose little by it, in private…But if she was of evil Example, Witwood makes amends for her; in the Moral of her Character; where the Women

42 The Wives’ Excuse is listed in The London Stage with a December 1691 premiere, based on its mention in the January 1692 issue of The Gentlemen’s Magazine (which in turn may have been printed in January or February). The published play was advertised in the February 1692 Term Catalogue. In “Dating Plays from Publication Data 1660-1700,” Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume note that this would mean it took as long as two months for Southerne to print the play, potentially twice as long as the one-month lapse becoming typical in the 1690s.

are manifestly Safer in the Possession of a Lover, than in the Trust and Confidence of a Friend.. (1:261)

Milhous and Hume suggest that the audience did not appreciate the way Southerne’s play defied their expectations. The title suggested a wife justifiably cuckolding her husband, but the wife is and remains virtuous throughout. Expectations were further defied by casting: Mrs. Barry, pretty well notorious for her sexual liaisons, playing the chaste Mrs.

Friendall? As Southerne points out above, her onstage virtue has little to do with the way she bestows her favors offstage, yet the character was still offensive to the young men in the audience. Friendall suffers humiliation and neglect at her wayward husband’s hands, but refuses to pay him back in kind. Her part is a sad one, and the play ends with the couple agreeing to separate and live apart.

Milhous and Hume raise several questions about the casting of the play in

Producible Interpretation that are partly answered with assumptions about Susanna’s pregnancy:

The role of Mrs. Friendall was created by Elizabeth Barry, a piece of casting which raises some questions. Barry was about thirty-three…She had done some highly pathetic roles...but by this time the authors were generally casting Barry in more lurid parts…A more obvious choice for Mrs. Friendall…would have been Susanna Mountfort (then twenty- four)…Finding Mrs. Mountfort cast as Mrs. Wittwoud—a tough, scheming female rake, rather long in the tooth—is a surprise: Barry would seem to have been a natural for the role. We have no evidence about Southerne’s casting plans when he wrote The Wives Excuse in early 1691, but…by the time of the premiere in December Mrs. Mountfort could not plausibly have taken the part of the younger, trimmer Mrs. Friendall: she was five months pregnant. (237-38)

As an early grotesque part, it is not surprising that Milhous and Hume find Susanna’s casting odd, particularly without considering her casting as Abigail the previous season.

Their suggestion that the casting changed as a result of her body may not be false but it is worth considering that the casting was deliberate.43

The cold and chaste Mrs. Friendall seems much more out of Susanna’s existing line at the time than Mrs. Wittwoud. It makes more sense to cast a woman with success in tragedy in the part of the ill-starred Mrs. Friendall than to put your darling comedienne in a role that uses almost none of her comic talent. It should not be surprising to see Mrs.

Mountfort a female rake—it is the exact part she played in Sir Anthony Love and, to a lesser extent, as Abigail in The Scornful Lady. We also know from Cibber’s testimony that Susanna was willing and able to perform older or less attractive characters; this evidence simply suggests it started earlier in her career, and possibly that her pregnant body contributed to the development of this particular talent. Add to this the comedy of watching the husband and wife actors discovered in flagrante to both their disappointments, and I would argue that the casting is less concerned with making

Herculean allowances for Susanna’s body than with best deploying its talent. Indeed, it may be playing up the comic potential of her body by casting her as a lusty older woman adept at pawning illegitimate pregnancies off on unsuspecting husbands. These assertions are borne out by Susanna’s casting as Lady Susan Malepert in 1692/3, the first time we know she performed into the late stages of pregnancy. Susanna’s continued association with grotesque characters after this season implies that there was something successful about her performance as Mrs. Wittwoud, even if The Wives’ Excuse failed as a play.

43 There are also assumptions about age (versus, say, appearance or experience) in this account that are quite interesting and reveal assumptions by scholars today that are worth further exploration and testing for historical accuracy. 82

If Bush-Bailey is correct that Lady Susan was created as a “grotesque” character in reaction to Susanna’s pregnant body, then it should be seen in light of the parts she played during her earlier pregnancies. The above information shows that, potentially, the entirety of her grotesque line of business in the early 1690s was in part a reaction to her pregnant body. Instead of a punitive reaction, however, it was an opportunity to exploit her body for its comic potential and to draw on Susanna’s specific talents.

Thomas Southerne clearly enjoyed writing for Susanna. Sir Anthony Love complimented her fine figure; Lady Susan and Mrs. Wittwoud offered an alternative way of using her body to enhance character. In fact, Southerne makes a possible reference to her pregnancy in Sir Anthony Love, which Susanna premiered during her second pregnancy in 1690. In Act Three of Sir Anthony Love, Ilford stops a scheming Sir

Anthony in the streets. Sir Anthony is in haste, and the two engage in a brief exchange using pregnancy as a metaphor for Anthony’s plans:

Ilf. …Sir Anthony—Sir Anthony—a word with you— Sir Ant. Pr’ythee let me go; I am big with jest, and shall certainly miscarry with the first grave word you say to me. Ilf. Be deliver’d of our burden then, lay it to my door; I’ll father it for a friend. Sir Ant. As some men wou’d a bastard, for the reputation of getting it. (1:203-4)

Susannah was probably in her second trimester when the play premiered, and several sources comment on its popularity.44 It ran for six nights at opening, and very likely was repeated later in the season. While we cannot say definitely that Southerne is making a joke about her condition, we should not discount the possibility. The private body of the

44 While the LS dates Sir Anthony Love to September 1690, Hume and Milhous suggest November 1690 is a more realistic date because the play was advertised for publication in late December. If so, Mountfort was five months pregnant when she premiered this particular breeches role. 83

actress was always easily to hand in audience’s minds—the “horse-laugh” occasioned by

Mrs. Barry’s reference to her “Virgin Innocence” being only one of many examples

(Chetwood 28). Temporarily, Barry’s own reputation superseded that of her character in the mind of an audience member, whose vocal recognition would trigger a similar recognition in other’s minds. Given that Southerne seems to have had a particular fondness for Susanna and for making jokes that conflated on and offstage circumstance

(his epilogue to The Fatal Marriage, for example), the pregnancy banter in Sir Anthony

Love might well be a reference to her condition.

2.1.6 CONCLUSION

Susanna’s protean qualities, and her willingness to alter her voice, her figure, and her countenance to suit a part, even when the results were unflattering, made her a marvel onstage. Her offstage behavior, despite the often witty, lewd, or teasing epilogues, was seemingly chaste, and she was a responsible wife and, we can presume, mother, who successfully provided for her children for a year on a single salary of 50s. a week.

Perhaps this same duality is what enabled her to continue performing while pregnant without raising significant comment. We know from Anthony Aston that audiences continued to call for her performances in breeches roles even as her figure aged; the plasticity of Susanna’s body in performance seems to have accommodated many physical changes as well.

As with Thomas Brown’s “Mrs. Abigail” (Mrs. Willis), Susanna’s marital status likely also contributed to her ability to remain on stage. There was no need to conceal the pregnancy from the audience to preserve a virgin reputation and no mystery about how her condition arose. In each of the satiric or mocking references to pregnant actresses 84

covered in the Prologue to this dissertation, ridicule focuses on the hypocrisy of a pregnant body and the failed performance of virginity. Susanna Mountfort Verburggen’s body involved no failed performance. Her public persona was one of frankness, witty good cheer, and hard work, and her private life lacked any amorous intrigue that might rupture this identity. Instead, the pregnant body became another tool for the comedienne, and the authors who wrote for her.

From 1693 onward, Susanna began adding grotesque characters to her repertoire regularly regardless of pregnancy (for example, Mary the Buxom in D’Urfey’s three-part

Don Quixote), but each of her initial forays into this line of business came during a pregnancy in its second or third trimester. While premiering a play with a pregnant actress might be a greater financial or practical risk than performing a stock play with long established casting, the example of The Old Bachelor in 1693, as well as many of the parts Susanna played in 1703, should caution against making generalizations about the treatment of the pregnant body on stage. It is very likely, given the 1693 and 1703 castings, that audiences saw a pregnant Susanna act Abigail and Mrs. Wittwoud in repertoire with the full compliment of her other lines of business, including her “gay couple” parts and possibly her breeches roles.

Milhous and Hume’s, and Bush-Bailey’s, speculations about Susanna’s pregnancies and their impact on repertoire are valuable, but often the impact of her body is assumed to be both greater and more punitive than the evidence would suggest.

Susanna’s changing body may have opened the door to her grotesque line of business c.1691, but it does not seem to have required that she set aside her other successful lines and therefore should not been seen as an inevitable reaction to that body. Pregnancy, in

this case, was ultimately an aid to Susanna, who was able to create and develop a line of business in which no other living comedienne could compete with her while maintaining her popularity in other lines.

2.2.1 THE CELEBRATED MRS. OLDFIELD (1683-1730): OVERVIEW

Her Person was infinitely graceful, her Nature majestic, her Behaviour so inchanting, and her Conversation so agreeable, that, during her whole Life, She was in the highest Esteem with Persons of the greatest Wit and Quality in the Kingdom —Authentick Memoirs of…Mrs. Ann Oldfield (1730), 10

Anne Oldfield was born in Pall Mall, daughter of Anne Oldfield and her husband.

Her father died while Anne was young, and her uncle George “put her to school, where she soon took her Learning with admirable Proficiency” (ibid 21). Supposedly discovered by George Farquhar while reading a play out loud at the Mitre Tavern, she joined the

Drury Lane company in 1699 (Milling). Colley Cibber reports that her career began slowly, with her first real successes not coming until 1703 after he realized her potential

for genius. This may not be strictly the case, as before

1703 she performed several prologues and epilogues

and had a solo benefit, usually reserved for the more

popular members of the cast. She was certainly

competition for the other leading ladies after 1706,

when the two companies reorganized into one. In later

life, she was described as charitable, generous, and

Figure 3 Unknown Artist. Anne Oldfield, beautiful, with dark hair and eyes, pale skin, and an National Portrait Gallery, London aristocratic mien (see Figure 1).

Anne Oldfield had two long-term relationships with prominent political men. The first was with Whig MP Arthur Maynwaring, by whom she had two children, in 1709 and

1713. They remained together in what seems to have been a monogamous relationship until Maynwaring’s death in 1712, which left Anne pregnant and the sole provider for their son, Arthur, almost exactly the same position Susanna occupied in 1693.45 Anne faced criticism for her relationship with Maynwaring during his life and after his death, particularly once it became known that he had made her executrix of his will over his sister and political friends. Tory enemies of Maynwaring attacked her, and the Whigs also wished to distance themselves. Posthumous sources emphasize the strength of their affection—those supporting Anne sentimentalizing it, those focused on Maynwaring often lamenting it as unfortunate but undeniable. John Oldmixon, Maynwaring’s biographer, wrote that “each of them loved with such a Passion, that could hardly have been stronger, had it been both Her and His first Love” (Oldmixon 43). He also claimed that Anne cared for Maynwaring enough that she, “her self has frequently represented to him, that it was for his Honour and Interest to break off their Alliance, which open

Frankness, on her Side, did as he has often confessed, engage him to her the more firmly, and all his Friends at last, gave over importuning him to leave her” (ibid).

About a year after Arthur’s death, Anne began a relationship with Lieutenant-

General Charles Churchill, an illegitimate nephew of the Duke of Marlborough, which would last until her death in 1730 and brought more social prominence and acceptance

45 Joanne Lafler, Oldfield’s most recent biographer, suggests that Maynwaring and Oldfield did not marry because Anne was uninterested in giving up her career and would have been expected to do so (34). Marriage would have also brought Oldfield’s income under Maynwaring’s control. Maynwaring’s patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, disapproved of his affair with a celebrated actress, which may also have played into the decision not to marry. 87

than her relationship with Maynwaring. There were rumors the two had married, though they never confirmed or denied the gossip. They had one son, Charles, in 1720. Oldfield left the stage quite early during her last pregnancy in 1720 and did not return until after the birth, but both pregnancies by Arthur Maynwaring offer clues to how her pregnancies were accommodated by managers and perceived by audiences.

Oldfield’s long and successful career made her a wealthy woman, and at her death her home was filled with beautiful objects and fine collectibles. When her final, painful illness progressed to the point that she could no longer perform, she rejected her managers’ offer to continue paying her salary. She died on 30 October 1730 and left her considerable fortune to her two sons. She is buried in Westminster Abbey beneath the monument to William Congreve. Churchill petitioned to erect a monument in her honor, but was refused.

After her death, two biographies appeared. The first, Authentick Memoirs of the

Life of that Celebrated Actress, Mrs. Ann Oldfield (1730), was quite short, authored anonymously and appeared only days after her death. Its first edition was a mere eight pages long, though by the third edition it was nearly fifty pages and claiming “large editions and amendments.” The second, Faithful Memoirs of the Life, Amours, and

Performances of that Justly Celebrated, and most Eminent Actress of her Time, Mrs.

Anne Oldfield (1731), came from bookseller Edmund Curll, who published it under the pseudonym William Egerton. Margaret Saunders, to whom Curll dedicated the book, was a constant companion to Oldfield and likely the biography’s primary source. An additional source for her life is Colley Cibber’s An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley

Cibber (1740), in which Oldfield features frequently, for Cibber knew her for the entirety

of her career. In 1957, Robert Gore-Brown published Gay was the Pit: The Life and

Times of Anne Oldfield, though I have favored Joanne Lafler’s more equitable and better- researched The Celebrated Mrs. Oldfield (1989).46

2.2.2 REPERTOIRE AND REPUTATION

Oldfield began in comedy and eventually inherited some of Susanna

Verbruggen’s parts after her death in 1703, including Narcissa (Love’s Last Shift),

Hellena (The Rover), Florella (Greenwich Park), Elvira (Spanish Fryer), Celia (Volpone), and Lady Lurewell (The Constant Couple).47 As she grew to maturity, she became a versatile performer and a powerful company member. Though she never had an official share in the company management, Oldfield knew her worth and had no qualms about negotiating new and better terms in times of turmoil. Oldfield’s successes brought her into conflict on occasion. She is credited with driving Anne Bracegirdle into retirement in

1707, and Jane Rogers accused her of stealing parts in 1712.

As a performer, Oldfield was frequently credited with being or becoming the parts she played. She bolstered this image by wearing her costumes straight through from dinner before the performance on to the stage, and to the parties and entertainments she attended afterwards. As a comedienne, she was known for her wit, appearance of naturalness, and sense of style. Her performances as fine ladies of quality convinced many that she belonged to the class she emulated so well, an enormously beneficial bit of charismata. As a tragedian, her moving performances of grieving and repentant women

46 “Mrs.” Was as much an indicator of age as of marital status at this time, with “Miss” being reserved for girls and young women, hence references to Mrs. Oldfield though Anne never married. Visible pregnancy—quite a definite marker of maturity—prompted a name change for George Anne Bellamy in 1753-54, as well as with Dorothy Jordan in 1782. 47 A lack of casting information in 1703-04 makes it unclear when she began to play these parts, but all were in her repertoire by 1706-07, with the exception of Narcissa, which she is first listed for in 1707-08. 89

helped to foster tolerance toward her liaisons in private life and were even credited with providing the audience with moral instruction.

Oldfield’s signature comic role was Lady Betty Modish in Colley Cibber’s The

Careless Husband. Begun with Susanna Verbruggen in mind, Cibber set the play aside after her death until Oldfield inspired him to finish it. Lady Betty is a witty woman of fashion who positively rejects the idea of being in love with her faithful suitor, Morelove.

After a complicated plot to make her jealous, she agrees to set aside her fears of losing her independence and marries him. In his Apology, Cibber wrote:

Whatever favourable Reception, this Comedy has met with from the Publick; it would be unjust of me, not to place a large Share of it to the Account of Mrs. Oldfield; not only from the uncommon Excellence of her Action; but even from her personal manner of Conversing. There are many Sentiments in the Character of Lady Betty Modish, that I may say, were originally her own…Had her Birth plac’d her in a higher Rank of Life, she had certainly appear’d, in reality, what in this Play she only, excellently, acted… (167)

Edmund Curll explained, “it was not the Part of Lady Betty Modish, represented by Mrs.

OLDFIELD; but it was the real Mrs. OLDFIELD, who appeared in the Character of Lady

Betty Modish” (3). As Lady Betty, Oldfield’s penchant for fine clothing, her wit, and her private circumstances could come into play to encourage the conflation of actress and role. For some, however, particularly Maynwaring’s political compatriots, Lady Betty’s declaration may have rung a little too true that:

I always take Admiration for the best Proof of Beauty, and Beauty certainly is the Source of Power, as Power in all Creatures is the Heighth [sic] of Happiness…I had rather Command, than Obey: the wisest homely Woman can’t make a Man of Sense of a Fool, but the veriest Fool of a Beauty shall make an Ass of a Statesman. (28)

Unlike Lady Betty, Oldfield did not conform to social expectations and marry at the end of the play. She did, however, seem to have Lady Betty’s hidden depths of feeling and true loyalty.

Starting in 1707 and particularly after 1712, when new comic parts were becoming scarce, Oldfield began to slowly increase her repertoire of parts in tragedy.

Between 1712 and 1725, she added three tragic parts to her repertoire with which she would become particularly associated, as they were credited with containing a measure of truth about the actress’ real life within them.48 These pathetic tragic parts stood in contrast to the sparkling wit of her comic roles, heightening what Felicity Nussbaum calls the “interiority effect” (multifaceted surfaces giving the illusion of depth), giving

Oldfield a more nuanced public persona.

The first of the significant tragic parts was Andromache, Hector’s widow and the title character in Ambrose Phillips’ The Distrest Mother (1712). Her relationship to this part is discussed in detail below. The next two came from Nicholas Rowe, a specialist in she-tragedies. In 1713-14, she originated the title character in Rowe’s Jane Shore, focusing on the suffering of Shore, Edward IV’s mistress, during the rise of Richard III.

The repentant Shore reconciles with her husband and earns his forgiveness before dying of starvation. Felicity Nussbaum writes that Oldfield was “credited with actually becoming Jane Shore” (108). In doing so, Nussbaum argues, she earned the audience’s forgiveness for her sexual transgressions when they forgave and sympathized with Jane.

Toward the end of her life and career, she played Calista in a revival of Nicholas

Rowe’s The Fair Penitent. Calista, in love with Lothario, marries Altamont after Lothario

48 These are only a fraction of the total new parts she played in these years, which were a combination of tragedy and comedy. 91

seduces but refuses to marry her. She and Lothario continue their affair until it is discovered; even so, Calista’s repentance comes only after she believes the affair has resulted in her father’s death. She stabs herself on stage in grief before asking Altamont to forgive her. Calista is a character that sees the untenable position of women who are sold from father to husband with no control over their lives. She rages against this situation, using the affair with Lothario, in part, to defy this control. When she sees the destruction caused, however, she regrets her behavior, and hence Nussbaum claims that,

“Calista, became a kind of prototype of the celebrated actress who had strayed from traditional moral paths” (114). As a part originated by Elizabeth Barry, Calista had a history of being portrayed by actresses of dubious sexual morality, who acted on stage a form of repentance they may or may not have felt off of it. Through this onstage repentance, the audience might imagine and forgive the actress’ offstage transgressions.

Oldfield’s comedies brought her fame and fortune, but her tragic parts lent depth and perhaps a measure of respectability to her non-conventional relationships through fictional portrayals of repentance. Turning to Oldfield’s pregnancies in 1709 and 1713 in light of her shifting persona offers evidence of three key questions surrounding pregnancy on stage. In 1709, documents surrounding a dispute between actors and managers allow us to glimpse how the management may have responded to Oldfield’s pregnancy, while her 1713 pregnancy impacted the repertoire by ending the successful run of a new play. Most significantly, that same year Oldfield used the power of a fictional performance to her advantage in the wake of Maynwaring’s death, calling for audience sympathy and support of her new role as single mother.

2.2.3 1709: ARTHUR MAYNWARING, JR.

Anne gave birth to her first child, Arthur, in the summer of 1709.49 The 1708-09 season was fraught with tension between actors and managers, exacerbated by a forced closure from 28 October to 14 December to mourn the death of Queen Anne’s consort.

Though Oldfield performed when the theatres reopened, she was off the stage from mid-

March to the end of the season in June, coinciding with her final trimester of pregnancy.

Lafler argues that Anne would not want to appear in public carrying Maynwaring’s illegitimate child, and that it would only be in the final trimester that her pregnancy would have been visible to the audience: “Clothing styles made it possible to conceal pregnancy until it was fairly far advanced. Certainly there are no surviving comments about her condition, as there would be about her pregnancy in 1713” (70). If this were the case, it would suggest that Oldfield intended to leave before anyone guessed her condition and that she became concerned about her body’s visibility in mid-March. The fact that she acted in benefit performances on 31 March and 16 April, the latter around the beginning of her seventh month of pregnancy, calls this into question.

Furthermore, the style of dress in the early decades of the 1700s, like much of the century, favored tapering stays that extended below the natural waist to create a “v” form to the body, often described as a cone shape. Skirts and petticoats were less full and round than they would become, and were often bustled. The emphasis on a low, or at least a natural, waist as well as the tapering torso make it unlikely that pregnancy could be easily concealed without a radically different style of dress. Perhaps fashionista Mrs.

Oldfield had a plan for concealment, if concealment was necessary or desired. Lafler’s

49 The birth was likely on or before 23 June, for Arthur married on 23 June 1739 and would have gained full access to a five thousand pound inheritance on his thirtieth birthday. 93

argument is again based entirely on an assumption that Oldfield’s body was an undesirable, stigmatic thing to be avoided.

In documents related to the disputes between managers and performers that year, several references are made to Anne. The dispute included Oldfield’s formal complaint against Christopher Rich for charging her 71l. instead of 40l. for her benefit, a violation of her articles. Oldfield’s complaint was part of a campaign against Rich that would result in permission for Owen Swiney and others to act at the Queen’s Theatre. Oldfield signed her articles with Swiney on 21 April and, though she was denied a part in the management at the Queen’s, the articles gave her 200l. a year plus a clear benefit.

When the Lord Chamberlain silenced Drury Lane in June in response to the actors’ complaints, Drury Lane’s treasurer Zachary Baggs published a pamphlet entitled

Concerning the Poor Actors, who under Pretence of hard Usage form the Patentees, are about to desert their Service… Among other charges, Baggs accused Anne of walking out for no reason in the spring of 1709 and refusing to help the rest of the company with their benefits. Her departure was not wholly unanticipated, however, as the Daily

Courant advertised her 16 April appearance as “being the last time of her Acting this

Season” (Hume, LS part 2, 481). Hume also notes that Oldfield was pregnant during the spring, a promising step toward reintegrating the pregnant form into existing theatrical history. Baggs noted that in addition to her salary and most of her benefit profits, including l.120 from selling special tickets to wealthy audience members, Anne received new clothing:

In January she required, and was paid, Ten Guineas, to wear on the Stage in some Plays, during the whole Season, a Mantua and Petticoat that was

given her for the Stage, and tho’ she left off 3 Months before she should, yet she hath not returned any Part of the Ten Guineas. (Baggs)

Baggs claims that Anne needed new clothing and the theatre provided it in January of

1709. Though he does not say the costume was meant to accommodate her changing body, the timing of the request at the beginning of her second trimester is suggestive. If her new mantua and petticoat (two unfortunately vague terms) were needed to dress her pregnant body—with the goal of either concealment or comfort—the fact that the theatre paid for the clothing indicates her position within the company as well as their willingness to accommodate her changing body.

More importantly, Baggs’ claims show the very real belief that Anne would be performing until the season ended in early June, with no expectation in January that she would be leaving the stage in mid-March. The fact that Baggs makes no mention of her pregnancy in his complaint means either that it was not a factor for the managers, and therefore no excuse for leaving the stage early, or that he is deliberately leaving out extenuating circumstances to make Anne look more guilty of violating her articles. He may have remained unaware of her condition, though she had given birth by the time of the pamphlet’s publication.

Oldfield’s absence in the spring of 1709 has several possible explanations. She might have left because of the pregnancy, either out of a need to conceal her condition or because her health required it. She may also have left for reasons unrelated to her pregnancy, perhaps because it was clear that the Lord Chamberlain was taking the actors’ part against Rich. Regardless of whether Oldfield always intended to leave the stage early or if circumstances arose that made that course of action prudent, the management

appears to have expected a full season from its star actress. The discussion of clothing, while not explicitly connected to her pregnant body in Baggs’ pamphlet, suggests one possible method by which Oldfield and the managers might accommodate her condition as she continued to perform. Over half a century later, the Drury Lane managers provided two new costumes for Sarah Siddons to wear in the final trimester of her 1785 pregnancy.

2.2.4 THE 1712-13 SEASON The Distrest Mother

Anne’s second pregnancy came shortly after she began to seriously develop a line of tragic heroines. On 17 March 1712, Anne debuted what would become one of her most popular tragic parts, the widowed Andromache in Ambrose Phillips’ The Distrest

Mother.50 The Distrest Mother is set in the aftermath of the Trojan war. Pyrrhus, the

Greek hero, coerces Andromache, Hector’s widow, into marrying him in order to secure her son’s birthright to the throne of Troy. She plans to commit suicide immediately after the wedding, however, so she will not be forced to be unfaithful to Hector, trusting to

Pyrrhus’ honor to abide by their arrangement after her death. Meanwhile, Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen of Troy, loves Pyrrhus and is beloved by Orestes. When

Hermione learns of Pyrrhus’ plan to marry Andromache, she persuades Orestes to kill

Pyrrhus on the wedding day. Ultimately, an angry mob of Greeks murders Pyrrhus at the

50 Andromache was originally meant for Jane Rogers, but according to the author of Faithful Memoirs, “the Author, as well as his Friends, were soon convinced that Mrs. OLDFIELD was infinitely the more accomplished Person for so Capital a Part” (Curll 1731:31-32). Fairly enough, Rogers was incensed to have the part taken from her, especially as she had been specializing in tragedy for much longer than Oldfield, who had only recently undertaken her first tragic parts. Rogers printed a broadsheet, “The Memorial of Jane Rogers…” in which she claimed the part was taken from her because Oldfield had peevishly declared to Wilks that “she would not play unless she had that Part” (qtd Lafler 94). When she continued to protest and engage Oldfield, Wilks suggested it would be better for her to leave the company than force him to fire her. 96

wedding altar, Hermione commits suicide, Orestes runs mad, and Andromache resumes her throne as regent until her son, Astyanax, is of age.

In the 1712-13 season, Oldfield performed Andromache frequently. These performances were often advertised as audience requests, usually “by desire” of Ladies of

Quality. She played the part on 27 September (by desire), 18 October, 25 November, 22

December (by desire), 10 February (by desire), and 13 April (benefit Mrs Porter, who played Hermione). The performance on 25 November was her first public appearance after Maynwaring’s death. On this occasion, anecdotal evidence suggests she took the opportunity to personalize the performance, using her offstage circumstances and the play’s fiction to elicit audience sympathy.

According to the author of the Authentick Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Ann

Oldfield (1730), Anne brought young Arthur onstage while delivering the epilogue at the

25 November performance. At the time, she was also about three and a half months pregnant though the audience may not have been aware of her condition. The audience,

“charm’d herewith, because there was then some Similitude between the Circumstances of Andromache and herself, both having lost a Friend and Patron” responded strongly

(31). Reflecting on her circumstances as a single mother, Edmund Curll commented that,

“The Distressed Mother seemed now to be the Case of Mrs. Oldfield both on, and off, the

Stage” (49).

There is, unfortunately, no corroborating evidence for this story. It is still a powerful testament to both Oldfield’s celebrity, and the affective potential of public performances of maternity. What Oldfield is credited with doing was in many ways revolutionary: she consciously used a fictional role to frame and draw attention to a

private tragedy, thereby requesting audience sympathy and support for her condition as a single mother. Oldfield’s decision to bring her young son on stage drew a parallel between her own situation and that of the fictional character. In doing so, she raised herself from a political mistress to a widowed queen, and her illegitimate young son to a prince. The move drew on two important items of charismata in Oldfield’s celebrity: that with the exception of birth, she was as natural an aristocrat as it was possible to be, and that what she seemed onstage she was also offstage. On the night of 25 November 1712, she made a bid for a new kind of pathetic power, one that reinforced the public/private conflation already central to audience understandings of her as a celebrity. At each repetition of The Distrest Mother, particularly the final one in April 1713, Oldfield’s pregnancy became more and more visible, adding to the plight of Oldfield as the character Andromache and as herself.

The play’s popular Epilogue, which Curll says “greatly contributed to the Run” of the play and which the audience always “insisted on,” justified and celebrated

Andromache’s triumph over Pyrrhus and subsequent coronation as queen of Troy (35). It also had Oldfield claiming in the same situation she would at least have enjoyed Pyrrhus one night before making the noble sacrifice:

I Hope you’ll own, that with becoming Art I’ve play’d my Game, and topp’d the Widow’s Part. My Spouse, poor Man! could not live out the Play, By dy’d commodiously on Wedding-Day: While I, his Relict, made at one bold Fling My self a Princess, and young Sty a King. You Ladies, who protract a Lover’s Pain, And hear your Servants sigh whole Years in vain; Which of you all would not on Marriage venture, Might she so soon upon her Jointure enter: ‘Twas a strange Scape! Had Pyrrhus liv’d till now

I had been finely hamper’d in my Vow. To die by one’s own Hand, and fly the Charms51 Of Love and Life in a young Monarch’s Arms! ‘Twere an hard Fate—ere I had undergone it I might have took one Night—to think upon it. But why, you’ll say was all this Grief exprest For a first Husband, laid long since at Rest? Why so much Coldness to my kind Protector? --Ah Ladies! had you known the good Man Hector! … At length howe’er I laid my Weeds aside, And sunk the Widow in the well-dress’d Bride. In you it still remains to grace the Play, And bless with Joy my Coronation Day: Take then, ye Circles of the Brave and Fair, The Fatherless and Widow to your Care. (Phillips 74-75)

Epilogues commonly poked fun at the play or the character played by the epilogue’s performer. In this case, it also drew on Oldfield’s gay, woman-of-fashion persona and her sexuality. When queried about the propriety of placing a comic epilogue with a tragic play, Eustace Budgell, insisted that, “The Moment the Play ends, Mrs. Oldfield is no more Andromache, but Mrs. Oldfield” (1 April 1712), no longer the character, but the

“real” person behind the performance.52 The pairing of her tragic portrayal of

Andromache and the saucy comic epilogue also happened to compliment Mrs. Oldfield’s particular brand of attractiveness—she could both move an audience to tears and to laughter in the space of a few moments.

If and when Oldfield brought her actual child on stage, however, and when the audience was acutely aware of Maynwaring’s death and her altered position, the theoretically clear shift between actress and character blurred. The speech is considerably

51 Diana Solomon points out that this is a double entendre referencing both suicide and masturbation, further sexualizing the previously chaste-seeming Andromache (175). 52 Budgell was at first thought to be the epilogue’s author, but by the end of the century it was attributed to Joseph Addison (Solomon 172). 99

more sober when considered in the light of the visual spectacle of Anne and Arthur as relicts of the deceased Maynwaring (Hector)—the “Fatherless and Widow” become not abstracted or fictional concepts, but two living entities who have suffered a recent bereavement. Similarly, it is not truly the play that the “Circles of the Brave and Fair” are being asked to care for, but the actress and her son. Oldfield’s delivery emphasized the ever-present power dynamic between actors and audiences, all the more important now as she embarks on single parenthood to her young son, and to the child she carries.

Beyond this single incident, Edmund Curll testifies to the power of her performance generally: “What harden’d Heart wept not with Andromache? What Mother did she not instruct in Maternal Love when Astyanax’s Danger wrings her Soul?” (153).

Oldfield did more than appeal to the audience as a mother on and off stage, she

“instructed” the women in the audience in what maternal grief looked and sounded like.

Oldfield, the woman who emulated her social superiors so well on stage, became through her fictional performance a paragon of motherhood off of it. It was not only in tragedy that she was granted this power, Curll credits her performances of Lady Betty Modish in

The Careless Husband and Lady Townly in The Provok’d Husband with exposing vice and folly. No other actress would be credited with instructing the audience in moral behavior in this way until Sarah Siddons in the 1780s. That Oldfield, an unmarried, calumnied actress could be credited with such power, shows the force of her onstage performances to temper her offstage reputation.53

53 Anne’s campaign for sympathy may have come in part from an awareness of how little she was likely to get in the press, especially from Maynwaring’s Tory detractors. Shortly after his death, Anne ordered an autopsy to dispel the rumors that Maynwaring died of a venereal disease. She took no chances: Curll writes that the autopsy was done by two surgeons, and witnessed by two doctors and an apothecary and names 100

Addison’s Cato

In 1712-13, Oldfield remained onstage until she gave birth in early May. Lafler suggests this was because she no longer had to be concerned with Maynwaring’s reputation. Her role as single provider must also have contributed, and was each day made more visible to the audience as a motivating factor for her continued exertions. She starred in several new plays over the course of the season, premiering The Heroick

Daughter in late November, the Humours of the Army at the end of January, and Cinna’s

Conspiracy in mid-February. Oldfield also played Marcia in the season’s biggest hit,

Joseph Addison’s Cato. Cato opened on 14 April 1713 and ran a record setting twenty consecutive nights, excluding Monday benefit nights. According to a letter dated May 7, the performances would have continued had Oldfield’s pregnancy not prevented it:

Mr Addison’s play has taken wonderfully, they have acted it now almost a month, and would I believe act it a month longer were it not that Mrs Oldfield cannot hold out any longer, having had for several nights past, as I am informed, a midwife behind the scenes, which is surely very unbecoming the character of Cato’s daughter. (George Berkeley to Sir John Percival, qtd Lafler 110)

Two days after this letter was written, Cato closed for the season and Anne did not appear again until late June, when the company traveled to Oxford. The child may have been stillborn or died shortly after birth, as there are no existing records for its baptism.

Berkeley’s letter indicates that the entire town sees and knows Mrs. Oldfield’s situation, but it does not deter them from the play. Beyond this, the letter tells us two things: that her body could, if anyone chose to let it, seriously undermine her each of the persons involved. The conclusion was that Maynwaring died of a consumption, a generic term at the time unassociated with sexual diseases.

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performance, and that without Mrs. Oldfield, the run would end. That Oldfield’s pregnancy ended the run of a successful play suggests her status in the company, the public, or both, was significant. The managers could have chosen to replace her and continue the run. Earlier in the year, other actresses stepped in to cover for Oldfield during Maynwaring’s final illness and immediately after his death; presumably the same could happen when she went into labor, yet it did not. Berkeley suggests that Mrs.

Oldfield has been exerting herself, perhaps exceptionally, to keep the play on the boards as long as possible. In his letter, however, this action is not sentimentalized as it would be with later actresses, particularly Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan.

2.3.1 CONCLUSION

Anne Oldfield and Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen’s cases have many similarities. Both women specialized in gay, witty comic heroines and played many of the same parts over the course of their careers. Mountfort Verbruggen also developed a line in the grotesque vein, Oldfield in the vein of noble tragic heroines. Both had two long-term relationships, and both lost one companion while pregnant with his child. Both started their second relationship less than two years after the death of their first husband/lover, perhaps an indication of the need for protection, or, in Susanna’s case, financial security. Both women may have retired early from the stage during pregnancy as a general rule, but each encountered exceptions: both continued to perform while pregnant after the deaths of their first companions and in both cases, financial necessity may have driven the decision because both already had young children.

Both had a pregnancy later in life, at age thirty-seven. Susanna performed throughout her pregnancy and died of complications, Anne left the stage early in her 102

pregnancy and survived, though it did take a toll on her health (Lafler 138-39). Did Anne stop performing because, as in 1709, she was attached to a political figure who might be censured for her condition? Or did she remember Mrs. Verbruggen and make the decision for her health? Both are feasible reasons, but we might also see Oldfield’s temporary retirement during pregnancy as a performance of her celebrity and economic status—she could afford not to work and her position in the company was secure, and so she chose not to perform. If the last is true, we should consider the possibility that Susanna’s early retirements in 1690-1692 were also due to the flexibility two incomes allowed and a relatively stable place within the United Company. The social and economic implications of performing or not performing during pregnancy will also arise in later chapters, particularly with Susannah Cibber, Sarah Siddons, and Dorothy Jordan.

Neither Oldfield nor Verbruggen’s case supports scholarly and biographic narratives that suggest pregnancy resulted in punitive casting decisions. In 1693 and

1703, Susanna performed the entire range of her comic characters, from witty young virgins to grotesques, during pregnancy. While some scholars have seen this as a negative, Susanna’s grotesque characters actually developed into a successful and lucrative line of business that showcased her specific comic talents. Susanna also added new ingénue parts to her repertoire, meaning pregnancy did not limit her participation in her profession to these grotesque parts. In 1712-13, Anne Oldfield likewise continued to perform popular stock characters, and to undertake parts in new plays such as Addison’s

Cato. Her private circumstances and visible body may have contributed to the rage amongst “Ladies of Quality” for command performances of The Distrest Mother. If so, this is a marked contrast to Sir Robert Howard’s fear in 1664 that “women of quality”

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would avoid the theatre if an actress performed while pregnant with an illegitimate child.

Though unmarried (and with the possible exception of her political enemy Jonathan

Swift), Oldfield was not criticized for being “impudent” or whorish for performing during. As we will see, women throughout the century used their private circumstances, onstage performances, and celebrity personae to dispel potentially negative responses to their pregnant, sexualized bodies.

In the case of Oldfield and Susanna, both women’s bodies, far from being invisible or causing inconvenient disruptions, became a tool for furthering their celebrity and careers. This project includes several more examples of pregnancy’s ability to further instead of hamper a career. In cases where pregnancy did have a negative impact, I will offer context that allows us to set some cautious guides to what might determine audience response to the pregnant body. Ultimately, I show that response to the pregnant body on stage was incredibly complex. Without a fully contextualized account of when, where, why, and how a woman continued her career during pregnancy, we are left making unsupported and often anachronistic assumptions about historical practice.

In this chapter, we have seen that both Susanna and Oldfield’s experiences after losing the fathers of their unborn children eloquently speak to the affective power of the pregnant form. In light of a publicly known and recognized tragedy, both women’s bodies took on new meaning: Oldfield’s body created a closer association between her private identity and her performances of tragic motherhood; Susanna’s body highlighted the contrast between the actress as private individual and the actress as character. Her pregnancy had the potential to function independently of the play, generating tragic or sentimental affect around her as an individual. The possibilities created in this layering of

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perceptions enable us to begin to theorize the ways pregnancy impacts audience perception. Already noted is pregnancy’s ability to bolster the fictional narrative an actress enacts, or to create a narrative that exists in parallel to that enactment. Throughout the ensuing chapters, I will offer further examples, building on the circumstances that can guide audience response to the pregnant body on stage, as well as a defining how perceptions of these bodies are swayed by the confluence of public and private, of fiction and reality, in the minds of audiences.

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CHAPTER THREE: SUSANNAH CIBBER, HANNAH PRITCHARD, GEORGE ANNE BELLAMY

The truth of playing appears when every look and gesture, as well as every accent of the actor, agrees with the age, condition, and situation of his character, and with the immediate circumstances of that moment. —John Hill, The Actor, A Treatise on the Art of Playing (1755) 225

This chapter covers the approximate years 1736-1760, focusing on Susannah

Maria Cibber (1714-1766), Hannah Pritchard (1711-1768), and George Anne Bellamy

(c.1727-1788), three celebrity actresses who worked at both Drury Lane and Covent

Garden theatres in the mid-eighteenth century. Due to the frequent changes in company affiliation, and the actresses’ intermittent absences from the stage, I provide the following table for reference:

Cibber Pritchard Bellamy 1736-37 Drury Lane Drury Lane -- 1737-38 Drury Lane Drury Lane -- 1738-39 -- Drury Lane -- 1739-40 -- Drury Lane -- 1740-41 -- Drury Lane -- 1741-42 Dublin Covent Garden -- 1742-43 Covent Garden Drury Lane Covent Garden54 1743-44 -- Covent Garden -- 1744-45 Drury Lane Covent Garden55 Covent Garden 1745-46 --56 Covent Garden Dublin 1746-47 Covent Garden Covent Garden Dublin Table 3 Contracts for Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, and George Anne Bellamy, 1736-1770 (continued)

54 Bellamy played Miss Prue in Love for Love on March 27 (benefit Bridgwater). 55 LS lists her in both companies; I do not find her performing at Drury Lane, however, only Covent Garden. 56 Cibber did not sign at either company, but did do benefit performances at both theatres during the year. 106

Table 3 (continued) Contracts for Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, and George Anne Bellamy 1736-1770 1747-48 Drury Lane Drury Lane Dublin 1748-49 Drury Lane Drury Lane Covent Garden 1749-50 -- Drury Lane Covent Garden 1750-51 Covent Garden Drury Lane Drury Lane 1751-52 Covent Garden57 Drury Lane Drury Lane 1752-53 Covent Garden Drury Lane Drury Lane 1753-54 Drury Lane Drury Lane Covent Garden 1754-6058 Drury Lane Drury Lane Covent Garden 1760-61 Drury Lane Drury Lane Dublin 1761-62 Drury Lane Drury Lane Covent Garden 1762-63 Drury Lane Drury Lane Edinburgh 1763-64 Drury Lane Drury Lane Edinburgh 1764-65 Drury Lane Drury Lane Covent Garden 1765-66 Drury Lane Drury Lane Covent Garden (died January 1766) 1766-67 -- Drury Lane Covent Garden 1767-68 -- Drury Lane Covent Garden (retired April, died August) 1768-69 -- -- Covent Garden 1769-70 -- -- Covent Garden

3.1.1 SENSATION: SUSANNAH CIBBER’S EARLY CAREER (1733-1738)

The story of Susannah Cibber’s career is one of sensation, downfall, redemption, and triumph. From a harried, persecuted wife, she went on to enjoy one of the most successful stage careers of the century. Though her onstage roles presented a generally passive, innocent victim—a persona she made excellent use of—she was offstage a passionate and dedicated professional. In the fall of 1745, she urged Garrick and Quin to go in on the management of Drury Lane with her after Charles Fleetwood so badly mismanaged the accounts that he could not pay his actors during the 1744-45 season.

Garrick was at first interested in the idea of managing with her, but ultimately decided against it out of fear that her estranged husband Theophilus would find some way to

57 Cibber spent much of the year in Paris auditioning dancers for the Covent Garden company.

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reassert his rights to Cibber’s property: “I should be glad of your visiting Mrs.

Cibber…but how can she be a joint patentee? Her husband will interfere, or somebody must act for her, which would be equally disagreeable” (Garrick 1:71-72.). Though she never became a manager, her wealth and connection to her lover William Sloper enabled her to secure complete control over her repertory, for she was never, after 1742, dependent on the theatre for her livelihood. David Garrick testified to her tenacity when he declared, upon hearing of her death:

Then half of tragedy is dead! she was the greatest female plague belonging to my house. I could easily parry the artless thrusts and despise the coarse language of some of my other heroines; but whatever was Cibber’s object, a new part or a new dress, she was always sure to carry her point by the acuteness of her invective and the steadiness of her perseverance.” (An Account 18, also qtd Highfill 3:279)

From a historiographical perspective, it is fascinating to note that this quotation is often given as “she was the greatest female player belonging to my house” (Melville 233), obscuring the agency implied in Garrick’s statement, which expresses clear frustration with Cibber’s ability to manipulate circumstances to her advantage. Mary Nash simply quotes the first exclamation (318), refusing to acknowledge this glimpse of a far from passive Susannah. Yet she must have been passionate and dedicated—she risked health and reputation to return to the stage after public trials for criminal conversation, something that was hardly necessary on financial grounds given her relationship with

Sloper. On at least two occasions, she refused to perform for an entire season simply because she did not like the conditions. Roach suggests that celebrity is often accompanied by a certain amount of the “unbiddable,” something Cibber certainly possessed, though rarely made public.

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At the height of her career (c.1745-1766), Susannah Maria Cibber (neé Arne) was the highest-paid actress of her day. Born in 1714, she began her career as a singer and developed a life-long professional relationship with George Frideric Handel. In 1733-34 the English Opera Company, led by her composer brother Thomas Arne, joined with

Theophilus Cibber’s rebels from Drury Lane for a season at the Haymarket theatre.59

There she met Theophilus Cibber. She joined him in the Drury Lane company when he returned in March 1734, accepting a salary of £200. They married in April 1734 and had two children, in 1735 and 1736. Susannah performed during both pregnancies, though much more extensively in 1736, when she made her debut as a tragic actress. She attained a prominent position in the company over the next two years, specializing in “imperiled virgins and patiently suffering wives” (Nash 147).

When Susannah married Theophilus Cibber, she joined a family that had helped to shape the London theatre scene for nearly three decades. Colley Cibber, her father-in- law, was Poet Laureate, a prolific playwright, and a popular actor, as well as holding a share of the management at Drury Lane from 1711 to 1733. Theophilus was a popular comedian and occasional playwright, and her sister-in-law, Charlotte Charke, also a performer and author.60

Though undoubtedly successful and even popular in his early life, between 1730-

40 Theophilus’ “increasingly eccentric, extravagant, and, on occasion, appalling behavior” (Salmon) made him unpopular. His dissolute ways made him too coarse, too

59 Theophilus and other company members left Drury Lane when his father, Colley Cibber, retired and sold the management to the woefully inexperienced John Highmore. According to Eric Salmon, Theophilus had bought his father’s portion of the patent in 1732, but Highmore effectively suppressed his involvement in management, prompting the rebellion. 60 After the Licensing Act passed, she managed Punch’s Theatre in St. James, a puppet theatre. Previously, she had formed her own summer company at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. 109

much like characters, such as Shakespeare’s Pistol, which were his line in the theatre.

Thomas Davies described Pistol as a “peculiar kind of false spirit,” given to “uncommon blustering” and “loud and grotesque vociferation” (1:294), all of which could and did describe Theophilus’ publicity stunts, endless quarrels with Susannah, and tendency to exploit his children from his first marriage to support his theatrical career. He was perpetually in debt and perpetually unfaithful to both his wives, being “as often in bagnios [brothels] and taverns as the stage” (ibid). Smaller than average in height, Henry

Baker described Theophilus’ face as “rather disgusting” (qtd Salmon), perhaps a reflection of his reputation as much as his actual appearance.

Susannah, in contrast, was delicate, well spoken, apparently gentle and humble.

She appealed to audiences, who found her genteel and refined—not least because she played genteel and refined characters on stage. She was pale, with dark hair, large eyes, and a slim, small figure (Figure 2). If, as Roach argues about charismatic talismans of celebrity, Sarah Siddons had her skin (or in Judith Pascoe’s view, her voice) and Dorothy

Jordan had her hair, Mrs. Cibber had her figure: “that

uncommon symmetry and exact proportion in her form,

that happily remained with her to her death” (Victor

81). More than this, though, she had her sensibility:

“Nature had bestowed on her an agreeable figure, a

bewitching voice, and, above all, an exquisite feeling”

(The Theatrical Review for the Year 1757). On stage

Figure 4 Thomas Hudson, Susannah she wept, trembled, blushed, and sighed; strong Cibber (1749)

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emotions acted on her body visibly because she was, and remained, small and almost frail. Her seemingly truthful portrayal of emotion fed into the cult of sensibility rising in public taste: actor Charles Dibdin praised her for being “the character she represented.

