The Genius of Jane Austen: Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood

There are two more notable occurrences that reflect Austen’s interest in the drama. There still exists in the Austen-Leigh family collection a short unidentified document, untitled and consisting of two dramatic dialogues on the business of child-rearing in the early nineteenth century. From 1806 to 1809 Mrs Austen, her two daughters and Martha Lloyd were living in Southampton, for part of the time with Frank Austen and his newly pregnant wife Mary Gibson. As was the convention, the women read novels and plays aloud. This provided Jane Austen with another opportunity for the composition of amusing playlets on the subject of baby-care and motherhood.78 (#litres_trial_promo)

In these dramatic dialogues, a first-time mother, Mrs Denbigh, is seen neglecting her child, and spending almost all of her time in the garden looking at her auriculas. She pleads ignorance in child-rearing as ‘I was just come from school when I was married, where you know we learnt nothing in the way of medicine or nursing’. The incompetence of Mrs Denbigh (and her Irish nanny) is contrasted with the sensible advice and practical skills of her friend Mrs Enfield:

MRS ENFIELD: [Endeavours to look at the back] Ah Nurse his shirt sticks! Do bring me some warm water & a rag.

MRS DENBIGH: [rising] I shall faint if I stay.

MRS ENFIELD: I beg you will stay till we can see what can be done.

MRS DENBIGH: [takes out her smelling bottle] I will try – how unfeeling [aside].

MRS ENFIELD: [applies a mild plaister] Now nurse you must change the plaister night & morning, spread it very thin, & keep a few folds of soft linen over it – Will you bring me a clean shirt.

NURSE: [going out] Yes Ma’am, if I can find one – I wish she and her plaister were far enough [aside].79 (#litres_trial_promo)

The dialogues are didactic, as they are meant to be, but the selfish Mrs Denbigh is comically drawn. Her rattling conversations perhaps foreshadow the monologues of Miss Bates and Mrs Elton in Emma.80 (#litres_trial_promo)

The other significant event in these later years took place in 1809. It was then, only two years before starting work on Mansfield Park, that Austen acted the part of Mrs Candour in Sheridan’s School for Scandal. In writing of Sir William Heathcote of Hursley Park, Hampshire, in 1898, the novelist Charlotte M. Yonge recalled: ‘His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Lovelace Bigg-Wither of Manydown Park in the same country … She lived chiefly in Winchester, and it may be interesting that her son remembered being at a Twelfth day party where Jane Austen drew the character of Mrs Candour, and assumed the part with great spirit.’81 (#litres_trial_promo)

There is no reason to doubt this evidence. Jane Austen’s friendship with the Manydown family lasted all her life. Both she and Cassandra often used to spend the night at Manydown when they attended the Basingstoke balls as girls. Jane informed Cassandra of a twelfth day party at Manydown in her letter to Cassandra of 27 December 1808:

I was happy to hear, cheifly [sic] for Anna’s sake, that a Ball at Manydown was once more in agitation; it is called a Child’s Ball, & given by Mrs Heathcote to Wm – such was its’ beginning at least – but it will probably swell into something more … it is to take place between this & twelfth-day. (Letters, p. 160)

The postscript to her next letter (10 January 1809) suggests that she attended the festivities: ‘The Manydown Ball was a smaller thing than I expected, but it seems to have made Anna very happy. At her age it would not have done for me’ (Letters, p. 165). If this was the same party that Sir William recollected, then Jane Austen was acting in a Sheridan play only two years before she began writing Mansfield Park. This would seem to be still stronger evidence against the notion that the novel offers an unequivocal condemnation of amateur theatricals.

Jane Austen’s artistic development was clearly influenced by the vogue for private theatricals that swept Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Contrary to popular belief, it was not merely as a passive spectator that she was exposed to private theatricals as a young girl. Her plays show that she was actively engaged in the amateur dramatics at Steventon, and her involvement in private theatricals in Kent, Southampton and Winchester confirm an interest that was to be crystallised in the writing of Mansfield Park.

2

The Professional Theatre (#ulink_d9e418e5-91d7-5b2f-a478-731dba928f40)

In 1790 Jane Austen wrote Love and Freindship, a parody of the popular heroine-centred, sentimental novel. The cast of characters includes two strolling actors, Philander and Gustavus, who eventually become stars of the London stage. As a final joke, these two fictional characters are transformed into real figures: ‘Philander and Gustavus, after having raised their reputation by their performance in the theatrical line in Edinburgh, removed to Covent Garden, where they still exhibit under the assumed names of Lewis & Quick’ (MW, p. 109).

