Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/208

 Constance in ‘King John,’ Lady Randolph in ‘Douglas,’ the Countess of Salisbury, and Sigismunda. At the close of the season she went to Edinburgh, where she appeared on 22 May 1784 at the Royalty Theatre as Belvidera. The scenes familiar in London were there repeated. People came from places so distant as Newcastle. As many as 2,575 applications were made in one day for 630 places. Strangers passing the theatre door were carried helplessly in by the crowd. At first, she said, her utmost efforts only aroused the exclamation ‘That's no bad!’ from a solitary listener. In the end she had no reason to complain of lack of enthusiasm. Her receipts for nine performances, including presents and a sum of 200l. guaranteed by Edinburgh gentlemen to the manager, and dexterously annexed by her husband, who was also her business manager, reached over 967l.

Before she returned to London the charge, too strongly insisted on, but scarcely quite unfounded, of stinginess had been heard, and she had been openly taxed with taking a large sum of money for acting in Dublin for the benefit of West Digges [q. v.], who was in embarrassed circumstances, and for that of Brereton. When seen on 5 Oct. 1784 at Drury Lane as Mrs. Beverley, she was greeted with loud hissing and a cry of ‘Off! off!’ Kemble led her off the stage. She came back, however, and denied the charges made against her, from which she was vindicated in the press by a writer signing himself ‘Laertes,’ supposed to be the pseudonym of Kemble. From the first charge she is exonerated by Lee Lewes in his ‘Memoirs,’ and Brereton somewhat tardily exculpated her from the second. Her indignation at her treatment was such that she talked about leaving the stage.

After playing Margaret of Anjou in the ‘Earl of Warwick,’ and Zara in the piece so named, she was on 2 Dec. the original Matilda in the ‘Carmelite’ of Cumberland, who declared her to be ‘inimitable.’ On 27 Jan. 1785 she was the first Camiola in the ‘Maid of Honour,’ altered by Kemble from Massinger. On 2 Feb. she assumed, for the first time in London, her great character of Lady Macbeth. This has been declared by competent judges to be perfect from beginning to end. Her acting in the sleep-walking scene has been followed ever since. She did not dare, however, to restore the scene in which, on the assemblage of the principal characters after the murder, she faints and is borne off, which was then omitted as conducive to hilarity. Desdemona, Elfrida, and Rosalind were essayed during the season. Her audiences had included Burke, Gibbon, Sheridan, Windham, and Fox. Reynolds had already painted her as the ‘Tragic Muse,’ a picture now in the Dulwich Gallery, in the attitude she at first assumed when Reynolds had addressed her, saying: ‘Ascend your undisputed throne, and graciously bestow upon me some good idea of the tragic muse.’

Her history for many years to come was confined to her appearances at Drury Lane and her summer performances in the country. In the season of 1785–6 she was seen as the Duchess of Braganza, Mrs. Lovemore in ‘The Way to keep him,’ and Hermione in ‘The Distressed Mother.’ On 9 March she was the original Malvina in Dr. Delap's ‘Captives,’ derived in part from Euripides. Portia and Elwina in ‘Percy’ followed; and she played, for her benefit, Ophelia and the Lady in ‘Comus.’ The regularity of her appearances was disturbed by the birth of her children. She was again in Edinburgh in July 1785, and played in Glasgow on 12 Aug. The following season saw her in Dodsley's ‘Cleone,’ a piece speedily withdrawn; Imogen in ‘Cymbeline;’ Hortensia in the ‘Count of Narbonne;’ Lady Restless in ‘All in the Wrong,’ and Alicia in ‘Jane Shore;’ and on 14 April 1787, as the original Julia in Jephson's ‘Julia, or the Italian Lover.’ Ill-health prevented her acting in the country. The year 1787–8 saw her as Cordelia, Katharine in ‘Katharine and Petruchio,’ and Cleopatra in ‘All for Love;’ and in two original parts—Chelonice in Mrs. Cowley's ‘Fall of Sparta,’ 31 Jan. 1788, and on 1 April Dianora in the ‘Regent.’ This last piece was by Bertie Greathead, a friend, now head of the family with which she had lived when a girl at Guy's Cliff. The ‘Biographia Dramatica’ says that this piece was acted twice, and Campbell says twelve times. Genest, for once nodding, says it was given only once, and adds it was acted nine times. Queen Katharine, her first new part in the autumn of 1788, when the management passed into the hands of John Kemble, acting for Sheridan, was followed by Volumnia in ‘Coriolanus,’ altered by Kemble. This was one of her great parts, though Genest charges her with looking like Kemble's sister, not his mother. She also played the Fine Lady in ‘Lethe,’ Juliet and the Princess in the ‘Law of Lombardy,’ and was, on 20 March 1789, the original Queen Mary in St. John's ‘Mary Queen of Scots.’ Young the actor gives a very striking account of the performance in Volumnia when she came down the stage on the triumphal entry of her son: ‘She came alone, marching and beating time to the music; rolling (if that be not too strong