Love, rage, resentment, pity, disdain, and all the graduations of the various passions she greatly felt and vigorously expressed” (qtd Melville 233).61 The contrast between

Theophilus and Susannah in appearance and in persona made it easy to read her onstage parts, particularly those of wronged wives, as containing a measure of truth about her offstage life.

Theophilus and Susannah had two children, a daughter, Susannah, in February

1735, and a son, Caius Gabriel, in April 1736. Neither child lived for more than two weeks. Susannah performed during both pregnancies. During her first pregnancy, she was a singer in two operatic afterpieces, Cupid and Psyche, or Colombine Courtezan (Psyche) and Merlin, or the Devil of Stonehenge (Spirit/Italian Lady), which ran for one week in

December. Both of her roles were small and undemanding and she did not perform in the latter half of the season. By 1735-36, however, their financial situation was problematic.

Theophilus was running up debts, and Susannah had not received a full salary for the previous year because of her extended absence. Eventually, Colley Cibber looked to his new daughter-in-law as a possible solution, and discovered in her a prodigious talent for tragedy: “In forty years’ experience that I have known the stage, I never knew a woman at the beginning so capable of the business or improve so fast” (Tryal of a Cause 8). He

61 Other critics were less homogenous in their opinions. Playwright Richard Cumberland criticized her sing-song delivery: “though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it; when she had once recited two or three speeches, I could anticipate the manner of each succeeding one.” (qtd. Melville 228-9). A short, sarcastic puff piece in the Daily Journal of 27 January 1736 jeered “[Mrs. Cibber showed] her natural Genius, by never in one Night varying in either Tone of Voice or Action from the Way she was taught.” According to Nash, Kitty Clive was responsible for the piece (94). 111

began to give her acting lessons in the 1735-6 season, and to look for a new play in which she might make her debut before the birth of her second child.62 Just as financial necessity drove Mountfort and Oldfield’s appearances in the late stages of pregnancy, the

Cibbers’ need drove Susannah’s.

Aaron Hill, a playwright with a passionate desire to reform English acting style, offered Colley and Susannah a translation of Voltaire’s Zaïre for her debut. Hill’s desire for a new, “natural” English style of acting resulted in several publications.63 In these,

Hill takes what today we would term a psychological approach to acting: he observes that the physical expression of emotion derives from the subject’s internal feelings, and applies this to theatre, tracing the motivation behind and proper expression of various emotions on stage. Mrs. Cibber’s ability to express feeling was particularly compatible with Hill’s approach: “Her tenderness was natural, for it was said that in pathetic parts she wept genuine tears; and that her agitation turned her face pale, even through the rouge” (Fitzgerald 2:299-300). After several months working with Aaron Hill, she debuted as the title character in Zara on 12 January 1736 while six months pregnant.

Zara is a slave in the court of Osman, the Sultan of Jerusalem. The two fall in love and plan to marry. Nerestan, a young nobleman later revealed as Zara’s brother, comes to negotiate the release of Zara and other Christian captives. Osman agrees to release the captives, though Zara plans to remain and marry him. Zara learns that she is the daughter of one of the captives, that Nerestan is her brother, and that she had a Christian baptism.

62 It was essential to place her in a new play, as existing roles were the property of other actresses in the company. George Anne Bellamy refers to the custom of lending a part to a new performer for their debut, but the part would revert after this to the person who owned the role. Susannah needed a part that would be exclusively hers. 63 He edited, with William Popple, The Prompter (1734-36), a theatrical newspaper, and in 1746 published his poem, “The Art of Acting,” which later appeared in prose as “Essay on the Art of Acting” (1753). 112

Zara promises to practice her faith in secret. Osman, suspicious that Zara plans to elope with Nerestan, kills her in a jealous rage and, after learning the truth, commits suicide. To introduce Mrs. Cibber to her audience, Theophilus performed a prologue written by his father:

To-night the greatest venture of my life Is lost or saved, as you receive—a wife… Her unskill’d tongue would simple nature speak… Amidst a thousand faults, her best pretence[sic] To please—is unpresuming innocence. When a chaste heart’s distress your grief demands One silent tear outweighs a thousand hands, If she conveys the pleasing passions right, Guard and support her this decisive night. (An Account 6)

Theophilus uses his presumed rapport with the audience to plead for his “unskill’d” wife, whom he calls his “greatest venture” hinting at the financial stakes involved. He casts

Susannah as innocent, chaste, sincere, and in need of the audience’s support and protection. Such characterization of Susannah suggests that she and Zara have much in common.64 The fictional character is loyal and loving, faithful to her family and to

Osman, an innocent victim, and so is Susannah. She was an immediate success in the role, appearing fourteen times in fifteen days. Chetwood, the prompter, wrote that she played “to the Admiration of every Spectator that had their auricular Faculties” and that she was “the Daughter of Nature in Perfection” (123).

After the success of Zara, Charles Fleetwood, Drury Lane’s manager, agreed to let her undertake other parts, so long as they did not belong to other actresses. Before her confinement, she performed Indiana in Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers and

64 According to Highfill, Susannah wore her wedding dress, slightly altered, for the role, further emphasizing the melding of actress and character. Unfortunately, I am unable to find a mention of this elsewhere. 113

Amanda in Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift. Steele’s Indiana is a foundling beloved of a wealthy young man. Though the play is a comedy, the “sighing orphan Indiana” (Todd

44) was a good vehicle for Susannah’s pathos: thinking that she will never be able to marry the man she loves, Indiana resigns herself to running mad and perpetual weeping immediately before the comic conclusion of the play.65 Cibber’s Amanda is a woman impoverished by her faithless husband. She eventually regains his love through patient suffering and a bed trick, in which she acts the part of a courtesan. Just as Susannah’s

Zara emphasized an innocence and chastity she supposedly retained in private life,

Amanda hinted at the realities of Mrs. Cibber’s offstage life:

For some time Theophilus had been robbing his wife to pay his debts. In 1735 he had taken half her salary; in 1736 he took a present of £50 which Fleetwood had given her for her appearances as Zara; and in 1737 he collected most of what she made at Drury Lane and stripped her wardrobe of dresses and her closets of linen. (Highfill 3:248-9).

It is unclear to what extent the audience was aware of his behavior, but his gambling and affairs were publicly known during his first marriage. Love’s Last Shift proved popular and was repeated by the “particular desire” of “ladies of quality” on several occasions.66

As her final new part of the 1735-6 season, Susannah performed the widowed

Andromache in Ambrose Philips’ The Distrest Mother for Theophilus’ benefit. As it was a benefit performance, Theophilus chose both the play and the cast. Andromache drew on her talents for pathos while restricting the amount of time she spent on stage; though the title character, Andromache appears in less than one-third of the scenes in the play. The

65 In Act Five, Indiana says she will “sigh, and weep, to rave, run wild”; in her fit, she flings a bracelet that her father recognizes, and which brings about the happy conclusion of her story (90). 66 Though claiming to act “by desire” was a common advertising strategy, Mary Tickell, sister-in-law to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, later called Covent Garden’s use of this ploy “a downright hostility” (Y.d.35.148) suggesting it could be a successful marketing tactic despite its frequent use. 114

Distrest Mother is a common thread in the careers of several of the actresses in my study.

We have seen the affective possibilities of pregnancy in this role with Anne Oldfield, and

George Anne Bellamy and Sarah Siddons also used the part during pregnancy as well.

Theophilus’ selection played on Susannah’s pregnant body to emphasize the part’s maternal nature, adding to the pathos of the part as Andromache makes the terrible decision to sacrifice both herself and Hector’s unborn child to save her living son.

Susannah played Andromache on 23 March, and the part became a staple in her repertoire after she returned to London in 1742. Susannah intended to play Indiana for her own benefit on 13 April, but went into labor and gave birth on 5 April. Theophilus played in The Alchemist in her absence, taking the opportunity to highlight his wife’s popularity among “Ladies of Quality”:

…her present Condition not permitting her to play on her Benefit Night as she proposed, She is obliged to change the Play…as she is prevented paying her Duty to the Ladies of Quality, etc. in Person, as she intended, she relies entirely on their Candor and Good Nature…that she shall nevertheless be honored with their Appearance on her Benefit Night (LDPGA 6 April 1736)

It was not unusual for an actress to use the papers to appeal to “Ladies” or “Persons of

Quality.”67 Actors and actresses would offer benefit tickets for sale at their house or sometimes through intermediaries, but would typically call in person on wealthy patrons to sell tickets or boxes for their night. Susannah’s child, Caius Gabriel, lived only a short

67 When Mrs. Pritchard was pregnant in 1749-50, she placed a notice on 24 April that reads, “Mrs Pritchard humbly hopes such Persons of Quality…will excuse her waiting on them in Person (as her Indisposition renders her incapable)” (LDPGA). 115

time, dying on 16 April 1736 and Susannah did not appear again during the regular season.68

Though her debut season was short, it was effective: she opened the following season with Indiana, and played Amanda by royal command on 23 July 1736. From the start of her career, her performance style and repertory appealed to aristocratic audience members. The greater popularity of Love’s Last Shift as a vehicle for Susannah potentially came in part from the similitude between Amanda Mrs. Cibber. If Kinservik’s claim is true that sentimental comedy prompted the audience to identify with, rather than laugh at, the characters in the play, Love’s Last Shift offers more in the way of moral redemption for both characters and audiences.

The parts Susannah added over the next few years created a decisive line of business onstage, and bolstered the image of her as a virtuous, pious, chaste, and principled woman. As a sample, she played Desdemona in Othello; Isabella in Measure for Measure; Arpasia in Tamerlane (sexually assaulted by her husband, Bajazet);

68 Nash claims that each of Susannah’s children by Cibber died because Susannah could not produce sufficient milk to keep them alive —one wonders, if this was the case, why no wet nurse was engaged? Sloper hired a wet nurse for Molly, however, and she survived infancy, so perhaps her speculation is valid. The other factor to consider is a possible venereal disease, such as syphilis or gonorrhea. In printed literature after the criminal conversation trials, there is an implication that Theophilus gave his wife some kind of disease (see Tryal of a Cause 12). If so, it might explain the infants’ failure to thrive. In a 1790 report in the London Medical Journal, Thomas Denman, the popular accoucheur patronized by the Duchess of Devonshire, wrote of symptoms in infants later identified as syphilitic. The infants, after about two weeks of healthy life, would develop a heavy and often bloody discharge from the nose and no longer be able to nurse (not being able to breathe while doing so), quickly wasting away and dying despite the application of purgatives (see Dunlap in The Secret Malady 117-8). If Theophilus gave Susannah syphilis during their marriage, it may explain why her early children (born in 1735 and 1736) failed to survive, while her children by Sloper (1739, 1750), born during the later, non-contagious stage of the disease, lived. A similar circumstance would explain the deaths of Theophilus and Jane’s first two children. Sloper seems not to have contracted an illness, which may date the disease’s progress. It is only possible to pass syphilis to a child in utero or at birth during the secondary stage of the disease. The short primary and longer secondary stages occur over about a one to two year period before the disease enters its latent stage, which can last more than forty years. Once in the latent stage, the disease is no longer contagious, even if and when it enters the final tertiary stage. Susannah did not show any signs of the disease at autopsy, or at least none were reported, and Sloper, as far as we know, died simply of old age (he was in his early eighties); with the timing of syphilitic progression, this is a plausible, if entirely conjectural, possibility. 116

Belvidera in Venice Preserv’d (constant, pure, and forgiving); Statira in The Rival

Queens (who forgives her murderer and rival with her dying breath); and Monimia in The

Orphan (who commits suicide after being tricked into sleeping with her husband’s brother). Each of these parts offered a consistent portrait of Susannah as an innocent victim. After her marriage to Theophilus fell apart in a spectacularly public fashion, however, the maternal body that had been prominently on display during her 1736 pregnancy—a body that signaled her status as wife and soon-to-be mother and potentially added to the pathetic power of her performances— became of necessity, invisible, as her

1738/9 and 1749/50 pregnancies were the result of her affair with William Sloper.

3.1.2 DOWNFALL: MRS. CIBBER’S SCANDAL (1738-1739)

In 1737, probably prompted by his mounting debts, Theophilus introduced

Susannah to William Sloper, a married country squire. Theophilus encouraged a sexual relationship between the two in exchange for Sloper’s financial support. When Susannah wanted to live with Sloper permanently, however, Theophilus brought actions for criminal conversation against him in 1738 and 1739. At the time of the first trial,

Susannah was pregnant with the first of two children she would have with Sloper. She went into hiding and did not perform, though her pregnancy and details of her sex life played a crucial role in the trial proceedings. After the second trial, she and Sloper took their daughter Molly and disappeared for two years.

In December 1738, Theophilus brought an accusation of criminal conversation against Sloper, for which he sought £5000. In advance of the trial, Theophilus printed four apocryphal letters to Susannah and Sloper casting himself as the wronged party in an attempt to secure public sympathy. The letters depict Susannah as heartless and greedy, 117

having no maternal feelings to tie her to her husband. Theophilus laments, “Had God permitted our tender Babes to have remained on Earth, those innocent Angels would have pleaded in my Behalf beyond the Rhetorick of Man” (Four Original Letters 6). He suggests that all of his debts are due to his generosity towards her: “I can’t throw away any thing where I am sure there’s no Obligation, —nor must my Children [by Jane

Johnson] starve while you riot” (ibid 34-5). Though he does not suggest that Susannah has maternal obligations as the girls’ stepmother, he does suggest that she is the cause of their distress. The printed letters went into three editions by the end of 1739.

At the trial, however, it was clear from the outset that Theophilus had actively arranged and encouraged the affair for pecuniary gain: he openly referred to Sloper as

“Mr. Benefit” to their servants, and Anne Hopson, Susannah’s maid, testified that Sloper and the Cibbers had adjoining rooms in their summer residences. Mrs. Cibber would undress in her husband’s room, take a pillow from the bed, say goodnight to her husband, and retire to Sloper’s room, returning in the morning when Theophilus would knock on their door to wake them for breakfast (Tryal of a Cause 28-9).

Theophilus’ collusion did not prevent the jury, and the public, from hearing the details of Sloper and Susannah’s sex life. Mr. Hayes, a landlord at the Blue Cross Inn where they sometimes met, was a particularly entertaining witness. He “express’d himself as much by Gestures, as by Words,” (15) and testified:

I bored Holes through the Wainscoat an could see them very plain. He used to kiss her, and take her on his Lap. On the 22nd Day of December [1737] I was looking through; he took her on his knee, lifted her Clothes, and took his privy Member and put it in his Hand, and put it between her Legs. (ibid 14)

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The level of detail grew to such excess that the judge eventually admonished the prosecution to desist for, “we are not trying a rape” (ibid 15).

A trial for criminal conversation was a trial between two men: the husband

(plaintiff) and the wife’s lover or attacker (defendant). The husband sued for damages, usually by claiming that the affair deprived him of his wife’s affection, time, and domestic and sexual services. Ben Wilson, in The Making of Victorian Values (2007) writes of the standard legal strategy for criminal conversation trials:

The defendant…was obliged to present the object of his attentions as a low, debauched, corrupted woman who was worthless to the world let alone to her sorry husband. The plaintiff, in order to secure a high payout, had to present his marriage as an unending festival of joyous love and his unfaithful wife as the best and most innocent woman in the world before the wicked seducer got his grubby hands on her. (150)

Despite the almost universal absence of the woman in question—women could not testify at the trial and Susannah appears to have been entirely absent—the trial placed her body at the center of debate. The female body, in absentia or not, was anatomized for its continence, its availability, and its performance of virtue or licentiousness. The Cibber-

Sloper trial was no exception, but the testimony of a Mr. Fife, who helped Cibber abduct

Susannah in the summer of 1738, showcased not simply a sexual body, but a maternal one as well:

…when Mr. Cibber was in the Chamber in the Inn, she called her Husband a great many Villains, and said that now he had ruined her Reputation, she did not value it if all the World knew that she was with Child by ‘Squire Sloper, and that she loved him dearly, for he was an honorable Gentleman. (Tryal 20; Tryals of Two Causes, 15-16)

Susannah’s public confession to being pregnant with another man’s child did several things from a legal standpoint (intentionally or not). First, it put her in compliance with

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the Bastardy Act of 1733, which ordered that a woman pregnant with a bastard child must declare herself so, and name the father (Price). Second, it created witnesses who could prove that she claimed the child was Sloper’s. In theory, her witnessed declaration would make it more difficult for Theophilus to claim rights to the child, which he could then use to leverage control over Susannah and Sloper. Third, her declaration highlighted the necessity of Theophilus’ complicity: her reputation was ruined not because of the affair, but because Theophilus elected to reveal it. She showed no remorse for her behavior, and was proud of the illegitimate child she carried—here was the stage audience’s innocent victim, brazenly screeching her affairs aloud at a public inn. The remarkable thing is that, given Theophilus’ behavior, no one really blamed her. Legally, however, the questions that always lay behind trials of this kind—issues of property rights, illegitimacy, and inheritance—were put into practice through the image of Susannah’s gravid body.

Theophilus, knowing that some might question the harm an adulterous actress might do her actor husband (who owned neither title nor property), cast himself as a descendent of William of Wickham, Bishop of Winchester and founder of New College at Oxford and Winchester College. Theophilus claimed to fear that “a spurious Branch might arise and debauch the Progeny” of this illustrious man. In doing so, Theophilus attempted to turn Susannah’s pregnant body from a source of amusement or a matter of little consequence, into a body that transgressed upon the memory, and via Theophilus, the body, of a respected historical figure. His attempt, like many of his other ventures, provoked more mirth than outrage. Sloper’s lawyers took delight in ridiculing

Theophilus’ claims, suggesting that, as William of Wickham was celibate, Theophilus could not be descended in any “right line” (Tryal of a Cause 23) and using Wickham’s

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motto, “Manners make the man” to spurn Theophilus’ gross attempts at manipulation. If

Theophilus attempted to raise Susannah, and her body’s, importance, Sloper’s lawyers dedicated themselves to degrading and devaluing it and her.

In his defense, Sergeant Eyre, Sloper’s lawyer, painted Susannah as an unfeeling woman (and typical actress) who had willingly colluded to seduce Sloper and rob him of his money, arguing:

That Players are a people who act, and enter into all manner of Characters…That their Women learn all the Allurements that can engage the Eye and Ear, and strike the Imagination of young Gentlemen; they dress, chat, sing, dance, and every way charm unguarded young Gentlemen, who are not aware of any ill Consequences. (Tryal of a Cause 23-4)

In this characterization, Susannah is dangerous because her profession has taught her to conceal her true nature; as we will see, however, defenders used her perceived sincerity and sensibility on stage to argue the exact opposite—that she was as sincere and genuine as her performances suggested, a radical argument given associations with acting generally, and women specifically, with duplicity. Eyre, making use of Susannah’s pregnancy, equated the Theophilus’ situation with that of Cato, “the greatest Man of the

Time he lived in,” who lent out his wife to a friend “to breed out of her” and took her back again afterwards “very well contented” (Tryal 23).

The stoic Cato, who committed suicide rather than live under Julius Caesar’s tyrannical rule, was a prominent figure in the eighteenth-century imagination.69 In light of

69 Addison’s play of the same name had premiered in 1713, as we have seen, and was popular with both Whigs and Tories. It ran for over a month, stopping only when Anne Oldfield, playing Cato’s daughter Marcia, went into labor. It was George Washington’s favorite piece of literature, and many quotations associated with the American Revolution are, in fact, paraphrases of lines in Addison’s play. Nathan Hale’s “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country” closely resembles “What a pity it is / That we can die but once to serve our country,” while Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” paraphrases “It is not now a time to talk of aught / But chains or conquest, liberty of death” (Miller). 121

Susannah’s pregnancy, the analogy between Theophilus and Cato was particularly apt, suggesting first a similar complicity in Cato and Theophilus’ situation, and second that

Theophilus should welcome his wife back uncomplainingly. It was also a clever dig at his claims to noble affiliation: if Cato had not complained, neither should an upstart comedian. Along with mocking Theophilus, of course, it also implies something degrading about Susannah: that her value cannot approach that of Cato’s wife.

Theophilus found his attempts at playing the victim wholly unsuccessful both in court and at the theatre: the jury awarded Theophilus £10 in damages, far less than the £5000 he asked for, and not even enough to cover the associated legal fees. Though a victory for

Sloper, the victory came at the expense of Susannah’s exposed, anatomized, satirized, and devalued body.

When Theophilus attempted to perform after the trial on 4 January 1739, the audience hissed, jeered, and accosted him with projectile vegetation:

When the Scene came in which he was to appear, there was a dead Silence, till he popp’d his poor Head from behind the Scenes, then at once the Hurley-Burley began, Volleys of Apples and Potatoes, and such vile Trash, flew about his Ears. He retir’d, the Storm subsided; he advanc’d, it began again.---But determin’d to go through the Play, he went through it amidst the greatest Uproar that ever was heard so long a Space in a Theatre… (Apology for the Life of Mr. T---- C----- 63)70

Though eventually the rioting subsided, Fielding writes, “For some time after, every Joke in a Part he himself spoke, or if, when he was on the Stage, any Thing was said that alluded to Cuckoldom, the Joke was made allusive to him, and the Audience had their

Laugh” (ibid 64).

70This mock-autobiography was likely written by Henry Fielding, who detested the Cibbers, father and son. It would be a suspect source if not corroborated by others. For example, Lady Stafford wrote to Lord Wentworth that “his old friend Impudence kept him from being either out of countenance or in the least disturb’d at the noise” (qtd. Highfill 3:253). 122

The trial sparked at least two long letters in the newspapers calling for censure on

Theophilus, but casting no aspersions on Susannah. On 27 January 1739, The Weekly

Miscellany published a long letter from “Philodramatus” on its front page. The author called for the removal of immoral actors from the stage, specifically “such who have been guilty, thro’ a long Series of Time, of various and gross Immoralities, attended with sufficient Proof, and well known to the World.” The actor is Theophilus, as

Philodramatus’ charges make clear: “Let us suppose, that the Crimes of an Actor are not only of the blackest Dye, but also of so peculiar a Nature, that they have actually been the Means of depriving the Theatre of one, or more of its brightest Ornaments…” referring to Susannah and to his first wife, Jane Johnson. Philodramatus casts the audience as the means of salvation for “some, who have greetly [sic] sufferd (perhaps in the tenderest Point) thro’ the Faults of this Offender, and not their own, and are unable to redress themselves.”71 Philodramatus believes that the audience should protect the injured parties and punish the guilty. In this summation, Susannah’s conduct is neither criticized nor examined, there is no question of whether or not she was in the wrong. Her pregnancy is not mentioned.

The following week, a letter from H. Stonecastle implied that the riotous audience was damaging the entertainments available at the theatres: “Have not some of these tumultuous Proceedings sunk the Reputation of the Theatre, and deterr’d the Fair and

Polite from appearing there, who us’d to be its brightest Ornaments?” (Universal

Spectator and Weekly Journal 3 February 1739). The echo of Philodramatus’ phrase

71 The reference to the “tenderest Point” may be to Susannah’s heart, or even a reference to the accusation that Theophilus gave Susannah a venereal disease, a charge published nine days earlier in The Comforts of Matrimony: “He frequented Women of lewd Fame…and by that Means she received an injury” (12). 123

“brightest Ornaments” suggests this may be a reference to Susannah, fearful of coming back to work because of the audience response to Theophilus, though it may also refer to female audience members.72 If it applies to Susannah, then he implies that she would not receive the same treatment as Theophilus if she returned.

These public letters complicate Mary Nash’s assertion that audiences universally and publicly vilified Susannah after the first trial, despite the humiliating exposure of her sexualized and pregnant body in the courtroom (146-49). In fact, her body plays no direct part in either letter, she is unnamed, and her pregnancy is not alluded to. It seems from these small glimpses that public sympathy may have been in Susannah’s favor—or at least that her defenders were more vocal in print than any detractors immediately following the first trial. This would concur with Joanne Bailey’s findings regarding expected behavior for husbands and wives.

Summarizing a wife’s complaint against her husband in 1734, Bailey writes that,

“she had been his wife for some years, brought him a very plentiful fortune and was the mother of his several children, yet he was adulterous to a woman he brought into the house, to whom he made his wife act as servant” (109). The woman’s testimony clearly demonstrated that she had fulfilled all expectations of her as wife: she contributed economically to the family, and bore her husband’s children. Despite this, her husband offered her disrespect by committing adultery and robbing her of her rightful position of authority within her own home. Though Susannah brought no dowry to their marriage, she had a salary of several hundred pounds from Drury Lane. She appeared on stage during the final trimester of her second pregnancy, visibly performing social expectations

72 A reference to throwing vegetables earlier in the piece certainly implies that he is discussing Theophilus, further supporting this connection to Susannah. 124

that a wife would add to the couple’s economic security and provide children. Her husband, on the other hand, was a spendthrift and adulterer. He gambled to excess, stole her salary, was accused of giving her a venereal disease, and once sold her of her stage costumes to pay his debts. The latter was not only cruel, it compromised her ability to make a living. Susannah had clearly and publicly fulfilled her obligations to her husband, whereas he had violated nearly every obligation a man had to his wife.

Susannah continued to hide from Theophilus in the spring and summer of 1739 at a home in Kennington Lane. While in hiding, she pursued legal separation from

Theophilus and, barring that, a guarantee of financial independence.73 Theophilus discovered Susannah in the fall of 1739, after a local surgeon recognized the famous Mrs.

Cibber while visiting the house. Theophilus again brought an action against Sloper, this time for “detaining” his wife and depriving her husband of the income she would otherwise have earned at Drury Lane, which he estimated at £300-400 per year.74

Despite Sloper and Susannah’s attempts to avoid another criminal conversation conviction, “It was easy to establish that the illicit relationship had continued, part of the evidence being the birth of Mrs. Cibber’s first child by Sloper” (Highfill 3:270). The financial arrangements for the Christening, as well as the presence of a nurse and wet- nurse during the lying-in and after, were described several times in the short trial. The fact that Sloper supported her and the child financially was sufficient evidence that the previous trial had failed to correct their behavior. This time, the jury took the matter more

73 As he was still her husband, Theophilus could claim her salary, and had entire legal control over her contracts and other business dealings. Before returning to London in 1742, she had to ensure a legal separation that gave her control over her money and career. 74 The actual charge reads for detaining and “assaulting, beating &c. the Plaintiff’s Wife” (2). At the opening, the Solicitor-General warned that “this present Trial was not as likely to afford so much Mirth and Entertainment to the Bystanders” (Tryals of Two Causes 2). 125

seriously and instructed Sloper to pay Theophilus £500, roughly equivalent to two years of Susannah’s earnings at Drury Lane. Though far less than the £10,000 Theophilus sought, it was more than enough to keep Theophilus from agreeing to a formal separation or divorce; instead, he could continue to bring new actions for criminal conversation against Sloper for years to come.

The details of both trials were widely and frequently published.75 On 18 January

1739, two different version of the trial appeared, The Comforts of Matrimony76 and Tryal of a Cause. The latter forms the basis of accounts of the first trial in all subsequent editions. Tryal of a Cause went into several reprints, including editions with a frontispiece entitled “Pistol’s a Cuckold!” which may have been a smaller version of

“Pistol’s a Cuckold, or Adultery in Fashion,” a broadsheet printed in 1738 which showed

Theophilus, dressed as Pistol, watching Sloper uncover a naked Susannah on the bed while two figures look on from the doorway. An explanatory poem labeled Susannah “the

Innocent” and Theophilus a “crusty Pimp,” while a Latin verse on the left side of the frame implies Theophilus’ speech: “The public hiss at me, but I cheer myself when in my own house,” a quotation from Horace.

There are important differences between the story (initially printed as Tryal of a

Cause) that became the dominant narrative, and The Comforts of Matrimony, published

75 In addition to accounts in the biographies of Susannah and Theophilus, the trials were included in many collected editions of criminal conversation trials. 1761’s Adultery Anatomized: in a Selection of Trials for Criminal Conversation, brought down from the Infant ages of Cuckoldom in England, to its Full Growth in the Present Time, enjoyed a reprint in 1771 under the name: Cuckoldom Triumphant; A New and Compleat Collection of the Most Remarkable Trials for Adultery &c. from the Time of Henry VIII to the present period appeared in 1780 (with illustrations of Cibber and Sloper in flagrante); in the same year, Trials for Adultery, or the History of Divorce included their story; and in 1793, The Cuckold’s Chronicle, being select trials for Adultery, Imbecility, Incest, Ravishment, &c. capped the trials’ eighteenth-century printing history. 76 Advertised with “Cuckoldom’s Glory” and “The Contented Cuckold” (play). The same page advertises the “third edition” of Four Original Letters (LDPGA, 18 January 1740). 126

the same day in 1739 under the pseudonym Francis Truelove.77 Truelove’s volume contains additional details, likely due to the “long Acquaintance” he claims with the Arne family (10). Truelove praises Mrs. Cibber’s sincerity on stage and asks the readers to remember her performance of Amanda in Love’s Last Shift “for the Similitude it bears to the Cause of her real Sorrow” (9). Truelove asks his readers to imagine that Susannah’s private feelings are available to them if they only remember this performance; instead of her profession being a liability, Truelove suggests that her stage career supports her innocence. The fact that the role remained in her repertoire after the criminal conversation trials is indicative of Cibber’s successful reassertion of innocent victimhood upon her return to the stage.

The major differences between The Comforts of Matrimony and later printed texts are as follows: Truelove provides Susannah’s description of events in several places including the assertion that Theophilus threatened her with a pistol when she refused to take Sloper as a lover (15). He adds Shakespearean flair to their affair when he claims that Susannah dressed as a boy and accompanied Sloper about town (24). Mr. Hayes’ testimony also differs. In most printings, Sloper is the agent in their lovemaking, but The

Comforts of Matrimony suggests mutual passion:

Upon this he…did sit down, and she did sit down in his Lap, and with her Hand did pull out his Pr—v-te Me-b-r, and then he did pull up her Coats, and put it between her Th---s, and after that she did sit some Time, and riggle about very much. (31)

Susannah is given agency in this encounter: she sits on his lap, she takes out his “Pr—v- te Me-b-r” and she performs the active role of “riggl[ing] about very much.” While a small point, it is important that this depiction of mutual consent is in the pamphlet which

77 The actual author has never been identified. 127

most seeks to vindicate Susannah’s behavior. Truelove also describes Susannah’s behavior while the trial was proceeding: “During the Course of this Action, she hath cited him into the Spiritual Court for Incontinence, hoping (as supposed) to obtain a Divorce a

Mensa & Thoro” (37).78 This glimpse of Susannah actively pursuing her own freedom is compatible with her later proactive approach to contract negotiations with theatrical managers.79

Despite the intimacy he claims with Susannah and her family, Truelove makes no mention of Susannah’s pregnancy in the narrative introduction to the trial proceedings or in the summary of the trial testimony. Similarly, neither of the letters in the papers defending her mention this pregnancy. Why not? Is it not of interest? Is it inconvenient proof of complicity or guilt (stigmata) that compromises her status as innocent victim

(charismata)? When Cibber leaves the stage in the 1749-50 season during pregnancy, is this a similar recognition of the way her body might compromise her onstage identity?

Truelove concludes his argument with a call for Susannah’s public forgiveness and return to the stage: “’tis the Desire of all who are fond of good Representations on the Stage, that she may again appear; and it is hop’d, every one on the Side of Good- nature, will be her Friend, (since her Misfortunes have not been occasioned by herself alone)” (37) . Truelove’s account is sympathetic to Susannah, supportive of her continued career, and showcases an agency other accounts deny, yet he ignores and renders invisible her pregnant body.

78 The use of “incontinence” in the charge refers to an inability to restrain his sexual appetites. 79 See Cibber’s correspondence with David Garrick for examples. 128

3.1.3 REDEMPTION AND TRIUMPH: 1741-1750

The invisibility of Susannah’s maternal body continued after she returned to her public career in London in September 1742. After several years out of the public eye and a single season in Dublin, Susannah secured a legal separation from Theophilus that allowed her to return to work. When she returned, her repertoire included several popular roles from her pre-trial career: Andromache, Amanda, Indiana, and Desdemona, the part she played at her Covent Garden debut on 22 September 1742. Before the trials,

Desdemona had fed into the public perception of her as a suffering, innocent wife.

Desdemona’s vindication at the end of the play, her unspotted loyalty and chastity, epitomized domestic tragedy. This time, however, Susannah Cibber’s amorous situation was more complex. This Desdemona was not innocent of adultery. This Desdemona had, rather than be killed and die in innocence, fled her Othello with a handsome lover; this

Desdemona, essentially, agreed with Emelia’s (and Francis Truelove’s) assessment that

“it is their husband’s faults if wives do fall” (4.3). In light of the disparity between her personal life and that of the character, Desdemona could seem an odd choice. However, when she performed the role in 1742, the London audience burst into spontaneous applause during Desdemona’s protestations of innocence and pleas for mercy in Act Five

(An Account 11, “from the information of a person present”). Susannah’s past, as much as her own, adulterous body, was on display that night; her plea for mercy applied to both herself and her character, and was heartily accepted by her audience.

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She also added several new parts to her repertoire, one of which she had debuted in Dublin the previous season: Calista in Nicolas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent .80 The affair between Calista and Lothario after her marriage to Altamont offered a neat parallel of the

Sloper-Theophilus-Susannah ménage à trois. Calista’s part also speaks powerfully and directly to the unfair position of women, railing against their status as property first to fathers and then to husbands:

How hard is the Condition of our Sex, Thro’ ev’ry State of Life the Slaves of Man? In all the dear delightful Days of Youth, A rigid Father dictates to our Wills, And deals out Pleasure with a scanty Hand; To his, the Tyrant Husband’s Reign succeeds; Proud with Opinion of superior Reason, He holds Domestick Bus’ness and Devotion All we are capable to know, and shuts us, Like Cloyster’d Ideots, from the World’s Acquaintance, And all the Joys of Freedome; wherefore are we Born with high Souls, but to assert our selves, Shake off the vile Obedience they exact And claim an equal Empire o’er the World? (26)

Calista’s repentance and payment for her sins is entirely fictional, of course, but when

Susannah performed the role in London, Calista remained unnamed in the cast lists, which read “Fair Penitent…Mrs. Cibber” (LS 3:2.1008), inviting the audience to take this fictional repentance as indicative of actual atonement. The content of the part, including the explication of women’s difficult position quoted above, might also suggest the justice of her refusal to return to Theophilus.

The other part, Lady Brute in The Provok’d Wife, was similarly laden with meaning. Lady Brute’s husband treats her abominably despite her best efforts to please

80 We do not know Cibber and Sloper’s location between the 1739 trial and the 1741-42 season, when she came to Dublin in the company of James Quin and Handel to perform in a series of plays and concerts, including the premiere of Handel’s Messiah. 130

him. Eventually, she is tempted to take a lover. Though she does not go through with the affair and retains her virtue, other characters in the play support her desires as totally justified by her husband’s inhumane treatment, treatment that Susannah suffered at

Theophilus’ hands:

L.B. …Why suppose you had a Wife, and she should entertain a Gallant. Con. If I gave her just Cause, how cou’d I justly condemn her? L.B. Ah; but you differ widely about just Causes. Con. But Blows can bear no Dispute. L.B. Nor ill Manner much, truly. Con. Then no Woman upon Earth has so just a Cause as you have. L.B. O, but a faithful Wife, is a beautiful Character. Con. To a deserving Husband, I confess it is. L.B. But can his Faults release my Duty? Con. In Equity without Doubt. And where Laws dispense with Equity, Equity should dispense with Laws. (63)

Susannah never made a personal appeal to the audience regarding her absence or her affair with Sloper; she never published a memoir or a commissioned a biography. She— or Rich—did, however, choose her first season back carefully. She resumed her identity as the wronged, innocent victim with Desdemona, and the Fair Penitent suggested the reform of a fallen woman. Her first appearance as Lady Brute continued a campaign to win audience support and generate sympathy. It also showcases the interconnectedness of

London theatres and their willingness to capitalize on interest in the personal lives of prominent performers. Susannah’s appearance in The Provok’d Wife created ripples:

Drury Lane promptly produced The Provok’d Husband (about a man whose frivolous wife drives him to distraction) on 8 November with Susannah’s old rival, Kitty Clive, playing Lady Townly; four days later, they mounted The Provok’d Wife on 12 November with Hannah Pritchard as Lady Brute, and Theophilus (loathe to be forgotten) acted the

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title character in The Careless Husband—whose wife’s gentleness reforms his adulterous habits—on 24 November at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The growing belief that actors must identify closely with their characters, and that sensibility was key to this, enabled Susannah Cibber to reassert a position of innocent victimhood after the scandalous rupture in her career. Her onstage image, however, did not compromise her agency offstage; though restricted by the theatrical and social world in which she lived, Susannah wielded her celebrity effectively, exerting considerable control over her career and onstage image. When she was pregnant again in 1749-50, she concealed her pregnant body, which potentially risked compromising her carefully crafted onstage celebrity.

3.1.4 ABSENT PRESENCE: SUSANNAH CIBBER IN 1750

At the end of the 1748-49 season, Susannah Cibber indicated to playwright Aaron

Hill that she intended to perform in the 1749-50 season. However, that summer she withdrew and left Garrick scrambling to cover her absence. The timing suggests her absence was at least partly due to her final pregnancy, a circumstance missed by a number of sources that accuse her of being spiteful.81 She began to have health problems and missed several performances in April 1749. These absences may have been related to the pregnancy, for her son Charles was born early in 1750.

Susannah and Sloper went to Bath for most of the year, perhaps because bathing was considered therapeutic for pregnant women.82 It was also a place where she might enjoy greater privacy. She is mentioned only once in the London papers that year, when

81 For example, Armstrong’s A Century of Great Actors (1977). 82Queen Anne took the waters at Bath several times throughout her difficult and painful reproductive years. 132

she was rumored to be violently ill and her life was in danger. No mention of pregnancy accompanied this notice. Though she and Sloper rarely drew attention to their continued relationship, which a pregnancy would certainly invite, it was far from being a secret.

Thomas Davies, in his Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick (1780), recalled:

In conversation Mrs. Cibber was extremely agreeable; she was civil without constraint, and polite without affectation. She was not the mere actress; her accomplishments rendered her dear to persons of the first quality of her own sex. There was ever such an engaging decency in her manner, that, notwithstanding a peculiarity of situation, she charmed and obliged all who approached her. (2:83-4)

In a more explicit reference to Susannah’s private life, Elizabeth Montague recounted her horror at a faux pas she made while viewing Sloper’s estate at West Woodhay with friends in 1747:

The Housekeeper came to me, & ask’d if I would walk in I said I should be glad to see the House if Mr Cibber was not at home; the Housekeeper look’d as aghast as if she had spoild a custard, or broke a jelly glass; I coloured, Mrs. Donnellan twittered, Dr. Courager sputtered half French half English …we were hear[sic] a quarter of an hour before we got out of the coach… (Elizabeth Montague to Margaret Cavendish)

Though plainly known to the public, Susannah and Sloper’s relationship (and their former ménage à trois arrangement with Theophilus), could be embarrassing. Leaving the stage during her pregnancy was a discreet, if not strictly necessary, move that helped maintain her onstage identity as virtuous woman—the source of much of her charismata—without revealing a potentially stigmatic body that pointed to her private, less-than-virtuous circumstances.

Jealousy may have been a factor in Susannah’s decision to go to Covent Garden.

She and Hannah Pritchard both preferred Garrick for an acting partner, and Garrick had

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lately performed much more frequently with Pritchard than with Susannah.83 Though

Susannah had a great success with Romeo and Juliet opposite Spranger Barry, Pritchard and Garrick had equal or better success as Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About

Nothing, and Pritchard triumphed as the lead in Meropé in a part Aaron Hill initially wrote for Susannah. Richard Cross’s diary illustrates the rivalry between the two women:

Garrick granted Susannah a “free” benefit that year on 7 March, meaning she did not have to pay the £60 house charge out of her evening’s profits. He did not offer the same to Pritchard (whose benefit fell on 12 March), but had Powell enter the charge to

Susannah in the account books so that William Pritchard, his treasurer, would not know and demand the same consideration for his wife (see LS 4:1.34).

Susannah Cibber’s absence in the 1749-50 season, like her earlier absence in

1738-9, left a serious gap in the Drury Lane company and ultimately shifted the balance between the two theatres when she elected to go to Rich instead of Garrick on her return.84 Tate Wilkinson, actor and theatre manager, recalled,

Mrs. Cibber having withdrawn was a severe stroke upon the Drury Lane tragedies, Mrs. Ward85 being but a cold and inanimate substitute, and it fell heavier on Mr. Barry’s plays than Mr. Garrick’s, as Lear, Macbeth, Richard, with Mrs. Pritchard’s Lady Macbeth, &c. would do without Mrs. Cibber; but Castalio, Romeo, Veranes, &c. were ruined without her

83 In 1747-8, Cibber performed 39 times with Garrick over the course of the season; Hannah Pritchard appeared with him 25 times. In 1748-9, Cibber performed 29 times with Garrick; Hannah Pritchard 45 times with Garrick. 84 Nash suggests that Garrick’s marriage in June 1749 might have contributed to Cibber’s decision to leave for Covent Garden. She suggests that Susannah enjoyed a kind of chaste love affair with Garrick (à la a chivalric romance) and was hurt by his treatment of her during the season leading up to his marriage; I’m uncertain of this claim, but the marriage may have slowed Garrick’s business dealings down so that contracts were presented later than usual to the performers. 85 Just prior to the start of the season, Garrick engaged Mrs. Ward from Covent Garden. Though beautiful, Ward got distracted and sometimes forgot her stage business. She once fiddled with the buttons on a glove during a passionate speech of Garrick’s, forgetting entirely that he was there until he tugged her sleeve, much to the house’s amusement. 134

helping hand: Indeed Barry refused acting Romeo with Mrs. Ward. (Memoirs 4:150)

Spranger Barry’s diminished repertoire that season, occasioned by Susannah’s absence, as well as constant and often unfavorable comparisons between him and Garrick, made him willing to join her at Covent Garden. Their defection set the stage for the rival productions of Romeo and Juliet in the fall of 1750, an event explored in more detail below. Though the rival Romeo and Juliets form a familiar episode in eighteenth-century theatre history, the fact that Cibber’s pregnancy contributed to the conditions that prompted the rivalry has not been noted.

3.2.1 HANNAH PRITCHARD (NEÉ VAUGHN): EARLY CAREER TO 1739

Hannah Pritchard’s path to celebrity was considerably longer, and less sensational, than Susannah’s:

Her history, in one point, resembles Betterton’s: it was a life of pure, honest, unceasing labour. She was too busy to afford much material for further record. In another point [her life] resembled Mrs. Betterton’s, in the unobtrusive virtue of her character. While Margaret Woffington was pretending to lament on the temptations to which she yielded, and George Anne Bellamy yielded without lamenting, honest Mrs. Pritchard neither yielded nor lamented. (Doran 242)

Hannah Pritchard was born in 1711 to a family of stay-makers. She began her theatrical career in the early 1730s, performing at Bartholomew Fair, the Haymarket, and

Goodman’s Fields before joining the company at Drury Lane in 1734, when the company reunited after Theophilus’ rebellion. In her early life, Thomas Davies described her as having a

genteel person…expressive, yet simple, manner; her unembarrassed deportment and proper action, charmed all spectators…seeing a rising genius, capable, perhaps, one day, of consoling them for the loss of their favourite Oldfield, who was then lately deceased. (Memoirs 2:176) 135

At Drury Lane, she first played almost exclusively in comedy, slowly adding tragic roles until she attained the substantial range for which she would later become famous. She worked her way up in the patent theatres, attaining a recognizable celebrity in the 1740-

41 season (Figure 3). Her own celebrity, and salary, allowed her family to open and operate a fashion warehouse (serving both the public and the theatres) in the 1750s, and she was official dresser to the new queen, Charlotte, for her royal wedding in London in

Figure 3 Francis Hayman, Hannah Pritchard and David Garrick in Benjamin Hoadley's The Suspicious Husband (1747) 1761. Her daughter, Hannah Mary, became an actress during the last decade of her mother’s career, and Mrs. Pritchard used her own celebrity to help launch Hannah Mary, including giving several of her own parts to her daughter. Weight gain in later life affected her repertoire, but throughout her career, she maintained a balance between her popular comic and tragic parts that equaled and complimented David Garrick’s range.

Horace Walpole once declared that Garrick “hated” that Pritchard’s Beatrice had more

“spirit and originality” than his Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing (Doran 2:81).

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Hannah and William Pritchard married in 1730 and had three daughters, Judith

(baptized 13 July 1731), born before her mother’s stage career; Tamary Elizabeth

(baptized 24 January 1738); and Hannah Mary (baptized 13 April 1739), born during her early career; and one son, John (baptized 17 June 1750), born during the height of her celebrity. Hannah Pritchard’s career offers a glimpse of the way status within the company might influence the handling of a performer’s pregnancy, as repertory changes during her 1739 pregnancy, came while she was still a minor player, and those during her

1750 pregnancy came at the height of her celebrity.86 I then show how Susannah Cibber’s departure from the company enabled Mrs. Pritchard to attain this celebrity. As a coda,

Garrick’s handing of part assignments during Mrs. Pritchard’s daughter’s pregnancy in

1761-62 provides a further comparison of the way Garrick, as manager, dealt with an actress’ pregnancy. In correspondence with Mrs. Palmer (Pritchard’s daughter), Garrick lays out a number of concerns to be considered when assigning a part in a new play, and illuminates possible concerns about verisimilitude and health during pregnancy.

According to The London Stage for 1738-9, Hannah Pritchard left the stage between 9 April and 14 May.87 Her daughter, Hannah Mary, was baptized on 13 April, suggesting she performed until quite close to the birth and lay in for four to five weeks.

She returned on 14 May, performing five nights between that date and the end of the month. Her benefit that year, the first time she had a solo benefit, took place during her

86 Though Pritchard was also pregnant in 1737-38, a theatre closure between late November and early January means that there is no available information about how the pregnancy might have impacted her repertoire in the final months before the birth. Before the theatres closed, she performed regularly without being replaced by other actresses. Though a few parts were covered during her lying-in, she regained the parts when she returned to work full time. 87 She is listed in the cast for The Pilgrim on 5 May for the benefit of the company’s treasurer and may have performed on this single occasion before returning fully on 14 May. 137

confinement on 28 April. Despite her confinement, those requesting tickets were directed to her home at No. 8 Craven Buildings, Drury Lane (LS 3.2:1771).