William Thomas (‘Gentleman’) Lewis (1748–1811) and John Quick (1748–1831) were well-known comic actors of the Covent Garden Company. The roles of Faulkland and Bob Acres in Sheridan’s The Rivals were created for them, and Quick was also the original Tony Lumpkin in Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer. ‘Gentleman’ Lewis earned his appellation for his rendering of refined roles. A fellow actor, G. F. Cooke, called him ‘the unrivalled favorite of the comic muse in all that was frolic, gay, humorous, whimsical, and at the same time elegant’.1 (#litres_trial_promo) Leigh Hunt considered that ‘vulgarity seems impossible to an actor of his manners’,2 (#litres_trial_promo) and Hazlitt’s testimony ranked him high above the comedians of his day: ‘gay, fluttering, hare-brained Lewis … all life and fashion, and volubility, and whim; the greatest comic mannerist that perhaps ever lived.’3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Quick, conversely, was a fine ‘low’ actor, ‘the prince of low comedians’.4 (#litres_trial_promo) He was a diminutive man who breathed life into the roles of clowns, rustics and servants before he became famous with his performance of Tony Lumpkin. Unsurpassed in playing old men, he was George III’s favourite actor.5 (#litres_trial_promo) Hazlitt records that he ‘made an excellent self-important, busy, strutting, money-getting citizen; or a crusty old guardian, in a brown suit and a bob-wig’.6 (#litres_trial_promo)

By the 1790s Lewis and Quick were among the highest-paid actors in the Covent Garden Company.7 (#litres_trial_promo) Austen’s reference to this comic duo reveals her knowledge of the contemporary stars of the London stage, and suggests the young girl’s eagerness to be included in the theatre-loving clan of her brothers and her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, to whom Love and Freindship was dedicated (MW, p. 76). The joke is more than merely a glancing and amusing allusion to an immensely popular pair of eighteenth-century comedians: it also reveals a striking and specific interest in the nuanced world of high and low comedy in the late Georgian theatre. This interest was to have a strong influence on Austen’s comic vision. As will be demonstrated, her sense of the interplay between genteel characters and low ones was an important part of her awareness of how comedy works.

The first reference to the professional theatre in Austen’s letters is a mention of Astley’s Theatre in London, in August 1796: ‘We are to be at Astley’s tonight, which I am glad of’ (Letters, p. 5). The history of this theatre, and its importance in the growth of the illegitimate stage, has been overlooked by Austen scholars.

Astley’s Amphitheatre was an equestrian theatre built on the south side of the river in Lambeth by Philip Astley in 1770.8 (#litres_trial_promo) When first opened it was merely an open-air circus ring with covered seats. By 1780 Astley had roofed over the whole of his ring, which was now called the Amphitheatre Riding House. It was renamed the Royal Grove in 1784, when Astley obtained a royal patent, and in 1787, he added ‘burletta’ to his amphitheatre licence.9 (#litres_trial_promo) It was popular not only for equestrian events, but for acrobatics, swordsmanship, musical interludes, songs and dancing. In 1794 the amphitheatre was burnt to the ground. It was rebuilt in the following year with the new name, the Amphitheatre of Arts.10 (#litres_trial_promo) In 1796, when the Austens visited Astley’s, the entertainment was more elaborate than ever before. Thirty-five new acts were advertised, and, as a special attraction, two Catawba Indian chiefs performed dances and tomahawk exercises.11 (#litres_trial_promo) Astley’s Amphitheatre survived two fires and lasted until 1841.

As with many of the minor, unpatented London theatres, Astley’s circumvented the licensing laws by exploiting the ambiguity of the term ‘burletta’ and slipping in straight plays among the main entertainments.12 (#litres_trial_promo) The Licensing Act of 1737 confined legitimate theatrical performances to two patent playhouses in London, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. The Act prohibited the performances of plays elsewhere for ‘hire, gain or reward’ and gave the Lord Chamberlain statutory powers to examine all plays.13 (#litres_trial_promo) The monopoly of the patents was broken in 1740, however, by Henry Giffard who re-established his theatre in Goodman’s Fields and avoided the ‘hire, gain or reward’ clause by claiming to charge only for the music and giving the play free. The authorities tolerated Giffard’s theatre until David Garrick joined the company in 1741. The unprecedented success of Giffard’s new actor ensured that both he and Garrick were offered engagements at Drury Lane, and Goodman’s Fields was closed once more.

