Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson. Paula Byrne

Young Lady (1st appearance upon any stage)’. For Mary herself it was a frightening experience. She was exceedingly nervous, mindful of the critics in the pit and Garrick sitting there with his shrewd, intense stare. The fate of a play (and an actor) was sealed on the opening night even before the curtain fell on the concluding act.

      Theatre audiences did not sit in darkness and silence as they do today. The atmosphere was boisterous, voluble and interactive; the lighted auditorium helped to establish a rapport between spectators and actors. Applause or hisses rang out throughout the performance, and it was the audience rather than the critics who determined whether there was to be a long run or a speedy closure. The audience in the lobby and auditorium put on a display of its own: the young men in the pit, who were probably the most attentive spectators, offered criticism and comment; cheers and jeers could be expected from the gods (the one-shilling galleries), accompanied by songs, laughter, and flying fruit. It was not only rotten fruit that was hurled at bad performers – broken glass tumblers, metal, and wood could also rain down onto the stage. Despite having a reputation for drunken and unruly behaviour, those in the cheap seats usually paid attention once the play had begun and they were satisfied all was well. Less attentive were the aristocracy and gentry in the boxes, where fashionable society peered at itself as if in a mirror. As Mr Lovel, the fop in Fanny Burney’s contemporaneous novel Evelina, says, ‘I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do in looking at one’s acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage.’⁵

At last the huge curtain opened and Mary walked onto the stage clutching the arm of the nurse, almost fainting with anxiety.^* Before she had even spoken a line, she was greeted with rapturous applause. The audience, who could be vicious and recalcitrant if they felt cheated or disappointed, could also be encouraging and kind. It helped that she was beautifully dressed: ‘My dress was a pale pink satin, trimmed with crape, richly spangled with silver; my head was ornamented with white feathers.’ In the final scene, when Juliet is in her tomb, she wore a white satin dress that was ‘completely plain, excepting that I wore a veil of the most transparent gauze, which fell quite to my feet from the back of my head, and a string of beads round my waist, to which was suspended a cross appropriately fashioned’.⁶ White satin was the customary dress for a tragic or mad scene.

      Playbills often advertised ‘new dresses’ – clothing was as important as scenery in making the theatre a place of spectacle. Fine robes and court dresses belonging to the aristocracy were sold to the theatres or given to favourite actresses, some of whom wore them irrespective of the role they were playing. There was much debate about consistency and historical accuracy of costumes in plays that mixed together ‘Old English’ style and contemporary dress. Newspapers often complained that the performers dressed according to their own whim and without the least regard for the consistency of the whole – a character might wear Turkish slippers together with a Grecian turban. Leading players could choose their own costumes, either from the stage wardrobe or made up by their own dressmakers. In the case of comedy, which was usually produced in contemporary dress, the female costumes were particularly elaborate, with hoops and high headdresses of plumed feathers. While performing, actresses prided themselves on dressing fashionably, regardless of the specific part they played. A chambermaid could look like a lady. The actress Sophia Baddeley, when encouraged to cut down her wardrobe expenses, reputedly answered, ‘One may as well be dead as not in the fashion.’⁷

      ‘The thundering applause that greeted me nearly overpowered all my faculties,’ Mary remembered. ‘I stood mute and bending with alarm, which did not subside till I had feebly articulated the few sentences of the first short scene, during the whole of which I never once ventured to look at the audience.’ Her next scene was the masquerade. By now she had had time to collect herself. Being in an onstage crowd, she felt less self-conscious and dared to look out on the pit: ‘I beheld a gradual ascent of heads: all eyes were fixed upon me; and the sensation they conveyed was awfully impressive: but the keen, the penetrating eyes of Mr Garrick, darting their lustre from the centre of the Orchestra, were, beyond all others, the objects most conspicuous.’ The rest of the performance passed in a daze and ended with ‘clamorous approbation’ and compliments on all sides.⁸

      Sheridan was pleased with her and paid her well. After only two performances as Juliet, she was given a much-needed £20.⁹ Ten pounds per appearance was the top rate for an actress. But what she most desired was the approbation of Garrick. His praise sparked in her an intensity of feeling greater than she had ever known. She had gained the respect of ‘one of the most fascinating men and most distinguished geniuses of the age’; she felt ‘that emulation which the soul delights to encourage, where the attainment of fame will be pleasing to an esteemed object’.¹⁰

      Mary’s performance was well received. The prompter William Hopkins, who had seen all the greats and all the failures, was not an easy man to impress. ‘Juliet by Mrs Robinson – a genteel Figure – a very tolerable first Appearance, and may do in time,’ he noted laconically.¹¹ The writer of ‘Theatrical Intelligence’ in the leading newspaper, the Morning Post, saw considerable potential:

      A Lady, whose name is Robinson, made her first appearance last night at this theatre, in the character of Juliet; her person is genteel, her voice harmonious, and admitting of various modulations; and her features, when properly animated are striking, and expressive—

      At present she discovers a theatrical genius in the rough; which, however, in elocution, as well as action, seems to require considerable polishing, before it can be brought to perfection. In the scene with the Nurse, where she mistakes Tibalt’s murder, for that of her lover, Romeo, she gave an earnest of stage-abilities, which, if properly attended to, may prove a credit to herself and the Theatre. – We shall be able to speak of her powers at large when we find her become a little more familiar with the stage.¹²

      A gentleman signing himself ‘Fly Flap’, writing in the same paper, found her ‘love-inspired Juliet’ most ‘truly and naturally depicted’. Two days later, following a repeat performance, the Morning Post confirmed its favourable first impression: Mrs Robinson ‘has a considerable share of untutored genius, and may, under proper instructions, become an acquisition to the stage’.¹³

      A rival paper, the General Advertiser (where Garrick had good contacts), went much further: ‘There has not been a lady on this, or any other stage, for some seasons, who promises to make so capital an actress … she has eloquence and beauty: the grace of her arms is singular … we may venture to pronounce her an acquisition and an ornament.’ The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser said, ‘the young lady who performed the part of Juliet last night was received with uncommon and universal applause’. The Morning Chronicle was also impressed, though it did sometimes think she ‘substituted rant for passion, and dealt in whispers where she evidently meant to be pathetic’. ‘Mrs Robinson,’ the reporter added, had a ‘genteel figure, with a handsome face, and a fine masking eye. She appeared to feel the character; and although there wanted a polish in her manner of speaking and more ease in her actions and attitudes, she gave the audience a better impression of her than we can remember them to have received from any new actress for some time past.’¹⁴

      Mary played Juliet several more times over the following months. Her second role, in which she appeared on Monday, 17 February 1777, was as the exotic Statira in a tragedy called Alexander the Great by the verbose Restoration dramatist Nathaniel Lee. In the Memoirs she recollects her costume in great detail: ‘My dress was white and blue, made after the Persian costume, and though it was then