During the 1738-39 season, three of Pritchard’s parts were reassigned to other actresses before she left the stage to lie in. Mrs. Cross played Lady Haughty in The Silent

Woman (Jonson’s Epicene) once in January, Mrs. Hamilton took Peggy in the popular afterpiece, The King and the Miller of Mansfield, and Mrs. Clive that of Dorcas in another popular afterpiece, The Mock Doctor. Since Pritchard retained the part of the promiscuous Lady Haughty in her 1739-40 repertoire, Cross’s substitution may have been related to the pregnancy. Pritchard also retained the part of Dorcas (taken by Kitty

Clive on 26 March after Pritchard played Doll Common in The Alchemist), playing it twice in May after the birth of her child. Peggy, however, continued to be Mrs.

Hamilton’s throughout the rest of the season, and went to Mrs. Chetwood the following year.88

If Pritchard was still performing regularly, why did the managers make substitutions, and why specifically were these the parts they chose? I believe the primary answer is the preservation of Pritchard’s health. Increasingly toward the end of the century, audiences express concerns over actresses’ physical exertion during pregnancy, and medical texts warn of overexertion throughout the time period. Siddons’s audiences, for example, requested smaller or shorter parts for her in later pregnancy, and she gave up her physically demanding tragic roles for comedy in the month before she lay in in 1785.

Some of the substitutions, therefore, might help keep Pritchard from over-exerting herself. Since two of the substitutions were in afterpieces, this might protect her from

88 Mrs. Pritchard played Peggy again in 1740-41, but it is uncertain if this substitution was about pregnancy, or simply a part reassignment. 138

having to play in both the main piece and the after piece on the same evening, something that caused fears for Dorothy Jordan’s health in the 1780s. Pritchard did two performances a night with regularity until the end of January, when she stopped performing twice in one evening entirely with the exception of Kitty Clive’s benefit on

13 March. Since The King and the Miller of Mansfield was very popular, it is possible that giving the part to Mrs. Hamilton was a compromise between protecting Pritchard’s health and the economic necessity of keeping the play in the repertoire.

If it was vital that Pritchard played the part of Peggy—if the public would object to another actress taking the part—the management could alter the schedule to accommodate her, not pairing The King and the Miller of Mansfield with the plays in which she performed. The fact that this was not the solution is not terribly surprising, as

Pritchard had yet to gain the kind of popular following that might make it objectionable to substitute another actress for her in a popular part.

In the 1737-9 seasons, Hannah Pritchard continued to perform during pregnancy.

In 1738-9, she missed only a month, the traditional period of lying-in after a birth. As an ensemble member, she had few parts in 1737-9 that would bring her celebrity status, though she was actively working to expand her repertoire through benefit performances.

The management substituted other actresses for her both before and after birth, so at this point in her career, the ownership of a part could be suspended or transferred temporarily during pregnancy or illness. In 1750, we will see a different approach, while later in the century Sarah Siddons’s absences result in a complete shift in repertoire. The most important thing to note about Pritchard’s early pregnancies is that replacements were temporary. Pritchard neither lost her job, nor her position in the company, because of

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pregnancy, despite not being a leading player. When Susannah left in 1739, Pritchard was well placed to rise to celebrity in her absence.

3.2.2 LEADING LADY: PRITCHARD IN THE 1740S

By the end of the 1740-41 season, Hannah Pritchard had transformed herself into the versatile heroine of comedy and tragedy she remained for the next twenty-five years.

She was helped, in part, by the shuffling that took place in Susannah Cibber’s absence.

When a pregnant Susannah left during the sex scandals of 1738-9, she also left a vacuum in the company. To compensate, the managers promoted Mrs. Giffard, hired from

Lincoln Inn Fields in 1736-7, to take on most of Mrs. Cibber’s parts with assistance from

Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Butler.89 Pritchard remained a second in tragedy and comedy.

When Giffard left for Goodman’s Fields in 1740-41, however, Susannah’s parts went not to Roberts or Butler, but to Hannah Pritchard.90

While Giffard, Butler, and Roberts led the tragic arm of the company in 1738-39 and 1739-40, Pritchard made a bid for leading lady status, first in comedy, then in tragedy. She showcased a good figure in breeches parts during the 1739-40 season, playing Hypolita in She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not in February. Her figure and status within the company may explain why this happened in 1739-40 and not before. A pleasing figure was important in securing breeches’ roles, and this was the first time in two years Pritchard had not been pregnant for some or all of the season. She was also not yet a leading lady, which might have created some leeway in regard to her figure.

Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen, for example, debuted the part during pregnancy, but she

89 Giffard played Monomia, Marcia in Cato, Desdemona, Indiana, and Belvidera, Roberts took Arpasia in Tamerlane and Mrs. Butler played Amanda in Love’s Last Shift. 90 With the exception of Belvidera, which went to Mrs. Roberts. 140

was much more established than Pritchard when she did so. Underscoring her interest in breeches parts, Pritchard played the title character in The School Boy as the afterpiece on her benefit night. Pritchard had made her point: the next year, 1740-41, she played

Rosalind in As You Like It, Viola in Twelfth Night, and Nerissa in The Merchant of

Venice, showcasing her talents as a lead in comedy, as well as her figure.91

Pritchard had also laid the groundwork to take on some of Susannah’s tragic repertoire. For her 1739-40 benefit, she played Indiana in The Conscious Lovers, staking a claim to Susannah’s old part. Her bid was successful, and the choice of Indiana well calculated to showcase versatility. As previously noted, The Conscious Lovers may be a comedy, but Indiana’s part contains ample opportunity for pathos. Not only did her benefit performance land her Indiana for the 1740-41 season, but she received two major tragic parts: Desdemona in Othello, and Monimia in The Orphan, both formerly belonging to Susannah Cibber.

Noting Pritchard’s up and coming talent, John Rich secured her for Covent

Garden for 1741-42. There, Pritchard tried her hand at several parts that highlighted her growing tragic abilities while maintaining her popular comic repertoire: she played the

Queen in Hamlet, Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, Lady Brute in The Provok’d Wife, and

Paulina in The Winter’s Tale. She also played Amanda in Love’s Last Shift, another of

Susannah Cibber’s parts. Both Rich and Pritchard were dissatisfied with the arrangement, however, so with Susannah returning to London and engaged at Covent Garden, Prichard returned to Drury Lane in the 1742-3 season.

91 “I can recollect our having seen all that merit in Mrs. Pritchard, through the disguise of little characters, which afterwards disclosed itself in Rosalind; and can remember the audience bestowing their curses on the managers for not giving that good actress a better gown” (qtd. Vaughn 18-9).

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At Drury Lane, Charles Fleetwood used Pritchard’s strength in tragedy, and the popularity she established during Susannah’s absence, to pair her with David Garrick and pit them both against Mrs. Cibber. As the season opened, the stage was set for a showdown between the patent theatres: Colley Cibber, Susannah’s father-in-law, called

Rich’s hiring of Susannah a “master-stroke…intended to counterbalance the advent of

Garrick at Drury Lane” (Melville 229), and also the rising star of Hannah Pritchard. The first few weeks of the season show strong competition between the patent houses, with

Pritchard and Susannah competing in many of the same parts.

Pritchard opened her season with one of Susannah’s signature roles, Indiana, on

16 September, and played Amanda in Love’s Last Shift on 28 September. Susannah opened the Covent Garden season with Desdemona in Othello on 22 September, and played Indiana on 29 September. Susannah played Monimia in The Orphan on 4 October.

The next day Pritchard was Monimia to Garrick’s Castalio. From the second lady of comedy, Pritchard had capitalized on the void in tragedy Susannah left to become a leading lady in both genres. When Susannah returned, Pritchard was a key figure in

Drury Lane’s gambit to counteract the draw of Susannah at Covent Garden.

Pritchard’s Celebrity

John Hill in his Treatise on the Art of Playing (1755), wrote that Mrs. Cibber could not rid herself of her “naturally plaintive voice” though she tried, and this made her unqualified for many parts. Garrick had “too much spirit,” which he was unable to repress, while Mr. Barry had too much softness. In contrast,

Mrs. Pritchard, having no distinguishing mark of this kind, carries with her nothing that is peculiar to herself into the character; it would be better if the other three would shake off what is so peculiar in each of them, 142

beautiful as it is: for tho’ by means of it, they severally shine in certain characters, yet it renders them less fit for universal playing: and in this we see the strongest instance imaginable, that any peculiar turn of mind, far from qualifying a person for playing, is rather a disadvantage. (61)

Without a singular strength in one kind of character, paradoxically, Pritchard was both more versatile (charismata) and less knowable (possibly a source of stigmata). Her repertoire did not reveal strengths that could be attributed to a natural disposition for a particular line of business, which in turn pointed to or became a stand-in for the “real” identity or character of the performer. In later life, particularly when helping launch her daughter’s stage career, however, Pritchard’s status as a good, affectionate mother became noteworthy and charismatic. In part, of course, this is because of a metadramatic performance of maternity that starring opposite her own child provided, and perhaps rising interest in parenthood as a concept. It may also have become more important as

Pritchard’s body aged and began to compromise her ability to play the range of parts she played as a younger performer.

Pritchard’s virtuosity, however, helped to diffuse the effects of age in some of her popular characters. Thomas Wilkes wrote:

In Beatrice, Clarinda, and all characters of that cast, the engaging archness and pleasantry of her aspect fully realizes the poet’s idea and leaves us nothing more to wish for and we even forget her size, which is not quite proper for a coquette. (286)

Supporting this, Shearer West argues, “Before the 1770s, there was a sense that the performer’s talents transcended his or her physical limitations,” while Marvin Carlson suggests ghosting as one way in which talent overcame the physical (West “Body

Connoisseurship” 155). A performer of long standing, whose audience was familiar with their performance over a significant period of time, might benefit from the audience’s

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memory of their past performances to smooth the effects of age or infirmity. Wilkes points to another important factor by casting Pritchard as a cipher to the playwright: she does not just perform well; she displays the true intent of the writer. In doing so,

Pritchard successfully subsumes anything singular about herself (whether physical or not) to the character she plays.

John Doran suggests another key factor in mitigating the effects of age:

her distinguishing qualities were natural expression, unembarrassed deportment, propriety of action, and an appropriateness of delivery which was the despair of all her contemporaries, for she took care of her consonants, and was so exact in her articulation, that, however voluble her enunciation, the audience never lost a syllable of it. (243)

The defining feature of young women like Clarinda, Beatrice, and Millamant in

Congreve’s The Way of the World was their wit. Doran recalls, “in Millamant…even in her latest years, her easy manner of speaking and action charmed her audience, though elegance of form and the beauty of youth were no longer there” (ibid). This is key:

Pritchard’s voice, which remained unaffected by age or her changing body, ensured that she continued to sound the part even when she no longer looked it. The charismatic power of her vocal performances overcame the stigmatic power of her body. Her voice was essential to her tragic success as well; when Lord Harcourt compared Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth, Pritchard’s vocal performance is the prominent difference:

Lord Harcourt, no lukewarm friend of Mrs. Siddons, missed in her Lady Macbeth “the unequalled compass and melody of Mrs Pritchard.” In the famous sleep walking scene, his lordship still held Mrs. Siddons to be inferior,—there was not the horror in the sigh, nor the sleepiness in the tone, nor the articulation in the voice, as in Mrs. Pritchard's. (ibid 245)

If Pritchard was, in some ways, a blank slate onto which any character might be drawn, and her voice more than her body was central to her virtuosity, pregnancy could,

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possibly, be effaced along with any sense of Pritchard’s private identity during her final pregnancy in 1749-50.

3.2.3 MRS. PRITCHARD’S 1748-51 SEASONS

Mrs. Cibber’s illness in the spring of 1749 paved the way for one of Mrs.

Pritchard’s great successes. Aaron Hill, the playwright whose Zara launched Mrs.

Cibber’s career, desired her to play the lead in his new play, Meropé.92 David Mallet, his emissary, reported that Mrs. Cibber loved the play and wished to take the part, but would be unable to if he planned to stage it before the end of the 1748-9 season because of her health. When Mallet conveyed her answer to Garrick, the manager scoffed at the idea of an actual illness and suggested that Hill write a letter purporting to be delighted to have

Mrs. Pritchard play the part instead. Garrick would ensure Susannah saw the letter, which would make her “so jealous of the other’s acquiring new reputation by a capital part” (qtd

Vaughn 57), that she would consent to play.93 Mallet, while confessing a preference for

Mrs. Cibber, wrote “I have no fears for the success of the play, whether your Heroine has a little more or a little less flesh on her bones; which the event may shew to be, on this occasion, the greatest difference between their respective merits” (ibid). Garrick’s gambit against his “rival princesses” (ibid) did not work, and Pritchard debuted as Meropé on 15

April, with Garrick playing her son, Eumenes. Hill rewrote the prologue and the epilogue, feeling the original “light” tone of the latter would not suit Mrs. Pritchard’s matronly figure:

92 The play ran nine nights at opening and was included in the repertoire for the following season. 93Pritchard and Cibber remained rivals even when in the same company. Rich once attempted to wrest Pritchard away by spreading a rumor that Garrick had promised to perform exclusively with Mrs. Cibber (Garrick 1:88-90).

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Please tear out the old Prologue, and the Epilogue, and let these alter’d ones be put in place of ‘em. A friend of mine was advising me to give the last, a lighter turn, which would not, perhaps, have been wrong, had Mrs. Cibber been the Meropé, because from a soft-looking, maiden-like, slim figure, (such as hers) the point of joke, in double entendres, catches the spirit from surprise, and makes the wantonness attractive; but those turns, from a look and form, of different appearance, make but cold impression; though in all things, but the look and shape, their merit may be equal. I dare venture to insure Mrs. Pritchard as great applause in this grave address, as she could have expected, from a fat high one, season’d to the full relish of the fashion. (ibid 58)

In this case, Pritchard’s matronly figure was not a barrier to playing a maternal character in the play, but Hill felt that the original flirtatious epilogue was ill suited to her figure.

The audience would not enjoy the “surprise” like that evoked by Susannah’s appearance of girlish innocence, if it came from Pritchard’s older and heavier figure. Hill stresses that in all other ways, the women are equal, as does Mallet. It is entirely a matter of figure, not ability and not reputation. Interestingly, instead of giving the original epilogue to another performer, Hill rewrote it so that Pritchard/Meropé would still be able to deliver it. Hill’s insistence on rewriting the epilogue indicates that, in his mind at least,

Pritchard’s body was beginning to hamper the transformational powers of her acting style when it came to acting flirtatious or coquettish.94

In 1749-50, Garrick divided Mrs. Cibber’s parts amongst the other women in his company. Mrs. Pritchard kept Mrs. Sullen and Lady Brute, which she had played at the end of the 1748-9 season. Mrs. Ward, the new hire, took Fidelia in The Foundling,

Cordelia, Monimia, Calista, and Andromache. Mrs. Elmy played Desdemona and Indiana

(both opposite Barry), and Mrs. Clive resumed her role of Polly in The Beggar’s Opera.

94 The epilogue Pritchard presumably spoke (as it is attributed to her in the 1749 edition of the play), imparts witticisms on marriage and praises the widowed state. We do not know the content of the epilogue he originally intended. 146

Garrick left Jane Shore and Venice Preserved out of the repertory entirely, and Romeo and Juliet was out due to Barry’s refusal to play with Mrs. Ward. In total, these four women performed forty-four times in roles previously belonging to Susannah to make up the gap in the repertoire left in her absence. Even with these substitutions, pathetic tragedy played much less of a role at Drury Lane in Mrs. Cibber’s absence.95

While Susannah spent her pregnancy in Bath, Pritchard spent hers in front of an audience. She was pregnant for the entire season, and her son, John, was born in mid-

June. Though the benefit season, somewhat beyond the management’s control, fell during the most visible parts of her pregnancy, a look at her repertoire is still revealing. She played twenty-six different parts in the regular season, and five additional parts in the benefit season. The only noticeable slowing of her schedule is that she performed in only nineteen benefits in April and May, instead of the twenty-four she played in the previous and succeeding seasons (1748-49 and 1750-51). She also missed ten days in December because of an illness, though we do not know if this was related to the pregnancy. In contrast to 1738-39, however, no one took over her parts during this absence; she had also stopped appearing in afterpieces, so did not risk playing twice in one night.

Pritchard played a typical range of parts in comedy and tragedy throughout the season, often playing opposite Garrick. Many were wives (the Queen in Hamlet, Mrs.

Sullen in The Stratagem, Lady Brute in The Provoked Wife, Lady Macbeth) or widows

(Isabella in The Fatal Marriage, Queen Elizabeth in Richard III), some were witty virgins (Clarinda in The Suspicious Husband and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing), and Millwood in The London Merchant is a prostitute. She played Viola once at the

95 Cibber performed 75 times in the preceding season. 147

beginning of the season, but did not repeat it, nor did any one else take the part. She premiered Horatia in The Roman Father, which was a success, and added two new parts to her repertoire, Cleopatra in All for Love and Isabella in The Fatal Marriage (for her benefit). Isabella is a widow threatened with starvation who remarries to save her child, only to discover that her husband is still alive. She runs mad and commits suicide.

Pritchard’s pregnancy did not result in radical repertoire shifts. There may have been a slight slowing of her schedule in her final trimester in deference to her health, but she still performed consistently until the end of the season and still participated in the premiere of a new work, The Roman Father. Pritchard’s repertoire in the final months of her pregnancy was, of course, entirely within the benefit season. While this means we cannot attribute her casting to the managers, her repertoire clearly shows that there was no taboo against seeing a pregnant performer commit suicide on stage, and we have no testimony that watching her perform emotionally distressed parts disturbed her audience.

As a contrasting example, some audience members found it distressing to watch Sarah

Siddons enact powerfully pathetic parts late in her pregnancy, and Siddons asked to shift her repertoire from tragedy to comedy in the last month of one of her pregnancies.

3.2.4 MATERNAL PERFORMANCE: MRS. PRITCHARD AND HANNAH MARY PALMER

“Her PRIVATE life! What is there is the private life of the most excellent wife, mother, sister, friend, the detail of which could be interesting to the public? The duties of such a character are unobtrusive, unostentatious, and avoid the pen of history.” —James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons (1827) 1:xv

Hannah Pritchard’s maternity was most remarked on not during her pregnancies, but when she helped to launch her daughter Hannah Mary’s stage career in 1756-57 in a production of Romeo and Juliet: “The scenes between them were heightened in interest, 148

for Lady Capulet hovered about Juliet with such maternal anxiety, and Juliet appealed by her looks so lovingly to her mother, for a sign of guidance or approval, that many of the audience were moved to tears” (Doran). Davies writes that Mrs. Pritchard wanted to

“share with her the danger of the day” and describes their performance together:

the daughter’s timidity was contrasted by the mother’s apprehensions, which were strongly painted in their looks, and these were incessantly interchanged by stolen glances at each other. This scene of mutual sensibility was so affecting, that many of the audience burst into involuntary tears. (qtd Vaughn 75)

The audience, who were partial to moving performances of domestic tragedy, found added poignancy in the Pritchards’ representation of a fictional mother and daughter because their “timidity,” “apprehensions,” and “stolen glances” functioned metadramatically as signs of their offstage relationship. The Dramatic Censor complimented her for not encouraging her daughters to follow her profession: “To Mrs.

Pritchard’s great praise be it spoken, she never gave her children encouragement to a theatrical station…Mrs. Palmer’s own strong inclination for the drama overcame, not at all unhappily, her mother’s prudent prejudice” (ibid). Once overcome, Mrs. Pritchard did her best for her daughter, as a loving mother should.96

Mrs. Pritchard’s daughter, Hannah Mary, remained at Drury Lane through 1768, the year her mother died. She married John “Gentleman” Palmer on 20 April 1761. The following year, a letter from Garrick gives evidence of his handling of part assignments in light of a new play and a pregnant actress. Earlier examples show a variety of approaches: Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen debuted both grotesque roles, which might

96 It was not uncommon for an actor to “loan” a part to a new performer for their debut. Miss Pritchard played Juliet all throughout 1756-7, however, and from that point on she and Mrs. Cibber shared the part— Miss Pritchard playing the role of Juliet when Mrs. Cibber was unavailable, usually at the beginning of the season. 149

make her figure an advantage, and ingénue roles where it might not; Theophilus Cibber cast his pregnant wife, Jane Johnson, as the pregnant lead in Caelia or the Perjured Lover in 1732-33; and his next wife, Susannah Cibber, as Andromache in 1736, though she also played Zara and Indiana, ingénues, before her lie-in. Garrick obviously continued to use

Mrs. Pritchard to advantage during pregnancy, premiering The Roman Father when she was about five months along in 1750.

Garrick’s letter to Mrs. Palmer is in response to a complaint that he did not give her the ingénue part of Celia in William Whitehead’s The School for Lovers, and that he had deliberately delayed its premiere so that she would be unavailable. Mrs. Palmer was pregnant and had delivered a healthy son on 17 January. Like her mother, she had performed up until the birth, the London Chronicle noting approvingly: “She had played the night before with great spirit, was not taken ill till six in the morning, and safely delivered at ten.” (17-19 January 1762). With School for Lovers set to premiere on 10

February, Palmer would not be through her lying-in period and felt the timing was intentional.97 Garrick responded:

…Mr Whitehead particularly desir’d it, but if he had not, I should not have thought of Acting it Sooner…I never intended that you should [play the part of Celia], & for one Reason among many, that it would have Shewn too strongly the Similitude between the Guardian and the School for Lovers…Had I intended the part for you, it would have been as improper in us to have given it to You, in your Condition, as in you to accept it and I think Ladies Should rather be thankful to the Managers for the Attention & Humanity to them, than be call’d to an Account for not giving parts to those, who are not in a Condition to play them. (Garrick 1:357-58)98

97 In the previous season, Hannah Mary had been part of a successful new play, The Minor, which accounted for six of her fifteen performing nights between September and February. 98 The editors of Garrick’s letters, Little and Kahrl, erroneously give her first name as Prudence. 150

Garrick introduces the consideration of health here, which was an increasingly verbalized concern of audiences watching pregnant actresses perform. He may also be thinking of the health and safety of the new play, which might not have received its standard run if

Mrs. Palmer had gone into labor while in the cast. George Anne Bellamy’s condition, for example, ended the run of the new play Constantine when she gave birth after the fourth performance in February 1754.

Elsewhere, Garrick claimed to defer to the playwrights for casting unless they made truly objectionable choices, and in this case, Whitehead had written to Lord

Nuneham on 24 August 1761 that, “Mrs. Poyntz tells me that she believes Mrs. Palmer advances so happily in her pregnancy, that it is doubtful whether she will play much this following winter, & Caelia, you know, must not be with child” (qtd Vaughn 89). It is likely that he conveyed the same condition to Garrick, who obliged by not putting Mrs.

Palmer into the role, perhaps because it suited his own preference as well. Mrs. Cibber, who at forty-eight still had a slim figure, played the role of Celia instead. His concerns, then, are presented in this order: 1) that Mrs. Palmer’s acting Celia would highlight the play’s similarity to another play in which she plays the lead, something Garrick (and

Whitehead, presumably) wished to avoid,99 2) that, failing that circumstance, he would not give it to her for reasons of verisimilitude, which I am surmising based on

Whitehead’s letter, and 3) that he had concerns for her health.

In other cases, however, Garrick seems not to have concerns related to verisimilitude and pregnancy, or for some reason not to have taken the course of action he claims here. Mrs. Pritchard played Horatia in The Roman Father while pregnant in

99 When Philip Francis’ Constantine was so maligned, someone printed a pamphlet outlining its similarities to Shakespeare, and emphasizing Francis’ shortcomings in the comparison. 151

1750. Chaste Horatia, grieving over the death of her fiancé at her brother’s hands, intentionally provokes the rage of Publius, her brother. Publius stabs her, offstage, and she dies. Whitehead also authored this play, but he apparently raised no objections to

Mrs. Pritchard’s condition for Horatia as he did with Mrs. Palmer playing Celia. It is, perhaps, a question of both reputation and of genre. Both Mrs. Pritchard in 1750 and

Mrs. Cibber in 1762 were far more popular than Mrs. Palmer was in her time, and might therefore draw audiences despite their physical condition. In terms of genre, Elizabeth

Howe suggests that audiences were more willing to ignore Elizabeth Barry’s sexual history when she acted tragedy than when she acted comedy; John Hill also claims that comedy must more accurately reflect real life. The combination of Pritchard’s celebrity, grounded in her versatile abilities, and genre might combine to make Pritchard’s body a non-issue in Horatia. In addition, The Roman Father was Whitehead’s first dramatic success. He may have felt it best to let Garrick make the decisions, or simply desired the most popular performer possible to take the part, disregarding the question of verisimilitude in Horatia’s physical condition. The material point is that Garrick expressed certain concerns relating to pregnancy to Mrs. Palmer in 1762, but in practice did not necessarily prevent his pregnant actresses from working, or curtail their repertoires on the grounds of verisimilitude, even in new plays in which no one had a prior claim to parts.

3.3.1 BELLAMY THE BEAUTIFUL

In 1748-9, young George Anne Bellamy (Figure 4) came to London after several seasons in Dublin. She was young and beautiful at a time when Mrs. Pritchard’s stoutness grew notable, and Susannah’s health began to wane. Bellamy’s gift for passion and 152

pathos made her a popular performer, and there was no doubt she was the “it” girl of her day. John Doran’s description of Bellamy, written half a century after her death, is worth quoting in full for the way it captures the “it-ness” of this “haughty and hapless beauty”

(4:226):

…she excited the wonder, admiration, pity and contempt of the town for thirty years…To say that she was a siren who lured men to destruction, is to say little, for she went down to ruin with each victim; but she rose from the wreck more exquisitely seductive and terribly fascinating than ever…Meanwhile, she kept a position on the stage, in the very front rank, disputing with the best there …for this perilous charmer was unequalled in her day for the expression of unbounded and rapturous love…whether she gazed at a lover or rested her head on the bosom of her lord, nothing more tender and subduing was ever seen, save in Mrs Cibber. She was so beautiful, had eyes of such soft and loving blue, was so extraordinarily fair and was altogether so irresistible a sorceress, that Mrs Bellamy was universally loved as a charming creature, and admired as an excellent actress; and when she played some poor lady distraught through affection, the stoutest hearts under embroidered or broad cloth waistcoats, crumbled away, often into inconceivable mountains of gold dust. (4:277-78)

Like Susannah’s sensibility and Pritchard’s virtuosity, Bellamy had her own charismatic talisman: her passion. Though also notoriously beautiful, this was not as singular a quality as the passion that made her compelling onstage and compulsive offstage, creating an enticingly unattainable and unbiddable persona. Bellamy was a great favorite of James Quin, a great frustration to David Garrick, and a great friend of Whig politician

Henry Fox. She had three children with two lovers, George Montgomery Metham and

John Calcraft. She ran away with Metham in the middle of a performance of Lady

Fanciful in The Provok’d Wife, later claiming to think they had married. When she left him for John Calcraft she received a contract in which he promised to marry her, which she later learned was invalid as he was already married.

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In later life, she had a tumultuous relationship

with the actor West Digges, and lived for ten years (she

claimed platonically) with comedian Henry Woodward.

She was perpetually in debt, and spent much of her

final years in debtor’s prison. In 1785, she published

her Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, a six-

volume memoir likely penned by Alexander Bicknell.

She spent about twenty-five years on the London stage, Figure 6 François Maradan, after Marie G. Benoist. George Anne Bellamy, 1790. moving between Covent Garden and Drury Lane in her early days as a counterpoint to Mrs. Cibber. Bellamy, like Kitty Clive before her, knew how to manipulate an audience to aid her career. When the Covent Garden manager cast

Mrs. Wilford as Cordelia in 1766-67, Bellamy distributed handbills to the audience saying the part had been taken from her, but that she would perform it if the audience preferred. The audience rioted against poor Mrs. Wilford and George Anne took the part back.

Bellamy’s first child, George, was born on 17 December 1749 at a house in

Yorkshire where she and George Montgomery Metham were staying. She returned to

Covent Garden in late January 1750, and the ramifications of her half-season absence are discussed at the end of this section. After three years with Drury Lane, she returned to

Covent Garden in 1753-54. By this point, Bellamy had left Metham and was now involved with John Calcraft, clerk to Henry Fox. According to a letter dated 22 January

1752, Calcraft had promised to marry Bellamy in “six or seven years” or forfeit £50,000 to her in recompense (Bellamy 2:173); he did neither. Their first child, Caroline

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Elizabeth, was born 1 March 1754; their second, Henry Fox Calcraft, in September 1756, before she would have returned to London for the fall season.

1753-54 was the only time Bellamy performed while visibly pregnant. That season, she performed between 20 November and 28 February and from 28 March to the end of the season. Before the birth, she played her established parts of Athenais in

Theodosius, Monimia in The Orphan, Calista in The Fair Penitent, Eudocia in Siege of

Damascus, Desdemona in Othello, Celia in Volpone, and Andromache in The Distrest

Mother, as well as creating the role of Empress Fulvia (a Desdemona-esque character nearly killed by her husband’s jealousy) in Philip Francis’ poorly-received Constantine.

Like Anne Oldfield in 1713, Bellamy’s pregnancy dictated the length of the run of a new play. In her Apology, Bellamy recalls that the play ended after its fourth night “…by the introduction of a daughter into the world” (2:199).

Tate Wilkinson, recalling Bellamy’s pregnant performances in 1753-54, raises concerns of verisimilitude. He describes her start in the “very improper character” of the

“chaste Athenais” followed by,

the pure Monimia…which led to strange ideas that Castalio most certainly had been acquainted with that lady long before the third act.100 After that season (and not before it was necessary) she wisely changed the appellation of Miss to Mrs. Bellamy. (Memoirs 4:185)

Wilkinson implies that Bellamy’s performances of Athenais and Monimia are objectionable because they undermine the chastity of the characters, which are important elements in the plots of both plays. Essentially, he claims that her pregnancy was (or should have been) an overwhelming stigmatic force in the performance of these virtuous

100 Castalio contrives to take his brother’s place on his wedding night to Monimia. When all is revealed, both brothers and Monimia commit suicide. 155

women. Eudocia, who takes holy orders at the end of the play, also seems rather objectionable on these grounds, though this performance was by Royal Command.

Encoded in Wilkinson’s response is an objection to what he perceives as hypocrisy: not only is she playing these characters while pregnant, but she had the indecency to continue calling herself “Miss” Bellamy. This failure to appropriately perform her pregnancy—to acknowledge that this makes her a mature woman and necessitates a name change— offends him. Wilkinson focuses on these parts, perhaps because the others did not require the audience to ignore her obviously pregnant body. Bellamy played Calista, an adulteress and “Fair Penitent,” Andromache, a mother, the Empress Fulvia and Celia, both wives; each might, conceivably, be pregnant in the world of the play.101

Interestingly, Wilkinson’s objection also presupposes that the audience would care about such a discrepancy between the actress’ body and the fictional part. As we have noted, however, pregnancy did not stop Hannah Pritchard from playing virginal parts, and neither (at least for a time) did her weight gain in later life. Earlier in the century,

Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen and Anne Oldfield also played virginal parts during pregnancy.

In general, Wilkinson’s rules of propriety are inconsistent, as he fails to level criticism at other actresses for performing virginal parts while pregnant at other points in his Memoir (for example, as we will see, he makes no disparaging comments about

Dorothy Jordan in 1782). Indeed, Wilkinson’s critique illuminates his own prejudice

101 Imoinda, one of Bellamy’s popular parts from Oroonoko, is actually pregnant in the play and commits suicide to prevent herself and her child from being enslaved; Rich did not take advantage of the coincidence, but it was not likely out of fear of offending anyone’s sensibilities with a pregnant woman pretending to stab herself on stage: Calista and Monimia both commit suicide; most of Hannah Pritchard’s tragic characters in 1749-50 do as well. 156

toward her as an individual more than reflecting the thoughts of those who saw her at the time or a blanket attitude toward pregnancy. Wilkinson barely veils his frustration with

Bellamy throughout most of his memoir, calling her, “unthinking, pompous, vain and foolish Bellamy” (Memoir 2:203), which should be reckoned into his critique of her pregnant performances. It seems that, having a dislike for her already, the disruptive potential of Bellamy’s pregnant body becomes another way of shaming or criticizing her, so Wilkinson choses to read it into the circumstances of her 1753-54 season. In this sense, it is not unlike Jonathan Swift’s comment about Anne Oldfield during the rehearsals for Cato in 1713. Calling her a “drab” drew on potentially negative associations with her profession and personal life, including possibly, though by no means certainly, her pregnant body, to express disapproval of Anne herself and through her, Maynwaring and all Whigs in general. Critiques of the pregnant body on stage require careful evaluation, for they may be critiques of something else entirely.

3.3.2 BATTLE OF THE ROMEO AND JULIETS: BELLAMY IN 1749-50

On 20 April 1749, George Anne Bellamy ran away with George Metham in the midst of a performance. Explaining to the audience, James Quin:

[begged the audience’s pardon] for the fantastical girl of quality, whose company they would be disappointed of at the conclusion of the piece, as she had left Heartfree, upon finding an admirer that was made on purpose for her—this was said in allusion to Lady Fanciful’s speech in the early part of the play. (Genest 4:284)

Bellamy performed twice more, as Anne Bullen in a command performance of Henry

VIII on 4 May, which was repeated the next day. She then retired to a house in Yorkshire with Metham and remained in the north until after the birth of their son on 17 December, returning to Covent Garden on 22 January. Despite the tale of her extended labor in her 157

memoirs, the fact that she was pregnant is sometimes missed in accounts of her absence.102 Though depicted as compulsive and unthinking, the fact that Bellamy had a contract to return to at the theatre suggests she made arrangements with Rich sometime over the summer to accommodate her pregnancy in the ensuing season.

During Bellamy’s absence, Mrs. Vincent took on several of her roles: Indiana in

The Conscious Lovers, Celia in Volpone, and Marcia in Cato. The first two, both in comedies, Vincent kept after Bellamy’s return, but Marcia reverted to Bellamy. While

Bellamy was gone, her signature pathetic roles in Venice Preserv’d, The Orphan,

Oroonoko, The Revenge, Theodosius, Don Sebastian, and The Siege of Damascus were out of the repertoire entirely. Instead, Covent Garden relied on Peg Woffington, whose repertoire that season put her in direct competition with Hannah Pritchard, to lead the way. Once Bellamy returned, she performed Belvidera in Venice Preserved and Juliet uncontested by Drury Lane, as well as Monimia and Calista, all parts normally held by

Susannah Cibber, herself absent because of pregnancy. She reprised her roles as Leonora in The Revenge, Athenais in Theodosius, Imoinda in Oroonoko, and Almeyda in Don

Sebastian, and played Octavia in All for Love and Zara in The Mourning Bride. All were roles she had played in Dublin in 1745-8 and all but the last two had been in her repertoire in the 1748-9 season. This half season stood her in good stead when Susannah

Susannah elected to return to Covent Garden and left David Garrick looking for a replacement.

102 “The 1749-50 season at Covent Garden opened without George Anne Bellamy in the company; she had been ‘abducted’ by an admirer in the interval of a performance, and had not returned…[until] tired of the ‘abduction’ story, [she] resolved her complicated love affairs for the time being and returned to Covent Garden in January 1750” (Dunbar 167-8).

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When Garrick learned of Susannah and Barry’s defection to Covent Garden in the summer before the 1750-51 season, he engaged Bellamy to take Susannah’s place: “We know Cibber will not be with us, and I think Elmy should not; and then how can we patch up our broken fortunes better than with Bellamy?” (1:146). He then organized a campaign to harry the Covent Garden company with direct competition:

Let them do their worst…I shall be soon ready in Romeo, which we will bring out early; I have altered something in the beginning, and have made him only in love with Juliet.—I believe you’ll like it.—If Bellamy agrees with us, she may open with it;—then, if we can get out King John before ‘em, (as we certainly may) and dress the characters half old English, half modern, as in Edward the Black Prince, we shall cut their combs there too… Come what, come may.— My Soul’s in arms, and eager for the fray. (1:152-53)

Garrick’s plan emphasized the importance of opening their competing productions first; he believed that getting the drop on Rich with both Romeo and Juliet and King John would shake the confidence of the other company. He furthermore makes it clear that it is the combination of Bellamy and Pritchard who will contend with Mrs. Cibber—neither woman can do both Juliet and Constance as Mrs. Cibber is able to do, which was the crucial advantage of Susannah’s persistently slim figure. He ends his letter to Lacy with a mash-up of lines from Macbeth, equating the 1750-51 season with a battle.

In September 1750, the theatres prepared to pitch David Garrick and George

Anne Bellamy, and Susannah Cibber and Spranger Barry, against each other in rival productions of Romeo and Juliet. They went head-to-head for twelve nights, after which the contest ended because Mrs. Cibber refused to continue.103 Drury Lane performed its

103 The novelty of the competition had worn off quickly for the public: “Well, what tonight?” says Angry Ned/As up from bed he rouses/“Romeo again!” and shakes his head/“A pox on both your houses!” (The Daily Advertiser, qtd. Nash 255) 159

production once more as a victory lap before moving on with the season. The theaters continued to compete with these rival Romeo and Juliet productions throughout the season, a night at one house immediately prompting a response at the other. In the end,

Covent Garden came out with nineteen total performances to Drury Lane’s eighteen. In the Gentleman’s Magazine, a correspondent summarized the differences between the two with, “At Covent Garden I saw Juliet and Romeo…At Drury Lane I saw Romeo and

Juliet” (Nash 255). When comparing the Juliets, it is not surprising that Bellamy’s abandoned passion won her more admirers in the first half of the play, and Susannah’s pathetic powers more in the second half.

The rivalry between the two houses clearly shaped strategy during the 1750-51 benefit season. The patent houses occasionally collaborated to avoid competition.

Garrick, for example, had agreed not to interfere with a run of Coriolanus in 1747-8, and that year’s benefit season saw Mrs. Cibber, Barry, and Mrs. Pritchard with uncontested benefit nights. In this case, uncontested generally means that the other house either does not mount a production, or mounts something without one of their star actors in a favorite part, which might draw audiences away from the other house. Rich once allowed Mrs.

Bellamy to cover for Susannah during an illness in 1756 so that a fellow actor’s benefit would not suffer:

As Mrs. Cibber’s illness prevents her from performing the Part of Sigismunda, for Mr. Berry’s Benefit [at Drury Lane], he apply’d to Mr. Rich, who very readily consented to let Mrs. Bellamy [at Covent Garden] play that Part for him, which she has obligingly comply’d with, and, will accordingly appear in it at Drury-lane this Evening. (PA 8 April 1756)

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Such moments show the cooperation the theatres were capable of, particularly during benefit seasons or when giving benefits for members of their profession. No such consideration existed, however, in 1750-51.

Quin’s 11 March benefit (Othello with Susannah as Desdemona) competed with

Mrs. Pritchard’s benefit (The Roman Father, from which she made £250). When, on 14

March, Drury Lane put up The Orphan with Miss Bellamy as Monimia (one of

Susannah’s signature parts) for Snowdon’s benefit, Covent Garden countered with The

Revenge with Susannah playing one of Bellamy’s parts, Leonora. Drury Lane did Romeo and Juliet (benefit Woodward) on 17 March to Covent Garden’s Zara for Mrs. Cibber’s benefit. Woodward made £300; no total is recorded for Mrs. Cibber. Bellamy did Venice

Preserved for her benefit on 18 March (£200), while Barry did Romeo and Juliet for his benefit the same night.104 In the 1750-51 season of betrayal and rivalry there was no love lost between the two patent houses and the head-to-head clashes during benefit season are a clear symptom. They are also a further impact of Susannah’s pregnancy-related absence in 1749-50 and subsequent defection to Covent Garden.

3.3.3 BELLAMY IN 1753-54

Unlike every other actress in this study, Bellamy writes her own story and provides her own analysis of her pregnancy’s impact on the 1753-54 Covent Garden season. In this analysis, she generally exaggerates its impact greatly. In the case of

Romeo and Juliet she writes, “During my confinement, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was unavoidably obliged to be postponed, much to the regret of the manager” (2:196). While

Juliet was one of her signature parts, she actually did not play it at all that season. Miss

104 See LS 4:1.241-243 for totals and schedule. The Drury Lane totals come from Cross. 161

Nossiter, a new actress, debuted her Juliet that year and was hugely popular opposite

Spranger Barry’s Romeo. She ended up keeping the part for the season, perhaps because of Bellamy’s condition, or to capitalize on the popularity of the production. Barry and

Nossiter had become lovers, driving public desire to watch them act together. To that end, Nossiter also played Belvidera to his Jaffier in Venice Preserved, another part usually belonging to Bellamy. Nossiter’s presence was being explicitly used to harry Mrs.

Susannah, who had returned to Garrick that season. A prologue for Romeo and Juliet had

Barry lamenting the fickleness of his former Juliet and praising the new one, with an explicit reference to Nossiter’s youth, something Susannah clearly lacked.

The next season, when Nossiter and Barry went to Dublin, these two parts reverted to Bellamy. Given Bellamy’s ownership of these parts (and her extreme and extremely public responses when she felt her ownership was violated), Bellamy may have lent both parts to Nossiter temporarily. We do not know if or how much her pregnancy may have figured into this decision. It is possible that her delayed appearance meant she could not participate in the opening volleys against Mrs. Cibber and Garrick, so Nossiter became Cibber’s temporary new rival.

Bellamy attributes a delay in a production of Romeo and Juliet to pregnancy, but the evidence does not support her assertion. She also attributes a reduction in the number of productions of Otway’s The Orphan to her pregnancy: “My pregnancy prevented this play from having an equal run with that which had attended it two seasons before”

(2:196). She did the part three times, twice while pregnant on 22 November and 14

February, and on 1 May during the benefit season. At Drury Lane, she performed the part four times in 1751-52. Bellamy appears to be blaming her pregnancy for a slight decrease

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in the number of performances of The Orphan, yet she does not suggest this is due to impropriety, as Wilkinson does, but as a by-product of missing some of the season. Her body, essentially, was not stigmatic, just inconvenient.105

Not unlike Wilkinson’s use of Bellamy’s pregnancy to criticize a performer he did not like, Bellamy uses her pregnancies to inflate her importance to the companies in which she worked, suggesting that her body was a primary force behind the development and execution of the repertoire. Both examples illustrate the ways that pregnancy was open to appropriation and narrativization, and so could be seen as either stigmatic or charismatic depending on the view of the author. Bellamy’s memoirs further capture this quality as she uses pregnancy to generate affect and position herself socially.

3.3.4 “HEARTFELT ANGUISH:” BELLAMY’S MATERNAL DISTRESS

Intriguingly, Bellamy makes no mention of Andromache in The Distrest Mother, the part she performed most frequently before her lie-in in 1753-54. Of the twelve appearances she made before the premiere of Constantine, fully half were as

Andromache. As in Anne Oldfield’s case, Bellamy’s pregnant body might create

‘similitude’ with the themes of the play, if not the literal character body of Andromache, pregnancy’s narrativizing force aiding instead of conflicting with the play’s pathos. On a practical level, the fact that Oldfield, Susannah, Bellamy, and later Sarah Siddons all played the part in the late stages of pregnancy suggests that it may have become a kind of standing option for late-stage pregnancy when overexertion might become a concern.

105 If Bellamy has mixed up her seasons and means to indicate these effects for the 1756-57 season, her claim about The Orphan is true (she did not return to the stage until 31 March and did not play Monimia); Romeo and Juliet, however, once more came out early in the season with Nossiter and Barry. 163

After the birth of her third and final child in 1756, Bellamy’s repertoire began to shift strongly toward the maternal. In January of 1758, she played Mariamne, a mother who loses her child: “In the last two Scenes of the second Act, the Queen is persuaded to part with her son…the agonies of a mother, in such a pitiable situation, are finely realized by Mrs. Bellamy” (LEPBC 30 January-1 February 1758). The following season, she created a sensation as the title character in Robert Dodsley’s Cleone in December. A plot laid by her husband’s brother forces Cleone to flee her husband’s house with her young son, who is murdered as she attempts to make her way to her father. The Fourth Act, in which Cleone runs mad over her child’s dead body, were an enormous success for

Bellamy. She wrote, “The language was simple, and I determined that my performance of it should be the same. It was an effort worth trying; as from its novelty, I should, at least have the merit of its being all my own” (3:105). Bellamy, so long a counterpoint to

Susannah, had the opportunity to create an entirely new part and gain success on her own merits without reference to another performer. One spectator wrote,

I had a pleasure which the Theatre has not afforded me this great while…the pleasure of relieving real heartfelt anguish by a flood of tears… Artless innocence, truth, candor, and every lovely quality, seemed to accompany her in her distress…her departure from her own house, in order to fly for shelter to her father’s, with her little infant, was executed by this performer in a manner so affecting, and with such genuine accents of the passions…Her attachment to her dear infant, the fixed position of her eyes, which shewed that every other object was excluded from her mind, her tender prattle to him, when she thinks him alive, and her lamentations over him, when again she thinks him dead, were traits of nature as finely performed by her, as they were difficult to be executed. (Lloyd’s Evening Post and British Chronicle 4-6 December 1758)

Bellamy had grown from the embodiment of youthful passion into a fine performer of maternal roles. The interest in actors’ “sympathetic imagination” might suggest that

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Bellamy’s successful portrayals of maternal tenderness and grief indicate that she has, and does, feel such emotions offstage. In her Apology, however, Bellamy makes no such connections with her offstage life. Instead, she explains that the text was simple, and so she resolved to be as well:

The unaffected naïveté, which I intended to adopt in the representation, was accompanied by the same simplicity in my dress. This was perfectly nouvelle, as I had presumed to leave off that unwieldly part of a lady’s habiliments, called a hoop. A decoration which, at that period, professed nuns appeared in (3:109)

Bellamy does not emphasize the psychological realism of her performances, but instead emphasizes the careful creation of an artful artlessness to her performances. She “adopts” an “unaffected naïveté,” and uses her choice of costume (always carefully planned and executed) to bolster this appearance of natural simplicity. While audience members at the height of the cult of sensibility might assume a correlation between her on and offstage maternity, Bellamy offers no corroborating evidence in her memoir, instead emphasizing the work that her craft required. This is consistent with her tendency to conceal or leave unmentioned much of her life as a mother, except when the specter of her children or a pregnancy might provoke sympathy in her audience—usually at moments of personal crisis.