Giffard had demonstrated that the law could be circumvented. Other theatre managers followed suit and found ways of evading the £50 fine and the threat of the loss of their licence. Samuel Foote sold tickets inviting the public to ‘drink a dish of chocolate with him’ at noon, and provided entertainments free of charge, thereby inventing the matinee. This led to his obtaining a summer patent for his Little Theatre in the Haymarket in 1766.14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Foote’s patent was followed by a number of patents for provincial theatres. In London, by the early nineteenth century, the proliferation of illegitimate theatres posed a formidable challenge to the patents. By 1800 there were seven minor theatres offering regular entertainment: Sadler’s Wells, Astley’s, the Royal Circus, the Royalty in east London, Dibdin’s Sans Souci, the King’s, Pantheon and the first Lyceum.15 (#litres_trial_promo) In 1826 Edward Brayley included eleven minor theatres in his Historic and Descriptive Accounts of the Theatres of London, and F. G. Tomlins, in A Brief View of the English Stage (1832), listed thirteen minor theatres operating in London.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Astley’s was not only visited by Jane Austen. It was also chosen by her as the location for a major turning point in Emma.17 (#litres_trial_promo) It is Astley’s Theatre where Robert Martin meets Harriet and rekindles the love affair between them, thus clearing the way for Emma and Mr Knightley to be united. Scholars have assumed that Austen was referring to the equestrian amphitheatre by Westminster Bridge in Lambeth. But following the success of his amphitheatre, which only operated on a summer licence, Astley opened a new theatre on Wych Street in the Strand in 1806.18 (#litres_trial_promo) He called his new theatre the Olympic Pavilion, but it was also known as Astley’s Pavilion, the Pavilion Theatre, the Olympic Saloon, and sometimes simply Astley’s.19 (#litres_trial_promo) The theatre specialised in equestrian events, but Astley also obtained a licence, through the influence of Queen Charlotte, for music and dancing.20 (#litres_trial_promo)

According to the testimony of one nineteenth-century theatre historian, though Astley conducted several other establishments, the new Olympic theatre was ‘par excellence, “Astley’s” – a name which has become historic’.21 (#litres_trial_promo) It was an especially popular place to take children. Astley had built his new theatre from the remains of some old naval prizes that he had bought. The deck of the ship was used for the stage and the floors.22 (#litres_trial_promo) The new theatre was built like a playhouse, with a stage, orchestra, side-boxes, galleries and a pit surrounding the ring. It was the largest of London’s minor theatres and accommodated three thousand people.23 (#litres_trial_promo) In writing about Astley’s in his A Brief View of the English Stage, Tomlins notes that it was ‘a name at which the youthful heart bounds, and the olden one revives. Jeremy Bentham pronounced it to be the genuine English theatre, where John Bull, whatever superior tastes he might ape, was most sincerely at home’.24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Jane Austen was not absolutely precise about dates in Emma: the theatre visit takes place some time in late summer and Harriet marries Martin shortly afterwards, in late September. This opens up the possibility of the Astley’s reference being to either the summer amphitheatre in Lambeth or the winter Olympic house off Drury Lane. Strictly speaking, the summer season commenced on Easter Monday and closed about the end of September or the beginning of October.25 (#litres_trial_promo) Given that the Austens patronised the Lambeth Amphitheatre, Jane may well have intended the same theatre. On the other hand, the genteel John Knightleys visit Astley’s as a treat for their young boys, and Harriet, on quitting their box, is made uneasy by the size of the crowds. This suggests the superior Olympic Pavilion.26 (#litres_trial_promo) The Lambeth Amphitheatre also had its own separate entrance for the boxes and the pit, with the gallery entrance fifty yards down the road, so it would be more likely that Harriet encountered large crowds at the Olympic.27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Nevertheless, whichever of Astley’s playhouses Austen intended when she was writing Emma in 1813, the allusion is of considerable interest, as the long-standing battle between the minor theatres and the patents had once again flared up that year, with the name ‘Astley’s’ at the centre of controversy. When Elliston opened up Astley’s in 1813 with the provocative name ‘Little Drury Lane Theatre’, he was almost immediately forced to close. He was able to reopen the theatre by reverting to its old name. In 1812 Astley had sold his theatre and licence to Robert Elliston for £2800.28 (#litres_trial_promo) Almost as soon as the management passed into Elliston’s hands, he remodelled the playhouse in the hope of attracting a superior type of audience. He introduced a mixed programme of farce, pantomime and melodrama, all of course concealed under the term ‘burletta’. Though many of the minor theatres circumvented the law by similar methods, none had dared to do so in the direct vicinity of the patents. Perhaps Austen was sympathetic to Elliston’s crusade to compete against the patents, for he was one of her favourite actors, and, as we will see, she followed his fortunes throughout his career.

