{"id":4365,"date":"2023-10-12T12:11:52","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T11:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/?p=4365"},"modified":"2023-12-04T09:31:19","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T09:31:19","slug":"principal-players-of-the-long-eighteenth-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/specialcollections\/2023\/10\/12\/principal-players-of-the-long-eighteenth-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Principal Players of the Long Eighteenth Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

In keeping with our Theatrical Thursdays theme on principal players, this post is dedicated to three eighteenth-century celebrities: Mary Robinson (1757-1800), Dorothea Jordan (1761-1816), and Sarah Siddons (1755-1831). All three make an appearance in our 1798 volume of The Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>which I\u2019ve previously written about here<\/a> as well as other theatrical works and women\u2019s periodicals held in Special Collections and Archives. Women\u2019s periodicals of this time are particularly fascinating for how they contributed to, and participated in, a growing consumer and celebrity culture. They were as much interested in what women did as what they wore \u2013 and we\u2019re going to follow suit and explore both too.<\/p>\n

By the time our copy of The Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>was published in 1798, Mary Robinson was destitute \u2013 financially and physically \u2013 having suffered a mysterious injury during a carriage ride that left her crippled. In her early twenties, she was an eighteenth-century Icarus, shooting to public attention as the Drury-Lane actress that captured the young Prince of Wales (later George IV), becoming his acknowledged mistress and taking her Shakespearean role of Perdita<\/em> off-stage and off-script. She became a target for all sorts of media attention, from gossip columns to satirical prints. Also acknowledged, however, was her astonishing sense of style, which rivalled that of the Duchess of towering-plumes Devonshire \u2013 who was, incidentally, also her literary patron. Despite her tragically short life, her literary achievements number several novels, plays, poems and political tracts. In April 1798, The Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>printed \u2018Farewell to Glenowen\u2019 from the risqu\u00e9 novel Walsingham <\/em>(1797), a story which charts the adventures of the cross-dressed heroine \u2018Sir\u2019 Sidney Aubrey. This deceit of dress was a popular plot device in the eighteenth century; irl, it was reserved principally for the stage, though aspersions were cast that Robinson assumed breeches during her dalliance with the Prince. She penned her own version of events in her Memoirs <\/em>(1801), and Special Collections and Archives holds a late nineteenth-century copy filled with delicious details of her dresses, and illustrated with black and white plates (copies of portraits made during her lifetime). Fig. 1 gives a glimpse of early 1780s fashion, and Robinson is deliberately cultivating a domesticated look here with her pigeon-breasted fichu and mob-cap.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>

Fig. 1 Mary Robinson, Memoirs of Mary Robinson, \u201cPerdita\u201d (1894) \u2013 Reading-Rayner Theatre Collection (SPEC COLL SCRP 6.33)<\/p><\/div>\n

Whilst Robinson is represented in The Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>principally as a poet, Dora Jordan and Sarah Siddons ranked amongst the most famous actresses of their day, and were respectively famed as the muses (aka queens) of Comedy and Tragedy. These lofty titles reflect the neo-classical flavour that came to characterise Regency culture, from the ionic columns in architecture to the elongated silhouettes of high-waisted muslins. Thalia (Comedy) and Melpomene (Tragedy) were, moreover, \u00a0positioned above the proscenium arch and thus part of the iconography of Drury Lane Theatre where Jordan and Siddons were seen to perform. What is interesting, however, is how these actresses\u2019 titles became cemented through the press, and through women\u2019s magazines in particular.<\/p>\n

The Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em> reported eagerly on London\u2019s theatre scene throughout its run, giving regular accounts of new plays and comments on performers. The February issue for 1798 mentions Jordan in relation to Thomas Holcroft\u2019s Knave or not<\/em>, newly penned and produced at Drury Lane on 25th<\/sup> January that year. Unlike Mary Robinson, Dora Jordan survived the scandal of becoming a royal mistress \u2013 rather than a fling, she and the Duke of Clarence (later William IV) had a proper relationship; he became her protector, and by 1798 they\u2019d had four children and were enjoying domestic harmony together at Bushy House. This stability perhaps enabled Jordan to keep up her industrious stagecraft and professional identity, and she never needed to pen memoirs to resuscitate a fallen reputation (despite the castigation she endured from the satirical press). Jordan was especially renowned for her singing voice and shapely legs, the latter discerned through her portfolio of breeches and travesty roles: Rosalind, Viola, Fidelia, Sir Harry Wildair, etc. The report of her performance in The Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em> is complimentary in general, and emphasises the \u2018commensurate applause\u2019 she received. Jordan portrayed the character Susan Monrose, described as \u2018an awkward but honest and sincere country girl.\u2019 This part is designed to contrast with the \u2018chaste, elegant, and pathetic\u2019 part of sentimental heroine \u2013 Aurelia Rowland \u2013 played by Marie Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Du Camp (who would, incidentally, become Sarah Siddons\u2019 sister-in-law on marrying her actor-brother Charles Kemble in 1806).<\/p>\n

