July 1769

This is part of a local history note on performances at Richmond's Theatre Royale. See the start of this local history note.

Plays:

• Comus
• The Register Office

The Company

The Company included:

Mrs [Martha] Dodd (died October 1769)

Martha Dodd was the wife of the actor James William Dodd (1740? to 1796). She played at the theatre frequently during the 1760s. Her marriage was not a happy one and 1769 was a year of special crisis in the relationship between herself and her husband, each making written denouncements of the other which were published in the newspapers of the time.

Francis Godolphin Waldron (1744 to 1818)

Waldron became a member of Garrick’s company at Drury Lane and was, at different times during his career, manager of Richmond, Windsor and other country theatres. He was the author of The Richmond Heiress, a much-altered version of an earlier play of the same title written by Thomas D’Urfey. Waldron’s play was first performed at Richmond on 8^th September 1777, for his own benefit. On this occasion he took the part of Dr. Guaiacum and also spoke the prologue. His adaptation of Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem (entitled The Imitation), in which the female characters were substituted for men, and vice versa, was produced at Drury Lane in 1783 and, not surprisingly, was coldly received. He made occasional appearances at the Haymarket Theatre where his son, billed as Young Waldron, also appeared. Waldron’s editorial work is probably more notable than his career as an actor and a dramatist. His Literary Museum, a selection of rare old tracts, first appeared in 1792 and the Shakespeare Miscellany, a similar collection, followed in 1802. Both works give evidence of the mind of an enthusiastic and knowledgeable antiquarian.

Miss Younge [Mrs Elizabeth Pope] (1744? to 1797)

Miss Younge was the first wife of the actor Alexander Pope (1763 to 1835). Her first appearance as an actress was made at Drury Lane in October 1768, when she played Imogen. The performance won her immediate recognition and in her first season she played many leading roles. During her 1769 season at Richmond she played Desdemona to Love’s Othello and Lady Townly in The Provok’d Husband, a comedy altered by Colley Cibber from an unfinished play by Vanbrugh. Throughout her career, Mrs Pope was generally assigned the parts of lasies of title or fashion. She was a very versatile actress – Boaden considered her "as a daughter of Garrick’s theatre, because she acquired all the resources of her arts, and they constituted her the most general actress the stage had ever seen." Laetitia Hardy in Mrs Hannah Cowley’s Belle Strategem – a role which she created at Covent Garden in 1780 – was probably her finest characterisation. She was buried on the west side of the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, near the grave of the actress Kitty Clive.