My colleague, distracted beyond measure by the shouting from the pit, clasped my hands in hers and gave me the inexorable look of a rabbit gazing at a gun muzzle. Her mouth opened and closed, gaping and flapping, but no words would come, at least none that I could hear. I realized suddenly that the disapprobation had so greatly put her off that she had gone up on her lines, forgetting her part!
“Never have I been treated so poorly,” she exclaimed—this much I could hear—and dropped my hands, all pretense at playing the scene totally cast aside.
“I am a tragedienne!” she announced, though none could hear her but I. Mrs. Yates made every attempt to retain her dignity as she dodged a flying dinner roll, exclaiming, “Good God, they’ll kill us all!” But she retreated from the stage, leaving me alone to encounter the critical tempest.
I stood stock-still for some moments, fearful that the dinner roll might be followed up by something more damaging, unsure of what to say or how to salvage the situation. Sheridan, whose play it was, called frantically from the wings, “Mary, hold your ground!” as if I were a general under attack from enemy fire.
I looked about me for a friendly face, but encountered mostly angry snarls. Yet in the royal box right above the lip of the proscenium sat His Majesty’s libertine brother, the Duke of Cumberland.
“Take courage, young lady; it is not you but the play they hiss,” said His Royal Highness.
Perhaps because of where he sat, I could make out his voice above the din. I curtsied most gratefully, and to my utter astonishment, that curtsy seemed to electrify the whole house—for a thundering appeal of encouraging applause followed. Even more astonishing was that the comedy was suffered to go on—and became a stock play at Drury Lane.
After this, Sheridan was determined that I should play more comedies, offering me the greatest compliment by penning one of the supporting roles in The School for Scandal for me. Though Sheridan was one of them, his play positively skewered the Devonshire set; in fact, the leading character of Lady Teazle was rumored to have been modeled on the duchess herself.
My delight was immense at such an honor. How many actresses can say that one of the greatest dramatists of their day has found in them a muse? Yet, alas, it was not to be. With heavy heart I admitted that I was by now so unshaped by my increasing size that I should probably be confined to my chamber at the period when the opus should receive its debut.
My final performance of the season was fixed for April 10, 1777, but five months since I had first met Mr. Sheridan. Coincidentally, it also was to be my benefit performance—an annual tradition among thespians. Though my burgeoning figure had made quite the comical silhouette a few weeks earlier when I played Sir Harry Revel in Lady Craven’s The Miniature Picture, I did not wish to provoke laughter for all the wrong reasons. Therefore, given my condition, I chose my benefit role sensibly, portraying the pregnant Fanny in Garrick and Colman’s comedy The Clandestine Marriage. The boxes were filled with persons of the highest rank and fashion, a thrilling and flattering assemblage for my temporary swan song.
It was painful for me to abandon the adulation I had received for the past several months. Just as dear to me was the camaraderie—even the rivalries—that went on in the warrens behind the scenes, amid the tiny, cramped dressing rooms, and after hours in the noisy taverns and fashionable salons; for theatre folk have the biggest, grandest hearts of any you’ll meet. Though they may sulk and fuss when another is preferred for a plum role, they are also the first to lend a hand or a shilling when one of their own has fallen upon hard times, and they never fail to bolster the kindred spirit wounded by a fickle critic.
Sheridan was one such soul. He would visit me almost daily during my confinement, despite the enormity of his responsibilities at Drury Lane. Aside from selecting the theatre’s repertoire and overseeing the casting and the rehearsals, he juggled the delicate egos of eighty-five actors and actresses, twenty dancers, and the thirty dressers who saw that we got onstage in the proper costumes, not to mention the men of the orchestra and an army of backstage staff—prompters and carpenters, and the artisans who would design the set pieces and the lighting, for colored gauze reflecting off of an illuminated tin screen was now the latest thing. Even the men who swept the peanut shells from the floors, and the orange sellers who hawked their wares in the aisles, fell under Sheridan’s managerial purview.
“Well, now, what is it today, my gazetteer?” I would ask him, eager for the news from the stage. “The morning papers have their opinions; now what’s yours?”
And Sheridan would laugh and those Irish eyes of his would twinkle. “While Mrs. Yates dithers about whether to do Jane Shore or Lady Macbeth for her benefit, I waste time scolding Miss Farren for neglecting to purchase her own white stockings. Actors! They know bloody well the theatre doesn’t supply one’s hosiery. Egad—the minutiae of wardrobe expenses is the sort of thing Mrs. Linley should be worried about. The Farren had to go bare-legged as Ophelia the other night. I daresay her flightiness, or her parsimony, started a new fashion for the mad scene.”
I cradled my belly, near to bursting with child. “She’s playing my roles.”
“She always has,” Sheridan replied pragmatically. “And mayhap she always will. Some manager I’d be if I had only one performer in the company who knew a given part.” He glanced at my stomach. “All it takes is