The \u2018country girl\u2019 was a stock character of eighteenth-century comedy; she had a licence to flirt but stayed safely on the side of virtue \u2013 she was, in short, an incarnation of the comic muse. In the context of The Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em>, \u2018country girl\u2019 is used as a shorthand that truncates Jordan\u2019s theatrical repertoire into a single denomination \u2013 it ensures that this becomes the primary part-type for which she is known. Jordan made her London debut in 1785 playing the part of Miss Peggy, the titular heroine of David Garrick\u2019s The Country Girl <\/em>(1766) \u2013 an adaptation of William Wycherley\u2019s The Country Wife<\/em>, to whom copies are sometimes falsely ascribed (as is the case of the copy in Special Collections, see Fig. 2).<\/p>\n

\"Frontispiece<\/a>

Fig. 2 William Wycherley, The country girl : a comedy (1791) \u2013 Classified Sequence (PR 3774.C6 WYC)<\/p><\/div>\n

The image that graces this frontispiece is nearly identical to one that was published by The Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em> which reported eagerly on Jordan\u2019s first charismatic performance \u2013 omitting, in its imagery, the fact that this role, too, featured the adoption of breeches. Thirteen years later, the magazine uses the same terminology to describe the part Jordan plays as Susan Monrose. In doing so, The Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em> self-consciously type-casts Jordan as a comedy actress and strengthens its own reputation for consistent and reliable journalism. When La Belle Assembl<\/em>\u00e9e<\/em> published its own series of theatrical biographies in the early nineteenth century, it adapts a famous portrait by John Hoppner of Jordan in 1785 to accompany her memoir. (Fig. 3) The original painting depicted Jordan as the Comic Muse in company of Euphrosyne and a menacing satyr. La Belle Assembl<\/em>\u00e9e <\/em>removes the accompanying characters and conflates Jordan with Euphrosyne in order to function as an illustration of her playing a theatrical part from John Milton\u2019s Comus <\/em>(1634). As the classical goddess of merriment, this is arguably another incarnation of the comic muse, simply the high-brow equivalent of the country girl. The magazine\u2019s choice is therefore an act of editorial one-upmanship, supporting its own pretensions as much as securing Jordan\u2019s status.<\/p>\n

\"Plate<\/a>

Fig. 3 La Belle assembl\u00e9e : being Bell\u2019s court and fashionable magazine, addressed particularly to the ladies vol. 10 (Nov 1814) \u2013 Classified Sequence (PER AP 4.B31)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Plate<\/a>

Fig. 4 La Belle assembl\u00e9e : being Bell\u2019s court and fashionable magazine, addressed particularly to the ladies vol. 5 (Feb 1812) \u2013 Classified Sequence (PER AP 4.B31)<\/p><\/div>\n

In a neat fait accompli, La Belle Assembl<\/em>\u00e9e <\/em>paired Siddons\u2019 memoir with an engraving of Reynolds\u2019 1784 portrait of the actress as the tragic muse. (Fig. 4) It is an image designed entirely to evoke homage, and paeans to Siddons are common throughout the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century world of print. Siddons started her career on the provincial circuit before rising to fame in London in 1782 and cultivated a professional profile as maternal tragedienne. She was known to bring her children on stage with her, embodiments of her marital fidelity and mascots of virtue to stave off the satirical press. The Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>for 1798 offers an example of her extensive fandom, printing \u2018Lines written on seeing Mrs. Siddons, as Mrs. Haller in \u201cThe Stranger,\u201d Friday, 25th<\/sup> of May; and as Isabella, in \u201cThe Fatal Marriage,\u201d Monday, 18th<\/sup>, 1798. By Capel Lofft, Esq.\u2019 Mrs. Haller and Isabella were, indeed, two of Siddons\u2019 most famous stage roles, both naturally tragic characters, and Special Collections holds theatrical works that give insight to Siddons\u2019 performance of these parts and to Regency costuming as well. I want to finish this post with my favourite finds: Elizabeth Inchbald\u2019s British Theatre <\/em>(1806-8) and William Oxberry\u2019s New English Drama <\/em>(c. 1818-26). These series printed popular plays alongside illustrations and forewords that reflected contemporary productions, including those of The Stranger <\/em>and Isabella; or, the fatal marriage<\/em>. In comparing the two (Figs. 5-7) we can see an interesting contrast in theatrical wardrobes, from the white muslin of an unabashed Mrs. Haller to the Van-Dykd velvet of the swooning Isabella. The stage, of course, was (and always will be) a place where contemporary fashions and fanciful costumes vie with each other.<\/p>\n

\"Plate<\/a>

Fig. 5 William Oxberry, ed. New English Drama (1806-1808) \u2013 Pettingell Collection (PETT BND.86(5))<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Page<\/a>

Fig. 6 William Oxberry, ed. New English Drama (1806-1808) \u2013 Pettingell Collection (PETT BND.86(5))<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Frontispiece<\/a>

Fig. 7 Elizabeth Inchbald, ed. The British theatre : or, A collection of plays, which are acted at the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Haymarket vol. 7 (1808) \u2013 Classified Sequence (PD 1269.B7)<\/p><\/div>\n