Shortly after her maternal successes onstage, Bellamy’s tumultuous romantic relationships singled her out for criticism based on perceived neglect of her maternal duties. In 1761’s The Meretriciad, a satiric poem criticizing the vices of various public figures, the author writes:

But here observe the Juliet of her days, Fall’n from the pinnacle of public praise …

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Nor griev’d we less when Bellamy withdrew, Yet we forgave thee for the golden view. How did the Town applaud thy happy choice, Altho’ in thee she lost the sweetest voice? But if the ties of mother will not bind, How weak are women, ignorant, and blind! Not all the rhet’ric of a Courtier’s tongue, Or that of mother from thy tender young, Were found sufficient to subdue thy lust, Tho’ quite corroded, by corrosive rust, When Metham had thee, such a deed as this Was merely modish, and became a Miss; But yet his tenderness, could not subdue, That thirst of dear variety in you: All he could say that itch could not destroy, To bind the Mother to the loveliest Boy. CALCRAFT you left in search of new delight, And roll’d in wanton joy with Gay Dick W. But since Old Time has worn the dimple sleek, And furrow’d wrinkles o’er the blushing cheek, Who would imagine you would play the whore, And fly in raptures to the Irish shore? But women crave while man’s a drop to give, Nor cease to lust, until they cease to live. If e’er these lines should reach thy flinty heart, Fly to thy babes—and act the mother’s part; But if they’ll not induce thee to return, Disgrace, and shame, must seal a Juliet’s urn. (E. Thompson 19-20, 1770 edition, emphasis mine)

When Bellamy began to play maternal characters on stage successfully, she was adhering to a script like that proposed in the Meretriciad: older, wiser, and less beautiful, her foremost concerns should now be her children, which displace the sexual exploits of earlier years. That this was only a shift onstage, and not off, was problematic for the author.

Edward Thompson, the author of the Meretriciad, suggests that the public sanctioned Bellamy’s relationship with Metham, but that her behavior since, and particularly a perceived indifference to her children by both men, is wholly without

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excuse. Lust drives her to leave Metham, then Calcraft, and fly “in raptures” to Ireland, lust which should have been subsumed to her duties and feelings as a mother.106

Bellamy’s sexuality displaces the maternal. In Thompson’s poem, young, beautiful

Bellamy could be indulged for running off with a lover in the middle of a performance or exchanging one lover for another in a fit of passion. The mature actress and mother who found success playing maternal characters onstage was offensive for not doing the same offstage.

Bellamy left London for Edinburgh in 1762-63 and did not return for two years.

She had success in Dublin and Edinburgh, but was increasingly unable to secure consistent contracts and work. Ultimately, she died in poverty three years after the publication of her Apology. At that point, her son by Metham was dead, Calcraft’s son was stationed in India, and she had been estranged from her daughter, Caroline Elizabeth, for many years.

3.3.5 MRS. BELLAMY’S APOLOGY

An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy (1685) is a tale of misadventure and distress, which Kristina Straub sees as Bellamy’s attempt to fashion herself into the heroine of a sentimental novel. Straub writes that Bellamy,

presents herself as entering life with a ‘natural’ tendency toward domestic tranquility, and throughout her career, she purportedly struggles to be the wife that the daughter was born to be…her out-of-wedlock liaisons with George Metham, Thomas107 Calcraft, and the devil-may-care actor West Digges are portrayed less as the results of her own transgression than as the fate of an unprotected innocence. (115)

106 Probably a reference to her relationship with West Digges, whom she met at Smock Alley and followed to Edinburgh in 1762. 107 I assume this is a mistake for John, as I can find no other references to a Thomas Calcraft, except in Felicity Nussbaum’s Rival Queens, in which case I believe she is following Straub. 167

Like the tragic heroines for which she was famous, Bellamy is an innocent victim unable to control her fate. Bellamy’s performance of victimhood was probably less successful than she hoped. Her memoir inspired indignation, refutation, and moral judgment along with pity. Even the act of writing the memoir, Straub suggests, compromises the notion of her innocent distress: “At the heart of the spectacle of virtue in distress lies the assumption that virtue is never made into a spectacle by its own volition…By making a spectacle of herself, Bellamy compromises the very credentials as sentimental heroine that she seeks to establish” (117). Perhaps this was why it was so necessary for Susannah

Susannah never to directly address her relationship with Sloper through memoir or direct address to the audience. A lady who protested her innocence too much offstage compromised the illusions of innocence she could create onstage.

Bellamy’s textual performances of maternity in her Apology are used to elaborate on existing hardship and misfortune and to promote her social status. For example,

Calcraft is cruel to her regarding her debts, and his behavior is made worse because it is during her lying-in period. She discovers that Calcraft lied about the marriage contract, again while pregnant, and her condition makes it impossible for her to leave. She goes to great lengths to malign Calcraft and absolve herself of responsibility for their relationship, presenting Metham as her one true love. Bellamy’s pregnancy with

Metham’s child is the only one that presents her with something other than misery. Their child later functions as a prop in a scene when Metham, driven mad by love for Bellamy, attacks her in her chamber and only comes to his senses when he sees their son. Bellamy convinces him to leave her to compose herself, then flees the house in meticulously

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described dishabille and goes into hiding with no mention of what she does with her son.

The child serves to generate affect: not only is he physically close to his mother in the domestic scene, but it is his presence that spares her life. When he has served this purpose, however, he is quickly forgotten.

Bellamy also uses the births of her children as a way of enacting social class. In the Apology, her accounts of her childbearing experiences encode the social status and networks in which she moved, making her pregnancies and births social performances of aristocratic femininity. Metham insists on a male attendant in 1749, even earlier than most aristocratic families would use one, but a very fashionable choice at the time of the memoir’s publication in 1785. In the midst of her account of an eleven-day labor,

Bellamy turns philosophical, admonishing her female readers not to allow modesty to lead them into danger during childbirth:

It is a matter of great surprise to me, that as female practitioners in midwifery are in general inexpert, women defer having an accoucheur, till necessity obliges them to be called in. Those who, out of a mistaken modesty, do this, not only risk the lives of themselves and infants, but, if difficulties render it necessary that a doctor should be called in, are informed by it of their danger, at a time when no addition ought to be made to their terror. And if, through their continued obstinacy, their lives should be lost, they are, in my opinion, guilty of self-murder. (2:68)

The unnamed accoucheur is credited with saving Bellamy’s life, and she is clearly converted to the use of man-midwives in the future. In 1756, she writes that William

Hunter, future accoucheur to Queen Charlotte (1762-1780), was meant to attend her but the birth went too quickly for him to make the journey. After her delivery, she became ill and went to Bristol, where James Ford, the obstetrician who took over for Hunter to deliver the Queen’s final child in 1783, oversaw her recovery. Though at the time she

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used them, neither man was as famous as he would become, her name dropping in print in 1785 would be an effective way of placing herself, retrospectively, on the forefront of the fashionable move toward male birth attendants.

In the Apology, her children, like her famously sumptuous stage costumes, are props that help her align herself with the social class she performed so convincingly on stage. When discussing the birth of her second child in 1754, for example, Bellamy writes that the birth and christening of their child, attended by Henry Fox and others, was taken as a sign that she and Calcraft had married, and so legitimated her relationship:

This event [the birth] seemed of more consequence to Calcraft that if he had been made master of the world. He imagined the Marmoset to be already the very likeness of himself; and was in hopes that this pledge would insure to him my affection in future. Lady Caroline Fox, Lady Tyrawley, and Mr. Fox, stood sponsors in person. This circumstance put the certainty of my being married out of all doubt… (2:199)

Bellamy’s daughter’s godparents imply an elite and powerful social network. In emphasizing their names and presence in her memoir, Bellamy connects herself to a powerful political figure (Henry Fox) and two virtuous and fashionable women of quality.

Bellamy, however, did not perform her maternity consistently either in print or, if the Meretriciad has any foundation in truth, in real life.

3.4.1 CONCLUSION

Performers are none other than themselves doing a job in which they are always someone else…From moment to moment…they must hold them together with the force of their personalities, but in the service of a representation to which their personalities are supposedly excrescent. Such a precarious center, at once self-expression and self-erasure, cannot hold; but for the two-hour traffic of our stage, the contending forces remain in play, while their contingent interaction generates an intense, charismatic radiance that emanates from their fissionable source. 170

—Joseph Roach, It (2007), 9

As shown in the introduction, the Licensing Act, the Shakespeare Revival of

1740-41, the “cult of sensibility,” and the articulation of acting theories that focused on individual performer’s merits and deficiencies, altered attitudes toward the professional theatre, and conceptions of “naturalism” on stage. Each of the women represented here benefitted in some way from and/or helped to drive these changes. Susannah Cibber and

George Anne Bellamy’s sensibility and passion made them stars of pathetic tragedy, while Pritchard’s abilities enabled virtuosic transformations into a wide variety of characters, from coquettes to queens. Susannah and Bellamy engaged in extra-marital relationships and had children out of wedlock, private circumstances that became potentially stigmatic forces in their lives and careers; Pritchard’s stable private life, like

Garrick’s, was a charismatic force that won her respect and helped improve the condition of the profession. That a woman who started performing in fairground booths in 1732 could, less than thirty years later, be trusted with teaching deportment and dress to

England’s new queen on her wedding day, best shows the great esteem Hannah Pritchard earned offstage. This chapter shows that the extent to which the private lives of each actress were visible and/or problematic shaped their response to pregnancy within the context of their professional careers.

Susannah Cibber’s early repertoire created the persona of an innocent victim, a persona that stayed with her—against the odds—through the first trial for criminal conversation in 1738. When she began her comeback in Dublin, she suggested repentance and a return to virtue through her onstage performances of Calista in The Fair Penitent, and her role in Handel’s Messiah, that culminated with her successful return to London in

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1742.108 For the rest of her career, she used her theatrical repertoire to reconstitute that initial, innocent body, replacing the sexualized and degraded image that might linger through the constant re-printings of the trial accounts. To preserve this body intact onstage, she concealed her private life, including her pregnancy in 1749-50. While the control she gained over her repertoire enabled Susannah to control her public image, the pregnant body’s ability to generate independent narrative made displaying that visible body problematic.

Within the context of her ties to prominent theatrical families (the Cibbers and the

Arnes), Susannah lived and worked closely and publicly with her relations, just as

Hannah Pritchard did. At moments when the display of offstage ties would draw attention to her extramarital relationship or her status as the mother of illegitimate children, however, Susannah carefully concealed her private life from public notice. The importance of this is realized in two incidents from the 1760s recorded in eyewitnesses’ correspondence.

In 1760, Sloper and Susannah took their daughter Molly, now twenty-one, to

Bath. After a young man asked her to dance one night, a mother made such a fuss that

Mrs. Cibber’s illegitimate daughter would be allowed to dance in polite company, that she was ever after consigned to being a wall flower. The order to keep her from dancing came, apparently, from Beau Nash, the old master of ceremonies. In a letter to Mrs.

Dewes, Mrs. Delaney recounted the story and wrote, that “Mr. Cibber [Sloper]” (Doran

239) raged at Mr. Collett, the Master of Ceremonies for the insult to no avail. Molly’s

108 Susannah sang the lament, “He was Despis’d,” which Handel wrote specifically for her. The text comes from Isaiah and recounts Christ’s suffering on the Via Dolorosa; Nash argues that her casting and the text suggested that Susannah represented Mary Magadalene, another fallen but repentant woman. 172

existence and illegitimacy could be forgotten when her mother performed onstage, but in public, seen together, it was offensive. Even famous Susannah had her detractors; another woman, Tabitha Terrick, publicly questioned the propriety of allowing adulterous

Susannah to sit at her table when they were together at Scarborough spa (Nash 282).

On stage, Susannah was a celebrated actress, movingly portraying queens, wives, mothers, and distressed young heroines. Offstage, her position was tenuous: her reputation as a woman who had left her husband for a married man, and who was mother to illegitimate children, never went away. She attained onstage a virtuous life she was not allowed offstage and, through the parts she played, Susannah wrote a story for her audience. In this story, an innocent wife (Desdemona, Lady Brute) is plagued with a boorish husband, whom she naturally wishes to escape, her virtue still intact. She has children, loves and cares for them, protects them, is passionately devoted to their father, and wins the sympathy of her audience.

Though this is not a chapter in which my argument claims that pregnancy aided an actress’ career, it is a chapter in which we see the clear advantages to other actresses that could arise when a performer became pregnant. Pritchard in 1739-41 and Bellamy in

1750 both capitalized on Susannah’s absences to improve their prominence in play-going

London. The ways pregnancy might aid other actresses is neither the most novel nor the most significant thing that Pritchard’s career offers, however. Hannah Pritchard’s early pregnancies show that, though she was a minor player and in a much more vulnerable position than star actresses, her pregnancies neither resulted in automatic dismissal from the company, nor in penalties in role assignments in 1737-38 or 1738-39. In fact,

Pritchard made positive advances in her career both years: she added the valuable new

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part of Mrs. Ruth in The Committee to her repertoire at the end of the 1737-38 season, the same season she secured her first solo benefit. In 1739, her benefit was on 28 April, a week earlier than the preceding two seasons.109 Since placement in the benefit schedule indicated hierarchy in the company, it was a move forward.

As an established celebrity in the 1749-50 season, Pritchard played a wide range of parts throughout her pregnancy. She performed in fewer benefits, but beyond that, her pregnancy changed very little—the variety of parts, from virgins to wives and mothers to licentious women in the first part of the season mirror the breakdown in types of parts she played in the second half of the season. Pritchard’s stability ensured her reliable presence in the theatres; she was neither unattainable nor unbiddable. Her lack of a highly visible private life made it easier to transform into a character onstage, but may be the reason she never inspired the frenzied reactions that Bellamy and Susannah caused on and off stage.

Like Hannah Pritchard in 1749-50, Bellamy played most of her usual repertoire in

1753-54 without public comment. Though her own account of the season exaggerates pregnancy’s impact, her frequent appearances as Andromache in The Distrest Mother suggest that this part may have become a kind of staple role for pregnant tragic actresses.

Soon after her last pregnancy and the breakdown of her association with Calcraft,

Bellamy became popular for enacting maternal distress on stage, but only a few years later, her private life undermined the truth of those performances. The author of the

Meretriciad claims the town indulged Bellamy’s youthful follies, but when her beauty waned and her offstage behavior did not conform to maternal expectations, she was subject to personal attacks. When she wrote (dictated) her Apology, charismatic maternal

109As Pritchard was still confined at this point, she did not perform in her own benefit. Her friend Kitty Clive led the cast of The Amorous Widow on her behalf. 174

performance was a mode by which she might recreate the persona of a woman of fashion that she held during her career. In this way, her Apology functioned much like Susannah’s repertoire, which reconstituted Susannah’s ruptured reputation. In the memoir, Bellamy’s pregnancies and children serve both an affective purpose, and illuminate social networks through the names of her accoucheurs and her daughter’s grandparents, as well as retroactively placing her on the forefront of the aristocratic move to male birth attendants in the latter half of the century.

By and large, at mid-century, pregnancy helped other actresses more than it helped the pregnant actresses: it could impact part assignment, benefits, and visibility for women not yet at the top of the company. Despite this, none of the examples given here cast pregnancy as an occasion for penalty or rebuke. The verisimilitude that audiences demanded in an actor’s action and emotion did not extend to rejecting a pregnant performer. Nor was pregnancy a reason not to give a celebrity actress a part in a new play. Pritchard played Horatia in The Roman Father, and Bellamy Fulvia in Constantine.

Most strikingly, pregnancy was not a reason to delay a debut: Susannah began her tragic career in the late stages of pregnancy in 1736, and Sarah Ward debuted while pregnant in

1748. Retroactive accounts of women’s pregnancies, like Wilkinson’s of Bellamy or

Bellamy’s of her own, demonstrate the powerful and conflicting narratives that can be created around and applied to the pregnant body. What celebrity ideally enables is some form of authorship or shaping power over these narratives, which can take a potentially stigmatic force and turn it to advantage. In the next two chapters we will clearly see the way Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan each learned to use pregnancy as a tool for charismata that advanced their careers and bolstered their public personas.

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CHAPTER FOUR: “THE MATERNAL CHARACTER:” SARAH SIDDONS 1775-1794

Men being the Historians, they seldom condescend to record the great and good Actions of Women; and when they take notice of them, ’tis with this wise Remark, That such Women acted above their Sex. By which one must suppose they would have their Readers understand, That they were not Women who did those Great Actions, but that they were Men in Petticoats. —Mary Astell, The Christian Religion (1715) in Backschider, 69

There is something in maternal affection, that, I think, melts the soul to a degree of tenderness superior to what any other sensation can inspire; being composed of the softness of love, divested of its selfishness, blended with the warmth of affection equalled only by the paternal. —The Beauties of Mrs. Siddons (1786), 52

4.1 INTRODUCTION

Sarah Siddons took London by storm in the 1782-83 season. As her first performance, she played the title role in David Garrick’s Isabella or the Fatal

Marriage.110 Isabella, a poor starving widow, reluctantly marries a man she does not love for the sake of her young son. Discovering the following day that her long-lost husband is alive, she commits suicide. The part showcased her strengths in domestic tragedy, heightened by the fact that Siddons’s eldest child, Henry, played the part of Isabella’s son. An anecdote in the Morning Post on the day of the performance emphasized

Siddons’s tragic powers and the bond between mother and son: “Mrs. Siddons, of Drury- lane theatre, has a lovely boy about eight years old—Yesterday at the rehearsal of the

110 Adapted from Southerne’s The Fatal Marriage, itself an adaptation of an Aphra Behn novel. 176

fatal marriage, the boy observing [his] mother in the agonies of the dying scene, took the fiction for reality, and burst out into a flood of tears” (10 October 1782). This anecdote invited the audience, like Henry, to take the fiction for reality, and primed them to read

Siddons’s Isabella as a performance of her own maternity. The publicity following this production, including a painting of Sarah and Henry by William Hamilton, reinforced the tripartite conflation of Siddons the actress with Siddons as mother, and as character.

Hamilton’s painting, completed 1785 and made into an engraving that same year, turned this mingling of Siddons’s public and private lives into a commodity the audience might purchase for their private enjoyment. It was not simply an image of the actress-as- character, but also, it implied, the actress as self (Figure 5).

Mary Monckton, Lady Cork, found it unnecessary to wait for an artistic interpretation of the performance. She “inveigled” a live performance from Mrs. Siddons

and Henry under false pretenses to raise the profile of

a party (Siddons Reminiscences 15). When Siddons

was invited to Monckton’s house, the lady requested

that she bring Henry, “more for effect I suspect, than

for his beaux yuex [sic],” Siddons wrote (ibid).

Siddons found herself forced to endure close scrutiny

from the guests: “The room I sat in was so painfully

crowded that the people actually stood upon the

chairs round the walls, that they might look over I Figure 7 “Mrs. Siddons and her Son in the Tragedy of Isabella.” Engraving by J. nieghbour’s [sic] heads to stare at me” (ibid 16). Caldwell (after William Hamilton), 1 June 1785. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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Monckton used the privilege of her aristocratic status to place Siddons and Henry on display as a tableau vivant of themselves.111

Between 1774 and 1794 Siddons gave birth to seven living children: Henry (4

October 1774), Sally (5 November 1775), Maria (1 July 1779), Frances Emelia (baptized

26 April 1781), Eliza Ann (2 June 1782), George (27 December 1785), and, after miscarriages in 1788, 1789, and 1791, Cecilia (25 July 1794). Though reluctant to discuss her family life in her Reminiscences, in her earlier career she consistently performed while in the late stages of pregnancy and consciously used her maternity in strategies of public intimacy.112 Public intimacy allowed her to establish a celebrity persona that invited audience members to conflate her fictional, onstage roles as wives and mothers with her offstage domestic circumstances. When she performed during pregnancy—just as when she performed a mother character to her actual son—her body generated what Shearer West calls “double vision,” a dual awareness of the actress-as- character and as-self, in the minds of her audience. The degree to which the audience privileged one or the other awareness depended on Siddons’s celebrity identity and the role she performed. Siddons’s maternal body became a powerful charismatic force in her career, providing explicit justification for her lucrative and public profession while generating heightened affect around her portrayals of wives and mothers.

Siddons was born at the Shoulder of Mutton Inn in Brecon, Wales on 5 July 1755.

111 Siddons rarely ventured to such parties in her early career. Walpole wrote in 1783, “Mrs. Siddons continues to be the mode, and to be modest and sensible. She declines great dinners, and says the business and cares of her family take her whole time.’” (qtd Doran 356) 112 Siddons limited her Reminiscences to the years 1773-1785. By the time she wrote her memoirs, she had lost Maria (1798) and Henry (1815) to tuberculosis, and Sally (1803) to emphysema. She and William had separated and he was now also deceased (1808), as were her mother and most of her siblings. George had gone to India in 1803 and never returned. Little wonder Siddons found her private life too painful to dwell on. 178

She was the eldest child of Sarah (née Ward) and Roger Kemble, the manager of a respectable touring company. The Kembles had twelve children and Mrs. Kemble appeared on stage during many of her pregnancies. Siddons began her career in her parents’ company and married William Siddons, a fellow actor, in 1773. For the first two years of their marriage, Sarah and William appeared together in various touring companies and had two children, Henry on 4 October 1774, and Sarah Martha (Sally) on

5 November 1775.

In 1775, accounts of Siddons’s abilities reached David Garrick at Drury Lane. He asked a friend, Reverend Henry Bate, to attend a performance at Cheltenham in August and send him a report. Siddons was about six months pregnant with Sally when Bate saw her perform Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. After remarking, “Her figure must be remarkable fine, when she is happily delivered of a big belly, which entirely mars for the present her whole shape” (qtd. Manvell 23), Bate went on to report favorably on her face, action, stage deportment, behavior, and interpretation of the role. Bate’s reaction to

Siddons’s pregnant performance of Rosalind illustrates one of three possible reactions to a pregnant body on stage. Bate saw her body, recognized the impact the pregnancy had on her figure, but was able to separate it from his analysis of her overall performance.

The fact that Siddons was enacting a virginal, cross-dressed character while pregnant did not trouble Bate when considering her for Garrick. It may, in fact, have helped Bate separate the actor and character bodies as nothing in the text encouraged him to read

Siddons’s body as the character’s body.

Garrick’s reaction was positive and he asked Bate to “secure the lady with my best compliments” (Garrick 3:1027). That he also registered his “alarm” at “the big belly”

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and queried when she would be in “shapes” again, is an oft-quoted bit of evidence suggesting that pregnancy was detrimental to a woman’s career (ibid). Garrick’s statement is much more indicative of his opinion regarding Siddons’s condition at that particular moment and in the context of her debut, his role as manager, and the organization of the repertoire than it is a blanket statement about pregnancy on stage.

It would be foolish to deny that physical attractiveness was part of a performer’s appeal, especially for an unknown actress. This is clearly part of Garrick’s concern when he asks Bate when she would regain her shape. He was hiring a new actress, and a nice figure could only add to her (and his) success. It was also a practical concern, though: he would want her to start in the coming season, but her condition might prevent her debuting in October, when new talent usually came out with the official opening of the season.113 Delaying her appearance would impact the first few months of the season, but it was decided that, given her expectation of lying-in in November, it was best to wait.

Garrick’s correspondence with William Siddons shows his willingness to, essentially, give Mrs. Siddons paid maternity leave before she begins her contract: “if…You find it convenient to have any pecuniary Assistance from Me, I shall give it You with great pleasure—let me once more intreat that Mrs Siddons may have No Cares about me to disturb her, & that she may not be hurried to ye least prejudice of her health” (ibid 1038).

Siddons’s pregnancy impacted the schedule on which she made her Drury Lane debut, but was not a circumstance that prevented it. Garrick had worked with many actresses through pregnancy, he had brought many new performers to the stage. He made

113 In 1748, John Rich scheduled Sarah Ward’s debut in early October instead of waiting until after the birth of her child. This may have been Rich’s or Ward’s preference; Garrick seems to have expected to let Siddons’s preferences guide the schedule. 180

the necessary accommodations for her and got on with the season. Siddons made her debut on 29 December 1775 as Portia in The Merchant of Venice. She did not make much of an impression in this initial half season, appearing mostly in comedy. Garrick seems to have had little idea of, or patience to discover, what Mrs. Siddons’s strengths were, and her own understanding of those strengths was still developing. Some of this may have been due to the fact that Garrick lost comedienne Jane Pope over the summer and was unsuccessfully trying out Siddons as a replacement. After six months of working with him, Siddons came away with the impression that she was mostly hired for the

“mortification and irritation of Mrs. Yates and Miss Younge” (qtd Manvell 36). Despite this, she had every expectation of returning for the next season and was distraught to learn that her contract was not renewed. Siddons wrote:

Who can conceive the size of this cruel disappointment, this dreadful reverse of all my ambitious hopes in which too was involved the subsistence of two helpless infants! It was very near destroying me…For the sake of my poor babies however, I exerted myself to shake off this despondency, and my endeavours were blessed with success (Reminiscences 6-7)

Writing nearly fifty years later, Siddons attributes the pursuit of a stage career to the need to support her family, an assertion consistent with those made throughout her life.

Siddons’s emphasis on the maternal allowed her to be both a respected professional and ideal mother, generating continued sympathy and support for her career. After the disappointment at Drury Lane, she and William joined a touring troupe before finding a permanent home in Bath in 1778.

For four years, Siddons commuted between the Theatres Royal in Bath and

Bristol and gave birth to her next two children, Maria (1 July 1779), and Frances Emilia

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(baptized 26 April 1781, and who died shortly thereafter). During these years, Siddons realized her true gifts lay with tragedy and developed a repertoire of successful tragic roles. The new management at Drury Lane took note, and she returned to London in

1782. As part of her farewell performance in May, she paraded her three children (and her own advanced state of pregnancy) on stage after a benefit performance, revealing them as the “THREE REASONS” she was leaving Bath.114

From this first explicit use of her maternity to justify her stage career, Siddons built a celebrity persona whose foundation was her identity as a wife and mother.

Siddons’s carefully and intentionally placed her private circumstances and motivations on stage, and her most famous and popular stage roles were wives and mothers, many of them noble queens and all of them tragic. That the marrying of her on and offstage lives was a personal and commercial success in London is clear in the initial reactions to her performance of Isabella, and in the many successes she enjoyed throughout her career.

Siddons’s maternity was essential to her celebrity, a powerful form of charismata.

In the following pages, I focus on perceptions of and reactions to her pregnant body in

1785 and 1794 when she performed in London. In 1785, Siddons’s pregnancy was a topic of consistent discussion in the popular press, while the 1794 pregnancy provides a more private view of Siddons’s experiences. During both pregnancies, Siddons’s celebrity association with the figure of Lady Macbeth played a key role in audience response, and I

114 Before this performance, on 21 May 1782, Siddons had advertised that the performance would conclude with her “producing to the audience THREE REASONS” for leaving Bath. It was an orchestrated and successful publicity stunt. It was apparently much-talked of, for Miss Wewitzer and Mrs. Didier mocked her at their own benefit in July, advertising that “After the Play, Miss Wewitzer will produce THREE REASONS For Her CONTINUANCE on the BRISTOL Stage…” (8 July 1782, transcript of unknown periodical clipping, Kathleen Barker Collection). 182

will devote an additional section to exploring the interpretive implications of Siddons’s pregnant Lady Macbeth.

4.2 SIDDONIAN IDOLATRY

A common theme in accounts of Siddons’s performances, particularly during her first years in London, was her ability to evoke a strong physical and emotional response from her audience. Newspaper accounts and private writings describe the way that

Siddons’s onstage emotions could permeate and overcome the audience that watched them: “Mrs. Siddons’s performance of Jane Shore on Saturday evening was attended with unusual effects. Two ladies in the boxes fainted in the last scene, and at the same moment a young girl in the first gallery shrieked out, and went into hysterics” (MHDA 3

February 1783). Karl Gotlob Küttner saw Siddons as Isabella in The Fatal Marriage in the 1783-4 season, and found her vocalizations, particularly her mad laugh as she plunged the dagger into her breast in Isabella’s death scene to be, “truly harrowing, arousing unpleasant, distressing feelings…such sounds as cut me to the quick” (qtd

Booth 19). The effects were long-lasting, as the anonymous author of The Beauties of

Mrs. Siddons testified: “her sorrows took possession of my soul… [I] could only express my feelings by tears;—and, even now, my agitation is so great, that I must lay by my pen” (3). In Edinburgh, young men came to the theatre just to help remove the afflicted; the practice was referred to as “carrying off the dead” (Thompson Domestic Management

63-64).

These reactions, of course, testify to the power of Siddons as an actress, but also to the culture of the time and the desire of those in her audience to participate actively in the fiction they saw on stage. Both Edmund Burke and David Hume wrote of human 183

emotion as contagious. Burke specifically labels sympathy, the ability to feel what another feels in oneself, as a defining marker of the human condition.115 Theatre, and specifically tragedy, encouraged the public expression of these emotions and was therefore a potentially powerful moral force. Burke went further to suggest that rousing the pity of audiences in the theatre would lead to greater charitable beneficence in society as audiences sought the catharsis they did not receive within the plays’ fictions. Edmund

Curll’s description of Anne Oldfield’s Andromache as instructive to mothers in the audience similarly emphasizes the moral possibilities of tragic performance. In excess, emotions were dangerous, and patients inclined to nervousness and hysteria were advised to avoid the excitement of Siddons’s performances (Royster).

The psycho-somatic impact of Siddons’s performances, then, must be seen in light of a culture that actively encouraged the expression of emotion by valuing sensibility, and that considered human passions contagious. John Hill explicitly tied the latter belief to notions of good acting in his Treatise on the Art of Playing (1750). In this chapter, two questions linger in the background of my analysis. First, did Siddons’s pregnancies impact the likelihood of audiences having these physical responses to her performances? Second, did those same performances raise fears for Siddons’s personal health or the health of her unborn child? Details from her 1785 season will help address these questions.

115 See Burke, Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful; Hume, Treatise of Human Nature. 184

Saleable Celebrity: Siddons as Wife, Mother, and Tragic Queen

After her debut season at Drury Lane in 1782, the market for saleable images of

Siddons was considerable. Engravings represented her as Euphrasia in The Grecian

Daughter, who breastfeeds her imprisoned and starving father to keep him alive; as

Isabella with her son Henry; as Jane Shore, the repentant former mistress of Edward IV; and as Lady Randolph reuniting with her long lost son in Douglas. She served as the model for the Queen in a Wedgewood chess set, and was painted by many prominent artists. Gainsborough, George Romney, Gilbert Stuart, and Thomas Lawrence showed her as a private citizen, while others showed her as the personification of Melpomene, the tragic muse (Pascoe 21). King George and Queen Charlotte patronized her and she became preceptress (reader) to the young princes and princesses. During a visit to court, the Queen complimented the actress on her deportment. Siddons later recorded in response that she had, “frequently personated queens” (qtd Manvell 78). Siddons’s onstage performances received a mark of authenticity from Britain’s sovereigns, both in this story and in their support of her at Drury Lane.

Siddons’s celebrity united three disparate themes into a single body: her maternity, her performances of ennobled and distressed women (who, like Siddons, were frequently married women), and her status as the tragic muse.116 The most famous representation of this conflation is Joshua Reynolds’ 1783/4 Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic

Muse. Crowned, enthroned, and attended by pity and terror, Reynolds’ portrait captures

116 Susan Rutherford has suggested that Wilhemine Schröder-Devrient’s status as muse to Richard Wagner drew on far older associations with the word ‘muse’ than the passive figure we tend now to imagine. Schroder-Devrient was “a creator in her own right whose example inspired others to attain a similar level of artistry” (Rutherford 76). Given the awareness and acknowledgement of Siddons’s creative genius throughout her lifetime, I suggest the same definition here. 185

the essence of Siddonian celebrity in the mid-1780s. Her maternity, the one thing obviously missing from the portrait, may have originally been hinted at in the figure of a putto at her knee, now covered with her train. It was certainly included when Siddons recreated the painting in a tableau vivant at the end of her 1785 pregnancy.117 Siddons’s pregnancy activated/embodied what was usually an allegorical relationship between creativity and reproduction; the muse who could inspire the conception of an idea in a writer or painter that they then labored to bring forth was now pregnant herself. As we will see, her physical condition and status as muse inspired an odd but compelling reproductive fantasy of female parthenogenesis.

4.3 SIDDONS IN 1785: PREGNANCY AND THE PRESS

By the end of her third season in London, Sarah Siddons had made a triumphant debut as Lady Macbeth on 2 February 1785 and was entering the second trimester of her sixth pregnancy. She went on tour as usual during the summer months. While gone, her pregnancy was announced in the papers. When she returned to Drury Lane in September, her appearances before the birth were highly anticipated. Throughout the fall, narratives about her performances and private life appeared regularly in the press. Much as her performances worked on the physical bodies of her audience, her celebrity dominated their imaginations. Newspapers wrote of her planned performances, schedule, and

117 Anecdotes about the way in which her pose came about circulated, all crediting in some way Siddons’s genius. Her own account reads: “…he took me by the hand, saying ‘Ascend your undisputed throne and graciously bestow upon me some grand Idea of The Tragik Muse.’ I walked up the steps and seated myself instantly in the attitude in which She now appears” (qtd. McPherson, “Picturing Tragedy” 410). Though Reynolds’ account presents the pose as an accident (she looked up at a drawing on the wall), with himself as the one to recognize its genius, both accounts present her as possessing an innate sense of the tragic muse, a naturalness that underscores the idea that she is the tragic muse, or at least her most perfect representative. 186

expected lying-in date. They also placed her continuing performances within the context of a family tradition:

A Theatrical Anecdote.—When Mrs. Siddons's grandfather, Mr. Ward, and his company of Comedians (which was always numerous and respectable) were performing the historical play of King Henry VIII at Keynton…the part of Anna Bullen was played by Mrs Kemble, who, after performing the character, and before the birth of Elizabeth, was announced –her Majesty was actually brought to bed of the present Mr. Stephen Kemble. (Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser, 4 November 1785)

The anecdote showcases the deliberate conflation of the private life of the actress, Mrs.

Kemble, and her performance of the fictional pregnant queen, Anne Boleyn. It also suggests the delight audiences might find in similar conflations during Siddons’s pregnancy.

Siddons made her premiere in September, a month earlier than normal. The

Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser (MCLA) explained:

Mrs. Siddons’s pregnancy makes it necessary that the Drury-lane Managers should reap their harvest while they can. Hence the Siddons, with a chearfulness[sic] that does her and her husband great honour, has consented to play as often as possible between this and Christmas, by which time she expects to be confined to her chamber. (24 September 1785)

To investigate the way Siddons used her 1785 pregnancy to bolster her career, I am taking a three-pronged approach, moving from a consideration of her place in society (or

“offstage”) to her place within the theatre company (“backstage”), and finally, to the way her body was read in relation to her fictional performances (“onstage”). In doing so, I am, of course, creating divisions where none existed in Siddons’s daily life and possibly perpetuating the public/private divide I criticized in the introduction. However, I hope that within this organizational model the private and public interact, and that it will

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provide a methodology for the ways in which we might choose to consider pregnancy’s impact on women in theatre in the future regardless of whether our interest lies in on, back or offstage circumstances or events.

Offstage

By 1785, Siddons had achieved an almost unprecedented social mobility—she was patronized by the King and Queen, she loaned stage costumes to women of fashion, and was painted by the most prominent artists of her day, not simply as her stage characters, but also as a private individual. Though earlier women in this study had become wealthy through their careers (Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard), only Anne

Oldfield had attained some measure of sociability with the upper classes. Siddons’s marrying of the regal and the domestic placed her in good company. In Fashioning

Celebrity, Laura Engel writes that,

…[portraitists] depicted [Queen Charlotte] as a fashionable, attractive woman whose duties involved both her regal obligations and her position as a wife and mother… Similar[ly]…Siddons’s portraits promoted the vision of her as both a public celebrity and a private individual (29).

For example, Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait, Mrs. Siddons, painted between 1783-85, shows a woman of quality dressed in the height of fashion: the daughter of strolling players who made a living emulating her social superiors was increasingly able to narrow the perceived social gap between herself and her patrons. In 1785, Siddons’s pregnancy reinforced her social status through an engagement with aristocratic birth rituals and her selection of birth attendant.

Male accoucheurs were increasingly fashionable with the aristocracy and other wealthy families from the 1770s onward, and the queen used an accoucheur for all fifteen

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of her pregnancies. As her attendant, Siddons chose Dr. James Ford, part owner of Drury

Lane and the Queen’s accoucheur. When Siddons hired Dr. Ford to attend her during birth in 1785, she put her maternal health on par with that of the Queen of England and placed herself socially in the company of her wealthy admirers in public and private life.

The Queen herself took an interest in Siddons’s maternal health, sending her the powders she took during her own pregnancies (Manvell 143).

Newspapers reinforced Siddons’s social performance of birth by using aristocratic birth rituals to announce her labor and delivery. The General Advertiser announced

George’s birth with a notice that Mrs. Siddons was finally “in the straw,” a reference to the tradition of laying straw around the home of a parturient woman, ostensibly to minimize noise, though also to call attention to the “Great Event” taking place inside, thereby making the private public.118 Siddons’s participation in this ritual, or, alternately, the newspaper’s use of such a ritual to frame her confinement, helped to reinforce the public perception of her as an affluent member of society.

Backstage

In the theatre, Siddons had to work with the managers to balance the economic demands of her job with her needs as a pregnant woman. One way of doing this was by beginning her London season a month earlier than normal. The Morning Post and Daily

Advertiser (MPDA) speculated:

From the apparent loss which old Drury will suffer by Mrs. Siddons's lying-in (unless relieved by the best effects of Comedy) Managers ought to learn a lesson, to make it an article with the husbands that the wives should lye-in in summer. Had this been the case, Mrs. Siddons would have produced an Irishman or a Scotchman. (MPDA 4 November 1785)

118 The tradition also, of course, suggests a corollary between aristocratic births and the nativity story. 189

The author of the above article frames Siddons’s body as the site of a financial transaction between her husband and the managers of Drury Lane; her physical body is her husband’s property and responsibility, and only he can exercise control over when she becomes pregnant. Legally, this is accurate, and is the kind of deprivation of rights

Siddons’s female characters often lament and Michael Booth suggests fed her celebrity with female patrons (see Booth 31):

The outpouring of emotion when Sarah Siddons played Isabella or Jane Shore or Belvidera must surely be placed in the context of a woman’s position in the legal and social framework of late eighteenth-century middle-class English society, and in the imaginative and sympathetic life of women in this society. Mrs Siddons herself was a part of this context and this life; her personal situation is also relevant. (Booth 31)

Felicity Nussbaum similarly points to the way that the collision of stage performance and offstage personality drew attention to tensions surrounding women’s place in society.

Siddons’s repertoire of roles both reflected her personal life and the life of eighteenth- century women generally. Together, these associations meant that Siddons could be both the ideal wife and mother off the stage, and from the stage, express the frustrations and indignities fellow women in the audience might feel. As Judith Pascoe puts it, “An audience could call on their knowledge of this safer Siddons [wife and mother] to allay any anxiety they might feel before the powerful performing one” (24). From Siddons’s perspective, outpourings of grief at the theatre relieved the grief she sometimes felt in private life.

Regardless of the complex and uncomfortable legal status of Siddons’s performing and reproductive body, there was no doubt that Drury Lane was hugely dependent on Mrs. Siddons’s willing presence and participation for its financial health. In

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the previous season, 1784-85, the box office receipts on nights that Siddons performed— not including her benefit nights—averaged l.242, compared to the l.138 average on nights when she did not perform, meaning she brought in approximately 175% more on average than all her fellow company members combined.

Underscoring Siddons’s economic power and importance to the company, the managers paid for two lavish gowns made to accommodate her pregnant body, but which could later be altered and worn after her pregnancy. One was for Mrs. Lovemore, a new part, and the other for the banquet scene in Macbeth. Mary Tickell, sister-in-law to

Richard Brinsley Sheridan and daughter of Thomas and Mary Linley, respectively the music master and wardrobe mistress at Drury Lane, described the dresses as follows:

“Mrs. Siddons Dress in Mrs. Lovemore I think must be ugly enough, yellow Lustring with black, blue, & silver Trimmings—her new Dress in Ldy Macbeth is the richest I ever saw—my Mother says there are forty yards of purple sattin in it tho’ the Petticoat is of gold Tissue” (Y.d.35.182). The papers provided additional details:

…it was a violet coloured satin, richly trimmed with gold fringe and sable. The petticoat was of gold tissue, ornamented in like manner; her head- dress consisted of plumage, interwoven with jewels. Her stomacher was also richly studded with gems. (MHDA 31 October 1785)

More minor company members would pay for their own costuming, but Siddons was dressed at the expense of the theatre. This investment in Siddons during her pregnancy— an investment that was notable for its unusual liberality—further highlighted her prominence and power in the company.

Siddons would leave the stage a few weeks before the birth, and be absent for four to six weeks after. The letters of Mary Tickell help illuminate the strategies Siddons and

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her managers used to maximize profits during the first two months of the season. Her witty correspondence offers a view of backstage life, and of the intense, day-to-day battles between the patent theatres, battles that Siddons engaged in fully, pregnant or not.

On 10 October, for example, she offered to perform Desdemona on what was normally an off night in order to foil her rival Mrs. Abington at Covent Garden, who was premiering a new part.

Mrs. Abington chang[ed] her Play of the Way to Keep him to Always in the Wrong, merely to forestall poor Farren’s who was to play in it, the day following…Mrs. Siddons said if the Managers thought it would be worth while, she w:d play Desdemona against her—so Madam Abington, will be finely taken in, & I think quite rightly served. (Y.d.35.152)

Mrs. Abington essentially planned to “scoop” Farren by playing a part Farren was preparing the day before Farren intended to play it. She did so assuming she would draw a crowded house and lessen the appeal of seeing Farren in the same play the following night. Siddons, who would almost certainly draw more audiences than Abington, offered to play in order to foil her plan.

Though Siddons began by performing her usual repertoire of tragic roles, Siddons requested—or rather, declared—the need for a change as her confinement approached.

After playing Lady Macbeth on 19 November, Tickell wrote,

Mrs S…has declar’d she cannot with safety play any more of her Tragedy Characters. She plays Constance Tuesday, as the only easy one left—there have been great Enquiries after the Way to Keep him, & there is no doubt that before she lies in, we might [have] half a dozen thumping Houses to it (Y.d.35.202).

Siddons resigned her tragic parts for comedy and, though not her strength, the idea that each performance could be her last (until after Christmas or even, chillingly, ever) spurred the desire to see Siddons in the flesh. The managers emphasized this by counting

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down her performances in advertisements.119

Siddons’s correspondence offers a glimpse of her personal experience balancing life and work during this pregnancy. A note to an unnamed recipient from the end of

October reads:

The King commands Measure for Measure next Wednesday, and I am to play Mrs. Lovemore this week which will keep me constantly employd till it is over—so that if you will not have the goodness to call on Sunday if you should happen to stay in Town, I shall think myself a very unfortunate woman. I was extremely sorry to hear you had been ill—In the hope that we shall meet before you go, (and God knows whether we ever may afterwards in this side of the Grave) I remain dear Sir Your most oblig’d and…obedient humble servt S Siddons (Y.c.432)

Siddons’s explanation of her busy schedule is coupled with the very real fear she feels for not only her sick friend, but for herself as a pregnant woman, fears that Judith Schneid

Lewis finds echoing throughout the correspondence of gravid women of the time.

After the birth, Mary Tickell reported that Siddons intended to nurse the child herself—a practice advocated by the Duchess of Devonshire and others:

She suckles it herself, and means to have it brought to the theatre on those Nights she acts—this is certainly an economical Plan of her to save the expence of a day Nurse & I wish the Theatre may not fare the worse for it— (8 January 1786, Y.d.35.228).

Siddons returned to work, but planned to—and did—bring her child to work with her despite having the economic resources not to and despite any objections she may have faced. Siddons’s maternal identity was never far removed from her onstage performances, sometimes quite literally so.

During Siddons’s 1785 pregnancy, the management attempted to buffer themselves against the financial blow they would sustain during her absence by starting her season a

119 e.g., “being the last Time but one of her performing ‘till after Christmas” (PA 29 November 1785). 193

month early, featuring her in popular parts regardless of verisimilitude, and outfitting her in expensive new costumes. They responded to Siddons’s physical needs by altering her repertoire in mid-November to less demanding comic roles that she would not ordinarily play, but which were still a financially sound investment.

The revival of Garrick’s Jubilee as an afterpiece, which included Siddons recreating the Reynolds’ portrait of her as the tragic muse, provided an additional opportunity to see

Siddons without demanding further physical exertion from her, as she was wheeled on the stage already seated and posed. Siddons’s 1785 pregnancy underscored her value to the theatre, and the economic power she wielded in the company, which extended to arranging her post-partum life to fit her preferred parenting practices.

Onstage

As I have suggested, there are three possible audience reactions to a visibly pregnant actress in relation to the fictional character she plays, all of which rely on the

“double consciousness” the audience holds of fiction and reality: 1) An audience can ignore the body in favor of the fiction, 2) the actress’ body can interfere with the fiction of the play, or 3) the actress’ body meld with that of the fictional character.120 These reactions are not mutually exclusive, and at any given moment during a performance, any of these responses is possible. In specific instances, however, we can glimpse which reaction seems to be dominant at a particular moment or in relation to a specific

120 The third possible audience reaction to a pregnant body on stage is exemplified by a story James Boaden recounts in The Life of Mrs. Jordan. Boaden attributes the failure of a revival of Robert Dodsley’s Cleone to Sarah Siddons’s pregnant body. Siddons played the title character, who runs mad over the body of her only child after he is viciously murdered. Boaden writes that it was, “truly distressing to see Mrs. Siddons in the agonies of Cleone only a little month before her own confinement” (Jordan 1:103), and for this reason, the audience could not bear to watch the play. Siddons, however, did not appear in Cleone until 1786, the year after she gave birth to George.

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character, and we can sometimes connect that response to fears about the physical effects of Siddons’s performances.

During the fall of 1785, the public made recommendations about parts Siddons should play during pregnancy, among them Beatrice, Cordelia, and Queen Catherine from Henry VIII. The suggestions show a consistent lack of concern for verisimilitude, meaning the audience was prepared to ignore Siddons’s pregnant body for the sake of the play’s fiction. In perhaps the most striking example, Siddons played Isabella, the novice nun from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, by Royal Command in early November.

Verisimilitude was not a concern for Siddons’s audience or the managers who created her repertoire; her physical health, however, was a preoccupation for both parties.

Siddons’s performances, as we have seen, were both highly emotive and physically contagious, inspiring hysterical responses in her audience. Concerns about

Siddons’s safety, however, could conflict with the usual connection between actress and audience, disrupting their investment in the fiction of the play. One audience member felt compelled to object after seeing Siddons act Jane Shore in her eighth month of pregnancy:

Mrs. Siddons ought not to appear any longer, and the managers should be reminded of the fable, by hazarding too much, they may lose all, and this may be the last golden egg she may ever bring them... our concern for the actress got the better of our feelings for the character she was to perform…The audience seemed more than once frightened for her (MCLA, 10 November 1785)

In Rowe’s play, Jane Shore, former mistress of Edward IV, is turned out into the streets to starve when she refuses to become Lord Hastings’s mistress or support his disenfranchisement of Edward’s legitimate sons. The author of The Beauties of Mrs.