Astley’s was known for its socially diverse audience. It was ‘a popular place of amusement for all classes’.29 (#litres_trial_promo) A friendly and unpretentious theatre, its tickets were priced well below those of the patents.30 (#litres_trial_promo) The spectacle that it offered clearly appealed to families, and to people of all classes, much as the West End musical attracts thousands of people today. Austen had no compunction about visiting the minor theatres when she stayed in London, and her reference to Astley’s in Emma may indeed have been a gesture in support of them in their long battle to break the monopoly of the patents.

Given Jane Austen’s scrupulous sense of class and realism, and the particular concern in Emma with fine discriminations within social hierarchies, it is by no means fanciful to attach considerable weight to her choice of Astley’s for the reconciliation between Harriet and Robert Martin. Precisely because of its status as a minor, illegitimate theatre, it was a place where a yeoman farmer and a girl who is without rank (carrying the ‘stain of illegitimacy’, we are reminded in the same chapter) could mingle freely with the gentry.

Austen does mention the patented theatres in her other novels. In Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby ‘ran against Sir John Middleton’ in the lobby of Drury Lane Theatre, where he hears that Marianne Dashwood is seriously ill at Cleveland. In Pride and Prejudice Lydia Bennet, in complete disregard to the disgrace that she has brought on the family by her elopement, can only prattle: ‘To be sure London was rather thin, but however the Little Theatre was open’ (PP, p. 319). Lydia’s elopement takes place in August, and, as Austen was aware, the ‘Little Theatre’ in the Haymarket was the only house licensed to produce regular drama during the summer season. This is a fine example of Austen’s scrupulous sense of realism working in conjunction with her knowledge of the London theatre world. It is also worth noting that her favourite niece, Fanny Knight, with whom she often went to the theatre, was particularly fond of the ‘little’ theatre in the Haymarket, as opposed to the vast auditoriums at Covent Garden and Drury Lane. In her unpublished diaries Fanny complained that ‘Drury Lane is too immense’ and that she preferred ‘the dear enchanting Haymarket.’31 (#litres_trial_promo)

There is only one other mention of playgoing in Pride and Prejudice, a vague reference to an ‘evening at one of the theatres’ in which Elizabeth Bennet and Mrs Gardiner talked over intimate family matters in what was presumably a theatre box, while the rest of the party watched the action on the stage (PP, pp. 152–54). In Persuasion, Austen includes only a few vague references to the Theatre Royal on Orchard Street in Bath.32 (#litres_trial_promo) However, she uses the same theatre in Northanger Abbey to structure an important plot link between John Thorpe and General Tilney. It is at the theatre that Thorpe, ‘who was never in the same part of the house for ten minutes together’ (NA, p. 95), falsely boasts to General Tilney that Catherine is the heiress to the Allen fortune, thus encouraging the General’s plan to invite her to Northanger Abbey.

In Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey and Emma Jane Austen uses the forum of the public theatre to implement crucial plot developments. In this, she was influenced by Fanny Burney, whose novels about the London ton used the playhouses as important meeting grounds for the advancement of plot lines. For example, in Evelina the heroine first attends Drury Lane to see Garrick in The Suspicious Husband and is later reunited with Lord Orville at a performance of Congreve’s Love for Love. Here she is subjected to impertinent remarks by the fop Lovel, who compares her to the character of Miss Prue, an ignorant rustic young hoyden, a role made famous by the comic actress Frances Abington.33 (#litres_trial_promo) As Burney and Austen demonstrate in their novels, the public theatres provided an arena for the exchange of news and gossip.

In Northanger Abbey there is a special irony at play, for Austen’s novel about an ingenue’s entrance into Bath society self-consciously mirrors Burney’s Evelina: or The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World. In one of the more subtle allusions to Evelina, Catherine quotes from Congreve’s Love for Love when she tells John Thorpe that she hates the idea of ‘one great fortune looking out for another’ (NA, p. 124). Like Evelina, Catherine delights in going to the play, though she has been told that the Theatre Royal Bath is ‘quite horrid’ compared to the London stage (NA, p. 92).

