upon the poorer classes of the city, hindered all public amusements and inflicted severe loss upon the theatres: for nearly three months they were entirely closed. In the following spring, “at the desire of several persons of quality,” she first stepped on the boards in her celebrated character of Sir Harry Wildair, in Farquhar’s comedy of the “Constant Couple.” The audience were delighted with her performance, and Rich, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, moved by her extraordinary success, at once secured her services for his ensuing season.
She made her first appearance before a London audience on the 6th November, 1740. The part selected for her debût was that of Sylvia in the “Recruiting Officer.” As Farquhar, for various reasons, is but little read in these days, it may be necessary to state that in the third act of the comedy Sylvia the heroine enters “in man’s apparel.”
“Your name?” demands Brazen.
“Wilful, Jack Wilful, at your service,” she replies.
“What, the Kentish Wilfuls, or those of Staffordshire?”
“Both, sir,” says Sylvia. “I’m related to all the Wilfuls in Europe, and I’m head of the family at present.” And afterwards she continues: “Had I but a commission in my pocket, I fancy my breeches would become me as well as any ranting fellow of them all: for I take a bold step, a rakish toss, a smart cock, and an impudent air, to be the principal ingredients in the composition of a captain. What’s here? Rose, my nurse’s daughter! I’ll go and practise. Come, child, kiss me at once!”
Her success was beyond all question. She subsequently played Lady Sadlife, in Cibber’s “Double Gallant,” Aura, in Charles Johnson’s comedy of “Country Lasses,” and, on the 21st November, “by particular desire,” she appeared as Sir Harry Wildair, repeating the character twenty times during her first season.
For seven years since the death of Wilks, the original representative of Sir Harry, the comedy of the “Constant Couple” had been in a great measure lain aside. Farquhar himself had asserted that when Wilks died there would be no longer a Sir Harry. When Garrick undertook the part in 1742, Wilkinson describes his performance as a failure, and the two biographers of the Roscius pass it over without comment. Yet the best critics hastened to pronounce in favour of Mrs. Woffington’s representation of the character. The town was delighted with her: the theatre was crowded to excess. It was not, as Tate Wilkinson points out, merely the whim of a winter; nor did the excitement arise solely from curiosity to see a woman sustain a man’s character. She evinced a peculiar fitness for the part, “she appeared with the true spirit of a well-bred rake of quality.” “She remained the unrivalled Wildair during her life.” “The ease, manner of address, vivacity, and figure of a young man of fashion were never more happily exhibited.” “The best proof of this matter,” Wilkinson goes on to say, “is the well-known success and profit she brought to the different theatres in England and Ireland wherever her name was published for Sir Harry Wildair. The managers had recourse to the lady for this character whenever they had fears of the want of an audience; and indeed for some years before she died, as she never by her articles was to play it, but with her own consent, she always conferred a favour on the manager whenever she changed her sex and filled the house.”
Davies describes her as “the most beautiful woman that ever adorned a theatre.” She was tall and well made, though slight in figure. She had a peculiar grace and freedom in her movements; there was a thoroughly well-bred and elegant air about her action; her face was singularly expressive; her features delicate, yet well defined, her eyes being superb, while over these were incessantly playing, giving point, and force, and brilliance to her every word and look, a pair of strongly marked mobile eyebrows. She was particularly careful in her dress, and always thoroughly prepared with the words of her part. Her voice, we learn, was inclined to be sharp in tone, a disadvantage in her performance of tragedy. When Foote gave his entertainment called “The Diversion of a Morning,” at the Haymarket, in 1746, he professed to find occupations for the actors who had declared they should be ruined by his persistence in his illegal performances, while he gave imitations of them in the new professions he selected for them. Mr. Quin, from his sonorous voice and weighty manner, he appointed a watchman, with a cry of “Past twelve o’clock, and a cloudy morning.” Mr. Delane, who was alleged to have but one eye, a beggar-man in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Mr. Ryan, whose voice was odd and shrill, a razor-grinder; and Mrs. Woffington, because of her harsh tones, an orange-woman to the playhouse. And then he went on to give a ludicrous travestie of Garrick’s dying scenes, in which the great actor was apt to hesitate and protract his words; as in Lothario: “Adorns my fall and che-che-che-che-che-cheers my heart in dy-dy-dying.”
But it may be noted that a certain harshness of voice is rather an advantage to an actress in her assumptions of male character. Admirers of Déjazet will recollect that her discordant tones, while they struck unpleasantly on the ear when she appeared as a heroine, ceased to be remarked, even if they did not assist the illusion, when she trod the boards the hero of the night.
During her first season, Mrs. Woffington played also Elvira in Dryden’s “Spanish Friar;” Violante in Theobald’s “Double Falsehood,” Amanda in Cibber’s “Love’s Last Shift;” Lætitia in Congreve’s “Old Bachelor,” and a few other characters. She was but twenty-two, and had already become the greatest public favourite in the theatre. Her rivals at Drury Lane were Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Clive, formerly Miss Raftor.
One night, during her performance of Sir Harry, when finishing a scene amidst a hurricane of applause, she rushed into the green room and cried, elated with joy:
“Mr. Quin, Mr. Quin, I have played this part so often that half the town believe me to be a real man.”
Quin only growled out a repartee more free than refined. She was the subject of all sorts of con-