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Siddons… called her performance, “too shocking for human nature to support,” and was particularly horrified at her convincing portrayal of Jane’s “famishing” (49, 48). During a performance in 1783 Ernst Brandes, “saw two ladies among the spectators fall into hysterics, and one of them had to be carried out, laughing convulsively. Such representations of pain are too much for modern nerves” (qtd. Booth 19). The audience member who wrote to the Morning Chronicle claimed that he and others were so fearful that Siddons’s physical exertion in Jane Shore would do her harm that they could no longer enjoy the performance. Rather than risk her health, he recommends she stop performing altogether. Such concern that she not over-tax herself helps to explain suggested roles such as Beatrice, Queen Catherine, and Cordelia: each relies more on vocal than on physical strength. These concerns also reflect the wider social awareness of the need to balance exercise and work with rest to ensure the health of mother and child.

Mary Tickell agreed that Siddons’s body rendered her performances painful. In

November she wrote, “Mrs Siddons contrives to make herself look wonderfully well from our Box, but in front they say she looks very big—she exerts herself amazingly indeed I think rather to give one pain.” (Y.d.35.148). Instead of transmitting the usual hysterical pathos to her audiences, Siddons’s pregnant body began creating a secondary and sometimes more powerful affect. This response showcases the parallel and possibly disruptive narrative a pregnant body can create on stage, a narrative which may have existed for the widowed Susanna Mountfort in 1693.

The discomfort experienced by the writer who complained about Jane Shore prompted concerns about Siddons’s short and long-term health. Mary Tickell also noted feeling pain during Siddons’s performances, but did not share concerns that Siddons

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would overexert and injure herself, perhaps because she knew Siddons personally. She did, however, feel apprehensive about bringing her friend Mrs. Lloyd to see Siddons act

Lady Macbeth:

I was afraid poor Mrs L—who you know is very nervous, wd have been quite ill after the sleeping scene—poor woman she was quite turn’d to stone with the perceived Horror of the play so finely exampl’d by Mrs S (Y.d.35.33).

Mrs. Lloyd’s nervous condition made Tickell doubt she could handle watching Siddons perform Lady Macbeth. She makes no comment about the pregnancy increasing or decreasing the likelihood that Lloyd will suffer, though she “never saw [Siddons] act better in my Life” (ibid).

Lady Macbeth

The most nebulous but evocative effect of Siddons’s pregnancy was the way it functioned to heighten her personal interpretation of the character of Lady Macbeth, which she had premiered the preceding February. She played the part three times during this pregnancy and a whopping thirteen times during her final pregnancy in 1794. Writing her “Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth” at the end of her life, Siddons emphasized Lady Macbeth’s wifely devotion to Macbeth, as well as her identity as a mother who has “really felt the maternal yearnings of a mother towards her babe”

(Campbell 2:18). Such a reading brought Lady Macbeth in line with the roles for which

Siddons was already famous and allowed her domestic celebrity to become a factor in audience reception and interpretation of the role. I am not necessarily suggesting that watching Siddons play Lady Macbeth while pregnant caused the audience to radically revise their interpretation of the character to a greater degree than they already had based

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solely on her performances and persona as wife and mother. What is clear, however, is that Siddons’s pregnancy became a catalyst for expressing the intertwining of Lady

Macbeth, Siddons, and maternity in the minds of the theatre-going public.

On several occasions, newspapers included good wishes to Siddons for a successful confinement in the midst of a performance review, conflating the personal and the professional. In each case, textual references to Macbeth appear, though the reviews are for other, unrelated plays. After Siddons performed Matilda in The Carmelite on

October 27, a review in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser lodged a disturbing objection to the play:

we enter our strongest protest against the resuscitations of a puny bantling [a premature child/the play], which, with a less skillful midwife than Mrs. Siddons—and may Dr. Ford’s skill be attended with equal success!— which, with a less skilful midwife than the Siddons, would have been strangled in its birth (29 October 1785)

The image of the play “strangled in its birth” echoes the “birth-strangled babe” in

Macbeth 4.1, while casting Siddons as a successful midwife reminds the readership of her own condition, as does the reference to Dr. James Ford, who will be delivering Siddons’s child.

A second review, of The Distressed Mother, references Lady Macbeth’s

“compunctious visitings of nature” from Act One, scene five: “The Siddons in

Hermione—such frantick prostitution of her transcendent talents is fit only for what she will, we hope, not experience, the delirious visitings of nature” (Whitehall Evening Post,

10-12 November 1785). Jenijoy La Belle identified “visitings of nature” with descriptions of menstruation in sixteenth and seventeenth century medical texts. The phrase also references the natural feelings of grief, horror, and compassion that Lady Macbeth fears

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will interfere with Duncan’s murder. Whether the “delirious visitings of nature” mean that she experiences a resumption of her menstrual cycle or that she is visited by grief, the author is using a reference to Lady Macbeth in order to wish Siddons well with her confinement. The seemingly odd pairing of the “fiend-like” Lady Macbeth and maternity is made possible by Siddons’s celebrity, which constantly emphasized her position as wife and mother, and the strong, personal identification of her with the figure of Lady

Macbeth.

The association between Lady Macbeth and Siddons’s pregnancy began almost as soon as the public was aware of her condition: in the summer of 1785, the following appeared in the Public Advertiser:

…To Her we will however say, ‘Bring forth male children only!’—For with reference to her great talents—we hope will spring from thence the prodigies of some future age. …Some who may act up to her Lady of Macbeth, and return all her excellence with equal force—And thus only can her talents flourish as they should do. (PA 19 July 1785)

Siddons’s pregnancy inspires a reproductive fantasy in which the child she carried became the sole child of her tragic genius. The child would usher in some “future age” where time holds no sway—or perhaps will spring, Athena-like, fully formed from its mother—and The Siddons can finally perform Lady Macbeth opposite a worthy Thane, which can only be her son, the male version of herself. When she did, in fact, have a son, the Public Advertiser announced George’s birth with: “The SIDDONS—who by the bye has just brought forth a son—‘male children only’ will be ready for Tragedy in six weeks from the date hereof” (PA 29 December 1785). The Siddons, it is implied, naturally brought forth a son because, like Lady Macbeth, her “undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males.”

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While Siddons’s 1785 pregnancy enables us to focus on audience response to and interpretation of Siddons’s pregnant body, her 1794 pregnancy provides a more personal view of her experience as reflected in a network of correspondence with female friends.

In part, this is because the context in which she performed during this pregnancy had changed significantly.

4.4 SIDDONS IN 1794

The years between 1788 and 1791 were difficult for Siddons, personally and professionally. Despite her brother John Philip Kemble’s elevation to company manager, tensions were high in the company. She performed irregularly, both for health reasons and because of disputes with Sheridan over payment of her salary. 121 Siddons’s six-year- old daughter Eliza Ann died in April 1788, the same month Siddons had her first of three miscarriages.122 Siddons’ miscarriages may have been related to a venereal disease Mrs.

Piozzi hints her less-than-faithful husband gave her (Thraliana 2:769). The country also faced a series of crises: George III’s first attack of porphyria sent the country into an extended debate over a possible regency in late 1788 and early 1789, with the Revolution in France following close behind. Mounting tensions with France would ultimately lead to war in early 1793.

121 When Dorothy Jordan, whose relationship with Siddons was known to be problematic, personally announced Siddons’s benefit in May, she was warmly applauded and her behavior complimented in the press. The event is mentioned in several biographies of both women with some puzzlement; I would suggest that the audience’s seemingly fervent reaction was because they took Jordan’s announcement as a public expression of support for Siddons from one mother to another. In the mid-1790s, both Sally and Maria Siddons experienced increasingly fragile health. Jordan, ever compassionate, offered to play for her occasionally so she might stay home with her daughters. 122 The miscarriages took place in April 1788, sometime in 1789, and in the summer of 1791. Hester Piozzi wrote in 1792 that Siddons had contracted syphilis from her husband, which caused the miscarriages and generally led to her problematic health throughout this period. If she is correct, Cecelia was likely born in the disease’s secondary stage, when the disease enters remission. 200

In 1791, meanwhile, the Drury Lane company moved into the Haymarket theatre for three years while their old building was pulled down and a new, larger edifice constructed. The new building expanded seating to 3611 and was a wonderland of mirrored lights, cut glass chandeliers, and opulent ornamentation. Siddons at first wrote of the beauty of the new theatre, but later expressed concerns about the acoustics and visibility of such a large space.

Though Siddons’s presence in the theatre was inconsistent, she made several significant appearances related to her position as a national celebrity and the favorite actress of the King and Queen. In 1789 she spoke an ode to the King dressed as Britannia during celebrations for George III’s return to health. As in the tableau vivant of the

Tragic Muse in 1785, the ode ended with Siddons recreating Britannia’s pose as shown on several denominations of British currency.123 In enacting Britannia, Siddons added an association with the personification of her country to existing associations with tragedy, queenship, and maternity.

Earlier in 1789 she acted Volumnia to her brother’s Coriolanus. It was Kemble’s own adaptation and he gave the play the subtitle “The Roman Matron,” highlighting

Volumnia’s central part. Siddons’s martial mother overshadowed all, including 240 extras, in the mind of Charles Mayne Young:

She came alone, marching and beating time to the music; rolling…from side to side, swelling with the triumph of her son. Such was the intoxication of joy which flashed from her eye, and lit up her whole face,

123 Britannia was a popular figure in prints, sometimes in physical danger or in danger of seduction from foreign powers, and occasionally shown as mother to her country in times of crisis. For example, The Acceptable Fast; Or Britannia’s Maternal Call… printed around mid-century after an earthquake in Lisbon, shows “an ethereal and larger-than-life mother [who] serves as the binding force between individual and nation and the conduit between the community and an internalized sense of affiliation and patriotism…” (Cody 24-5). 201

that the effect was irresistible. She seemed to me to reap all the glory of that procession to herself. I could not take my eye from her. Coriolanus, banner, and pageant, all went for nothing to me, after she had walked to her place. (qtd Manvell 169)

Jonathan Bate, summarizing William Hazlitt’s similarly enthused response calls her

Volumnia, “the mother of the nation” (Notorious Muse 92), meaning both Rome in the play and Britain. Joining her celebrity with the part throughout a tumultuous time of war enabled Siddons’s maternity to meld with Volumnia’s patriotism.

After the debut, the World took the opportunity to assert Kemble’s and Siddons’s superiority to French performers, declaring their Coriolanus “a triumph incontestable!”

(10 February 1789). Other reviews praised Siddons’s “familiar elegance,” “maternal triumph,” “artful persuasions,” and her “pathetic and chilling accents” at the end of the play (World 9 February 1789). Like all of Siddons’s best performances, Volumnia incorporated her strength, power, and affecting pathos while drawing on her maternal persona. The play was regularly performed until 1796, when mounting fears of an

English revolution may have prompted its removal from the repertoire.124 As the events of the 1790s unfolded, so did the national scale of Siddons’s maternity.

When Drury Lane reopened in 1794, Kemble planned a new production of

Macbeth with himself as the ambitious Thane and his sister, of course, as the fiend-like queen. Siddons, who had been touring earlier in the year, played Lady Macbeth thirteen times in the inaugural production at the newly renovated Drury Lane theatre before leaving the stage in expectation of Cecilia’s birth. As with her 1785 pregnancy, the audience was well aware of her condition. In February it was announced that Siddons

124 Elizabeth Inchbald observed that the treatment of plebeians in the play was considered dangerous in light of growing poverty and discontent. 202

would shortly “present another offering at the shrine of Lucina” (London Packet or New

Lloyd’s Evening Post 24-26 February 1794). Siddons was seen in an orchestra box in

March at the opening of the new theatre, which began with oratorio performances (Times

13 March 1794). In advance of her own debut, one report characterized her pregnancy as another Siddonian performance: “Mrs. Siddons performs only a few nights when she retires to act the maternal character upon a private Theatre” (Oracle and Public

Advertiser, 16 April 1794). Implicit in the phrasing of this announcement is the suggestion that prior to her retirement, she will act the maternal character in public.

As in 1785, though to a lesser extent, the papers reflect an interest in knowing what roles Mrs. Siddons will perform before lying-in. Lady Macbeth holds pride of place in this list, followed by Hermione in The Distrest Mother. In reality, she performed several more roles: Queen Catherine in Henry VIII, Mrs. Beverley in The Gamester, and

Lady Randolph in Douglas.125 A number of reasons may account for the diminished commentary on Siddons’s condition: she was no longer new to the theatre, but an established actress; the timing of the opening meant a season of only a few short weeks; and, perhaps, an awareness of the ill luck Siddons had been plagued with in her last three pregnancies. In April, Siddons herself expressed concern that the child she carried might not survive in a letter to her friend Elizabeth Barrington. In January, she was feeling uncertain of her own survival when she wrote of her concerns that she might not leave behind sufficient money for her children.

125 Notably, she did not substitute comedy for her tragic repertoire to accommodate her changing body as she did in 1785, but each of the parts she played in 1794 can be counted among her “easy” ones, relying on vocal power. 203

Before the Drury Lane opening, her friend and prodigious diarist Hester Lynch

Piozzi expressed concerns that Siddons’s condition would cause problems. Piozzi suggests that her body had the potential to represent personal gain in 1794 when it signified dedication to her profession in 1785:

Mrs Siddons is going to act Lady Macbeth on the new Theatre Drury Lane…She is big with Child, & I fear will for that reason scarce be well received: for People have a notion She is covetous, and this unnecessary Exertion to gain Money will confirm it. And yet, says Lord Deerhurst, “She thinks I suppose to carry all before her.” Lord Deerhurst is very comical. (Thraliana 876-77)126

Piozzi is not concerned that performing the character of Lady Macbeth will be problematic, but performing at all in her condition when she has no financial need to do so. Piozzi was protective of Siddons and may have worried unnecessarily that the occasional rebukes for Siddons’s lucrative career would overwhelm audience desire to see her. Instead, Siddons’s frequent absences seem to have made the audiences even more receptive to her performance.

After Macbeth opened on Easter Monday, Piozzi wrote to a friend, “Mrs Siddons is very big, yet looks beautifully on the Stage” (The Piozzi Letters 2:173), a sentiment

Mary Tickell expressed in 1785. Piozzi makes no mention of her former concerns, nor was such a reaction recorded in the press. As usual, Siddons was considered the best aspect of the production, but no details of her performance are recorded. Relying on the familiarity of her audience, the papers simply said she was as excellent as always.

Instead, newspaper coverage focused on several innovations, such as a bevy of children

126 Siddons had been publically criticized for the amount of money she made from her profession, and her seemingly insatiable desire to make more. 204

playing the witches’ spirits and the use of shadow play instead of an actor to represent

Banquo’s ghost.

Though it got less press coverage this time, Siddons’s condition was amply in view on stage: nine days after opening, while still performing regularly, Siddons complained to Mrs. Piozzi, “I am sure there must be two I am so frightfully large and heavy” (Sarah Siddons to Mrs. Piozzi, 30 April 1794, Burnim 58). Siddons did not receive new costumes this time. In fact, she reused her Lady Macbeth costume for other parts, possibly including Queen Catherine in Henry VIII: “Tomorrow I play Catherine and have all my Lady Macbeth’s finery to make up in other forms—” (ibid 57).127 She played for the last time on 6 June. By 2 July, the papers reported that she had been “much indisposed” and hoped “every day to be relieved” (Oracle and Public Advertiser).128 As in 1785, the birth took place later than expected. On 26 July, Sally, Siddons’s eldest daughter, sent word to Mrs. Piozzi:

To you then dearest Mrs Piozzi as I promis'd, do I first send the joyful news. Our sweet Mother was deliver'd at half after eight last night of a very fine little girl, and this morning as well as we could expect, so is the darling little one-- My Mother was ill all day yesterday, and Mr Batty was in the House from three in the afternoon--Thank God it is all over!--I have a great many letters to write, and as I have told you all that you wish to know, I must end this, pray make my congratulation to Ccy on the birth of the little Cecilia all our loves attend you, & I am most Affectionately yrs S Siddons

(Sally Siddons to Hester Lynch Piozzi 26 July 1794, British Library RP 4536)

127 She played Lady Macbeth again on 2 May, so had to undo whatever changes she made again the following day. 128 Her indisposition prevented her performance at a benefit for widows and children of those killed in naval action on 1 June 1794. 205

Cecelia was the new baby’s name, given in honor of Hester Piozzi’s daughter Cecelia

(the “Ccy” above). When she was well enough to write, Siddons referred to the new baby as “the little dear fat lump” who had given her a difficult time in delivery (Piozzi Letters

2:196). As in 1785, Siddons was attended by a male accoucheur, Mr. Batty.

Siddons’s correspondence illustrates the close connection she felt with Mrs.

Piozzi: she is the first person told about the birth, and Siddons’s first letter to her treats

Piozzi as though she is the child’s father: “I had a very Safe, tho a long and Laborious time, and I bless God that I have brought you as perfect and healthful a Baby as ever the

Sun Shone on” (ibid). Her correspondence also shows her still hard at work despite her lying-in: she received Richard Brinsley Sheridan to hear details of his proposed payment plan for the money he owed her from previous seasons. She returned to the boards for a single night to play for her sister-in-law’s benefit on 20 August. On 12 September she was ill, which she attributed to that performance. Like always, life and work were well and truly intertwined. She nursed Cecelia herself, which she feared was keeping her weak longer than she should be:

Nursing makes or rather continues to keep me weak, I hope the sea Breezes at Margate will strengthen us all! My pretty [the baby] thank God is vastly well, the strongest healthiest Child I almost ever saw--how I long to see your dear little Boy--and hope the next will be a Miss tiney (Sarah Siddons to Elizabeth Barrington 12 September 1794)

Siddons’s correspondence with Barrington is filled with advice about bathing, diet, and exercise. An avid proponent of breastfeeding, Siddons discouraged bathing in cold water,

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used a “more the merrier” policy toward godparents, and invited Barrington’s new little son to “water the flowers” [pee] on her carpet if she would only bring him for a visit.129

Siddons’s correspondence, like that between Elizabeth and Mary Linley (Tickell), showcases the rich information resources created by intimate female friendships. In

Siddons’s case, her relationships showcase the frustrations, challenges, and joys of the day-to-day life of a woman living an exceptional, and exceptionally public, life.

4.5 SIDDONS AND LADY MACBETH

In total, Siddons performed Lady Macbeth while visibly pregnant sixteen times: three times during her 1785 pregnancy, and thirteen times in 1794. Of these pregnant performances as Lady Macbeth, Laura Engel writes: “The double nature of her persona as the character and the pregnant actress must have collided…and helped to underscore

Siddons’s characterizations of Lady Macbeth as a potentially sympathetic figure” (250).

If the audience, as Engel supposes, did read Siddons’s pregnant body in conjunction with the character of Lady Macbeth, then this conflation does much more to the text than merely make Lady Macbeth more sympathetic (Siddons’s reputation could in theory do as much). The gleeful associations made between her pregnancy and the text of the play in 1785 had no parallels in 1794. Instead of indicating a lack of interest, however, or a separation of these two bodies in audience’s minds, it suggests a total conflation of

Siddons’s maternity with the performance of her most famous part.

Most accounts of Siddons’s Lady Macbeth, including her “Remarks on the

Character of Lady Macbeth” are written at the end of her career or in reaction to her first

129 Siddons’s comment is in response to Barrington’s relief that he did not pee on the carpet during a social call, 12 September 1794. 207

appearance in the 1784-85 season. Bernice Kliman emphasizes Siddons’s continual study of the parts she played, meaning that any analysis or description of her performances must be considered within this context: “Splendid as Siddons was, her Lady Macbeth was not frozen but a flexible, developing work of art…During the long pauses between performances of the play, she tried to develop truer, more interesting interpretations”

(35). Several important elements of her theatrical style have bearing on her performance and are well summarized by Laura Rosenthal in “The Sublime, the Beautiful, ‘The

Siddons’”: first, “In spite of her reported appearance of masculinity… she regularly acted while visibly with child, an unambiguous signifier of the feminine” (57), second, “…she balanced her masculine sublime with a specifically maternal beauty” (70). Siddons’s maternal persona added additional validity to many of the roles she played, especially the tragic wife and mother roles that comprised the majority of her repertory. Within this population, the role of Lady Macbeth may appear to be an anomaly; however, Siddons’s

“Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth,” along with contemporary accounts of her performances, suggest that Siddons found a way of interpreting the traditionally “fiend- like queen” that not only took hold of the public imagination, but that drew on Siddons’s particular powers as an actress and her domestic celebrity identity.

Some scholars, such as Roger Manvell, have argued that Siddons’s “Remarks” do not reflect the role in performance. If this is the case, her “Remarks on the Character of

Lady Macbeth” suggest that, in her mind at least, if not in performance, this character was both feminine and genuinely capable of maternal feeling. However, I argue that contemporary accounts of Siddons’s performance suggest that the “Remarks” are closer to Siddons’s performance than some have recognized, and that Siddons’s public persona

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was part of both her interpretation of the role and her audience’s reception of it. Siddons, who had reportedly been reluctant to play Lady Macbeth earlier in her career because she did not consider it a “female” role (recounted by Horace Walpole in a letter to the

Countess of Ossory on Christmas 1782, see Manvell 75), found a way of interpreting the character so that she drew on her strengths as an actress and her powerful maternal persona.

Siddons’s interpretation states: “According to my notion, it is of that character which I believe is generally allowed to be most captivating to the other sex,—fair, feminine, nay, perhaps even fragile—” (11). She anticipated that her audience would disagree on the subject of Lady Macbeth’s beauty and warned them not to cling to the

“person of her representative” (Campbell 2:11) when assessing her character description.

Roger Manvell takes this to mean that Siddons was presenting an entirely new interpretation, never seen on stage. However, the comment may equally be a recognition that “feminine” and “fragile” are adjectives that would not be associated with her own body.

Heather McPherson suggests that it was Siddons’s personal reputation that allowed her to “[transcend] the issues of gender and moral character raised by

Shakespeare’s unnatural protagonist, metamorphosing her from a murderous virago into a tragic heroine” (McPherson “Masculinity” 300). The analyses of Siddons’s performance written by James Boaden and George Joseph Bell suggest that the metamorphosis

McPherson describes took place in the course of the play, from the vaulting ambition of the first two acts to the pitiable figure of the sleepwalking scene. Judith Pascoe emphasizes the deliberation with which Siddons approached the role:

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Siddons’s project of portraying Lady Macbeth as a recognizable mother, daughter, and wife—a character whose nature at one time was ‘congenial’—was directly tied to promoting her own public image for audiences who had difficulty making the distinction between her identities on stage and off stage. (Pascoe 34)

Sarah Siddons’s public persona as wife and mother, as well as her tremendous ability to portray tragic heroines, was well established before she undertook the role of Lady

Macbeth, but the potential impact of her maternal body on the role then and now adds additional weight to the text.

A pregnant Lady Macbeth reframes much of the play, even beyond her appearances on stage, and becomes a visible signifier of the dynastic implications of

Macbeth’s actions. The potentiality encoded in her pregnant body creates a new level of tension in the play not present if the couple is perceived as barren. Beginning with the witches’s prophecy that Macbeth will be “king hereafter” while Banquo will “get kings though thou be none,” Macbeth’s preoccupation with Banquo’s dynastic prophecy becomes apparent: “Your children shall be kings,” and “Do you not hope your children shall be kings…?” (1.3). This preoccupation with the progeny Banquo will have and

Macbeth will not is the first introduction to Macbeth’s domestic life, before the audience has seen Lady Macbeth. If a visibly pregnant Lady Macbeth then appears, following the witches’s prophecy and Macbeth’s promotion, her body becomes a site of imagination and contest within the play. How could this visibly pregnant woman fail to get kings?

What fate awaits her? Visible pregnancy also radically changes the implications of her

‘unsexing’ speech:

Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

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Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers… (1.5.38-48)

In a pregnant body, what is normally abstracted imagery becomes disturbingly localized and concrete. A pregnant woman asking to be “unsexed,” filled “top-full” with cruelty

(who is already “top-full” with a child), who asks for intervention in the normal workings of her body’s “access” and “passages” and who desires to change her “milk for gall” is describing a process that would likely kill the child within her womb—or transform it into something other than human. Though the question of whether or not Macbeth would have become king without murdering Duncan is always a conundrum in the play, a pregnant Lady Macbeth explicitly raises a similar question about this speech—would she have safely delivered an heir if she had not asked to be unsexed?

In his 1827 biography of Siddons, James Boaden described the line “take my milk for gall” as follows: “A beautiful thought, be it observed; as if these sources of infant nourishment could not even consent to mature destruction, without some loathsome change in the very stream itself which flowed from them” (2:135). Having previously described Siddons’s Lady Macbeth as a “demon,” this contradictory statement suggests that there is a fundamental disconnect between Lady Macbeth/Siddons’s female body and the demonic forces she seeks to harness. Boaden’s description also lacks a specific subject—is he speaking of Siddons, of Lady Macbeth, or both? Thomas Campbell suggested that Siddons’s inherently tender nature could not be suppressed when writing her “Remarks,” even when confronted with Lady Macbeth: “Mrs. Siddons, disposed by

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her own nature to take the most softened views of her heroine, discovers, in her conduct towards Macbeth, a dutiful and unselfish tenderness, which, I own, is far from striking me” (2:48). Much of this tenderness is predicated on Siddons’s interpretation of the “I have given suck” speech:

I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. (1.7.54-59)

This passage is often cited as evidence of Lady Macbeth’s inherently evil nature, but

Siddons’s own account of this speech emphasized the extremity of the statement as a way to underscore her commitment to Duncan’s murder, not as a literal threat against a child.

She wrote: “The very use of such a tender allusion…persuades one unequivocally that she has really felt the maternal yearnings of a mother towards her babe, and that she considered the action the most enormous that ever required the strength of human nerves for its perpetration” (Campbell 2:18). Siddons, as her audience would be well aware, had

“given suck” to many children. She had certainly felt “the maternal yearnings of a mother towards her babe,” even if previous interpretations of this character had denied the possibility of such feelings in Lady Macbeth.

Siddons’s considerably more sympathetic interpretation of the above passage, as printed in her “Remarks,” seems also to have appeared on stage at some point in her career. John Galt gave the following account of her performance at this moment:

The manner in which she delivered the speech—‘I have been a mother’— has ever since pealed in the echoes of my remembrance as something indescribable; so far from impressing me with any thing of ‘a fiend-like

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woman…’ it filled me with mysterious wonder that there should be a being of such incomprehensible strength of resolution. (2:303)

Since there appears to be no living child now, and a pregnant woman before us, the possibility of a repeated birth and loss is very much alive in this portion of text. Lady

Macbeth’s statement prompts a response from Macbeth that, in regards to the witches’s prophecy, is especially poignant if directed to a pregnant Lady Macbeth: “Bring forth men-children only; / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males”

(1.7.72-74). Addressing this to the wife he has just been told will fail to have a male heir suggests a belief that force of will can frustrate the witches’s prophecy, a temporary forgetfulness, or even a sense of hopelessness. While each of these readings is possible without a pregnant Lady Macbeth, a maternal body provides a visible locus for

Macbeth’s hopes. It suggests a desire that words could shape the child within his wife’s womb. An audience complicit in Macbeth’s foreknowledge that this pregnancy will not result in an heir may also see that knowledge as a contributing factor in the deteriorating relationship between Macbeth and his wife, his motivation for killing Fleance, and even his decision to kill Lady Macduff and her children after his second visit to the witches in

Act Four, scene one.

Before Macbeth’s entrance in 4.1, we glimpse the witches at work, adding ingredients to their cauldron suggestive of horrific parodies of birth and maternity.

Among the first is the “Finger of a birth-strangl’d babe,” (4.1.30) a child killed at the moment of emergence, a child murdered by the body which had sustained it. For the audience, this gruesome image could foreshadow a possible reason for the failure of Lady

Macbeth’s pregnancy. When Macbeth requests the aid of the witches’s masters, they

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“Pour in sow’s blood that hath eaten / Her nine farrow,” (4.1.63-64) an image of infanticidal maternity in which the living offspring are reintegrated with the body of the mother through a cannibalistic act. The staging of this scene calls for two children to serve as apparitions. The second apparition, “A Bloody Child” evokes ambiguous images of birth: a newborn covered in amniotic fluid, a still birth encased in its own blood, or, like Macduff, a child delivered by Caesarian section. The Bloody Child also prefigures

Macduff’s children, soon to be murdered, and Macbeth’s own unborn child. The third apparition, “a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand,” once again raises the idea of dynasty, but the crowned child is not to be Macbeth’s, and his rage is awakened when he sees Banquo’s descendants as the line of kings and learns of Macduff’s flight. As if the series of images of bloody children have planted the idea in his mind, Macbeth vows to

“give to the edge o’ the sword / His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line” (4.1.149-152).

In the final act of the play, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene is filled with imagery that recalls her husband’s visit to the witches in 4.1. When enacted by a pregnant body, this imagery suggests doubled meanings for the audience: Lady Macbeth’s obsession with the smell and appearance of blood creates associations with the images of blood and childbirth in 4.1, while the Thane of Fife’s wife, a mother who was murdered along with her children, becomes a potential mirror for herself. Famously, this scene was one of Siddons’s best and the effect on the audience was incredible: spectators fainted and cried out; James Sheridan Knowles wrote,

Though pit, gallery and boxes were crowded to suffocation, the chill of the grave seemed about you while you looked on her;--there was the hush and the damp of the charnel-house at midnight; you had a feeling as if you and

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the medical attendant, and lady-in-waiting were alone with her; your flesh crept and your breathing became uneasy; you felt the tenaciousness of the spot which she was trying to rub out upon her hand; the scent of blood became palpable. (Knowles 167-68)

The last vision of a pregnant Lady Macbeth walking into the darkness off stage is haunting and provides a visual basis for imagining her death, signaled by a “cry of women” (5.5.8). The cry now implies, perhaps, a death in childbirth—a death that has been a possibility since Lady Macbeth’s first appearance on stage. Alternately and worse, it could signify the suicide (as Malcolm claims) of a pregnant queen, an infanticidal maternity of the kind that provides the witches’s magic in 4.1.

While Siddons may not have acknowledged her pregnant body explicitly on stage while playing Lady Macbeth, her analysis of the character in her “Remarks,” demonstrates the powerful influence her reputation as a wife and mother could have on an interpretation of the role.

4.6 CONCLUSION

In 1785, Siddons’s offstage performances of birth—namely, the laying of straw and attendance by Dr. Ford—perpetuated the idea of Siddons as a woman of quality.

Backstage, the pregnancy offers a glimpse of the way the repertoire could accommodate her physical condition, demonstrates the prioritization of health over verisimilitude, and showcases the economic importance of Siddons to the commercial health at Drury Lane.

Onstage, Siddons’s pregnancy was read in one of three ways: it was ignored in roles such as Desdemona, it was disruptive to at least one audience member in Jane Shore, and in

Lady Macbeth, it furthered Siddons’s conception of the character as a sympathetic tragic

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heroine, and the associations between Lady Macbeth and maternity enabled by Siddons’s celebrity persona.

In 1794, Siddons no longer engaged in the rituals she did in 1785, though they had fallen out of fashion so this is hardly surprising. She did remain in London for the birth, and continued to use a male birth attendant, though not one of such public prominence at Dr. Ford in 1785. Papers categorized the birth as a performance, one that translated her public maternity onto a private stage. Her repertoire in late pregnancy did not include comedy, but neither did it include Jane Shore, Isabella in The Fatal Marriage, or other parts that contained particularly violent physicality. Her body was still a site of affect—she was unable to perform in a benefit for naval widows and orphans because of her condition, but was still publicly thanked in the papers for offering. Notices late in the pregnancy emphasized physical suffering and anticipation of relief, while her private testimonials suggest the baby was larger than her previous children and took a greater physical toll.

Throughout her career, Siddons turned her domestic circumstances to her advantage, encouraging a conflation between her onstage roles as wives and mothers and her offstage life. Through this conflation, Siddons built a celebrity persona that adhered to the domestic ideal for women at the time and made her acceptable to a diverse range of social classes while profiting off the public performance of this ostensibly private ideal, a masterful use of charismata. Her affiliation with the figures of the tragic muse and Lady

Macbeth existed alongside, and within, the larger framework of Siddons the devoted wife and mother.

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Instead of the personal tragedies and financial necessity that fostered Anne

Oldfield and Susanna Mountfort’s continued performances during pregnancy at the beginning of the long eighteenth century, Siddons’s pregnant performances were taken as indicative of a cheerful goodwill toward her audience, a genuine desire to please and a recognition of her professional duties. Dorothy Jordan’s pregnancies were attended with similar associations. This change over time suggests that the valuing of domesticity and sensibility, along with notions of “good” motherhood and healthy behavior during pregnancy, enabled audiences to read pregnant performances as coming not simply from economic necessity, but a reciprocal sentimental relationship between performer and audience. In return for the performers’s contributions to the entertainment of the public, the audience took on the role of protector, advocating for or supporting repertory shifts that would protect the woman and her child.

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CHAPTER FIVE: THE WIFE METAMORPHOSED: DOROTHY JORDAN (1761-1816)

5.1 INTRODUCTION

On 6 December 1785, legendary comedienne Kitty Clive died at the age of seventy-four. Her passing prompted Horace Walpole, one of her closest friends, to declare the simultaneous death of Thalia, the comic muse. A few days after Walpole’s lament appeared, satirist Peter Pindar cheekily responded:130

Know Comedy is hearty—all alive, Truth and thy trumpet seem not to agree; The sprightly lass no more expired with Clive, Than Dame Humility will do with thee. (qtd Fothergill 80)

Pindar was not referring to Frances Abington, Covent

Garden’s reigning comic queen, he was referring to a

new arrival from the provinces named Dorothy Jordan

(Figure 6). Small of stature but with “a certain

roundness & embonpoint that is very pretty and

Graceful,” Jordan had legs that inspired rapture and

masses of irrepressible brown curls.131 She was hailed

as the child of nature, a persona enhanced by those

Figure 8 Detail engraving of George same curls, worn unpowdered and loose, which Gill Romney's "Mrs. Jordan as Peggy in The Country Girl" (1786)

130 Pen name for John Walcot. 131 Mary Tickell to Elizabeth Ann Sheridan, October 22, 1785. See Gill Perry, Spectacular Flirtations 87- 104 for a detailed analysis of Jordan’s curls. 218

Perry argues counteracted the “threatening artificiality” that could become associated with female performance (Spectacular Flirtations 92). Her beautiful voice, lively energy, and sprightly movement quickly captured the hearts of London’s audiences. Charles

Lamb declared that “her childlike spirit shook off the load of years from her spectators; she seemed one whom care could not come near; a privileged being sent to teach mankind what he most wants—joyousness” (qtd. Fothergill 74).132 The power of Jordan’s palpable physical presence was vital to her celebrity, enabling her to overcome obstacles and crises within her career while generating sympathetic affect around her body and her identity as a private individual.

Dorothy (also Dorothea or most commonly, Dora) Bland was born in London in

1761 to Francis Bland and actress Grace Phillips, after which the family moved to

Ireland. As a teenager, she appeared onstage under the name “Miss Frances” first at the

132 The sources for this section consist primarily of biographies of Dorothy Jordan, private correspondence, and newspaper articles. The private correspondence comes from the Dorothy Jordan collections at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, and Huntington Library in California; some quotations are taken from A. Aspinall’s Mrs. Jordan and Her Family: Being the Unpublished Correspondence of Mrs. Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), and individual letters in the collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The biographies include, in chronological order: James Boaden’s The Life of Mrs. Jordan (1831), Clare Jerrold’s The Story of Dorothy Jordan (1914), Brian Fothergill’s Mrs. Jordan: Portrait of an Actress (1965), and Claire Tomalin’s Mrs. Jordan’s Profession: The Actress and the Prince (1995). I also draw on Tate Wilkinson’s Memoirs (1790) and The Wandering Patentee (1795), and the anonymous The Great Illegitimates (1832). Of these, Fothergill’s is most focused on Jordan’s career, while Tomalin’s excellent study is more focused on her private life. Though perhaps occasionally sentimental about her subject, Tomalin paints a vivid and moving portrait of Jordan by weaving together a diversity of sources, some of which have come to light since Fothergill’s publication. Jerrold’s biography is very good, and is foundational to both Tomalin’s and Fothergill’s works. Jerrold also does an excellent job of teasing out the details surrounding Jordan’s many pregnancies, no small feat, and is aware of at least one that all the other biographers seem to have missed. Boaden, as with all of his biographies, strives to make the best possible version of his subject, though the biography is as much about the interesting people she encountered in her life as it is about the actress herself (for example, there is a four page digression to give the life of George Romney, who painted Mrs. Jordan as The Country Girl (1786), the portrait that Boaden used as the frontispiece to the biography). Clare Jerrold described him as “a wonderful person for talking around the subject and never arriving at the point…” (63). Tate Wilkinson’s Memoirs (1790) are quite positive about Mrs. Jordan, but his relationship with Jordan was soured by the time he published The Wandering Patentee, and his cheerful promises that they are still friends and he will do her no harm are somewhat undercut by his critiques of her as a professional. 219

Crow Street theatre in Dublin and then at Smock Alley theatre.133 She remained at Smock

Alley only a year, leaving Ireland for England in May 1782 pregnant with manager

Richard Daly’s child, born in November. In July 1782, five months pregnant, she joined the Yorkshire touring company managed by Tate Wilkinson and renamed herself Mrs.

Jordan. She stayed in his company for three years, playing in tragedy, comedy, opera, and farce. In 1785, she moved to Drury Lane, where she worked until 1812. Between her start in 1782 and temporary retirement in 1807, Jordan gave birth to fourteen children by three different men, including ten with the Duke of Clarence (later William IV), and was pregnant as many as twenty times (see Appendix Two).134

Despite her many pregnancies, Jordan worked constantly both in London and in the provinces on summer tours. At Drury Lane, Mrs. Jordan narrowed her focus and played a variety of comic heroines, ranging from the sweet and sentimental to her particular specialty, romp and hoyden parts.135 Jordan was an excellent strategist. The line of business she chose at Drury Lane both fulfilled a company need—Drury having been without a strong comic actress since Frances Abingdon left in 1782—and kept her from competing with other actresses for parts.136 The audience rarely saw evidence of her planning, however, and Jordan’s façade of utter sincerity on stage was not without its

133 Where she performed with a young John Philip Kemble, who would later manage Drury Lane during the height of her career. 134 Jordan’s many pregnancies are the subject of constant confusion in her biographies. I can confirm the births of her fourteen children (one of which, a son in 1788 was short-lived or stillborn), plus at least two additional miscarriages, with a third being very probable in late 1791. Two to three other miscarriages, in 1795 and 1796, are mentioned in several biographies, but I cannot confirm them myself. Furthermore, unnecessary yet persistent confusion over the birth order of Jordan’s first three children with Clarence appears in many of the biographies. 135 “A lively, playful girl” (OED) and “A rude, or ill-bred girl (or woman); a boisterous noisy girl, a romp.” (OED). See Tomalin 37-38 for a more extended discussion of Jordan’s strategizing. 136 Miss Farren, a popular actress of fine ladies in comedy, could rarely compete with Abingdon at Covent Garden. Jordan’s roles tended toward a very different social class than Farren’s, so did not threaten that actress’s line of business. 220

drawbacks. Fanny Burney, novelist and member of court, found herself defending Mrs.

Jordan’s character to a friend in January 1788:

During the evening, in talking over plays and players…when Mrs. Jordan was named, Mr. Fairly and myself were left to make the best of her. Observing the silence of Colonel Wellbred, we called upon him to explain it.137 ‘I have seen her,’ he answered quietly, ‘but in one part.’ ‘Whatever it was,’ cried Mr. Fairly, ‘it must have been well done.’ ‘Yes,’ answered the colonel, ‘and so well that it seemed to be her real character; and I disliked her for that very reason, for it was a character that, off the stage or on, is equally distasteful to me—a hoyden.’ I had a little of this feeling myself when I saw her in ‘The Romp,’…but afterwards she displayed such uncommon humour that it brought me to pardon her assumed vulgarity, in favour of a representation of nature... (Fanny Burney, 13 January 1788; D’Arblay, 3:385)

Jordan’s style of playing made her an impressive professional, but also invited a conflation of her on and offstage personalities, as Colonel Wellbred’s criticism shows.

Unlike Sarah Siddons or Susannah Cibber, this conflation could be damaging rather than beneficial. Throughout her career, it was Jordan’s constant struggle to present a coherent and consistent public persona that nevertheless maintained a distinction between her on and offstage lives. In the above story, it is only Burney’s direct and personal contact with the actress that has given her the ability to distinguish between performance and reality.

Jordan’s London triumph rocketed her to celebrity status within weeks of her first appearance. When she settled into a domestic arrangement with lawyer Richard Ford,

Mrs. Jordan was praised, like Sarah Siddons, for having it all: staggering professional success coupled with domestic harmony, an additional element of charismata. Jordan’s pregnant body, regularly visible on the boards at Drury Lane, came to encapsulate the relationship between onstage fiction and offstage reality. In a few short years, however,

137 Allegorical names Burney used for Fulke Greville (Welbred) and Stephen Digby (Fairly). 221

Jordan’s life would take a sharp and unexpected turn that would leave her fighting for the professional and personal status that came so easily in 1785. The body that was seen as evidence and guarantee of her stable identity became suspect, concealing unknowable but imagined secrets. Jordan’s great labor of the 1790s became repairing and reconstructing her celebrity identity and the meaning of her gravid body as a symbol of domestic and moral integrity. This chapter traces changing reactions to Jordan’s pregnant body from her early career in London through sexual scandal in 1791. I conclude by showing that

Jordan’s offstage maternal performances helped her recuperate and maintain an image of domestic probity from the mid-1790s onward. Alongside this larger narrative, the chapter explores when and how visible pregnancy shaped Jordan’s repertoire, and instances when her pregnancies had an economic impact on the theatre.

5.2 “THE MOST VALUABLE ACQUISITION:” MRS. “FORD’S” SUCCESS

Jordan’s four pregnancies during her relationship with Richard Ford offer key pieces of evidence: first, they offer some clues as to how and when these pregnancies were discovered; second, the manner in which Jordan’s pregnancies were discussed suggests that the public accepted the couple as married; third, that because of this,

Jordan’s continued performances during pregnancy were seen as indicative of her professional dedication instead of loose morals; fourth, that her 1787 and 1789 pregnancies did not prompt Jordan or her managers to change her onstage repertoire during the regular season, or during her summer tours to provincial theatres. Finally, absences during the regular season connected to Jordan’s 1788 and 1791 pregnancies offer evidence about her economic import to the theatre.

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Mrs. Jordan joined the Drury Lane company at £4 a week in the 1785-86 season.138 When audiences began to take note of the new actress and her personal circumstances, her three-year-old daughter Fanny’s potentially scandalous existence was rather extraordinarily and romantically explained as the result of Jordan’s marriage to “a sea-faring man, who left her the next morning” (qtd. Fothergill 95). This bit of fiction spared Jordan and her daughter from the taint of illegitimacy, and enabled the actress to present herself as a working woman providing for her family. This presentation was far from false: Jordan was supporting her mother, two siblings, and Fanny on a single salary.139

Jordan debuted as the sweet and comically simple Peggy in David Garrick’s The

Country Girl on 18 October 1785.140 Though not hailed as a great beauty, the press considered her pleasing, with an excellent figure and a delightful voice. Mary Tickell saw her on her second night, 21 October, and wrote enthusiastically of the theatre’s valuable new addition:

I went last Night to see our new Country Girl—and I can assure you…she has more Genius in her little Finger than Miss Brunton141 in her whole Body …she is the most valuable Acquisition Drury L. has ever had, except Mrs. S.—the applause is very great & it seems entirely genuine. (22 October 1785 Y.d.35.170-71)

Jordan’s success was swift and complete. She quickly established her comic abilities, particularly her specialties of silly young girls, witty virgins, romps, hoydens, and breeches parts. Her success in London was aided by the pregnancy that kept Sarah

138 Jordan was originally hired (over the objections of Mrs. Siddons) as a second to Siddons in tragedy, but convinced the managers to let her debut in comedy. 139 Wilkinson, whatever his disagreements with Jordan later in her career, admired her “uncommon labour and study for the Theatre, and so many mouths, whose food were depended on her bounty” (Patentee 2:144). 140 An adaptation of Wycherley’s The Country Wife. 141 A Covent Garden actress that Tickell particularly disliked. 223

Siddons off the stage from mid-November to early January.142 When Siddons left the stage, tragedy left with her. In consequence, the theatre was bereft of more than half its repertoire, and Mrs. Jordan’s value became readily apparent. As one paper put it:

Mrs Siddons’ accouchement being delayed so much longer than was reckoned, is a very unfavourable visitation of time and chance. Notwithstanding the pantomime, and the Jordon rage, her presence must be necessary. (MCLA, 24 December 1785)

The opportunity created by Siddons’s pregnancy gave Jordan the leverage she needed to secure a new contract and double her salary. On 16 December, Jordan signed a four-year contract with the theatre at £8 per week (Fothergill 78). By the end of the season, she had taken in £200 at her benefit and received an additional £300 from the members of

Brook’s Club, which included the Prince of Wales.

At the beginning of her second season, Jordan began a five-year relationship with

Richard Ford, a lawyer and the son of part owner of Drury Lane Dr. James Ford.143 The younger Ford had been interested in Mrs. Jordan for some time, as Mary Tickell’s correspondence shows:

Dick F—did not come till evening…we had a good deal of talk about Mrs Jordan—he says, its astonishing how fond the Dr is of her—I fancy they are something like Father & Son in the Citizens—for Master Richard is very attentive too, and as for poor Reid he is quite Master Slander144 & sighs at a distance. (c. 2 January 1786, Y.d.35.222)

Tickell implies that there is a father-son rivalry over Mrs. Jordan’s affections, referring to a similar situation between George Philpot and Old Philpot in Arthur Murphy’s The

142 Mrs. Siddons apparently saw her on November 21, 1785, a month before the birth of her son, George, while attending the theatre with Dr. Ford, and liked her much better in comedy than she had when she saw her in August 1785 in tragedy. 143 Accoucheur to Queen Charlotte during her last pregnancy, and to Sarah Siddons in 1785. 144 Probably Master Slender, from The Merry Wives of Windsor, who wants to marry Anne Page despite her indifference. 224

Citizen; if so, the son won out. Ford and Jordan moved into a house just north of Bedford

Square in the fall of 1786, and Jordan almost immediately became pregnant.

For the majority of their relationship, Jordan and Ford presented themselves as a married couple. Ford refers to Jordan as “Mrs. Ford” in letters and their acquaintances received her as Mrs. Ford in their homes. This appearance of married respectability was something that tacitly, if not explicitly, played a role in Jordan’s public image as a private woman and professional actress. Writing in April 1793, Bon Ton Magazine recalled:

It was given out by both parties [Ford and Jordan], and universally believed, that if they were not actually married, yet they were bound together equally strong, but that Mr. F could not declare her his wife, as his father’s resentment might deprive him of an ample fortune. The lady and even the public were satisfied with this story, nor was she ever classed among the easy dames of the theatre. (101)

Ford and Jordan had three children: daughters Dorothea Maria (Dodee) and Lucy were born in late July 1787 and on 28 September 1789, respectively, and a stillborn or short- lived son was born in late October or early November 1788. Jordan lost a fourth child in late February or early March 1791.145 During none of these pregnancies did Jordan alter her summer touring schedule or theatrical repertoire to accommodate her changing body, nor did audiences seem to expect such action (for her complete repertoire during these pregnancies, see Appendix 1).