Northanger Abbey’s status as a burlesque Gothic novel has unwittingly deflected attention away from Austen’s parody of the heroine-centred sentimental novel popularised by female writers like Burney and Edgeworth. Instead of London’s beau monde, unfamiliar terrain to Austen, the resort city of Bath becomes her microcosm of fashionable high society. Northanger Abbey was written in 1798–99. As Jane Austen and her mother were at Bath during the later part of 1797 visiting the Leigh-Perrots, her account could well have been based on actual experience.

In 1799 Jane Austen revisited Bath, staying at Queen Square with her brother Edward Knight. This visit included a trip to the Theatre Royal: ‘The Play on Saturday is I hope to conclude our gaieties here, for nothing but a lengthened stay will make it otherwise’ (Letters, p. 47). She does not name the play, but the account in the Bath Herald and Reporter for 29 June 1799 reveals that she saw Kotzebue’s drama The Birth-Day and ‘The pleasing spectacle of Blue-Beard’ on that occasion. In the eyes of the Bath newspapers, the new Kotzebue comedy was considered to be a vast improvement on his previous works, which were notable for their immorality:

If the German Author has justly drawn down censure for the immorality of his productions for the stage, this may be considered as expiatory – this may be accepted as his amende honoyrable [sic]; it is certainly throughout unexceptionable, calculated to promote the best interest of virtue, and the purest principles of benevolence: and though written in the style of Sterne, it possesses humour without a single broad Shandyism.34 (#litres_trial_promo)

James Boaden, a professed admirer of Kotzebue, described the play as ‘the naval pendant to the military Toby and Trim’, and thought it contained ‘one of the best delineations of human nature coloured by profession’.35 (#litres_trial_promo)

The Birth-Day, a comedy in three acts, was translated from Kotzebue’s play Reconciliation, and adapted for the English stage by Thomas Dibdin (1771–1841).36 (#litres_trial_promo) The plot is centred on a feud in a Bertram family. Twin brothers, estranged over a law suit, are finally reconciled on their sixty-third birthday by the efforts of their children, cousins who are in love with each other. The heroine, Emma Bertram, is devoted to her father and has vowed never to marry until she is finally persuaded by her cousin: ‘But if a man could be found, who would bestow on your father a quiet old age, free from every sorrow; who, far from robbing the father of a good daughter, would weave the garland of love round three hearts, who would live under his roof, and multiply your joys, by reconciling your father and your uncle.’37 (#litres_trial_promo)

Two of the best comic characters in The Birth-Day are a boatswain, Jack Junk, and a meddling housekeeper, Mrs Moral, who has taken over Captain Bertram’s household and has contributed to the family estrangement for her own devious means.38 (#litres_trial_promo)Mansfield Park, in which a different Kotzebue adaptation is staged, shares with this other Kotzebue play not only the family name Bertram but also similar comic stereotypes in the persons of the bullying, interfering Mrs Norris and the rum-drinking, oath-swearing Mr Price.39 (#litres_trial_promo)

In May 1801 Jane Austen moved more permanently to Bath to live with her parents. She stayed until July 1806. Owing to the absence of letters during this time, very little is known of her theatrical activities there.40 (#litres_trial_promo) Her residence in Bath coincided, however, with one of the most prosperous and exciting times in the history of the local stage. The period from 1790 to the opening of the new theatre in Beaufort Square in 1805 marked an unprecedented time of ‘prosperity, of brilliancy and of progress’.41 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bath was a fashionable resort town and was able to support a theatre of considerable standing for the society people who flocked there to take the waters. The theatre was run in tandem with the Bristol playhouse and was regarded as one of the best in the country. Provincial theatres in the Georgian era were not merely seasonal or summer playhouses, playing in the London off-season, but year-round operations. Their importance to the life and culture of their cities is suggested in the increasing numbers of royal patents granted by 1800.42 (#litres_trial_promo) The Bath theatre had been patented in 1768, becoming the first Theatre Royal of the English provinces.43 (#litres_trial_promo)

Outside London, Bath was one of the most important theatres, maintaining a regular company which was supplemented by London stars.44 (#litres_trial_promo) Many of the London stars had indeed cut their teeth in the Orchard Street playhouse. It was described variously as ‘a dramatic nursery for the London stage’ and a ‘probationary school of the drama to the London stage’.45 (#litres_trial_promo) Mrs Siddons had begun her career there in 1778, and retained such an affection and loyalty to the theatre that she often returned during the summer seasons.46 (#litres_trial_promo)

