Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/289

 Plyant in ‘Double Dealer,’ Aurelia in ‘Twin Rivals,’ Jocasta in ‘Œdipus,’ and Isabella in ‘Fatal Marriage.’ Next season saw her as Angelica in ‘Love for Love,’ Lady Dainty in ‘Double Gallant,’ Roxana in ‘Rival Queens,’ Penelope in ‘Ulysses,’ and Violante in the ‘Wonder.’ She was also, 23 March 1756, the first Melantha in ‘Frenchified Lady.’ It was in this season that Mrs. Woffington, who was on bad terms with Mrs. Bellamy, while performing Roxana to her rival's Statira, drove her off the stage and stabbed her almost in sight of the audience. In consequence of the quarrel Foote wrote his ‘Green-room Squabble, or a Battle-Royal between the Queen of Babylon and the Daughter of Darius.’ Even more bitter than this feud was that between Woffington and Mrs. Clive—‘no two women ever hated each other more’. In her last season on the stage Mrs. Woffington played Celia in the ‘Humourous Lieutenant,’ Almeria in ‘Mourning Bride,’ Queen in ‘Richard III,’ and Lothario, and was on 14 March 1757 the first Lady Randolph in Home's ‘Douglas.’

On 3 May she played Rosalind in ‘As you like it.’ This was her last performance. She had been declining in health all the season. Tate Wilkinson, to whom she had shown herself tyrannical and venomous, was standing by her when in the fifth act she complained of indisposition. He gave her his arm and took her away. She changed her dress and returned on the stage, saying she was ill. She got half through the epilogue when her voice broke. She strove vainly to recall her words, screamed with terror, and tottered to the door, where she was caught. ‘The audience, of course, applauded till she was out of sight, and then sunk into awful looks of astonishment at seeing a favourite actress struck so suddenly by the hand of death (for so it seemed) in such a situation of time and place, and in her prime of life. … She was that night given over, and for several days, but she afterwards so far recovered as to linger till 1760, but existed as a mere skeleton’ (, Memoirs, i. 118–19). She died on 28 March 1760 in Queen Square, Westminster, whither she had been removed from Teddington. In Teddington she was buried, and a tablet to her memory was placed on the east wall of the northern aisle of the church; she is in the inscription called ‘spinster.’ In the register she is described as ‘of London.’

Mrs. Woffington is said to have been the handsomest woman that ever appeared on the stage, though Wilkinson, whom her sarcasms and persecution stung, awards a slight preference to Miss Farren, subsequently Countess of Derby. ‘A bold Irish-faced girl’ was the description of her by Conway, the correspondent of Horace Walpole. She had vivacity (as Walpole himself admitted, though he disliked her acting) and wit, and a rarer gift—conscientiousness towards the public, scarcely ever disappointing an audience even when really too ill to act. She was content also, while the entire range of characters in tragedy and comedy was assigned to her, to take secondary parts. Her society was sought by all ranks, and she was one of the most courted and caressed of women. Her amours were numerous. She frankly avowed that she preferred the society of men to that of women, and told concerning herself the story that, after acting Sir Harry Wildair amid thunders of applause, she said to James Quin [q. v.] in the green-room, ‘I have played the part so often that half the town believes me to be a real man,’ receiving from Quin the rough retort, ‘Madam, the other half knows you to be a woman.’ She was, when she died, under the protection of Colonel Cæsar, and was held by some to be secretly married to him. Brought up as a Roman catholic, she changed her religion late in life, the reason, it is said, being the promise, subsequently fulfilled, of a legacy of 200l. a year from Owen MacSwinny [q. v.]

Mrs. Woffington was seen to highest advantage in ladies of rank and elegance—Millamant, Lady Townley, Lady Betty Modish, Lady Plyant, Maria in the ‘Non-juror,’ Angelica, and the like. She won also in tragedy high recognition, including that of so competent and prejudiced an observer as Wilkinson. Andromache and Calista were her most popular tragic parts. In breeches parts, and notably in Sir Henry Wildair, she carried the town captive. Neither Garrick nor Woodward was equally welcome in this character. Her voice was bad, and she was charged in tragedy with imitating the rather artificial method of Marie-Françoise Dumesnil, the famous actress of the Comédie-Française. Campbell, who could not have seen her, says ‘she used to bark out the “Fair Penitent” with the most dissonant notes.’ Both Cibber and Quick thought highly of her acting. The singular honour was accorded her in Dublin, during her last visit in 1753, of being elected president of the Beefsteak Club in that city. She assisted regularly at its meetings, being the only woman admitted. The privilege aroused some popular prejudice against her and her manager, Sheridan, and was partly the cause of her quitting Ireland. Innumerable stories, many of them apocryphal but some doubtless true, are told about