1787: Dodee Ford

Jordan was pregnant four times in her first six seasons at Drury Lane, making her maternity an inevitable part of her public image and a constant context to her onstage performances and relations with the theatre managers. The public, of course, would be

145 Though of Jordan’s many biographers only Clare Jerrold seems aware of it, newspaper accounts of Mrs. Jordan’s pregnancy were consistent throughout the winter of 1790-91. 225

aware of her pregnancies when they became visible or perhaps through announcements like those accompanying Sarah Siddons’s 1785 pregnancy. It is less clear how and when the management would be informed, but Mary Tickell’s backstage contacts noted

Jordan’s condition early in 1786/7:

my Mother whisper’d as the greatest of all possible secrets—that Mrs. Mills (Mrs Jordan’s Dresser) had made some curious female observations on that Lady for these last 10 or 12 Weeks—which certainly (if they are true) portend something or the other of consequence to the Ford Family but everything at present as my M. says is under the Rose… (Winter 1786/7, Y.d.35.222)

Mills guessed at Jordan’s condition and reported her suspicions to Tickell’s mother, Mrs.

Linley, the wardrobe mistress. The importance of secrecy implies a wish to control when and how the information is disseminated more widely, and implies that the changes are not yet visible to anyone with less intimate access to Jordan’s body than her personal dresser. Tickell’s letter also raises the question of whether or not manager Richard

Brinsley Sheridan might be first informed of Mrs. Jordan’s condition through unofficial domestic channels, and therefore holds larger implications for the way information networks formed around and functioned within theatrical communities.

By late March, the middle of Jordan’s second trimester, a notice in the World and

Fashionable Advertiser about Jordan’s summer tour suggests that the secret was out:

“The Jordan…will escape—travels by land and by water—and so forth” (29 March

1787). The reference “travels by land and water” comes from the litany from the Book of

Common Prayer, which continues, “all women laboring of child” (Blunt 231). The public may, then, have been aware of Jordan’s pregnancy in late March. They were certainly aware in early May, when the Morning Herald announced:

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Mrs. Jordan, who is generally stiled the daughter of Thalia, will soon make the muse a grand-mother: —that actress having lately contributed much to the entertainment of one of her favourites, by allowing him to take a Peep behind the Curtain!— (Morning Herald, 9 May 1787)

Styling Richard Ford “one of her favourites” implies that, at this point, the public did not consider them married, though they did live together. Leonore Davidoff and Catharine

Hall note a relatively relaxed attitude toward sexual transgression before marriage in the last decades of the eighteenth century, particularly if the parents married before any children were born (402). It is possible that the birth of their first child prompted the couple to begin presenting themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Ford, a presentation bolstered by their cohabitation and the fact that Ford travelled with her when she went on tour.

Jordan and Ford left London for the north in May 1787 when she was about six and a half months pregnant.146 On tour, she performed most of her popular London roles:

Priscilla Tomboy, Roxalana, Miss Lucy, Miss Hoyden, and the breeches roles of

Hippolita, Viola, Peggy, and Rosalind in As You Like It, a part she had played for the first time at her benefit on 12 April 1787 (Boaden Jordan 1:110).147 Though out of sight,

Jordan’s body remained of interest to those in London. When Jordan gave birth to Dodee in Edinburgh in late July, the World and Fashionable Advertiser sent her, “our hearty wishes, and the prayers of the Litany to assist her—all those travelling by sea and land, all women…” (1 August 1787), again a reference to the Book of Common Prayer. A

146 Jordan stopped appearing in London earlier than she originally planned, perhaps because of illness. She was advertised to appear on May 4, 8, and 9, but was replaced with another actress each day (“Playbills” items 103, 107-109). 147 Rosalind was not yet part of her standing repertoire because it was one of the few comic roles to which Mrs. Siddons claimed ownership. The plays associated with the above roles are as follows: The Romp, The Sultan, The Virgin Unmask’d, A Trip to Scarborough, She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not, Twelfth Night, and The Country Girl. 227

month later, birth announcements in London utilized references to aristocratic rituals to inform the public of her condition, just as they did during Siddons’s 1785 pregnancy:

Mrs. Jordan’s knocker is completely muffled, the lady of the mansion being at this moment in the straw but has so perfectly timed this her second offering at the shrine of Lucina, that she will be enabled to take her post again in the ranks of Thalia on the Boards of Old Drury. (PA, 6 September 1787)148

In casting Jordan as an observer of these aristocratic rituals, the press also cast her in the role of a respectably married woman.149 While we should be aware of possible sarcasm or archness in this comment, papers had used the same rituals to frame the birth of Sarah

Siddons’s son in 1785. Furthermore, the focus of this particular notice is more on

Jordan’s professional commitments than on innuendo, an important distinction given later responses to her body during her relationship with William, Duke of Clarence, third son of King George III and Queen Charlotte.

The Public Advertiser passage marries Jordan’s personal and professional lives.

Truly, the woman is a marvel: so good to her public that she has arranged the birth of her child to cause them the least possible inconvenience. Though the tone here is jovial, the association between Jordan’s visible pregnancies and her continued career generate positive feelings of gratitude around Jordan’s maternal body; it is a sign of her reciprocal dedication to her devoted public. These associations are essential background in light of the revision of public opinion that was to occur in a few short years.

148 Lucina is the Roman goddess of childbirth and women in labor. Laura Engel notes that the italicized use of “muffled” in the passage may reference both the sound-dampening effects of a ribbon-wrapped door knocker, and the illict implications of the word “muff,” sexualized fashion accessories often highlighted in portraiture of the time (email to the author 4 September 2014). 149Jordan was commonly depicted in art as the comic muse or as one of her popular characters, but John Hoppner drew her as a private citizen and woman of quality c.1786, and one of Thomas Gainsborough’s last portraits was a half-length of Jordan as a fashionable lady. The Hoppner drawing is in the British embassy in Paris, and the Gainsborogh in the collection of the Earl of Northbrook. 228

The open discussion of Jordan’s condition, as well as of her travels with Ford, suggest that her pregnancy was not considered scandalous and that Ford and Jordan were treated more as husband and wife than mistress and protector. It is also clear that her pregnancy did not prevent her from performing her full range of popular roles, including her breech and travesty roles. These conclusions are also true during her third pregnancy in 1789.

1789: Lucy Hester Ford

Jordan was due in late September 1789 when she, Ford, and her mother traveled north for the summer tour. Jordan and Ford travelled as Mr. and Mrs. Ford and, at least at

Leeds, Jordan was actually billed as Mrs. Ford at the theatre. Her complete summer repertory is difficult to reconstruct, but she did play the rakish Sir Harry Wildair in The

Constant Couple and Nell in The Devil to Pay or the Wives Metamorphosed at a benefit for Tate Wilkinson in Leeds on 8 July 1789. At the time, she would have been entering her third trimester.

Sir Harry had been a huge success at Jordan’s 1788 benefit, but the audience at

Leeds did not offer the expected approbation.150 Wilkinson attributes the Leeds ladies’s reaction to the immorality of Sir Harry: “at best a loose companion, and his chastity is not strengthened, but much to the contrary, when represented by a female” (Patentee 3:81).

He says nothing about Jordan’s condition lessening or increasing their disapproval,

150 Instead of touring north in the summer of 1788, Jordan went to Cheltenham Spa, where the royal family were in residence for about a month. She performed many popular parts there, including Sir Harry, and acted for the King and Queen on several nights. 229

though earlier in his account of this event he mentions “her situation” when expressing concern that she would fatigue herself by playing two parts in the same evening (ibid).151

By the time he wrote The Wandering Patentee, Wilkinson’s relationship with

Jordan had disintegrated so he was less inclined to make excuses for her. In addition, pregnancies were a common source of anxiety for Wilkinson during his many years as manager of the Yorkshire troupe, almost entirely made up of married couples:

…my ladies breed oftener than suits my inclination, as my pocket feels the effects of ladies when they are in the straw, adding to the live-stock of his majesty and liberty. But these lying’s-in make me melancholy, so I will leave the subject, and proceed to theatrical business. (Wandering Patentee 2:163)

The Leeds audience, then, were accustomed to seeing pregnant women perform in

Wilkinson’s troupe. If they truly objected to Jordan’s condition it is unlikely Wilkinson would hesitate to say so. Additionally, Ford and Jordan were consciously presenting her as Ford’s wife both on and off stage. Mrs. “Ford’s” condition, therefore, was unlikely to be a source of shock or scandal.

Like Boaden’s characterization of the way a certain Mrs. Smith’s pregnancy impacted reception of her virginal characters, however, this incident been seen as proving pregnancy’s detrimental impact on a woman’s career.152 Brian Fothergill is

151 There had been confusion about Jordan’s arrival. She originally offered to play gratis for Wilkinson’s benefit, but on arriving and finding that the benefit was delayed, she eventually charged Wilkinson twenty guineas to perform, fearing that it would delay her appearance in Edinburgh. Wilkinson says this, “lowered the consequence of her attraction so much” (3:81), perhaps indicating that these circumstances were known to the Leeds audience and also contributed to their disapproval. Certainly it soured his relationship with Jordan. 152 Mrs. Smith was a rival to Jordan when she was in the Yorkshire company. Boaden wrote that Smith’s competitive nature led her to continue performing parts very late into her pregnancy, and this had the effect of rendering “the virgin purity” of those characters “rather questionable to the eye” (Jordan 1:41). Boaden completely ignores that fact that Jordan herself was only a month away from lying-in at the time and playing an equal number of virginal parts. Unfortunately, his comments are continually taken out of context as indicative of eighteenth-century attitudes toward pregnancy and verisimilitude. 230

positive that the disapproval of Sir Harry was due to Jordan’s pregnancy:

the ‘precise ladies of Leeds’ were a little shocked to see the part of Sir Harry played by a woman, and especially by a woman in the condition in which Dorothy found herself at the time. Modern audiences would certainly agree with them on the latter point, but the London public of this period had no such scruples, and only two seasons previously, had found an added poignancy in the performance of Mrs. Siddons in Cleone when in a similar situation: ‘a mother raving over her murdered child—only a little month before her own confinement.’ (107)153

Fothergill is as modest as the Leeds audience in the above passage, suggesting that the pregnancy was an inexplicable circumstance in which Jordan herself played no part. In fact, Fothergill is reading Tate Wilkinson’s account of this performance for his own purposes here, apparently with the intention of equating the Leeds audience with

“modern audiences” (in 1965) and applying anachronistic moral standards to this historical performance.154

Jordan’s private reputation was stable and relatively scandal-free during this period: by presenting herself as Mrs. Ford socially, Jordan created a private identity that aligned closely with respectable wives and mothers, avoiding associations with prostitution and illegitimacy. Her pregnancies were openly discussed with relatively little innuendo or moral criticism, and the births of her children were announced in the papers, something that did not happen with previous actresses’ illegitimate children (see Anne

Oldfield, Susanna Cibber in 1739 and 1750, and George Anne Bellamy). This evidence points to Jordan’s successful creation of a persona that balanced her witty onstage performances with stable domesticity. The anonymous author of an early biography of

153 Fothergill repeats Boaden’s previously noted mistake of thinking that either Siddons performed Cleone during her 1785 pregnancy, or that Siddons was visibly pregnant in 1786, of which I find no evidence. 154 Fothergill’s sense that provincial and capital audiences would respond differently to pregnancy may not be entirely illogical, but clearly the perceived marital status of the performer was a factor here or Wilkinson’s troupe would never have been solvent. 231

the actress, Jordan’s Elixir of Life... To which is prefixed Authentic Memoirs of Mrs.

Jordan (1789), further confirms this assertion:

The feeling heart, simplicity of life And elegance and taste; the faultless form Shap’d by the hand of Harmony— are enjoyed in the fullest perfection by this incomparable woman; for in private as well as public life, she evinces the best claims on our praise, since to a sweetness of temper she unites a pliability and benevolence of disposition, that insures domestic tranquility, and yields comfort and happiness to her family. (7-8)

Beyond her professional accomplishments, the author cites Jordan’s domestic probity as one of her great virtues. Though satirists and the press called this virtue into question when she became Clarence’s lover, Jordan’s position as loyal partner and loving mother enabled her to eventually reclaim the affective value of her maternal body.

Economics and Repertoire in 1788 and 1790/91

Jordan was also pregnant in 1788, this time during the height of the theatrical season. This pregnancy, which ended in either a miscarriage or stillbirth in October or

November, had a distinct impact on the repertoire at Drury Lane for a period of three weeks. The attendant health crisis demonstrates Jordan’s economic value to the company, the affective value of her maternal status, and her continually developing ability to manage her audience.

It is unclear if the public was aware of her condition prior to the loss of her pregnancy, but concern had been expressed about her health because of her intensive performance schedule:

The Health of Mrs. Jordan (says a theatrical Correspondent) is so important to the present State of the Drama, that a publick Interposition

232

should prevent its being endangered at a sickly Season,155 and by appearing in the Play and Farce on the same evening. (St James Chronicle, 14-16 October 1788)156

On October 30, the management announced that Jordan had a cold and that Mrs. Forster would replace her as Miss Prue in Love for Love. On 4 November, when she still had not returned, the papers printed further details about her absence:

Mrs. Jordan’s present illness was occasioned by a strange accident. The last time she played, she and her mother went to the Theatre in her carriage. Near the house they were stopt by a parish funeral, when the coffin slipped from off the shoulders of the bearers, and burst open in the sight of Mrs. J. She got the better of the fright or emotion this occasioned, and played: went home, relapsed, and brought forth an abortion. (PA)157

The release of private information about Jordan—information that inevitably forced the audience to consider her in light of her private identity—both excused her absence and, in the framing the newspapers gave it, demonstrated her commitment to her profession.

Despite the fright she received on the way to the theatre, and her condition, she fulfilled her obligation to the paying public. Such a narrative is designed to provoke sympathy and excuse Jordan’s unexpected absence. Similar personal details, usually focused on her maternal identity, appeared in the papers during moments of crisis in her later career.

These details were consistently used to combat accusations regarding Jordan’s professional and personal character, drawing on audience sympathy and notions of

“good” mothering to protect Jordan’s reputation.

155 A period extending from either May or August to the first frost, when high temperatures were thought to make disease spread more rapidly. 156 This was the first year of John Philip Kemble’s management at Drury Lane. He was Siddons’s brother and Jordan was in the midst of attempting to secure new employment terms. Jordan’s supporters were vocal in the press, calling attention to her economic value and dedication throughout the fall. 157 “Abortion,” in the eighteenth century, was a general term for what we would today designate either a miscarriage (before the 20th week of pregnancy) or a stillbirth (after the 20th week), and therefore is unhelpful for determining precisely how far into the pregnancy Mrs. Jordan was in late October. Tomalin says the child was male, but cites no evidence for this assertion. 233

In the winter of 1790/91, Jordan’s maternal body again caused a series of brief absences. She missed two weeks in December, during which it was reported: “Mrs.

Jordan is at present very much indisposed, in consequence of a premature labour” (PA, 11

December 1790). She did not lose the child, but recovered and was working again by 13

December, only to have a carriage accident in late January. The Public Advertiser reported:

Mrs. Jordan’s late turn-over in her carriage, was fortunately productive of nothing more than alarm:—considering that Lady’s situation, either two deaths—or an additional life might naturally have been the consequence of the disaster!” (26 January 1791)

Jordan was still pregnant in late January. There is no birth or death notice in the papers later in the year, but Jordan was ill and unable to work between March 3 and March 14, perhaps owing to the loss of this pregnancy. In 1790/91, just as in the fall of 1788,

Jordan’s commitment to her profession during pregnancy was seen as indicative of her value as a professional. One writer commented that, “Mrs. Jordan will close her London dramatic season with the fame of having struggled more with disorder to gratify a delighted public, than any Actress perhaps ever did” (OPA 14 April 1791). Jordan’s repertoire remained entirely comic, but the presence and subsequent absence of her pregnant body provoked a protective emotional response from her audience. This response showcases the same concerns over a pregnant woman overexerting herself that were present during Siddons’s 1785 pregnancy.

The receipts for November 1788 showcase the economic impact of Jordan’s absences. It was a difficult season generally; John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons’s brother, became manager and was slow to make use of Jordan’s popularity or to respond

234

to her requests for a rise in salary. Jordan’s economic value was recognized outside of the theatre, however, and so this policy became a matter of public interest and comment:

Mrs. Jordan most certainly deserved a salary and benefits equal to any actress that ever trod the stage, as she undoubtedly brings more money than any other on the boards of either house, and is the greatest favourite the public ever had (Times, 27 October 1788)

Even if this is a puff piece from a Jordan supporter, a survey of the theatre’s finances shows that it is also true.

In his call to arms, “Theatre History 1660-1800: Aims, Materials,

Methodologies,” Robert Hume reminds us that the story of the London theatres in the long eighteenth century is a “vivid story of ongoing competition, sometimes fierce, even destructive competition” (16). In this context of this spirited and perpetual contest, losing a prominent performer was potentially disastrous, as the finances for November 1788 show. Drury Lane competed well with Covent Garden between 3-27 October 1788, taking in an average of £198 per night to Covent Garden’s £203 per night. Jordan, who performed on eight of the fourteen nights, brought in slightly more than the overall Drury

Lane average, £202.

Drury Lane Covent Garden Difference 3-27 October (total) £3170.10.5 £3251.3.6 -£80.13.1 Nightly Average £198 £203 31 Oct-18 November £2081.1.0 £3247.18.0 -£1166.17.0 Nightly Average £139 £216 Table 4 Earnings at Drury Lane before and after Jordan's absence in November, 1788

235

With Jordan absent between October 31-November 18, however, Drury Lane’s receipts fell far behind Covent Garden’s, dropping to an average of £139, in comparison to

Covent Garden’s £216.158

As an additional mode of comparison, between 3 and 27 October the companies competed head-to-head on twelve separate nights, evenly splitting the victories. In

November, the companies competed head-to-head on all fifteen nights and Covent

Garden trounced Drury Lane, bringing in more money on thirteen of the fifteen nights.

When Mrs. Jordan returned on 19 November, playing Corinna in The Confederacy for the first time, box office receipts broke £200 for only the third time since Mrs. Jordan’s last scheduled appearance.159 Drury Lane beat Covent Garden’s receipts that night by nearly

£50.

There are more factors to consider here, of course: Covent Garden’s plays The

Highland Reel (debuting November 6), and Inkle and Yarico (debuting October 22 but formerly shown at the Haymarket) were both successful, while Drury Lane was offering only old plays. Covent Garden’s production of Romeo and Juliet was also quite popular.

In addition, Siddons was having health problems and not appearing as regularly as she had in previous years. Jordan’s absence was all the worse because she had done considerable work sustaining the theatre during Siddons’s illnesses. The health problems

158 These tables compare sixteen performances during the October dates, and fifteen nights during the November dates. I have chosen these two date ranges because they fall after John Philip Kemble took over management of Drury Lane on September 23, which may have resulted in changes to the repertoire. For reference, see LS, Volume 5, part 2 pages 1101-1111. Covent Garden actually performed sixteen nights to Drury Lane’s fifteen; the extra performance took place on November 7, with receipts for 259l.12s. I have excluded this extra night from my calculations. 159 The other two occasions were Mrs. Siddons’s appearances in The Gamester and The Fair Penitent, two of her most popular parts. Covent Garden took in over 200l. on ten of their fourteen nights. 236

facing Drury Lane’s most popular performers sharply affected the theatre’s revenue, and

Covent Garden moved to take maximal advantage of this situation.

Pregnancy did not affect Jordan’s repertory in a substantial way in 1787 or 1789 and the timing of both births helped to ensure that the necessary absence of lying-in took place during the summer recess.160 Jordan’s energetic and stable commitment to her professional obligations during her 1780s pregnancies, much like Sarah Siddons’s, bolstered her celebrity. Her pregnant body was a site of affect for the audience: a sign of her honesty, professionalism, and adherence to expected and accepted female behavior.

Within this context, her 1788 and 1790/91 absences, while having a negative effect on the company’s finances, did not lead to accusations that Jordan was neglecting her professional duties. Instead, it underscored for the management and for the public how vital Jordan’s physical health was to the economic health of the theatre.161

5.3 THE “PROSTITUTE ACTRESS:” 1791

Despite the many health issues she faced that season, Jordan left London on 4

June 1791 and went on tour, as usual accompanied by Richard Ford. Over the summer, the papers noted the interest of a certain twenty-six-year-old Duke in the lovely thirty- year-old actress. They reported that Clarence traveled to see Jordan perform in July and

August, but whether or not she would accept his attentions was still up for debate. The publicity surrounding Clarence’s interest proved problematic for Jordan that summer: though she had travelled as Mrs. Ford during her 1789 summer tour without comment,

160 Jordan actually did not return to Drury in fall 1789 after Lucy’s birth; she first performed in January 1790. It may have been related to health, or to the bumpy relations with the management. 161 A similar comparison of ten nights before and during Jordan’s absence in December 1790 shows that Drury Lane averaged £227 per night to Covent Garden’s £180 while Jordan was present. During her absence, Covent Garden edged out Drury Lane with £206 per night average to Drury Lane’s £199. 237

audiences at York hissed her in The Country Girl and openly accused her of being Ford’s mistress (Tomalin 117-18). In London, the press had begun to publish contradictory information about Jordan and Ford’s relationship in late summer: “It is generally understood, that Mrs. Jordan makes her first appearance next season, in the character of

Mrs. FORD!” (Evening Mail 17-19 August 1791), suggesting marriage, while an account from York claimed, “At York she performed no character in public, because she could not play Mrs. Ford in private” (MPDA 2 September 1791), implying the opposite. As late as 16 September, Horace Walpole asked a friend, “Do you know that Mrs Jordan is acknowledged to be Mrs Ford?” (qtd Tomalin 119), something of apparent surprise.

Jordan’s identity as a wife was crumbling.

Shortly after Jordan began her London season all was settled. On 13 October, the

Duke of Clarence wrote triumphantly to his brother the Prince of Wales:

you may safely congratulate me on my success…they were never married: I have all proofs requisite and even legal ones…Mrs. Jordan, through a course of eleven months’ endless difficulty, has behaved like an angel… (Duke of Clarence to Prince of Wales, 13 October 1791; qtd Aspinall 10)162

As is clear from Clarence’s letter to his brother, confusion about the couple’s marital status attended the breakdown of Jordan and Ford’s relationship, and Clarence went so far as to request and received legal proof of their arrangement.163

162 Eleven months would place the start of his pursuit of Mrs. Jordan in November 1790, during her most recent pregnancy. 163 Likely because Clarence wanted to avoid a public and expensive trial for criminal conversation. Tomalin argues that Jordan held out against the Duke as long as possible, waiting for Ford to propose. When it was clear he would not, she agreed to enter into an arrangement with Clarence in the autumn of 1791. Fothergill suggests something similar, and both assert that it was only for the good of the children that she took any action, a not unreasonable assertion considering her clear concern for providing for them. Fothergill seems determined to deny Jordan any sexual or romantic feelings for either Ford or Clarence; Tomalin romanticizes the latter but writes of Ford as unattractive and undeserving of Jordan from the beginning. Each of these tendencies likely has some truth, but both biographers are subject to their own desired (and 238

When Jordan broke with Ford, attacks on her character began immediately.

Jordan’s letters to Clarence that fall reveal both her expectations of and reactions to the abuse she suffered: “I must prepare myself for a thousand cruel stories, both against you and me, and learn to treat them with the contempt they deserve” (RA GEO/ADD40/27).

The abuse she prepared herself for did not, apparently, include attacks on her maternity.

Bon Ton magazine wrote, “To be mistress to the King’s son Little Pickle thinks it respectable, and so away go all tender ties to children” (October 1791, 319).164 Jordan was shocked:

I was going to do a very foolish thing by asking you, whether you had influence over the people that manage the newspapers…I never take any in, but I have been told that some of them have already been very severe on me, impossibly so, by asserting that I had totally abandoned my children this is a charge that has hurt me extremely, every thing else I must fully expect, and am prepared for, from my superiority in my profession, I have always had many enemies but they have ever as yet been confined to people of the same profession, and as they cannot find fault with me as a performer, they catch at every opportunity of endeavoring to injure me as a woman. (RA GEO/ADD40/30)

In response, Jordan sent signed letters from Richard Ford to the press, where they appeared in various papers throughout the kingdom between 17 and 19 October. Jordan settled £600 per year on her daughters, £50 of which went directly to her sister, Hester, who lived with the children in a separate household (Lloyd’s Evening Post 14-17 October

1791). Ford’s letters also confirmed that Jordan still had access to the girls “provided her visits are not attended by any circumstances which may be improper to them or

often teleological) narratives—Tomalin to the ultimately tragic story of the actress and the prince, Fothergill to a maternal ideal that disallows any serious romantic attachments. 164 Throughout the fall, the most cutting remarks about Jordan insistently referred to her as “Little Pickle” the name of a popular character from the farce, The Spoil’d Child, which she debuted in 1790. “Little Pickle” is an eight year old boy who terrorizes his family. 239

unpleasant to me” (ibid). Since Ford could have taken the girls outright, this was a credit to her character.

Jordan’s strategy was successful to a degree. The editor of Lloyd’s Evening Post wrote:

Some insinuations having been thrown out against Mrs. Jordan, in which she has been accused of deserting the children she had brought into the world…the following letter, from the Gentleman whose protection she formerly enjoyed, will refute the aspersion, and will at least demonstrate, that the Lady is alive to maternal feelings… (ibid)

As the attacks on Jordan intensified, her defenders used the terms of the settlement providing for Dodee and Lucy as a marker of Jordan’s essentially good nature. The terms were even used to make sly, cutting marks in Ford’s direction: “It is impossible not to admire the greatness of mind of MR. FORD, in graciously permitting MRS. JORDAN to see his children when she comes to pay their Annuity!” (MCLA 20 October 1791). Her relationship with the Duke was a mistake in most minds, but her care for her children still admirable. In consequence of this strategy, attacks on Jordan in the fall of 1791 shifted focus from her maternity to her sexual morality and professionalism.

Concurrent rumors that Jordan was pregnant prompted a shift in attitude toward her maternal body that divorced that body from her reputation as a caring mother and rendered it, instead, indicative of an unrestrained sexual appetite and flawed morality.

The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser proclaimed: “Little Pickle is again pregnant; but whether the infant is to be a Lawyer [child of Ford] or an Admiral [child of Clarence], time only can discover” (MPDA, 15 October 1791).165 The press characterized Jordan as

165 It may be that this pregnancy was merely a rumor or that Jordan miscarried early on, for the notices regarding such a pregnancy disappear quickly. Tomalin writes that Jordan was pregnant in March of 1792 and miscarried in July, but makes no mention of an earlier pregnancy (139). William IV’s biographers John 240

sexually promiscuous, implying she had maintained sexual relationships with both men simultaneously. The protection of her honorary title of Mrs. Ford was gone, turning her from a wife to a social-climbing whore in a matter of days. References to the pregnancy persisted into November: “The Little Pickle Frigate will prove an invaluable acquisition to her new Commander, as she had taken in a Cargo immediately previous to the late

Contract!” (ibid, 8 November 1791).

There is no definitive proof that Jordan was pregnant beyond the mentions in print, but she did have health problems during the fall. Several early but undated letters to

Clarence mention doctor’s visits, advice to remain prone on a couch, vomiting, and other symptoms possibly indicating early pregnancy. If the pregnancy was in its early stages, it meant that no visual confirmation of her condition was possible or necessary; speculation was rampant. The public seemed continually convinced that Jordan’s body concealed something: pregnancy in October, talk of a miscarriage in November/December, another pregnancy in January, more speculation in June, and, finally, a miscarriage in August that did, in fact, take place and briefly threatened Jordan’s life.

In November 1791, the monthly Bon Ton Magazine suggested Mrs. Jordan had lost a pregnancy: “The Country Girl, it is said, has got into a sad pickle—all was not right at the helm—but no matter. All will be well in time” (November 1791, 357). Though cryptic, in December they clarified, “A recent miscarriage has been treated in the higher circles, with no small share of levity.—The plain fact, however, is, -- ‘Its all to do over

Watkins and William Wright (one of which may have been a pseudonym for the other), however, state that her November/December absence was due to a miscarriage. 241

again!’” (December 1791, 490).166 In January, the Star observed that “Mrs. Jordan has of late grown thin; but there is great prospect, that, in the Spring, she may get round a little”

(4 January 1791).

In June, Clarence was seen about town in a new carriage, the color of which apparently sparked another pregnancy rumor: “From the colour of the Duke of Clarence’s new carriages, it is not at all improbable that Mrs. Jordan will very shortly be in the straw!” (June 1792, 153).167 Jordan was pregnant this time. In August she gave birth while in her second trimester: “The 6th in the morning Mrs. Jordan was delivered of a child, which expired a short time after its birth. Only five months of her time had expired; so that the expensive fruit has fallen without being brought to perfection” (August 1792,

234). Bon Ton went on to declare, “The premature death of a certain young Bantling will not be productive of Court mourning” (ibid).

The commentary is occasionally factual and frequently cruel, judging her to be more valuable for her additional “cargo” in the fall and less valuable after losing “the expensive fruit” in the summer. The obsessive attention to Jordan’s body, scrutinized for weight gain and loss as indicators of its gravid status reveals not simply an interest in the pregnant body, or a pending illegitimate royal birth, but an almost fanatical need to know and imagine Jordan’s body as a sexual and reproductive entity. Duped into thinking the unmarried actress a respectable wife and not one of the “easy dames of the theatre,” (Bon

166 The new Duchess of York also reportedly had a miscarriage in December, but this seems an unlikely source of levity given that the Duke and Duchess of York were the best hope for an heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales having refused so far to marry after his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Catholic widow, was annulled. 167 Clarence had previously had a coach with yellow accents; this seems to imply the entire coach was yellow, bringing straw to mind. Jordan’s coach, which he had gifted her, also seems to have been yellow. 242

Ton April 1793, 101) the public can no longer trust Jordan’s appearance or public performances to grant them truthful access to her private character.

The preoccupation with Jordan’s body fed an appetite for satirical cartoons featuring imagined private scenes between Jordan and Clarence. In both visual and textual effigy, Jordan’s body was anatomized, scrutinized, and made to perform independently of the woman herself. In total, six prints appeared in the fall of 1791. They sometimes showed Jordan as one of her stage characters, punned about Clarence’s ability or inability to “Ford” the “[River] Jordan” and frequently featured the emblem of a chamber pot (colloquially called a “jordan”) as a metaphor for the actress.168 The state of the chamber pot, “open to all parties” in one cartoon, materially damaged in others, suggested the state of Jordan’s morality and/or physical body. The use of the River

Jordan was a convenient referent for Jordan, but also for her fertility. One paper wrote,

The Ford that formerly ran into this bright prolific river, which like that of Babylon fertilized and improved in all its progressions, will no doubt always lament the parting from its current; but every thing seems to prove and approve its present course, and to avow that it was intended by nature for the ploughing of a bolder and more exalted prow. (Bon Ton November 1791, 324)

Like the river for which she is named, one of Jordan’s most prominent features is her fertility. The fact that she was pregnant so early on in this new, royal relationship indicates a kind of cosmic blessing to their union.

168 The most common stage character to use was Nell from The Devil to Pay or the Wives Metamorphosed. In the farce, Nell is a cobbler’s wife whose husband drinks too much and is physically abusive. A wandering magician switches Nell for Lady Lovemore, the harridan wife of a local aristocrat. Nell’s sweet temper wins Lovemore’s affections, while Lady Lovemore and Jobson abuse each other. At the end, the temporary switch is reversed and both women return to their rightful husbands with promises of better marriages. Nell’s naiveté, and the transience of her elevated status, were irresistible correlaries to Mrs. Jordan’s new and presumably temporary position as royal mistress. 243

Figure 9 James Gillray. "Lubber's Hole, alias, Figure 10 William Dent, "Fording the The Crack'd Jordan." 1791. British Museum. Jordan." 1791. British Museum.

Accompanying the pregnancy rumors, two cartoons from November showed the

Duke drowning or disappearing into a cracked Jordan (“cracked” being slang for morally bankrupt). Instead of the jordan appearing as a prop in a larger scene featuring Jordan and the Duke in propia persona as in earlier cartoons, in these the chamber pot explicitly replaces some or all of Jordan’s body. The “Lubber’s Hole, alias The Crack’d Jordan”

(Figure 7), printed on 1 November, replaces Mrs. Jordan’s entire body with that of a cracked chamber pot, a vaginal opening running from knee to head, into which the Duke is diving face first while exclaiming “Yeo! Yee! Yeo!”169 “Fording the Jordan” (Figure 8) shows Jordan scantily clad painted onto the side of a large cracked chamber pot. The

Duke is waist deep in the pot, saying, “I shall be lost in Thee JORDAN” to which she responds: “Where should a wounded Tar be but in the Cockpit?”170 The outside of the

169 The “lubber’s hole” on a ship is an opening in the base of a platform attached to a mast, making it possible to climb the mast to the platform instead of up the sail rigging. “Lubber” generally is a term for a clumsy or stupid sailor. 170 “Cockpit” at the time meant an area on an aft lower deck where the wounded were housed. 244

chamber pot is inscribed “1000l. a year for the use of this JORDAN.”171 In “Fording the

Jordan,” Mrs. Jordan’s body and image become secondary to her more than man-sized vagina—the “cockpit” into which the Duke fears he will be “lost.” While we see only her bare breasts, the chamber pot stands for what we do not see under her skirts.

The image of a small man inside the urine that presumably fills the chamber pot calls to mind images showing doctors examining a patient’s urine to determine pregnancy. In several of these, a small fetus is visible in the urine, indicating that the woman in the picture is indeed pregnant, and suggesting the doctor’s diagnostic skill

(Figure 9).

“Fording the Jordan” and “The Lubber’s

Hole” make no overt reference to Jordan’s career as

an actress, she is simply a woman to be bought and

paid for. The Duke’s bodily engagement with the

jordan/Jordan, particularly a damaged one, suggests

leakage and contamination, as well as conjuring Figure 11 “A physician examining a urine specimen in which a faint figure of a baby is images of their sex life and her visible, a female patient is crying and being shouted at by her angry mother, indicating that she is pregnant.” possible pregnancy. The over-sized chamber pots- Watercolour by I.T., 1826. Wellcome Library. cum-sex organs and Clarence’s enthusiastic abandon imply an orgiastic overindulgence to their relationship, while Jordan’s body, which is full and/or swollen, becomes pregnant both literally and in terms of sexual excess.172

171 Jordan received an annuity of 840l. as Clarence’s mistress. While earlier cartoons suggested she was now a public commodity “open to all parties,” later cartoons made much of the price of her favors. 172 On 24 May 1792, a print entitled “Vices Overlook’d in the New Proclamation” showed members of the royal family engaging in bouts of avarice, drunkenness, gambling, and debauchery. The image for debauchery shows Clarence and Jordan, dressed in yellow, kissing and groping each other on a settee. 245

There was a sense that Jordan’s new position was in fact a revelation of what she had always been. The Public Advertiser claimed, “When Little Pickle fell into the sweets of one thousand per annum, she might be truly said to have changed her nature into a preserve, or that at least she was well clarified” (4 November 1791). This change in, or clarification of, Jordan’s nature is a result of her slide from respectable companion to whorish royal mistress. In Scotland, where Jordan frequently toured, the Caledonian

Mercury described the popular performer as “a prostitute actress” (31 October 1791).

Through all of these attacks, Jordan continued to appear in the theatre, using her charismatic presence and popularity to weather the storm. In late November, however, illness (possibly the miscarriage rumored in late November and December) kept her from appearing for two weeks, and the attacks intensified viciously. Instead of the contrast between print/cartoon effigy and real body, for these two weeks, only the effigies remained. Jordan and her managers were not insensible to this possible consequence.

Jordan had explained to Clarence, probably earlier in the season: “I am strongly advised to play in the farce tomorrow, it is thought and I think very properly that withdrawing myself just now for a couple of nights might have a very bad effect on the minds of the audience, who received me very kindly the other night” (RA GEO/ADD40/36).

On 26 November, Jordan was scheduled to appear in the evening’s afterpiece, but sent word “a few instants before the curtain drew up” (St. James Chronicle or the British

Evening Post 26-29 November 1791) that she would be unable to perform because of an indisposition. The audience nearly rioted, demanding they receive their money back, the play continue with another actress, or that Mrs. Jordan be immediately fired. The author

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of the account wrote, “the public are indulgent and generous, but they are not to be trifled with” (Whitehall Evening Post 26-29 November 1791).

The primary tension between actress and audience seemed to stem from the fact that Mrs. Jordan was considered a public employee. Audiences paid money to see her, she became rich, but owed her success entirely to their indulgence—did this then give her audience the right to know the private character of the performers they saw on stage and whose livelihoods they supported? Some thought yes, some not, but the question was further complicated by the fact that Clarence was a prince. Any lover who granted her a generous annuity compromised the power dynamic between audience and actress, but, as several prints hinted, because Clarence received an income from the government, it was still public tax money that went to support her lifestyle. If she left the stage, they would essentially be funding her private sexual performances for the Duke without any benefit to themselves in public access to her person: The Caledonian Mercury suggested that, “If the public money is to be thus applied to support the dignity of Princes, new Ways and

Means must be devised for levying it, that the people may not suppose themselves the subscribing abettors of dignified immorality!” (3 November 1791). Behind these complaints lay a real anxiety that she would leave permanently, and this anxiety turned to anger during her absence.

After two weeks off the boards, Jordan returned to the stage on December 10. On her first night back, she played Roxalana in The Sultan, a farce. Roxalana is an English slave in the Sultan’s harem whose goodness wins his affection and monogamy and ultimately gives Roxalana political power and control over the Empire. In performing this honorable, Christian character upon her return, perhaps Jordan was attempting to claim

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these virtues for her self, though it should be noted that she was also acting the part of a woman whose sexuality enables her to gain political power over a male ruler. According to accounts in the press, Jordan was variously cheered and hissed from the moment she took the stage. When it became clear the audience would not desist if she ignored them,

Jordan stepped forward in the middle of a scene to address them directly:

I should consider myself as totally unworthy of the distinguished favour and approbation I have ever received from you, if the smallest mark of your displeasure did not sensibly afflict me. Give me leave to assure you, that I never absented myself from the Theatre, but when compelled to it by real indisposition. Ever since I have had the honour and happiness of appearing before you, it has been my pride, my unremitting study, to endeavor to entertain and amuse you; and I trust I may, while so employed, consider myself as under your protection. (Lloyd’s Evening Post 9-12 December 1791)

Jordan gave the audience what they wanted: a personal appearance on stage, with assurances that she planned to continue in her profession. She made it clear that she relied on the audience for support on stage and emotional wellbeing offstage, acknowledging the power dynamic the audience had been attempting to assert since they felt wronged by her non-appearance. In raising the specter of herself as a private individual truly and closely tied to her audience’s wishes and feelings, Jordan re-asserted her identity as a woman sensible of her obligations to the audience. She also displaced the callous, hypersexual superficiality of visual and textual effigy and rewrote the narrative to which her audience objected: it is not the Duke who she considers her protector, but the paying public. Returning to the stage also offered her body—in actuality, not in effigy—up for continued public scrutiny for signs of sexual contamination, and, crucially, pregnancy.173

173 Jordan’s indisposition was never fully explained, but it was reported several times that she was spitting up blood, implying that the illness had nothing to do with pregnancy. If it was a miscarriage, then, she and/or Clarence clearly thought it better to conceal this fact. By the following summer, however, her 248

While the crisis was not entirely over, newspaper attacks and satiric prints decreased significantly after her reappearance, and her performances were warmly received.174

The 1791 crisis was the largest Jordan faced in her career at Drury Lane. As with earlier crises, she found that her personal appeals, especially those given on stage directly to the audience, were most effective for maintaining their favor. The fact that she prioritized the protection of her maternal image demonstrates its importance to herself as an individual, and her understanding of its importance to the audience. The angry public might forgive an affair eventually, but neglect of her children would be much more difficult to overcome. As her family and personal obligations grew, so did the dispersal of private information in the press.

Mrs. Pickle’s Mistake

In the British Museum’s vast print collection there is a mysterious image related to Dorothy Jordan whose origins have never been satisfactorily explained. Though I also have no definitive explanation to offer, the print is singular for explicitly depicting the birth of one of Clarence and Jordan’s children. The print, “Mrs. Pickle’s Mistake, or the

New Papa Disappointed with Justice Shallow’s attempt to Charm the Brutes” (Figure 10) is dated 15 March 1791. It shows Clarence, dressed as a midwife, emptying the contents

miscarriage was reported as such. This may indicate that it had been visible and therefore no concealment of the loss was possible, or that by this point Clarence and/or Jordan did not fear the public reaction as much. 174 On 4 January, in fact, in a remarkable display of approval, the entire Royal Family descended on the Haymarket to see Mrs. Jordan in Cymon, a new opera. Though the family never received Jordan at Court, and the Queen and princesses in particular disapproved of her in private, the Royal Family publically demonstrated their approval of her as a working professional throughout the next decade. 249

of a chamber pot labeled “DC” (Duke of Clarence) onto the head of, presumably, Richard

Ford, who leads a band of people in a charivari

(shivaree), a procession indicating disapproval and

censure used to enforce social norms that was

particularly used against cohabiting couples. Next to

Clarence is Dr. Warren, a physician in ordinary to

the royal family, who holds a child in a pair of

forceps. He tells the crowd to quiet down as “Mrs.

Pickle has just made a faux Couche” (had a

miscarriage) of a “young Sea Gull” (Clarence). The

woman in the bottom right comments on how much Figure 12 Isaac Cruikshank. "Mrs. Pickle's Mistake, or the new papa disappointed with Justice Shallow's attempts to chain the brutes." the “slink” (a premature or stillborn baby), looks 14 March 1791. British Museum. like its father. The association between the child and the emptying chamber pot suggests a correlation between the two. Both are previously hidden contents of Jordan’s jordan, and neither is worth keeping. Mrs. Pickle’s “mistake” refers not necessarily, or not only, to the relationship with Clarence, but also the loss of the valuable infant.

The print holds a strange place in biographical studies of Jordan. Though dated

March 1791, it clearly takes as its subject events in the affair between Clarence and

Jordan, which did not begin, or at least was not public, until six months later. The dating has prompted several of Jordan’s biographers to dismiss it entirely. Claire Tomalin argues that the cartoon must be a mistake on the part of the artist, perhaps referring to an illegitimate child of Clarence’s conceived before his relationship with Mrs. Jordan. Brian

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Fothergill skips over the 1790-91 season entirely and therefore provides no commentary on this portion of her life; Boaden similarly makes no comment. Clare Jerrold discusses the cartoon and asserts that rumors must have been circulating but for unknown reasons were not picked up by the press.

Of the four, only Jerrold seems to be aware that Jordan was actually pregnant in

1790/91. She suggests the pregnancy ended in February, just prior to one of Jordan’s two- week absences, and uses the cartoon to prove that this pregnancy, her last with Richard

Ford, ended in miscarriage. While I have uncovered no obvious evidence of such rumors somehow missed by her biographers, one detail from Jordan’s performances that year may be relevant. Just after the cartoon’s dating in mid-March, Jordan gave a potentially coy epilogue to the new play The Greek Slave, in which she played Celia, mistress to the king’s son. In typical epilogue fashion, Jordan came on to the stage and poked fun at what the audience had just seen. Henry Bunbury’s epilogue focused most intensely on the impropriety of casting Mrs. Jordan out of her usual line of low comedy:

How strange! methinks I hear a critic say, What, she the serious heroine of a play! The manager his want of sense evinces To pitch on Hoydens for the love of Princes! To trick out Chambermaids in awkward pomp— Horrid! To make a Princess of a Romp.” (WEP, 22-24 March 1791)

If any rumors of a relationship between Jordan and Clarence were circulating, this epilogue functioned as a direct refutation. Most of Jordan’s biographers suggest that the brazen reference must mean that no one knew of any burgeoning relationship between them—while this is a fair point, it might also be a good way of ridiculing and rendering harmless any such rumors.

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None of the biographers give credence to or explore the possibility that the cartoon is misdated, actually referring to the many rumors of a pregnancy and miscarriage in 1791/2. I contend that the cartoon is highly unlikely to be the result of mistaken information about an affair in March 1791 that was somehow ignored by the press. If misdated, however, the print would belong in the series of cartoons depicting intimate scenes between the Duke and the actress that appeared during the first months of their relationship. “Mrs. Pickle’s Mistake” cannot be ignored, even if it cannot be fully explained.

5.4 “ALL THE DEAR CHILDREN:” PREGNANCY AND PATRIOTISM 1792-1798

In 1792, the year after the spectacular revelation of her relationship with the Duke of Clarence, Jordan sat for a portrait by John Russell, whom the King had appointed as his official painter in 1789. The portrait placed Jordan decidedly in the role of respectable aristocratic woman. She sits facing the painter wearing a fashionable white gown and gloves with uncharacteristically powdered hair. Her hair, such a clear symbol of her identity as an actress, makes a striking statement. This is not the romp or the country girl, this is a domestic portrait of Jordan herself, an image to sweep away the negative associations created by the satirical prints released in the 1791-92 season. The timing of the portrait and the fact that Russell was an artist who largely painted members of the court helped Jordan reclaim her image from the satirists and provide a revised vision of her private identity to the public.

Though the public viewed Jordan and Clarence’s relationship skeptically in its early stages, the pair largely won over the public through their loyalty and dedication to

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each other. Clarence was kind to her other children, who grew to be fond of him as well, and this charming domesticity was dutifully reported in the press:

The Duke of Clarence enjoys domestic happiness with all its charms at Petersham; Mrs. Jordan’s daughters are with him, and live in such easy state of familiarity that when speaking to or of his Royal Highness, they call him papa, and papa Clarence. (PA, 16 September 1793)

Clarence was not the only one to perform visible and affectionate parenthood, the anonymous author of The Great Illegitimates (1830) recalled often seeing Mrs. Jordan:

in a plain yellow chariot at Miss Tuting’s, a milliner in St. James’s Street, where she would alight with an infant in her arms, and during her stay frequently change the linen of the little one in the shop, while freely conversing with the person in attendance. (qtd Jerrold 202)

Though they could never marry, the anonymous author claimed, “she lives as the nature of her connection will allow; and it may be said of her what of many ladies legally connected cannot be said: ‘Tho’ she boasts not the name, she’s the truth of a wife’” (70).