One of the theatre’s main assets was Robert William Elliston (1774–1831). Intended for the church, the young Elliston ran away to Bath and made his first appearance in Orchard Street in 1793.47 (#litres_trial_promo) Remarkably, he stayed until 1804, although ‘by permission of the Bath manager’ he was loaned to the London theatres, where he played once a fortnight, reinforcing the already strong links between the London and Bath playhouses. One of the reasons why Elliston refused to leave Bath, despite lucrative offers from both Drury Lane and Covent Garden, was his marriage. In 1796 he eloped with and married Elizabeth Rundall, a dance teacher, who, despite her husband’s success, continued her occupation.48 (#litres_trial_promo)

Despite Sheridan’s efforts to hire him, Elliston refused a permanent engagement at Drury Lane. His new wife had recently gone into partnership running a dance and deportment academy, and Elliston enjoyed his position as Bath’s star attraction. Even when he was finally lured to Drury Lane in 1804, Mrs Elliston remained in Bath. Jane Austen was aware of the unusual arrangements of Elliston’s private life. In February 1807, she shared with Cassandra some Bath gossip gleaned from her Aunt Leigh-Perrot: ‘Elliston, she tells us has just succeeded to a considerable fortune on the death of an Uncle. I would not have it enough to take him from the Stage; she should quit her business, & live with him in London’ (Letters, p. 122). This remark, which has not hitherto drawn comment from Austen scholars, demonstrates her loyalty to Elliston, both in his professional and his private life. Even though Elliston was now based in London, Austen continued to take an interest in him, and she clearly disapproved of his wife’s determination to remain with her academy in Bath.

Elliston’s last engagement on the Bath stage, before leaving for London, was as Rolla in Sheridan’s adaptation of Kotzebue’s Pizarro.49 (#litres_trial_promo) Rolla was not a surprising choice for Elliston. His performance of the noble, virtuous warrior was one of his most acclaimed tragic roles. It was also the role that he played for his Drury Lane debut, later that year, when he took over from Kemble.50 (#litres_trial_promo)

Another Kotzebue adaptation, Lovers’ Vows, was performed at least seventeen times in Bath from 1801 to 1806.51 (#litres_trial_promo) This suggests that Austen was familiar with the play long before she used it in Mansfield Park. Elliston played the part of Frederick. Kotzebue adaptations such as The Birth-Day, Pizarro, The Stranger and Lovers’ Vows continued to flourish at Bath, despite objections by the Anti-Jacobin Review to ‘the filthy effusions of this German dunce’.52 (#litres_trial_promo) In September 1801 Siddons played Elvira in Pizarro alongside Elliston at the Orchard Street Theatre.53 (#litres_trial_promo) Elvira, in particular, incited vicious attacks by the Anti-Jacobin Review which, with typically excessive rhetoric, described her as one of the most reprehensible characters that had ever been suffered to disgrace the stage. Such charges cut no ice with playgoers, who flocked to the Bath theatre to see Siddons as Pizarro’s dignified paramour.

Another comment suggesting that the Austens were theatregoers while living in Bath is to be found in a letter written by Jane’s mother to her daughter-in-law Mary Austen: ‘Cooke, I dare say will have as full houses tonight and Saturday, as he had on Tuesday.’54 (#litres_trial_promo) George Frederick Cooke (1756–1811) was the name of the Covent Garden actor whose brilliance as a tragic actor was overshadowed by his notorious drinking problem. He was one of the great actors of the English stage, the hero of Edmund Kean. After Cooke’s death brought on by hardened drinking, Kean arranged for his remains to be removed to a better location, and kept the bone of the forefinger of his right hand as a sacred relic.55 (#litres_trial_promo) Cooke’s reputation as a drunkard has obscured his acting abilities. His performances of Richard III and Iago were legendary, but he was considered to be an unreliable and erratic actor. One of his critics, to Cooke’s great mortification, described him in the following terms: ‘No two men, however different they may be, can be more at variance than George Cooke sober and George Cooke in a state of inebriety.’56 (#litres_trial_promo) At Covent Garden in 1803, while playing Sir Archy MacSarcasm in Love à la Mode, Cooke was so drunk that he was hissed off stage and the curtain dropped.

Like Kean and Siddons, Cooke started his career as a provincial actor before he became famous on the London stage.57 (#litres_trial_promo) In December 1801 Cooke returned to Bath where he played Richard III, Shylock and Sir Archy MacSarcasm. In that season, the same time that Mrs Austen was writing of him, he also played Iago to Elliston’s Othello. Cooke wrote in his journal: ‘I received the greatest applause and approbation from the audiences.’58 (#litres_trial_promo)