Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/283

Rh him to give her such useful lessons, as soon put her upon a level with most of the capital singers of that period. She had, however, at this time, no thoughts of coming upon the stage; but her father dying, and the state of his affairs turning out very different from what was expected, she was prevailed upon to exert her musical talents in public, and introduced to Mr. Fleetwood in the year 1734. He engaged her, as a singer, at Drury-lane theatre the ensuing season, at a salary of a hundred pounds, and a benefit.

Mr. Theophilus Cibber, about this time, lost his first wife, and Miss Arne's beauty, accomplishments, and unblemished reputation, induced him to pay his addresses to her in form. Mr. Colley Cibber was at first averse to the match, thinking his son entitled to a woman of fashion and fortune. The match nevertheless, unfortunately for Miss Arne, took place, and they were married in 1735. Great cordiality subsisted between them for some time; and Colley Cibber, who by the amiable deportment of his daughter-in-law, and seeming reformation of his son, was induced to take the young couple into favour, undertook to teach Mrs. Cibber the art of acting, that she might obtain a better salary, (they were at that time very poor) and more rank upon the stage.

Upon her first attempt to declaim in tragedy, as he informs us, he was surprised at such a variety of powers united. She had been two years upon Drury-lane stage as an actress, when her husband, by the most reiterated villainy, introduced and encouraged a gentleman to seduce his wife, with whom she afterwards lived. By this occurrence she was estranged some years from the stage, returning about the year 1742.

She now appeared in almost every capital character in tragedy,