In April 1793, Bon Ton Magazine ran a two-part biography of Jordan in which she was praised for being “a woman of so rare a natural genius…who, instead of forcing

[Clarence] into dissipation and folly, leads him to domestic life, to study, and improvement; who, if she may be somewhat expensive, prevents prodigality to a dangerous extent” (103). Royal mistress she may have been, but Jordan could still be considered a positive influence on her paramour.175

Understandings of Jordan as a positive influence were vital in the context of concerns that the visible immorality of the English aristocracy could prompt a revolution

175 In comparison to his brothers’ extravagant spending and endless strings of mistresses, Clarence’s affair with Jordan was nearly as stable, harmonious, and monogamous as their parents’ marriage. Her positive influence extended to his political life: Clarence once gave an impassioned speech in Parliament about the rights of women in divorce cases; afterwards, it was suggested that Jordan had written it for him (Jerrold 188). 253

in England mirroring that in France. In February 1793, when France declared war on

Britain, these anxieties increased. Poor harvests and a potential invasion were seen as additional spurs to revolution. That summer, London fashions inclined to the maternal: a brief rage for cork bellies to simulate pregnancy, supposedly started by the Duchess of

Devonshire but inspired by Marie Antoinette, took hold. Instead of being flagrantly sexual, the aristocracy was flagrantly maternal. This bizarre trend coincided with

Jordan’s next pregnancy, this one to end in the birth of her first child with Clarence.

Beginning in January 1794, Jordan and Clarence had ten surviving children, further solidifying their appearance of stable domesticity. Jordan and Clarence’s first three children (George, Sophia, and Henry) were born in 1794, 1795, and 1797. Some grumbling took place over the supposed cost of Jordan’s confinement in 1794, but even this was tempered by the couple’s devotion: the papers noted Jordan had slept on a cot so that she could nurse Clarence when he had a broken arm earlier in the year; he attended her diligently throughout her pregnancy. Mrs. Jordan successfully symbolized domesticity with her Duke, not the aristocratic excess that might come with her status as royal mistress.

George’s birth was, fortunately, more the subject of joking than censure in the press:

Mrs. JORDAN’s new-born boy is to be immediately entered a Midshipman. If we are not to have a Peace until France is conquered, it is probably that before the conclusion of the War he will be made an Admiral. (Morning Post, 6 February 1794)

After George’s birth, Jordan made her first appearance back at a benefit for naval widows in July 1794 during Sheridan’s several-year campaign to introduce nationalistic fare at

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Drury Lane. This was not only, then, a patriotic act on her part, but of course called to mind her association with Clarence. “What Girl but Loves a Merry Tar” from The Spoil’d

Child became a sort of recruitment anthem during the war, as pretty Mrs. Jordan acted the sailor and performed her private love for a certain ‘Merry Tar’ on the public stages.

Frederic Reynolds’ The Will, opening just prior to Henry’s birth in 1797, had her playing a young woman named Albina who must go into disguise as a sailor. The combination of her private circumstance and the political realities of 1790s London gave Jordan’s breeches performances a decidedly patriotic flair. Her continued and increasingly frequent appearances while pregnant suggested that they too were part of her nationalistic fervor.

While soldiers and sailors across the country were enlisted and three of his brothers entered the fray, Clarence was passed over for command. When Jordan had a second son in 1797, the Telegraph thought the country should be consoled that, “Little

Pickle…though she keeps one tar at home, is willing enough to produce others to supply his place abroad!” (11 February 1797). Jordan’s body is conflated here with nationalist concerns: she has the potential to supply the navy out of her own body.

The increasing family also increased demands on Jordan’s time, sometimes creating conflicts with her professional duties. In the fall before Henry’s birth, Jordan was performing while visibly pregnant and had two young children at home, in addition to the three other daughters she supported financially. She performed regularly until early

January, with the exception of a brief crisis when Sophia contracted small pox. Her absence, which she clearly minimized, delayed a highly anticipated production of Hamlet in which Jordan would play Ophelia opposite John Philip Kemble. The Evening Mail

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reported, “The expectation [sic] of the Public are very much baulked of the expected treat of HAMLET at Drury lane this evening. The cause, we understand, to be the sudden indisposition of a Royal Infant under innoculation” (Evening Mail, 14-17 October 1796).

The Telegraph added a reminder that, “[Mrs. Jordan] is also far gone in her pregnancy”

(18 October 1796).176 In this instance, the full details of Mrs. Jordan’s absence appear in the initial notification to the audience, and those reasons are directly tied to her private identity as a mother. Jordan’s position would certainly enable her to hire nurses, but despite her elevated status and her physical condition, she tends her children herself.

While the public was disappointed, there was no widespread outcry against Jordan for neglecting her professional duties as in the fall of 1791.177

The following month, in November 1796, she appeared as Nell in the popular farce, The Devil to Pay. In 1791, satirists used the similitude between Nell’s fictional life and Jordan’s situation prominently, mocking Jordan’s perceived naïveté in entering into an association with Clarence and suggesting she would soon return to her rightful place.

By 1796, Jordan’s pregnancy gave the part an entirely different meaning:

Mrs. JORDAN performed Nell with her accustomed excellence and was encored in some songs. Her appearance on the stage in her situation is a strong proof of her wishes to please the Public. The audience felt this; and they were equally filled with admiration, gratitude, and pity. (MPFW, November 24)

176 In fact she was only about four months pregnant, but this may indicate that she appeared larger. 177 The same was not true for her sister-in-law Mrs. Bland: “Little Bland was pitied by the public in her first faux pas, and generously forgiven, but considering how short the interval is since this act of liberality was shewn her on the part of the town, it is proof of no small courage, to see her enter the lists again. The true and only reason for her not being suffered to perform in Mr. Coleman’s new play was this—That by her own confession she must be in the straw long before the probable run of the piece was over. Is there something, in the very nature of this indisposition, under her circumstances, that entitles her to the protection of the public? Or is it always right that the business of the theatre should give way to the amusements of the performers? –Her bully-back has been sent to Coventry by the performers already. Let him beware lest this disposition may spread to the higher departments of the theatre.” (Bon Ton February 1796, 511-12) 256

Just as Jordan’s pregnancies in the 1780s had elicited sympathy from her audience

members when they believed her married, this sympathetic reviewer now characterizes

Jordan’s willingness to perform while pregnant as a sign of her professionalism and

sincere affection for her audience. This characterization is significant. It suggests that

Jordan’s body so overwhelmed the reviewer with pathos that he ceased to respond to the

play’s comedy. Instead of enjoying her performance, the reviewer was focused on the

affect her body created and the implications it had for Jordan as a working professional,

mother, and pregnant woman. It seems, in fact, that her pregnancy prompted him (and

perhaps others) to focus on anything but the performance. Rather than the sexualized

stigmatic force pregnancy had been in the fall of 1791, pregnancy was now a powerful

charismatic force once again.

The change in attitude toward Jordan and Clarence was also clear in visual

depictions. After Jordan withdraw from the

stage in 1797 but before Henry’s birth, George

III bestowed on Clarence the rangership at

Bushy Park, a country estate near Hampton

Court. James Gillray, a satirical cartoonist who

had made several biting prints in response to the Figure 13 James Gillray, La Promenade en Famille--a sketch from life." 23 April 1797. British Museum. relationship between Jordan and Clarence,

released La Promenade en Famillie: A Sketch from Life in April 1797 (Figure 11). It

depicts the Duke of Clarence and Jordan moving their children to Bushy Park. Jordan

walks with script in hand, while Clarence pulls a small cart containing two small children

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and an infant. The date on the print is 23 April, a month after Henry’s birth. Unlike the earlier satirical prints, this one contains no overt moral judgment on Jordan or her relationship with Clarence, nor is she depicted in the dishabille common in earlier prints.

While perhaps Gillray is poking fun at the Duke for taking care of the children while

Jordan works, Jordan is cast here as a working professional actress, not a prostitute.178

The fourth child, Mary, was born on 19 December 1798, and it seems that this, her eighth child, finally prompted a change in Jordan’s repertoire. Jordan withdrew from the stage on October 16, playing none of her popular breeches roles in the preceding month. When a new actress took up the role of Little Pickle in November, it was reported, “Miss Molini…is the eleve of Mrs. Jordan, who has determined never more to wear the breeches” (London Packet… 28-30 November 1798). From this point on, Jordan began removing herself from public view earlier and earlier in her pregnancies. She would often perform on tour in the summers but miss some or all of the London season.

Part of this may have been pressure from Clarence, or the demands of so many children, or her own declining health. Tomalin believes it was at least in part due to criticism of the weight she had gained in middle age. Permanent changes to her body, then, may have inspired a change in performance that the temporary (if frequent) change of pregnancy had not.

178 The immediate reaction in the press was to make bawdy jokes at the expense of the couple: “The appointment of the Duke of Clarence to be Ranger of Bushy Park is no new joke about Mrs. Jordan or any thing that belongs to her, but a sober fact!” (London Packet… 20-23 January 1797). The True Briton wrote, “The JORDAN disapproves highly of her Royal Swain becoming a Ranger, though she has no objection to the frequency of his visits at Bushy Park” (24 January 1797). With three children born in three years, the “frequency” of the Duke’s “visits” could not be in doubt. The comments, however, are focused on the stability and fertility of the couple; while lewd, the commentary does not suggest that either Clarence or Jordan are engaged in illicit activities. 258

5.5 CONCLUSION: “THE BEST OF WOMEN”

Jordan’s pregnancies offer a bellwether for changing attitudes toward her as an individual. More importantly, though, they show how Jordan’s fertile body was both a symptom and a cause of changing audience responses to the woman and her private circumstances. At a remove of more than one hundred years from the “whores with great bellies” of the Restoration, Jordan’s maternal body was prominently on display in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Despite this (and like married Mrs. Mountfort), her pregnancies did not prompt accusations of hypocrisy when she performed virginal characters in the 1780s. Her affair with Clarence changed that, prompting prints and press notices that cast her as a whore. In that context, the narrative of her pregnant body was one that primarily focused on her sexual activity and speculation about whether she had begun a sexual relationship with Clarence before she broke off her relationship with Ford.

The rumored pregnancy was a powerful stigmatic force that prevented Jordan from receiving the same affect and sympathy she had during her 1780s pregnancies, but by

1796, her pregnant body had regained its affective power when she played Nell in The

Devil to Pay while pregnant with her second child by Clarence. By this point, her domestic life with Clarence had begun to diffuse the stigmatic associations with her sexualized body.

Jordan and Clarence remained together until 1811, by which time it was clear he was attempting to find a wealthy wife. Peter Pindar, the man who first named her Thalia, the comic muse, wrote a poem entitled “The R---l Lover, or The Admiral on a Lee

Shore:”

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What! Leave a woman to her tears? Your faithful friend for twenty years; One who gave up all her youthful charms, The fond companion of your arms! Brought you ten smiling girls and boys, Sweet pledges of connubial joys; As much your wife in honor’s eye, As if fast bound in wedlock’s tie. (qtd Tomalin 248)

Cartoonists shamed the Duke for abandoning his faithful companion and all his children to make a fool of himself over the young heiress Miss Long.179 Jordan’s devotion to

Clarence and her status as mother to his children made her worthy of the title of wife she was legally denied. Jordan accepted his wishes without public comment. The children were confused; Henry, in particular, horrified at his father’s treatment of his mother.

After the separation, she continued to work periodically until driven to France by a son- in-law’s debts taken in her name. She died there on 5 July 1816, far from family and friends.

With Richard Ford, Jordan’s pregnancies were part of her persona as a wife and mother. They served as a charismatic force that underscored her devotion to her public and offstage performances of harmonious domesticity, performances that in turn helped to balance any negative associations with Jordan’s profession or with conflations between her on and offstage identites. When Jordan left Richard Ford for the Duke of Clarence, audience perception of her shifted radically and necessitated significant negotiation on

Jordan’s part. Unlike Susannah Cibber, however, Jordan’s solution was not to hide her maternity, but to use it to her advantage. Her decision likely stems in part from a

179 Even ten years after the separation (three years after the Duke’s marriage to Adelaide of Saxe- Meinengen and five years after Jordan’s death), a cartoon appeared in which Jordan’s ghost accuses the Duke of cruelty from beyond the grave, calling him “false, fleeting, perjured Clarence” (a quotation from Richard III). 260

difference in personality (and fertility), but there is little doubt that economics also played a factor, as did the much greater scrutiny of her private life. Given the press reactions and the print shop windows, Jordan was unlikely to avoid scrutiny about her private life simply by not appearing on stage while pregnant, so drawing on what she knew of her body’s affective potential was a more viable option. The carefully controlled release of private information fed audience desire for her presence during brief absences while preventing the kind of uproar that occurred in 1791.

Five years later, the results of Jordan’s successful negotiation can be codified by her performance of Nell in The Wives Metamorphos’d while pregnant with her second son, Henry. In the mythology of Jordan’s life, Nell transitioned from being an ideal metaphor for her relationship with Clarence in 1791, to symbolizing her professional dedication during pregnancy in 1796. Jordan’s case illustrates the dangers Lesley Ferris sees in audience effacement of private identity in favor of a belief that the fiction is reality, particularly when considering female performers:

The costumes of the women were for the most part the personal clothing of the actress…and so supported this enduring conflation of self and actress, [and] could be worn in daily life for attendance at court as well as on the stage…Of particular interest here is a subtext which says that women cannot in principle act a character, but can only perform aspects of themselves. (44)

During crises, Jordan’s attackers sometimes equated her with the fictional characters she played onstage, or with the archetype of royal mistress or actress-as-whore, in all cases negating her identity as a private individual. Jordan, in turn, emphasized her private life to assert her subject position, disrupting the conflation of her on and offstage selves, or of herself with a stereotypically grasping mistress: far from being the hoyden, the romp, or

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the virgin she played on stage, Jordan was a mother and provider for her children and family. In reminding the audience of her personal obligations through press notices, and by appearing on stage while visibly pregnant, she excused her absences from the theatre and cast the audience as her protector—without their support, Jordan could not provide for her family.180

Pregnancy did not greatly impact Jordan’s repertoire. Like Hannah Pritchard and

Susanna Mountfort, she continued to perform a wide range of characters during pregnancy. Like Mountfort, those characters included her breeches roles until more permanent weight gain prompted her to resign them (as did Hannah Pritchard in the

1750s and 1760s). Like Siddons and Pritchard, Jordan performed up until the moment of birth on occasion in her early career. As she gained status in the theatrical company, she began leaving the stage about a month or so before the births of her children.

In Siddons and Jordan we have two archetypal visions of actresses and women in society—Siddons looking forward to a domestic ideal of womanhood that flourished into the nineteenth century (at least in didactic literature), Jordan looking back on the archetype of the actress as royal mistress. However, Jordan’s use of her domestic circumstances to deflect charges of amoral or unprofessional behavior complicates this simple distinction. Jordan was a royal mistress, she was treated like a royal mistress by most of aristocratic society and was never received at court. In the public’s eyes, however, she was much more than a woman of pleasure and idleness. If the choices available to an actress were, as Kimberly Crouch has argued, to appear as a quasi-

180 This remained true during her relationship with Clarence, for she provided the dowries for her daughters by Daly and Richard Ford, as well as contributing to the maintenance of Bushy Park and the FitzClarence children. 262

aristocratic lady or as a prostitute (and a royal mistress was arguably both), Jordan found another way.

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CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION

Pregnant actresses on stage in Britain at the beginning of the long eighteenth century were the first publicly pregnant bodies available for sustained scrutiny by a diverse cross-section of society. Outside of a family or those encountered in daily life, the pregnant body was primarily available as an abstraction in the public imagination: prayers asking for fertility for royal couples or praying for the health and safety of “all women laboring of child,” for example. Actresses, however, appeared on stage several nights a week, many throughout most or all of their pregnancy—their individual bodies were also social bodies; their pregnancies, then, social pregnancies. If William Egerton could credit Anne Oldfield with teaching other women how to be good mothers through her onstage performances, and Edmund Burke could imagine in Sarah Siddons’s tragic queens the fate of Marie Antoinette, how did the eighteenth-century audience read the socially pregnant body of these women, and what factors influenced this reading?

The pregnant body inevitably denoted a private, sexual act made public. Despite

John Hunter’s successful foray into artificial insemination, there was really only one way to get pregnant in the eighteenth century.181 Visible pregnancy, then, incorporated both sex and sensibility. The pregnant body could be read along a continuum from the sexual, signaling base appetites fulfilled, to a locus for sensibility, a marker of normative womanhood and the fulfillment of domestic ideals. Changing understandings of

181 In 1785, Hunter successfully impregnated the wife of a man with hypospadias, a birth defect in which the urethral opening is on the underside of the penis, and the procedure resulted in a live birth. 264

pregnancy from a medical and social perspective—from a rite of passage to the start of lifelong motherhood, for example—altered the semiotic and affective meanings of the pregnant body. Celebrity actresses, already adept at creating and maintaining public personas through on and offstage performances, could turn these meanings to their advantage.

My project has made several key points about the pregnancies of the women in this study. I addressed the three assumptions that dictated discussions of pregnancy on the eighteenth-century stage until now, showing that 1) there is more than sufficient evidence upon which to build a study of pregnancy on stage; 2) audiences were clearly aware of, and sometimes deeply invested in, celebrity pregnancy; 3) pregnancy was not a universal bar or detriment to a woman’s career. Beyond this, I have argued that:

4) Managers, performers, and audiences prioritized women’s health over verisimilitude during pregnancy. 5) Pregnancy could and did have significant, if temporary, consequences for the repertory system. 6) Pregnancy did not prevent actresses from undertaking new parts and expanding their repertoires. 7) The pregnant body could be read in one of several different ways in relation to a fictional role: a) it could be ignored; b) it could be disruptive to the fiction; or, c) it could be conflated with the fiction of the play. 8) Reactions to pregnant performers were highly specific and dependent on social and medical understandings of pregnancy, and the public persona of the performer. 9) Pregnancy and birth were opportunities for performances of social class. 10) Pregnancy could be a charismatic or stigmatic force. This is because the pregnant body had the potential to generate narrative that could be appropriated by the celebrity actress, her supporters, or her detractors to write new, or further existing, narratives about the performer.

Some of these assertions may be extended to the experience of pregnancy on stage generally in the long eighteenth century; others are more portable, applying to the wider

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study of theatre history, celebrity, and repertory. Of the above arguments, the prioritization of health, impact on the repertory system, and readings of the pregnant body are most likely to hold true to some degree even for non-celebrity performers, while the last offers the most portable contributions this study can make to the wider field.

6.1 WIDER APPLICATIONS FOR NON-CELEBRITY PERFORMERS

Celebrity performers negotiated repertory changes with managers to accommodate their needs before and after birth; their salaries and prominence within the company would allow for longer absences than less prominent women might enjoy.

Women who were not celebrities, particularly if they were unmarried or unattached to a wealthy patron, probably faced financial pressure to return to work as soon as possible after giving birth. In both 1738 and 1739, Hannah Pritchard appeared in some kind of special performance one or two weeks before returning to her regular performance schedule. In both cases, financial motivation may have induced her to return to work temporarily during what otherwise seems to be her lying-in period.

Pregnancy’s impact on the repertory system is in some ways a matter of perspective. When looking at celebrity performers, the suspension of a part entirely during a woman’s absence (e.g., Lady Macbeth for Siddons, Lady Betty Modish for Anne

Oldfield) suggests that the woman and the part were closely tied to each other and that an audience might object to seeing a new performer in “her” role. Such an analysis has implications for repertory and celebrity studies more broadly, being a possible indicator of which plays or parts were in demand primarily because of the leading lady (alone or in combination with another performer), rather than for another actor, the ensemble more generally, the script, or for spectacular special effects. Looking at which parts had 266

substitutions and who the substitutes were opens this point up to a consideration of how the pregnancies of celebrity actresses aided or impacted the careers of more minor players in both the short and long term. I have already shown one example in Hannah

Pritchard, who benefitted from Susannah Cibber’s long absence during and after pregnancy in the late 1730s and early 1740s.

The possible readings of actor bodies and character bodies are available regardless of who the performer is, though the likelihood of each may be slightly different for celebrity vs. non-celebrity performers (c.f. Thomas Brown’s assertion that no one took note of “Mrs. Abigail” being pregnant). This point is also the most portable: asking how actor and character bodies interact with each other has relevance for celebrity, repertory, costuming, and disability and aging studies. My explorations of what in a text might inspire one reaction or another can serve as a model for close readings focused on other tangible or intangible attributes a performer might carry with them into a role.

The specificity of reaction to a pregnant body on stage holds true for non- celebrity performers to a degree, though identifying a specific “public persona” might be more difficult. It may also mean that audiences are less likely to intervene on a woman’s behalf out of concerns for her health. Such interventions are always selfishly motivated, as the audience does not wish to lose a popular performer for longer than necessary, concerns that may not exist for those without celebrity status. Consequently, interactions between the public and a performer during pregnancy and after may offer a new area of consideration for those engaged in audience and celebrity studies. Since absences due to pregnancy could be predicted to a degree, audience response and performer behavior may

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be markedly different in reference to these absences than those for sudden illness or managerial disputes.

The points about performance of social class and pregnancy’s narrative possibilities are more applicable to celebrity performers than non-celebrities—while all birthing women potentially reflected the rituals of whatever social class they belonged to, only Siddons and Jordan had their birth rituals commented on in the press, where they clearly encode class performance. Further, a woman needs some level of public prominence, positive or negative, in order to inspire narrative. The “big-bellied” actresses mentioned in some Restoration-era sources illustrate this: their pregnancies might be commented on, but they themselves remain unnamed and so comparison between these categorizations of them as shameless or impudent and other, more objective (or simply just alternative) information about the performers is impossible. Both social performances during birth and the generation of narrative and affect around the performer’s body offer further avenues of research to those interested in celebrity studies more broadly.

6.2 PREGNANCY, HEALTH, AND REPERTOIRE

At no point in this study did I find an example of an actress who was forced out of a contract during pregnancy. As previously stated, however, this does not mean that women of less certain status within a theatre company might not suffer such treatment.

Even in the 1664 case of Elizabeth Weaver, however, we have no evidence that the company forced Weaver to abandon her post because of pregnancy. In fact, Sir Robert

Howard’s letter suggests they neither knew of her condition, nor its illegitimacy, until after she resigned her parts. Three hundred and fifty years later, though, discussions of 268

Weaver seem to be perpetuating the same confusion about the order of events that prompted Howard to write to Bennet in the first place.182 That Howard had to defend the company to the King suggests dismissing a pregnant woman from the company (or at least one of Charles II’s former lovers) would have been extremely problematic. Instead of dismissal, this study has shown that there were identifiable ways of accommodating a woman’s condition within the repertory system regularly employed throughout the century.

For the women in this study, repertory choices and repertory changes during pregnancy overwhelmingly respond to potential health concerns, prioritizing these over concerns about verisimilitude. Letters to the press warned Drury Lane managers not to overtax Sarah Siddons in 1785, and suggested “easy” parts like the virginal Cordelia and barren Queen Catherine from Henry VIII as suitable vehicles for her talents and her condition. At mid-century, Hannah Pritchard’s repertoire was adjusted so that she performed only once per night. Similarly, not long before the birth of her short-lived or stillborn child in 1788, audiences expressed fears for Mrs. Jordan’s health because she was frequently required to appear in both the main entertainment and the afterpiece. In

Siddons’s and Jordan’s cases, the public’s reaction stems, at least in part, from popular understandings of how best to preserve a woman’s health during pregnancy: moderate physical activity was essential for health, more than this was dangerous. Accommodating

182 “In 1664 the dramatist Sir Robert Howard wrote to Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, explaining why Mrs Weaver ‘of her own accord brought in all her parts and … wou'd act noe more’. ‘Big with child’ and clearly unmarried, her appearance offended ‘women of quality’; and the actress, indignant her parts had been reassigned, ‘continued her resolution to goe’” (Fisk “Elizabeth Weaver”). Howard writes nothing of reassigning her parts before she decided to go, and it is questionable if he even knew of her pregnancy until after this happened. 269

Pritchard’s body by reducing her performance load may reflect a similar belief at mid- century.

The specific question of multiple performances in the same evening was much more likely to affect comic actresses than tragic ones, at least in this study.183 Other strategies, then, for reducing performance demands might appear in the careers of women who played predominantly or exclusively in tragedy. In 1749-50, Pritchard slightly decreased her total appearances during the benefit season as she neared her confinement.

In 1785, amidst a variety of comments about possible overexertion, Siddons temporarily resigned her tragic parts for comic ones in the final month of her pregnancy. Even before this, Siddons clearly distinguished between her “easy” tragic parts and those that required too much exertion for the later stages of pregnancy. From her repertoire and the letters of

Mary Tickell, we can see that Lady Macbeth and Constance in King John were among the “easy” tragic parts she could play while preparing for Mrs. Lovemore in The Way to

Keep Him. While perhaps less noticeable than a reduction in total stage time, the substitution of easier parts for more difficult parts shows one clear, direct impact of pregnancy on repertoire. Pregnancy on stage is a transitory but essential consideration for those engaged in repertory studies.

Other women and their managers also seem to have made a distinction between parts that were easier to play during pregnancy and those that were more difficult. For example, Dorothy Jordan frequently played Ophelia late in her pregnancies at the end of the 1790s, a tragic part that allowed her to sing and use her considerable personal charm

183 Hannah Pritchard and Sarah Siddons both stopped performing in afterpieces on a regular basis at some point in their careers—Pritchard by 1748-49 and Siddons after she came to London in 1782. In contrast, Dorothy Jordan and Pritchard’s contemporary, comedienne Kitty Clive, continued to act in main pieces and afterpieces. 270

while requiring less of the agile, farcical movement she specialized in during the 1780s and early 1790s.184 Andromache in The Distrest Mother appears to have been a go-to part for pregnant women throughout the century: the part provides good opportunities for pathetic display compressed into very little total stage time. Anne Oldfield played it continually throughout her 1713 pregnancy, as did George Anne Bellamy in 1753-54.

Sarah Siddons used it for a benefit at Bath in 1782 while heavily pregnant, and

Theophilus Cibber chose it for his wife Susannah in 1736 about ten days before she gave birth. Knowing this, we could potentially find historical moments when performances of

The Distrest Mother, in conjunction with other evidence, could indicate a possible pregnancy.

Though pregnancy could dictate some repertory decisions, this study has shown that it was rarely a reason not to give a woman a part in a new play. While Susanna

Mountfort Verbruggen does not appear in cast lists for new plays in the last trimester of her 1689/90-1692 pregnancies, she did originate roles in new plays during both her 1693 and 1703 pregnancies. The new roles span the entirety of her range of characters, from breeches parts to aging grotesques. Anne Oldfield likewise starred in a new play,

Addison’s Cato, in the final trimester of her 1713 pregnancy, and Susannah Cibber made her tragic debut in the last trimester of her 1736 pregnancy. In early 1750, Hannah

Pritchard premiered Horatia in The Roman Father in her second trimester, whereas

George Anne Bellamy first played Fulvia in Constantine in February 1754 only days before giving birth. Siddons’s debuted her Lady Lovemore a month before giving birth in

184 Leigh Hunt claimed that Jordan was a successful Ophelia because the character herself is not tragic, but made tragic by circumstance. Therefore, Jordan did not need to be a tragic heroine to act Ophelia, she could simply be herself (see Fothergill 70 for further commentary on her performance). 271

1785, and Dorothy Jordan debuted Helena in All’s Well that Ends Well in December 1794

(4 March) and Ophelia in November of 1796 (8 March).185 Like Mountfort Verbruggen, the new parts later actresses undertook during pregnancy tended to reflect the range of parts they normally played.

A pregnant woman’s physical health was clearly an important consideration for performers and their managers, but it existed within larger economic considerations for both parties. Women were not paid if they did not perform, so determining how early to leave the stage and when to return were major considerations. Planning ahead to accommodate their absences allowed the theatre to minimize its financial loss. In 1748-

49, John Rich used George Anne Bellamy to draw audiences during Sarah Ward’s nine- week absence; the advent of Dorothy Jordan helped save Drury Lane when Siddons missed about ten weeks of the 1785-1786 season.

If possible, the woman might retire about a month before she expected to give birth and be absent a month or longer after the birth; this is true of Hannah Pritchard in

1750, and Sarah Siddons in 1785 and 1794; George Anne Bellamy also lay-in for a month in 1749. If financial necessity or other exceptional circumstance existed, women might perform close or even up to their labor. Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen and Anne

Oldfield seem to have performed until close to the onset of labor in 1693 and 1713 when they were in the position of sole providers for their families. In 1753-54, George Anne

Bellamy, always in dire financial straits, also remained on the boards until the day she went into labor. In 1736, Susannah Cibber played as long as possible when financial necessity led to a career change from singer to tragedienne. Hannah Pritchard played until

185 Kemble’s version excised Helena’s pregnancy from the text of All’s Well. 272

the birth of her daughter, or slightly before, in 1739, while still occupying a secondary position in the company. She also returned temporarily to play in a benefit performance while still technically within the four-week lying-in period Adrian Wilson, Judith Lewis, and others suggest would be considered standard after birth.

The women in this study were more likely to perform up until birth when they were in the provinces than they were in London. Part of this is undoubtedly financial necessity. Siddons performed until she went into labor in her earlier career in the 1770s, as did her mother, Sarah Kemble, who worked her whole career in a touring company.

Dorothy Jordan played until shortly before Fanny’s birth in 1782 while on the Yorkshire circuit, and Tate Wilkinson paints a vivid picture of the determined Mrs. Smith doing the same. Even after they were well established, summer tours were a staple for both Siddons and Jordan, who undertook enormous financial responsibility for their large families;

Jordan gave birth to two of her children in Edinburgh in the 1780s and performed at the

Theatre Royal in Margate during her later pregnancies.

Audiences in London and audiences in the provinces accepted pregnant performers, refuting at least partially narratives that see a sharp delineation between these two populations. Tate Wilkinson’s memoirs make it clear that his audiences regularly saw pregnant performers on the Yorkshire circuit, while in The Itinerant (c.1817), S.W.

Ryley recalls the Mr. and Mrs. Long who toured for many years with their eventual eight children (1:255). Dorothy Jordan’s bad experiences in York in 1791 amidst rumors that she was unmarried might indicate that provincial audiences were more concerned about illegitimacy than their London counterparts, but the condemnation of London audiences during the ensuing season is not substantively different than the condemnation of the

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York audiences; both revised their opinions of Jordan based on an awareness of her private circumstances, recasting her from wife to mistress/prostitute.

6.3 READING THE BODY, THE ROLE, AND THE BODY-IN-ROLE

In her study of costuming on stage, Aoife Monks points to the problematic nature of the “self-expressive costume,” which becomes a referent to the actor’s body or persona rather than the character body/persona and thereby competes for the audience’s attention

(23). Pregnancy is similar: it is unavoidable evidence of the woman as woman or private citizen that can compete with the woman as character. The women in this study offer many examples of how pregnant bodies could be read in relation to a fictional role, and might even inspire the undertaking of new parts and lines of business when their self- expressive bodies are placed in service of the fiction.

Some roles, namely virginal ones in comedy and tragedy, required the audience to suspend their disbelief when a pregnant performer appeared in the role. Henry Bate, for example, did this with Siddons’s Rosalind in 1775. We might consider that Susanna

Mountfort Verbruggen’s audience did this as well with Belinda in The Old Bachelor in

1693. Dorothy Jordan’s London repertoire throughout the 1780s was almost entirely made up of virgins, cross-dressing heroines, and travesty roles like Sir Harry Wildair, and she played them all while visibly pregnant. In other cases, audiences might find the body disruptive for a) reasons of verisimilitude—George Berkeley’s joke about the impropriety

Cato’s daughter keeping a midwife backstage when Anne Oldfield played Marcia in

1713, or b) concerns for the woman’s health—the fear for the actress that distracted the audience while watching Siddons play Jane Shore in 1785. As both women kept

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performing, however these concerns do not seem to have been greater than the appeal of these celebrity actresses.

The pregnant body could also have a productive impact on a specific role or performer. Such an impact seems most likely to take place when a text neither requires nor disallows the possibility of pregnancy entering the fiction. Siddons’s celebrity, so bound up with maternity and the tragic muse, encouraged a conflation of her body and the role of Lady Macbeth during her 1785 pregnancy and ultimately underscored her more sympathetic view of the character as a tragic heroine. Such a reaction showcases the exciting possibilities pregnancy might have to radically alter understandings of an already familiar part, instead of focusing only on how a performer’s body could impact the initial creation of a role.

We have also seen, however, how pregnancy might impact a play’s initial performance. There are compelling reasons to connect the development of Mountfort

Verbruggen’s grotesque line of business to her yearly pregnancies in the early 1690s.

Thomas Southerne, who wrote several of these parts for her, may have had an interest in how her gravid body could heighten the comic effects of these characters on stage.

Several decades later, Theophilus Cibber had a similar thought about using a performer’s pregnancy to increase the pathos of a part when his first wife, Jane Johnson, was pregnant with their last child in 1732. Theophilus cast Jane in the lead role of Charles Johnson’s

Caelia, or the Perjur’d Lover: an unmarried pregnant woman whose lover leaves her to in a brothel, where she dies. Though only performed once, Charles Johnson testified that the audience “[joined] with Caelia in her tears” (“Advertisement to the Reader”). Jane’s

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condition does not appear to have been the problem; her physical condition mirrored that of the fictional character, and added to (or at least did not diminish) the pathos of the part.

6.4 PREGNANCY, CELEBRITY, AND REPUTATION

Kimberley Crouch has suggested that all celebrity actresses had to, essentially, choose from one of two types for their celebrity. They could pattern themselves on female aristocrats, or embrace the persona of the actress as whore. Crouch argues that these larger personas offered power and a certain freedom of behavior: “In the grey area between aristocrat and whore, the actress was sometimes allowed and even forgiven for the freedoms of both” (78). Crouch seems to implicitly place motherhood in the

“aristocrat” category, forcing adherence to yet another less-than-helpful binary about women on the eighteenth-century stage. However, the notion that performances of good maternity or charitable acts could be tools for distancing actresses from negative associations with prostitution, making the women worthy of emulation, is plausible.

Kristina Straub also suggests that “good” maternity stood in opposition to sexual excess, while Felicity Nussbaum’s concept of “exceptional virtue” demonstrates the ways unmarried actresses could claim respectability similar to (or in excess of) their married counterparts. The pregnant body signals the start of maternal performance, but is more subject to appropriation because of its visibility. While pregnant, an actress carried an unmistakable marker of sexuality and gender with her onto the stage.

Far from an inevitably negative impact on a woman’s career, this study finds pregnancy to be a complex site of possibility and appropriation that frequently aided rather than hindered a career. While we can point to negative comments made about a woman’s pregnant performances (George Anne Bellamy and Tate Wilkinson, Anne 276

Oldfield and Jonathan Swift, Dorothy Jordan and the press in 1791), these comments tend to take advantage of the woman’s situation to heighten an already negative or derisive attitude toward them. Pregnancy is not the origin point of the authors’ objections; it is a tool to further them.

Changing attitudes toward Dorothy Jordan’s pregnant body serve as a marker of her wider reputation with audiences. When Jordan was thought to be the wife of Richard

Ford, her body generated sympathy and protective overtures from the audience. In 1791, when she became a royal mistress, her rumored pregnancy became a sign of duplicity and sexual excess. Jordan’s response was to continue performing and fulfilling her professional obligations, allowing this devotion to eventually quell accusations of capricious indifference to her loyal public. Earlier in the century, Susannah Cibber took an entirely different approach. Cibber used her financial resources to absent herself from the theatre entirely during pregnancy in 1749-50. Cibber’s choice points to fears of a possible loss of control over her public image. Her onstage performances of innocent victimhood were charismatic and kept the focus on her history as one of passive victimhood rather than active duplicity or sexual agency. Her small and almost frail figure was hugely integral to these performances. As a powerful force for narrative, however, as well as something that would visibly mark her body, pregnancy would almost certainly be associated with the adultery and illegitimacy that she consciously downplayed on stage. Her body might become an independent stigmatic force that could over-balance the charismatic power of her performances.186 By removing herself from the public eye for a season, Cibber also gave herself an advantage: when she returned,

186 Her performance was so successful, however, that two centuries later passive victimhood remains the dominant trope in Mary Nash’s biography of Mrs. Cibber, despite well-researched evidence to the contrary. 277

audiences were all the more anxious to see her, particularly when pitted against Bellamy and Garrick at Drury Lane.

Being an unmarried mother was not always a sign that one was a bad mother, nor did it keep women offstage during pregnancy as a general rule; by and large, audiences seem to be quite capable of separating an actress’ marital state from her identity as a mother—acknowledging the alternative forms of “exceptional virtue” Felicity Nussbaum suggests actresses helped to create in the public imagination. Jordan was certainly considered a good mother for most of her life, even when her sexuality was decried in

1791, and Anne Oldfield’s refusal to marry was turned into a virtuous sacrifice in one of her biographies.187 The more long lasting and monogamous a relationship, the more likely it would be accepted as a kind of quasi-marriage. Oldfield was apparently loyal to both her partners; Jordan was publicly touted as the wife in all but name to first Ford and later Clarence. Both women’s reputations as good mothers helped them gain public acceptance and support and distance them from the loose morals they might otherwise be accused of having. In contrast, while George Anne Bellamy’s early affairs were mostly indulged, the Meretriciad suggests that taking up with West Digges instead of devoting herself to motherhood was a step too far. Susannah Cibber was the mistress of a married man, which would complicate any attempt to use her maternity as a way of normalizing their relationship.

In contrast, we can see women and/or their defenders appropriating pregnancy as a positive, charismatic force in their careers. Hannah Pritchard was praised for being a

187 The anonymous author of Authentick Memoirs of Mrs. Ann Oldfield charged: “Blush, ye rigid virtuous Women…who being left Guardians to your Children, marry second Husbands, and thoughtless of your first Brood, suffer your Spouses, for the sake of a Bedfellow, to waste your Childrens Patrimony...” (27)

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good mother, as were Siddons, Jordan, and Anne Oldfield. While “good” maternity seems most visible in posthumous sources for Pritchard and Oldfield, it was an explicit and necessary part of both Siddons’s and Jordan’s public personas.

Sarah Siddons used her maternity to further her career most explicitly, displaying her children at key moments to justify her career and to bolster her onstage performances of maternity. Her commitment to both her profession and her family served her well, and performances during visible pregnancy were seen as indicative of her personal devotion to the public. Dorothy Jordan’s performances during pregnancy in the 1780s and in

1796/7 also inspired a narrative of her devotion to audiences. She performed after taking a fright in 1788, which subsequently was said to have led to her “abortion,” and continued performing during her 1790/91 pregnancy despite being ill and suffering a carriage accident. In 1796, she nursed her daughter through small pox and raced back to the theatre for Kemble’s debut as Hamlet, in which she played Ophelia. The sheer amount of physical exertion Jordan employed to meet her professional obligations won her considerable admiration. Hannah Pritchard’s reputation for stability and professionalism may have been similarly bolstered by her continued appearances during pregnancy (especially in contrast to Bellamy and Cibber’s absences in 1749-50); and in

1713, Oldfield appeared as long as her body would allow, honoring the public craze for

Cato.

Narratives of professional devotion reinforced existing power dynamics between performers and their patrons. The patrons, in turn, praised women for their duty, and

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could become advocates for protecting the women and their health.188 Audience understanding of what this protection entailed came from both medical and popular understandings of pregnancy. Performance during visible pregnancy could also generate sympathy and support for the woman as provider for her family. Siddons and Jordan claimed this role explicitly (Jordan even after she became a royal mistress). The widely known private circumstances of Oldfield in 1713 and Mountfort Verbruggen in 1693 might similarly bestow the mantle of relict and sole provider on these women in the minds of audience members.

6.5 PREGNANCY AND SOCIAL CLASS

Pregnancy and birth were an occasion for accurate or aspirational performances of social class, especially with the stratification of birth rituals that took place during the latter half of the century. Siddons’s health during pregnancy was of interest to Queen

Charlotte in 1785, and Jordan and Siddons were both written of as participating in the aristocratic birth rituals of laying straw and wrapping doorknockers in the 1780s. Both used male accoucheurs for all of their London births: Jordan was attended by royal physicians in the 1790s, while in 1785, Sarah Siddons used the same Dr. Ford who delivered the Queen’s last child in 1783. In her Apology (1785), George Anne Bellamy places herself at the forefront of the royal and aristocratic move to use male accoucheurs at mid-century. After her difficult 1756 birth, Bellamy writes that she was placed under

188 “Mrs. Siddons’s pregnancy makes it necessary that the Drury-lane Managers should reap their harvest while they can. Hence the Siddons, with a chearfulness[sic] that does her and her husband great honour, has consented to play as often as possible between this and Christmas, by which time she expects to be confined to her chamber.” (MCLA, Sept. 24, 1785)

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Dr. Ford’s care in Bristol—the same Dr. Ford who would become accoucheur to the

Queens of England and of Tragedy some thirty years later.

For those who did not perform during pregnancy, this decision also had potential socio-economic implications. Susanna Mountfort may not have performed late in her

1689/90-1692 pregnancies, possibly because her husband could temporarily support the family on his acting and playwriting earnings. In 1709, Oldfield had a new and more lucrative contract with Owen Swiney to look forward to, as well as financial support from

Arthur Maynwaring when she stopped performing two and half months before the end of the season. In 1720, she had considerable personal wealth, as well as the support of

Charles Churchill, to enable temporary retirement during her last pregnancy. Susannah

Cibber’s large salary and connection to William Sloper meant that she was never forced to continue performing during ill health, pregnancy, or times of strife at the theatre. This financial independence gave her unprecedented agency to shape her own career.

After Birth

When considering the lives of these working mothers, we have a few glimpses of the practicalities of life coexisting next to professional demands. Bellamy’s memoir showcases the kinds of social performance enabled by the use of prominent public figures as godparents, claiming that the godparents to her daughter, Caroline, served to legitimate her relationship with John Calcraft in the public imagination. Siddons also took advantage of the way godparents reflected social networks: Kitty Clive mocked that

Siddons had the “‘whole world…to stand God fathers and God mothers’ for her children”

(qtd Crouch 70). Naming patterns also created and reflected community: Clarence and

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Jordan named each of their children for the Duke’s royal siblings; on a more personal level, Mrs. Siddons named her last daughter Cecilia in honor of Hester Piozzi’s daughter.

Both Siddons and Jordan brought their young children to the theatre with them.

Siddons’s son Henry recalled the kindness of Mrs. Jordan to him as a young child when he would meet her in the green room, and Jordan generally had the younger FitzClarence children with her in London. From Mary Tickell, we know Siddons breastfed back stage after giving birth to George. We do not know if Jordan breastfed regularly, but she may have done so with Sophia for a time, as she refers to the difficulties of weaning in a letter to Clarence and there is a two-year gap between the births of Sophia and Henry Edward.

Siddons wrote to Elizabeth Barrington of her exasperation with her children’s desire for her company while she was on tour, but to both her friend and her audience justified these separations as necessary in her role of sole provider.189 Jordan frequently missed performances to tend her sick children, or her sick Duke, in person. When she did so,

Jordan could deploy notions of good mothering and “natural” maternal/womanly feeling to justify her actions and avoid criticism for shirking her professional duties. This was a far cry from 1791, when her body became a site for visual and textual depictions of sexual excess, and her absence was construed as evidence of a previously hidden capricious nature.

Though first and foremost rivals, Siddons and Jordan could find common ground as mothers. When Maria Siddons was severely ill in 1798, Mrs. Jordan offered to play for

189 “I count the minutes till I return to my poor children whose tender reproaches for my long stay (Silly Girls for whom do I stay?) are sometimes too much for me...I shall be a thousand pounds the richer for my Irish expedition, but those dear silly girls of mine who know no wants while I am with them, think not how soon they may lose me, and how necessary it is to make some provision for that inevitable day" (5 January 1794; Barrington Papers ADD/MS 73736 35/28) 282

Mrs. Siddons so that she might stay at home to nurse her daughter. In 1788, after Siddons lost young Eliza Ann and suffered a miscarriage in the same month (both of which were reported in the press), Jordan’s announcement of Siddons’s May benefit was remarked upon in the papers:

If there be one mark of the national character more honorable than another, it is that which shews itself in the public reward of public merit. That the latter marks Mrs. Jordan, who will deny? ... After the Play, Mrs. Jordan came forward and as a pattern of “good Sisterhood,” gave out herself—“the Benefit of Mrs. Siddons! (World, 3 May 1788)

Though unspoken in any explicit manner, it seems that this expression of support from one mother to another generated a sympathetic response around both women as their commonalities, rather than their rivalries, took temporary precedence in the minds of audience members.

6.6 PREGNANCY, NARRATIVE, AND THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION

Throughout this project I have offered examples of pregnancy’s potent force in the cultural imagination. From the tale of Mrs. Oldfield displaying Arthur Maynwaring,

Jr. on stage after The Distrest Mother to George Anne Bellamy’s use of pregnancy to highlight her loss of agency in her romantic relationships in her Apology, pregnancy is clearly a powerful way to elicit pity and public support on the pages of memoir.190 It is so powerful, in fact, that writers seem to get carried away when speaking of it. Bellamy makes wholly false claims about the way her pregnancy shaped the 1753-54 Covent

190 It is not simply on the page that this happens, however; the constant requests by “ladies of quality” for Oldfield’s appearances as Andromache in The Distrest Mother after Arthur Maynwaring’s death seems to point to a genuine interest in reading Oldfield’s private circumstances through the fiction of the play. 283

Garden repertoire, while James Boaden once invented a pregnancy for Mrs. Siddons to justify the failure of a play.

In his Life of Mrs. Jordan, James Boaden offers an eyewitness account of Mrs.

Siddons’s performance of the titular character in Robert Dodsley’s Cleone. Boaden tells us that this revival (of a play George Anne Bellamy made a success in 1758) failed utterly. Rather than blaming the play, or changed audience tastes, or any aspect of casting or production, however, Boaden confides that it was a pregnancy of Mrs. Siddons that made the play unbearable. Her enactment of maternal grief “a little month before her own confinement” was simply too much for the audience, who could not bear to see Siddons so distraught over the loss of a child (1:103).191 The story is convincing on the page—so much so that historians repeat it in several recent sources—but it is plainly impossible.

Siddons was not pregnant in 1786-87 when this revival took place, unless it was a pregnancy that elicited no public comment whatsoever, and required no break in her schedule for a birth or miscarriage. Boaden’s mistake demonstrates the strong ties between Siddons as performer and Siddons as mother, and his awareness of the affective potential of the pregnant form. Apparently casting back his mind to find a reason for the play’s failure, he applied her pregnancy of the year before to the circumstance of this play. In doing so, he avoided casting any blame on Siddons or the managers for the play’s failure; instead, it was the sensitivity of the audience that could not bear the verisimilitude Siddons’s body added to that of her character.

191 Boaden’s biographies frequently include stories about other performers; this story about Siddons happens to be one included in his biography of Jordan. Interestingly, while he mocks critics in the Jordan biography for suggesting that Cleone failed because of changed audience tastes, that is the exact reason he offered when writing of Cleone in his Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons four years earlier. 284

6.7 OPPORTUNITIES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

At the beginning of this conclusion I pointed out ways that my research into pregnancy on stage might connect to researchers working on other topics. For example, reassignment of parts during pregnancy and lying-in could hold significant implications for celebrity and repertory studies—telling us something about individual celebrity in the public imagination, audience taste, and the conditions under which minor players could advance their careers. Pregnancy is certainly an overlooked factor in repertory studies (cf. how Susannah Cibber’s 1749-50 pregnancy impacted the 1750-51 rivalries), and attention to its potential impact would provide us with a greater total understanding of the repertory system.

The basic aim of this project, to break down some assumptions about women’s bodies on the eighteenth century stage, has connections to other research on women and on bodies. One potential topic for further exploration would be other actor bodies that do not “fit” their character bodies. For example, Milhous and Hume’s commentary in

Producible Interpretation on the casting of The Wives’ Excuse showcases other assumptions about verisimilitude or decorum surrounding the female body: suggesting that Mrs. Barry was inappropriately cast as Mrs. Friendall because of her age (a staggering 33) perpetuates the idea that women were valued solely as objects and decoration on stage, instead of being creative agents whose acting abilities and lines of business were at least considered in the balance when assigning parts. I am not denying that physical attractiveness was a major component of celebrity, particularly in an early career, but to perpetuate the idea that only young, lithe female bodies ever played young, lithe, female roles damages our credibility as scholars when we have considerable

285

evidence to the contrary. Moreover, we know audiences accepted, or at least did not riot against, Betterton’s septuagenarian body in Hamlet, and we know Hannah Pritchard and

Susannah Cibber played virginal parts until at least age fifty. Studies of aging and disability on stage could bring greater nuance to our understandings of how and when and why audiences expected actor and character to coincide, and how and when and why they forgave or disregarded these considerations.

There is still much more to be said, however, directly on the topic of pregnancy on the eighteenth-century stage. One obvious avenue for further research is to query how women who were not celebrity performers dealt with pregnancy, and what role the management played in accommodating them. With the exception of David Garrick’s offer to help support the Siddons family in 1775, I have no evidence that any woman was offered paid leave during late pregnancy or her confinement that would alleviate the necessity of performing as much as she was able. It is possible, however, that a further analysis of treasurers’ books or benefit performances would reveal less obvious forms of support. For example, a new or expectant mother being allowed a solo benefit or splitting her benefit night with fewer people than normal would be one way of helping her.

Another kind of informal support might be the appearance of a prominent player in a benefit performance for a less prominent company member. While some degree of this always took place as a collegial practice between company members, attentiveness to the personal circumstances of more minor players may uncover practices for pregnant women similar to those for injured or older performers—special benefits falling outside the regular schedule, or benefits during the regular season with a particularly strong cast.

286

Another line of inquiry would expand my analysis of pregnancy’s impact on repertoire outward to encompass more awareness of how other theatres responded to pregnancy and pregnancy-related absences. For example, how did Covent Garden prepare to maximize their possible profits upon learning that the Siddons will be absent for two months? Was there an identifiable difference in the way pregnancy was handled in one house over another? Very few of the women in this study performed at Covent Garden during pregnancy—is this is any way significant? Moving beyond London, we could explore pregnancy on stage in the provinces amongst women who worked on various touring circuits, or who spent their careers in Dublin or Edinburgh. This geographical move could continue to be expanded outward to encompass women on stage throughout the emerging British Empire.

We could also extend this study to include questions about creating the illusion of pregnancy on stage with props, gesture, or costuming. Several parts, such as Imoinda in

Oroonoko and Statira in The Rival Queens, include a pregnancy that is specifically discussed in the text of the play. How, if at all, were these pregnancies created on stage?

Only on two occasions (and never in London) is it possible that women in this study played these parts during visible pregnancy, which may indicate some generalizable rule about pregnant characters on stage that I am as yet unable to formulate.192

Finally, I might compare the experiences of eighteenth-century pregnant performers with female celebrities today whose bodies are monitored for telltale baby

192 Dorothy Jordan played Statira once in July of 1782 while touring in Yorkshire; she was still performing under the name Miss Frances at the time, and her condition may not have been visible as Wilkinson indicates that the name change to Mrs. Jordan (in August) coincided with the visibility of her pregnancy. In Bath, Sarah Siddons played Imoinda in Oroonoko on 11 March 1779, about three and a half months before giving birth. 287

bumps on the covers of fashion magazines. Such an analysis would be modeled on

Joseph Roach’s It, in which he posits a number of connections between celebrity then and now which creates what he calls the deep eighteenth century.

Regardless of how directly invested one might be in the topic of pregnancy on stage in the long eighteenth century in Britain, it is both undeniable and unavoidable as a context for performers and performances throughout the century. It illuminates repertory and celebrity studies, forces us to consider actor bodies as a factor in audiences’s reception of performance, and offers to our view the first generations of public, social, pregnant bodies—bodies we are still perpetually interested in today from legal, medical, social, and performance perspectives.

288

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A Note on Newspaper Sources

All cited newspapers were accessed through the British Library’s Burney Collection. The individual titles are as follows, with abbreviations, if used:

Caledonian Mercury (CM) Daily Courant (DC) Daily Journal (DJ) Evening Mail (EM) General Advertiser (GA) Lloyd’s Evening Post Lloyd’s Evening Post and British Chronicle (LEPDC) London Chronicle (LC) London Daily Post and General Advertiser (LDPGA) London Packet or New Lloyd’s Evening Post Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser (MCLA) Morning Herald Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser (MHDA) Morning Post (MP) Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (MPDA) Morning Post and Fashionable World (MPFW)

304

Oracle and Public Advertiser (OPA) Public Advertiser (PA) St. James Chronicle/St. James Chronicle or the British Evening Post (SJC) The Star Sunday Reformer Telegraph Times True Briton The Weekly Miscellany (WM) Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal (USWJ) Whitehall Evening Post (WEP) World World and Fashionable Advertiser (WFA)

305

APPENDIX A: REPERTORIES DURING PREGNANCY

This appendix offers the confirmed repertoires of each woman in the study during the final three months of each of her pregnancies. When the whole repertoire is not known, individual parts that can be confirmed are given.

In the case of the earliest women, I offer more than simply a three-month window before birth, as well as any roles played after the woman returned. These dates can help pinpoint a birth date when some uncertainty exists. Some of these tables are also in the individual chapters, but I repeat them here for additional reference.

1. Susanna Mountfort Verbruggen

Susanna Mountfort (Winter 1689/90; alternate date 27 April 1690194) 4 December 1689 Morayama Don Sebastian January 1690 Feliciana The Successful Strangers

Edward Mountfort (baptized[?] 1 April 1691) 21 October 1690 Phaedra Amphitryon 1 November 1690 Phaedra Amphitryon November 1690 Sir Anthony Love Sir Anthony Love Mid-April 1691 Florella Greenwich Park

Elizabeth Mountfort (22 March 1692) December 1691 Mrs. Wittwoud The Wives’ Excuse

Mary Mountfort (Late March 1693; baptized 27 April 1693) 2 January 1693 Prudentia A Duke and No Duke195 Late February 1693 Lady Susan Malepert The Maid's Last Prayer196 Early March 1693 Belinda The Old Bachelor April 1693 Annabella A Very Good Wife May 1693 Catchat The Female Virtuosos

Lewis Verbruggen (17 May 1703) 18 September 1702 Bellemante^ Emperor of the Moon 20 October Achmet Ibrahim

194 According to Highfill and Burnim (15:137). 195 On 2 January, Susannah may have played in a revival of A Duke and No Duke for the King and Queen. She had held the part of Prudentia since her early days with the company in 1684; now a leading lady, however, it is possible she had given this part up to another performer. 196 Hume and Milhous note that the play was published particularly quickly, in about two weeks, as it was advertised as published on 13 March. 306

23 October Lurewell Constant Couple 26 October Louisa Love Makes a Man 13 November Berintha The Relapse 14 November Panura^ The Island Princess 26 November Hypolita She Wou'd and She Wou'd Not 8 December Gillian The Bath, or the Western Lass 1 January 1703 Panura^ The Island Princess 2 January Charlotte Oroonoko Early/mid-January Hillaria Tunbridge Walks 3 February Lurewell Constant Couple 12 February Hillaria Tunbridge Walks 18 February Hellena The Rover 10 April Mrs. Whimsey The Fair Example 12 April Mrs. Whimsey The Fair Example 13 April Mrs. Whimsey The Fair Example 19 April Bellemante^ Emperor of the Moon 27 April Charlotte Oroonoko * 15 or 18 May Berintha The Relapse * 28 May Lady Brumpton The Funeral*

^ Bellemante and Panura were parts of Susanna’s from the late 1680s; it is unclear if she was still performing them or if they had passed to other company members.

2. Anne Oldfield

Arthur Maynwaring (June 1709) 3 March 1709 Mrs. Sullen The Beaux's Strategem 14 March Lady Lurewell The Constant Couple 15 March Alinda The Pilgrim 31 March Lady Harriet The Funeral 16 April Mrs. Sullen The Strategem

Unknown child by Arthur Maynwaring, Sr. (Mid-May 1713) 29 January 1713 Victoria The Humors of the Army 2 February Victoria The Humors of the Army 3 February Victoria The Humors of the Army 4 February Victoria The Humors of the Army 5 February Victoria The Humors of the Army 7 February Lady Betty The Careless Husband 10 February Andromache The Distrest Mother 12 February Caelia The Humorous Lieutenant 19 February Emelia Cinna's Conspiracy 21 February Emelia Cinna's Conspiracy 23 February Emelia Cinna's Conspiracy 307

28 February Scornful Lady The Scornful Lady 9 March Anna Bullen Virtue Betray'd 14 March Queen Mary The Albion Queens 17 March Estifania Rule a Wife and Have a Wife 24 March Leonora Sir Courtly Nice 9 April Lady Dainty The Double Gallant 10 April Laetitia The Old Batchelor 14 April Marcia Cato 15 April Marcia Cato 16 April Marcia Cato 17 April Marcia Cato 18 April Marcia Cato 21 April Marcia Cato 22 April Marcia Cato 23 April Marcia Cato 24 April Marcia Cato 25 April Marcia Cato 28 April Marcia Cato 29 April Marcia Cato 30 April Marcia Cato 1 May Marcia Cato 2 May Marcia Cato 5 May Marcia Cato 6 May Marcia Cato 7 May Marcia Cato 8 May Marcia Cato 9 May Marcia Cato

Charles Churchill (Fall 1720) Did not perform between June 1720 and 2 January 1721

3. Susannah Maria Cibber

Susannah Cibber (born and died February 1735) 5 October 1734 Psyche197 Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 10 October Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 12 October Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 14 October Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 15 October Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 16 October Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 17 October Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 19 October Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 22 November Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 23 November Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 3 December Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan

197 This is the only time Cibber’s name appears in the cast list. A Miss Young is listed in the printed version of the play, dated 1734, so might have replaced Cibber sometime between 10 October and December. Mary Nash suggests that Susannah did not perform at all after February, and that the latest she appeared was 19 December. Columbine Courtezan continued to be performed occasionally throughout the season. 308

6 December Psyche Cupid and Psyche or Columbine Courtezan 12 December Spirit/Italian Lady Merlin, or The Devil of Stone Henge 13 December Spirit/Italian Lady Merlin, or The Devil of Stone Henge 14 December Spirit/Italian Lady Merlin, or The Devil of Stone Henge 16 December Spirit/Italian Lady Merlin, or The Devil of Stone Henge 17 December Spirit/Italian Lady Merlin, or The Devil of Stone Henge 18 December Spirit/Italian Lady Merlin, or The Devil of Stone Henge 19 December Psyche Cupid and Psyche, Columbine Courtezan

Caius Gabriel (5 April 1736) 12 January 1736 Zara Zara 13 January Zara Zara 14 January Zara Zara 15 January Zara Zara 16 January Zara Zara 17 January Zara Zara 19 January Zara Zara 20 January Zara Zara 21 January Zara Zara 22 January Zara Zara 23 January Zara Zara 24 January Zara Zara 26 January Zara Zara 27 January Zara Zara 9 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 10 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 11 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 12 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 13 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 14 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 16 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 3 March Indiana The Conscious Lovers 13 March Amanda Love's Last Shift 15 March Indiana The Conscious Lovers 16 March Amanda Love's Last Shift 18 March Amanda Love's Last Shift 23 March Andromache The Distrest Mother 27 March Amanda Love's Last Shift 30 March Amanda Love's Last Shift

Maria Susannah (Molly; daughter of William Sloper, but known as Miss Cibber) 26 February 1739 Did not perform 1738-39 season.

Charles Sloper (fall 1749) Did not perform in the 1749-50 season.

309

4. Hannah Pritchard

Judith (13 July 1731) Not yet performing.

Tamara Pritchard (baptized 24 January 1738) 30 August 1737 Mrs. Foresight Love for Love 3 September Altea Rule a Wife and Have a Wife 6 September Flareit Love's Last Shift 15 September Araminta The Old Bachelor 27 September Patch The Busy Body 8 October Araminta The Confederacy 13 October Araminta The Confederacy 15 October Araminta The Confederacy 18 October Araminta The Confederacy 24 October Belina The Mother-in-Law 25 October Lucy The Beggar's Opera 26 October Lucy The Beggar's Opera 28 October Lucy The Beggar's Opera 27 October Lady Fidget The Country Wife 29 October Lady Fidget The Country Wife 2 November Mrs. Foresight Love for Love 3 November Lady Fidget The Country Wife 11 November Clarinda The Double Gallant 15 November Doll Common The Alchemist 16 November Lady Haughty The Silent Woman 18 November Araminta The Confederacy Theatres closed 21 November-2 January for death of Prince George of Denmark 25 January 1738 Lucy The Beggar’s Opera

Hannah Mary Pritchard (baptized 13 April 1739) 3 January 1739 Phaedra Amphytron 5 January Phaedra Amphytron 6 January Phaedra Amphytron 8 January Clarinda The Double Gallant 10 January Lucy The Beggar's Opera 12 January Araminta The Confederacy 17 January Peggy King and Miller of Mansfield 22 January Flariet Love's Last Shift 22 January Lady Loverule The Devil to Pay 27 January Clarinda The Double Gallant 29 January Phaedra Amphytron 30 January Duchess of York Richard III 30 January Lady Loverule The Devil to Pay 31 January Duchess of York Richard III 31 January Dorcas The Mock Doctor 1 February Isabella The Conscious Lovers 2 February Isabella The Conscious Lovers 5 February Isabella The Conscious Lovers 6 February Pert Man of Mode 12 February Pert Man of Mode 310

23 February Mrs. Foresight Love for Love 5 March Ruth The Committee 12 March Lady Loverule The Devil to Pay 13 March Mrs. Conquest Lady's Last Stake 13 March Lady Loverule The Devil to Pay 16 March Lady Loverule The Devil to Pay 17 March Lady Loverule The Devil to Pay 20 March Doll Common The Alchemist 26 March Doll Common The Alchemist 27 March Lady Loverule The Devil to Pay 30 March Mrs. Foresight Love for Love 3 April Mrs. Foresight Love for Love 5 April Lucy The Beggar's Opera 9 April Edging The Careless Husband

John Pritchard (baptized 17 June 1750) 10 March 1750 Emelia Othello 12 March Horatia The Roman Father 13 March Isabella The Fatal Marriage* 15 March Queen Hamlet 17 March Mrs. Sullen The Stratagem 19 March Lady Betty Modish The Careless Husband 24 March Clarinda The Suspicious Husband 26 March Rosetta The Foundling 27 March Isabella The Fatal Marriage 29 March Beatrice Much Ado About Nothing 31 March Merope Merope 2 April Cleopatra All for Love 3 April Lady Brute The Provok'd Wife 5 April Lady Comus 7 April Horatia The Roman Father 17 April Lady Townly The Provok’d Husband 19 April Queen Hamlet 21 April Mrs. Sullen The Stratagem 23 April Lady Macbeth Macbeth 24 April Horatia The Roman Father 25 April Merope Merope 26 April Cleopatra All for Love 28 April Lady Betty Modish The Careless Husband 30 April Lady Brumpton The Funeral 1 May Berintha The Relapse 7 May Lady Brute The Provok'd Wife 8 May Millwood The London Merchant 11 May Horatia The Roman Father 22 May Clarinda The Suspicious Husband

5. George Anne Bellamy

George Metham (17 December 1749) Did not perform until 23 January 1750. 311

Caroline Elizabeth Calcraft (c. 28 February 1754) 30 November 1753 Calista The Fair Penitent 15 December Celia Volpone 3 January 1754 Eudicia The Siege of Damascus 8 January Desdemona Othello 10 January Andromache The Distrest Mother 12 January Andromache The Distrest Mother 17 January Andromache The Distrest Mother 19 January Andromache The Distrest Mother 7 February Andromache The Distrest Mother 14 February Monimia The Orphan 15 February Andromache The Distrest Mother 16 February Andromache The Distrest Mother 21 February Athenais Theodosius 23 February Fulvia Constantine 25 February Fulvia Constantine 27 February Fulvia Constantine 28 February Fulvia Constantine

Henry Calcraft (late summer 1756) Did not perform until March 1757.

6. Sarah Siddons

Henry Siddons (4 October 1774) Summer 1774 Belvidera Venice Preserv’d Summer Calista The Fair Penitent

Sarah Martha (Sally, 5 November 1775) August 1775 Rosalind As You Like It

Maria (1 July 1779, Bath) 11 March 1779 Imoinda Oroonoko 16 March Philaster Bellario 25 March Princess Law of Lombardy 15 April Imogen Cymbeline 24 April Miss Aubrey Fashionable Lover 29 April Queen Elizabeth Richard III 1 May198 4 May Indiana Conscious Lovers 8 May Euphrasia Grecian Daughter 8 May Emmeline Edgar and Emmeline 15 May Sigismunda Tancred and Sigismunda 20 May Lady Randolph Douglas 29 May Jane Shore Jane Shore 1 June Emmelina Fatal Falsehood

198 The evening’s play is not recorded, but Siddons spoke a Monody on Garrick after the main piece. 312

Frances Emilia (baptized 26 April 1781, Bath) 13 January 1781 Lady Townly Provok’d Husband 31 January Mrs. Beverley The Gamester 6 February Isabella Isabella or the Fatal Marriage 17 February Jane Shore Jane Shore 22 February Lady Brumpton The Funeral 24 February Miss Hardcastle She Stoops to Conquer 27 February Indiana The Conscious Lovers 1 March Cleora The Bondman 6 March Bisarre The Inconstant 12 May Deianira The Royal Suppliants

Eliza Ann (2 June 1782, Bath)199 5 March 1782 Mrs. Beverley The Gamester 7 March Beatrice Much Ado About Nothing 9 March Isabella Measure for Measure 21 March Countess of Narbonne Count of Narbonne 4 April Lady Townly The Provok’d Husband 18 April Constance King John 27 April Elfrida Elfrida 15 May Mrs. Belville School for Wives 21 May Andromache The Distrest Mother 28 May Eleanora Edward and Eleanora 1 June Cecilia Chapter of Accidents 17 June Sigismunda Tancred and Sigismunda 17 June Nell The Devil to Pay 19 June Belville School for Wives

George John Siddons (26/27 December 1785, London) 17 September 1785 Desdemona Othello 22 September Lady Randolph Douglas 24 September Zara The Mourning Bride 29 September Margaret of Anjou Earl of Warwick 1 October Lady Macbeth Macbeth 6 October Sigismunda Tancred and Sigismunda 8 October Belvidera Venice Preserv'd 15 October Euphrasia Grecian Daughter 20 October Duchess of Braganza Braganza 22 October Isabella Measure for Measure 27 October Matilda The Carmelite 2 November Isabella Measure for Measure 5 November Duchess of Braganza Braganza 8 November Jane Shore Jane Shore 12 November Mrs. Beverly The Gamester 15 November Lady Randolph Douglas 18 November Tragic Muse Jubilee

199 This repertoire is compiled from newspaper clippings in the Kathleen Barker collection at the University of Bristol. 313

19 November Lady Macbeth Macbeth 22 November Constance King John 25 November Tragic Muse Jubilee 26 November Mrs. Lovemore The Way to Keep Him 29 November Mrs. Lovemore The Way to Keep Him 30 November Mrs. Lovemore The Way to Keep Him

Cecilia Siddons (25 July 1794, London) 21 April 1794 Lady Macbeth Macbeth 22 April Lady Macbeth Macbeth 23 April Lady Macbeth Macbeth 24 April Lady Macbeth Macbeth 26 April Hermione The Distrest Mother 28 April Lady Macbeth Macbeth 30 April Lady Macbeth Macbeth 1 May Queen Katherine Henry VIII 2 May Lady Macbeth Macbeth 5 May Lady Macbeth Macbeth 7 May Lady Macbeth Macbeth 12 May Lady Macbeth Macbeth 14 May Queen Katherine Henry VIII 19 May Lady Macbeth Macbeth 22 May Mrs. Beverley The Gamester 26 May Lady Macbeth Macbeth 29 May Mrs. Beverley The Gamester 2 June Lady Macbeth Macbeth 4 June Mrs. Beverley The Gamester 6 June Matilda (Lady Randolph) Douglas

7. Dorothy Jordan200

Fanny Daly (November 1782) 11 July 1782 Calista The Fair Penitent 15 July Countess of Rutland The Earl of Essex 17 July Statira The Rival Queens 22 July Euphrasia The Grecian Daughter 24 July Ophelia Hamlet 26 July Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 29 July Rachel The Fair American 31 July Macheath The Beggar’s Opera 5 August Indiana The Conscious Lovers 5 August Adonis Poor Vulcan 7 August Jane Shore Jane Shore 9 August Venus King Arthur 17 August Calista201 The Fair Penitent 19 August Priscilla Tomboy The Romp

200 For now, I have included only her repertoire prior to births of her surviving children, simply because of the difficulty of determining how visible or not pregnancies were that resulted in miscarriage. 201 Began appearing as Mrs. Jordan; before this point, she is credited as Miss Frances. 314

20 August Countess of Rutland The Earl of Essex 21 August Adonis Poor Vulcan 22 August Arionelli The Son-in-Law 23 August Rachel The Fair American 26 August Macheath The Beggar’s Opera 28 August Hermione The Distressed Mother 28 August Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 2 September Calista The Fair Penitent 6 September Jane Shore Jane Shore 11 September Macheath The Beggar’s Opera Revers’d 13 September Countess of Rutland The Earl of Essex 14 September Hermione The Distressed Mother 17 September Indiana The Conscious Lovers 17 September Arionelli The Son-in-Law 21 September Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 23 September Adelaide The Count of Narbonne 24 September Calista The Fair Penitent 26 September Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 27 September Arionelli The Son-in-Law 28 September Indiana The Conscious Lovers 4 October Mrs. Rackett The Belle’s Stratagem 5 October Ophelia Hamlet 7 October Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 8 October Lady Nell Know Your Own Mind 9 October Lady Teazle School for Scandal 11 October Rachel The Fair American 12 October Lady Alton The English Merchant 14 October Calista The Fair Penitent 15 October Indiana The Conscious Lovers 15 October Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 16 October Rachel The Fair American 16 October Arionelli The Son-in-Law 18 October Arionelli The Son-in-Law 21 October Queen Elizabeth Richard III 21 October Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 22 October Ophelia Hamlet 22 October Queen Dollilolly Tom Thumb 23 October Lady Alton The English Merchant 25 October Amelia Summer Amusement 30 October Arpasia Tamerlane 1 November Lady Nell Know Your Own Mind

Dorothea (Dodee) Ford (Late July/August 1787) 27 April 1787 Hippolita She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not 1 May202 Lucy The Virgin Unmask’d c. 4 June Peggy The Country Girl

202 Jordan ended her season early after becoming ill. On 4 May, Mrs. Wilson appeared for her in The Country Girl, and Mrs. Forster filled in as Miss Prue in Love for Love (8 May) and Miss Hoyden in A Trip to Scarborough (16 May). A Mrs. Kennedy from Covent Garden appeared as Hippolita in She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not on 22 May. 315

c. 7 June Hippolita She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not c. 7 June Lucy The Virgin Unmask’d c. 11 June Miss Hoyden A Trip to Scarborough c. 11 June Roxalana The Sultan 13 June Viola Twelfth Night 13 June Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 16 June Rosa The Strangers at Home 18 June Miss Prue Love for Love 18 June Lady Rackett Three Weeks After Marriage 20 June Viola Twelfth Night 20 June Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 22 June Peggy The Country Girl 5 July Rosa The Strangers at Home 5 July Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 9 July Bisarre The Inconstant 12 July Portia Merchant of Venice 12 July Peggy The Country Girl 14 July Peggy The Country Girl 14 July Lady Rackett Three Weeks after Marriage 16 July Bisarre The Inconstant 16 July Lucy The Virgin Unmask’d 17 July Priscilla Tomboy The Romp

Unknown child (c.27 October 1788)203 18 September 1788 Sir Harry Wildair The Constant Couple 18 September Roxalana The Sultan 23 September Miss Hoyden A Trip to Scarborough 23 September Matilda Richard Coeur de Lion 4 October Viola Twelfth Night 6 October Miss Hoyden A Trip to Scarborough 6 October Matilda Richard Coeur de Lion 11 October Miss Prue Love for Love 11 October Matilda Richard Coeur de Lion 13 October Sir Harry Wildair The Constant Couple 13 October Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 18 October Viola Twelfth Night 18 October Matilda Richard Coeur de Lion 22 October Hippolyta She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not 24 October Viola Twelfth Night 24 October Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 27 October Sir Harry Wildair The Constant Couple

Lucy Hester Ford (28 September 1789) 8 July 1789 Sir Harry Wildair The Constant Couple 8 July Nell The Devil to Pay

203 It is unclear if Jordan carried this child to full term or not (several biographers suggest it was a stillborn or short-lived boy, but I have yet to come across a source for this information). The birth seems to be a surprise, which would argue for a premature labor; that she was pregnant at all may have been a surprise for the audience. I include the repertory for completeness. 316

14 July Peggy The Country Girl 16 July Sir Harry Wildair The Constant Couple 16 July Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 20 July Bisarre The Inconstant 20 July Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 22 July Rosalind As You Like It 22 July Lady Bab Maid of the Oaks204 27 July Viola Twelfth Night 28 July205 29 July206 31 July Beatrice The Pannel 31 July Priscilla Tomboy The Romp 3 August Bisarre The Inconstant 3 August Lucy The Virgin Umask’d 5-7 August207

George FitzClarence (29 January 1794) Did not perform until July 1794; Drury Lane remained closed for construction until March 1794.

Sophia FitzClarence (4 March 1795) 25 November 1794 Lady Contest The Wedding Day 26 November Lydia Languish The Rivals 29 November Mrs. Goodly Nobody 1 December Mrs. Goodly Nobody 2 December Lady Contest The Wedding Day 5 December Miss Hoyden Trip to Scarborough 6 December Mrs. Goodly Nobody 9 December Nell The Devil to Pay 10 December Corinna The Confederacy 12 December Helena All's Well that Ends Well 15 December Lady Contest The Wedding Day 17 December Miss Hoyden Trip to Scarborough 26 December Roxalana The Sultan 3 January 1795 Beatrice The Pannel 6 January Miss Hoyden Trip to Scarborough 6 January Nell The Devil to Pay 7 January Lucy The Virgin Unmask’d 8 January Miss Prue Love for Love 9 January Beatrice The Pannel 14 January Beatrice The Pannel208 16 April Amanthis The Child of Nature 16 April Cowslip The Agreeable Surprise

204 Advertised on 20 July. Jordan’s mother died on 22 July, so this performance may not have taken place. 205 Advertised as playing “In Favourite Characters” but without specifics. 206 Advertised as playing “In Favourite Characters” but without specifics. 207 In Glasgow, no roles known. 208 On 15 January, Miss Collins filled in for Jordan as Corinna in The Confederacy and the audience were warned of an indisposition of Jordan’s. She did not appear again until mid-April. 317

Henry Edward FitzClarence (8 March 1797) 24 November 1796 Corinna Confederacy 30 November Nell The Devil to Pay 1 December Amanthis The Child of Nature 3 December Beatrice The Pannel 5 December Ophelia Hamlet 8 December Nell The Devil to Pay 9 December Lady Contest The Wedding Day 15 December Corinna The Confederacy 17 December Miss Hoyden A Trip to Scarborough

Mary FitzClarence (19 December 1798) 15 September 1798 Maria The Citizen 29 September Angela209 The Castle-Spectre 4 October Ophelia Hamlet 11 October Beatrice Much Ado About Nothing 16 October Ophelia Hamlet

Frederick FitzClarence (9 December 1799) Did not perform until 10 March.

Elizabeth FitzClarence (17 January 1801) Did not perform in London until February 1801.

Adolphus FitzClarence (17 February 1802) Did not perform in London until April 1802.

Augusta FitzClarence (3 November 1803) Did not perform in London until January 1804.

Augustus FitzClarence (1 March 1805) 15 November 1804 The Widow Cheerly The Soldier’s Daughter 16 November The Widow Belmour The Way to Keep Him 22 November Clara Matrimony 23 November Clara Matrimony 24 November Clara Matrimony 26 November Clara Matrimony 29 November Clara Matrimony 30 November Clara Matrimony 12 December Lydia Languish The Rivals 18 December Violante The Wonder 18 December Clara Matrimony 19 December Nell The Devil to Pay 20 December Mrs. Sullen The Beaux’s Stratagem 22 December Widow Belmour The Way to Keep Him 27 December Nell The Devil to Pay 28 December Roxalana The Sultan 29 December The Land We Live In

209 Replaced by Miss Biggs 318

2 January 1805 Violante The Wonder 5 January Widow Cheerly The Soldier’s Daughter

Amelia FitzClarence (21 March 1807) Did not perform.

319

APPENDIX B: DOROTHY JORDAN’S CHILDREN

Date210 Name Father G. I.211 CJ BF CT Ziegler Pocock212 November 1782 Fanny Daly x213 x x x x x Late July/Aug. 1787 Dodee Ford x214 x x x x c.30 Oct. 1788 Stillbirth Ford x215 x x x 28 Sept. 1789 Lucy Ford x216 x x x x c. March 1791 Miscarriage217 Ford x Nov/Dec. 1791 Miscarriage218 Clarence x219 August 1792 Miscarriage220 Clarence x221 x222 x 29 January 1794 George Clarence x x223 x x 4 March 1795 Sophia Clarence x x*224 x x x* x* July 1795 Miscarriage? Clarence x

*Entries marked with an * denote sources in which the birth order of Sophia and Henry Edward FitzClarence are reversed. Sophia is the older child.

An “x” indicates that the birth of the child is noted in the corresponding biography.

210 The dates of Mrs. Jordan’s children by the Duke of Clarence (around which there is not infrequent confusion) come from a list made in William IV’s hand at Wemyss Castle (transcribed in Fothergill 320). 211 Mentions on 32 that she bore Ford "a family of children" but no details about when they were born. Does not include Henry Edward in the list of children by Clarence. 212 Pocock mentions all of the FitzClarence children, but rarely gives birth dates. 213 Mentions Fanny throughout but not when she was born. 214 Jerrold contradicts herself, saying late spring (108); then late August (110). The latter is correct. 215 Jerrold and others claim the child was a boy, but there I cannot find the original source for this assertion. The child was probably not full-term, as the birth seems to have been a surprise. For a summary of discrepancies in number of children attributed to Jordan and Ford in other sources, see Jerrold 111. 216 Jerrold incorrectly gives the date as winter 1789; it is true that Jordan did not return to performing until January, which may be the source of the confusion. 217 Jordan was pregnant throughout the winter of 1790-91, and her pregnancy is mentioned several times in the papers. She missed two weeks in early March, after which there is no further mention of the pregnancy. Jerrold says the miscarriage happened in February. 218 Jordan was rumored to be pregnant in October. She was absent in late November/early December. 219 Jerrold suggests that the rumors were true, following William IV's biographers (see 172). 220 Confirmed by press coverage and the Duke of Clarence’s correspondence. 221 Says was a daughter (38) 222 Jerrold mentions a rumor that this was actually Sophie’s birth, but that she was hidden for a time. Part of her reasoning is based on the frequent mistaking of Sophie and Henry’s birth orders. 223 Jerrold mistakes the date for 23 January. 224 Jerrold says 27 March (see 213 for her note on confusion about Sophie). 320

Jan/Feb 1796 Miscarriage? Clarence x225 x 8 March 1797 Henry Edward Clarence x* x x x* x* 19 December 1798 Mary Clarence x x226 x x x x 9 December 1799 Frederick Clarence x x x x x x 17 January 1801 Elizabeth Clarence x x227 x x x x 17 February 1802 Adolphus Clarence x228 x229 x x x x 3 November 1803 Augusta Clarence x x230 x x x x 1 March 1805 Augustus Clarence x x x x x x 21 March 1807 Amelia Clarence x x x x x x

Sources:

(Unknown Author) The Great Illegitimates Brian Fothergill, Portrait of an Actress Clare Jerrold, The Story of Dorothy Jordan Tom Pocock, Sailor King, the Life of William IV Claire Tomalin, Mrs. Jordan’s Profession Philip Ziegler, King William IV

225 Jerrold bases this on a letter from Clarence in which he mentions tending to Jordan in her illness. 226 Jerrold gives the date as 18 November. 227 Jerrold gives the date as 18 November. 228 Says it was this date in 1800 (49). 229 Says it was this date in 1800 (49). 230 Jerrold gives birth as 20 November. 321

APPENDIX C: THE LANGUAGE OF PREGNANCY

Both Judith Schneid Lewis and Lisa Foreman Cody note linguistic shifts over the course of the century in discussions of pregnancy.

In examining women’s letters, Lewis notes the rise in favor of the term “confinement” over the earlier term “lying-in,” and suggests this indicates a shift in women’s attitudes toward this period after birth. Lewis also notes the favoring of French euphemisms, such as enceinte among the upper classes. Cody argues that replacing “generation” with “reproduction” (originally used to describe reptiles who regrew limbs) in medical texts c. 1780 held significant implications for associations between women’s bodies and those of animals, which in turn enforced beliefs about men’s inherent rationality and the irrationality of women and their bodies.

The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1791 suggested that “no female, above the degree of chambermaid or laundress” uses ‘with child’ or ‘roundwombed’ “nor is she ever brought to bed, or delivered” (72), mocking a fad for French euphemisms.

In the interest of discerning other possible linguistic patterns in regard to discussions of pregnancy, I offer some euphemisms, metaphors, and analogies used in the source material for this dissertation. The vast majority of these come from the 1780s and 1790s.

-- PREGNANCY

“Mrs. Poyntz tells me that she believes Mrs. Palmer advances so happily in her pregnancy, that it is doubtful whether she will play much this following winter, & Caelia, you know, must not be with child” (Whitehead to Lord Nuneham, 24 August 1761)

“My mother has so carefully concealed her pregnancy, and her connection with Lord Tyrawley, from her husband, that he had not entertained the least suspicion of her incontinence.” (George Anne Bellamy; 1785, 1:22)

“her pregnancy rendering such a step necessary” (George Anne Bellamy of Sarah Ward in 1748-49; 1785, 2:3)

“My pregnancy prevented this play from having an equal run with that which had attended it two seasons before.” (George Anne Bellamy, 1785, 2:196)

“you presented me with the annuity [120 pounds], which was for my natural life, and for that of the child I was then pregnant with” (George Anne Bellamy to John Calcraft, 1762. 1785, 5:157)

“The reporters of the pregnancy of the Siddons have given the managers of Drury very long faces” (PA 19 July 1785) 322

"The early appearance of Mrs. Siddons is political…She is far advanced in her pregnancy” (MPDA, 13 Sept. 1785)

“Mrs. Siddons’s pregnancy makes it necessary that the Drury-lane Managers should reap their harvest while they can…” (MCLA, 24 Sept. 1785)

“Mrs. JORDAN does not make her appearance until November, as she is too far advanced in her pregnancy to commence her performances at an earlier period.” (MPFW, 24 Sept. 1796)

“Mrs. JORDAN’s last born child has been seized with the small pox…She is also far gone in her pregnancy.” (18 Oct. 1796)

WITH CHILD

“since indeed Shee has appeard big with Child…” (Sir Robert Howard to Henry Bennet, 1664)

“Who do you think is with child, absolutely, declar’d—My Lady Salisbury! –there’s a Nine Months Wonder for you!” (Mary Tickell, 25 November 1785, Y.d.35.203)

“…when Mr. Cibber was in the Chamber in the Inn, she called her Husband a great many Villains, and said that now he had ruined her Reputation, she did not value it if all the World knew that she was with Child by ‘Squire Sloper, and that she loved him dearly, for he was an honorable Gentleman. (Tryal 20; Tryals of Two Causes, 15-16; 1738-39)

BIG- OR GREAT-BELLIED

“most theatrical impudence; nay, more than the orange-wench show there, or a drunken vizard-mask, or a great-bellied actress…” (The Country Wife, 1675)

“the Queenes great belly seemes to grow faster than they have observd their own to do,” (Earl of Danby to William of Orange, 1688)

“Hypocrisie has infected the Stage too, where Whores with great Bellies wou’d thrust themselves off for Virgins…” (Brown, Works 1707; 2:61)

“Her figure must be remarkable fine, when she is happily delivered of a big belly, which entirely mars for the present her whole shape” (Henry Bate to David Garrick, 1775)

“Your account of the big belly alarms me!” (Garrick to Henry Bate, 1775)

CONDITION

“women of quality have protested they will never come to thee house to see A woman acting all parts of vertue in such A shamefull Condition.” (Sir Robert Howard to Henry Bennet, SP 29/109 f.19)

"...her exertions were uncommon…considering her condition" (PA, 7 Nov. 1785)

“Ladies should rather be thankful to their Managers for the Attention and Humanity to them, than be call’d 323

to an Account for not giving parts to those who are not in a Condition to play them.” (David Garrick to Hannah Palmer, 1762)

SITUATION

“…her situation, as well as her figure, being against her, she did not conclude the part of Cordelia, with any degree of credit” (George Anne Bellamy of Sarah Ward in 1748-49, printed 1785, 2:3).

"Mrs. Siddons's present situation of course prevents her from appearing as Rosalind…” (MCLA, 1 Oct. 1785)

About Mrs. Jordan looking well in breeches: “Pray Heaven she may never be in Mrs. Siddons’s Situation” (SJC, 13 December 1785)

“considering [Mrs. Jordan’s] situation, either two deaths—or an additional life might naturally have been the consequence of the disaster!” (PA, 26 Jan. 1791)

“Her appearance on the stage in her situation is a strong proof of her wishes to please the Public…” (MPFW, 24 Nov 1797)

ACCOUCHMENT

“It is remarkable that Dr. Ford…could not postpone Mrs. Siddons’s accouchement till the conclusion of the Drury Lane season” (MPDA 3 Dec. 1785)

BROUGHT TO BED/BROUGHT FORTH

“Mrs. Abigail…can be brought to bed of a Living Child without any Manner of notice taken of her” (Works both Serious and Comical, 1707 3:39)

A new tragedy has been deferred, because of “Mrs Bullock’s hourly Expectation of being brought to Bed, she having the Principle Part in the Play” (21 January 1721, in LS 2:2.611)

“On the fourth of September I was taken ill, and before Dr. Hunter could come from London, I was, by the help of a country midwife, brought to bed of a son, which Mr. Fox named after himself, Henry Fox Calcraft.” (George Anne Bellamy, 1785, 3:132)

“The SIDDONS—who by the bye has just brought forth a son” (PA 29 December 1785)

“Mrs. Siddons & her Child are both very well, I suppose you have heard that she was brought to Bed with the Assistance only of some poor old Woman in the Neighborhood…” (Letter from Mary Tickell, 8 January 1786, Y.d.35.228)

“Mrs. Jordan…played: went home, relapsed, and brought forth an abortion.” (PA, 4 Nov 1788)

“on Wednesday last Mrs. Jordan was brought to bed of a young Admiral…” (London Packet or New Lloyd’s Evening Post, 29 Jan 1794)

“Little Pickle was brought to bed on Tuesday last of a son, at the Duke of Clarence’s house on Richmond Hill. This is her third child by the Duke.” (Times, March 13, 1797) 324

DELIVERED

“Miss Pit went to play in the Beg: Opera for Mr. Usher at Richmond & was deliver’d of a fine Girl—N.B. She was Virgin” (Richard Cross’s diary for Drury Lane, 11 Oct 1748, W.a.104, v.1)

“Yesterday Morning Mrs. Pritchard was safely deliver’d of a Son, at her House in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s Inn-Fields.” (GA 16 June 1750)

“Previous to the TRAGIC QUEEN being delivered, Mr. Siddons waited with suspense in the anti-room; at length the young Roscius was born, the news of which was sent to Mr. Siddons by a servant-maid; upon entering, he exclaimed from Shakespeare, ‘Now by thy looks, I guess thy message.—Is the QUEEN delivered? Say, Ay;--and of a BOY!’ Upon which the wench, who had herself frequently played in Tragedy, recollecting the CUE, replied ‘Ay, ay, my LIEGE, And of a lovely BOY!’” (MHDA 30 December 1785)

LIE-IN, LYING-IN

“a ramble into the Country for six Weeks brings it all about: The Lady lies in…” (The Comparison Between the Two Stages, 1702)

"From the apparent loss which old Drury will suffer by Mrs. Siddons's lying-in…Managers ought to learn a lesson, to make it an article with the husbands that the wives should lye-in in summer” (MPDA, 4 Nov. 1785)

"Mrs. Siddons is not going to give us Ophelia, till after the lying-in” (MCLA, 18 Nov. 1785)

CONFINED/CONFINEMENT

“During my confinement, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was unavoidably obliged to be postponed, much to the regret of the manager.” (George Anne Bellamy, 1785, 2:196)

“[Siddons] has consented to play as often as possible between this and Christmas, by which time she expects to be confined to her chamber.” (MCLA, 24 Sept. 1785)

"…For the first two or three nights…[Siddons] walks, and in her confinement deputes to her sister." (MCLA, 4 Nov. 1785)

“Mrs. JORDAN…is not yet confined, and consequently we cannot expect her much before the beginning of April.” (OPA 10 Feb 1797)

RITUALS: IN THE STRAW AND MUFFLED KNOCKERS

"Mrs Siddons being in the straw” (GA 27 Dec 1785)

“Mrs. Jordan’s knocker is completely muffled …being at this moment in the straw” (PA, 6 September 1787)

“The Lady in the straw” (London Packet or New Lloyd’s Evening Post, 29 Jan 1794)

DOWN

325

“Mrs. JORDAN is not down yet. Drury-Lane must feel their ups and downs like other families. This however a few weeks will set right.” (OPA, 4 Feb 1797)

“Mrs. JORDAN is not yet down; (we believe this is the phrase) of course the courage of her Knights Authors is not up.” (OPA 18 Feb 1797)

LUCINA

"The Jubilee, properly taking place before the lucina fer opem of Mrs. Siddons” (MCLA, 4 Nov. 1785)

“Lucina and Melpomene seldom unite their powers” (MPDA 3 Dec. 1785)

“Mrs. Jordan…has so perfectly timed this her second offering at the shrine of Lucina, that she will be enabled to take her post again in the ranks of Thalia on the Boards of Old Drury.” (PA, 6 September 1787)

NAVAL AND MARTIAL METAPHORS

“Yes, tho’ they are Mothers and never were marry’d; ’tis an old trick…They Trade like our East-India Ships, they take in their Lading the beginning of Winter, and having calculated the Voyage just for Nine Months, it falls out very opportunely for ‘em to unlade again in the long Vacation.” (The Comparison Between the Two Stages, 1702)

"..we are happy to find General King is so far recovered as to be able to call a council of war on the intended retreat of the Siddons” (MPDA, 5 Nov. 1785)

"The Siddons, a prime sailer [sic], has not as yet her bill of lading; as soon as that is accomplished, she sets sail for the Palm Islands, and the Coast of Guinea." (PA, 26 Dec. 1785)

“The Country Girl, it is said, has got into a sad pickle—all was not right at the helm—but no matter; all will be well in time.” (Star, 3 Nov. 1791)

“I receive’d a letter from Mr Leigh…I am very glad the poor little Woman is so safely landed.” (Mary Tickell, c.1785, Y.d.35.184)

“Mrs. Jordan, who, a few years ago, was at best nothing more than the miserable heroine …is now running right before the wind, ‘ycleped a Dutchess, and privately invested with all the Royal and Ducal Honours!” (World, 2 October 1793)

BREED/BREEDING

“all my theatrical corps, consisting of men, women, and children: For be it known that my ladies breed oftener than suits my inclination” (Wilkinson, Wandering Pantentee 1795, 2:163)

“I meant to have call’d on little Mrs. Birch this morning but the weather is so bad I can’t stir out—poor little Woman, I hear she is very poorly, I believe she frets very much at not breeding—” (Mary Tickell c.1785, Y.d.35.146)

MISCELLANEOUS

“The very morning which followed that night, put a stop for some time to my appearance in public…by the introduction of a daughter into the world.” (George Anne Bellamy, 1785, 2:199)

326

“She is a monstrous Size off the Stage, but contrives to look very well on” (Mary Tickell, November 1785, Y.d.35.206)

“I receiv’d a letter from Mr Leigh…at the Birth of a Daughter which happy Event took place the 3d” (Mary Tickell, c.1785, Y.d.35.184)

“…Mrs. Mills (Mrs Jordan’s Dresser) had made some curious female observations on that Lady…which certainly (if they are true) portend something of the other of consequence to the Ford Family but everything at present as my M. says is under the Rose” (Mary Tickell, c.Winter 1787, Y.d.25.339-40)

“Mrs. Jordan, who is generally stiled the daughter of Thalia, will soon make the muse a grand-mother” (Morning Herald, 9 May 1787)

“Mrs. Jordan is at present very much indisposed, in consequence of a premature labour.” (PA, 11 Dec. 1790)

“Mrs. Jordan, who, a few years ago, was at best nothing more than the miserable heroine …is now …‘ycleped a Dutchess, and privately invested with all the Royal and Ducal Honours!” (World, 2 October 1793)

“The increasing consequence of Mrs. Jordan, it is expected, will very shortly be diminished.” (PA 5 Dec. 1793)

“Mrs. Siddons performs only a few nights when she retires to act the maternal character upon a private Theatre” (OPA, 16 April 1794)

“unfortunately for me and herself she was the bucket that would soon go down, from the same cause that her opponent’s bucket would soon rise” (Wilkinson, The Wandering Patentee, 1795, 2:172)

“Mrs. Jordan is again in a promising way.” (Sunday Reformer and Universal Register, 22 March 1795)

“What is become of Mrs. Jordan? We presume that a certain catastrophe has put off the Wedding Day, and tamed the vivacity of The Romp.” (Sun, 20 March 1795)

“Little Pickle, it must be acknowledged, though she keeps one tar at home, is willing enough to produce others to supply his place abroad!” (Telegraph, 11 Feb. 1797)

327