October 1834

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

Date: 3 October 1834

 

Plays:

• Sheridan Knowles, The Wife: a tale of Mantua
• Edward Fitzball, Margaret’s Ghost

The Company:

John Cooper

John Cooper was born in Bath where he gained his first experience as an actor. He joined the company of Andrew Cherry in Wales, later moving to Scotland where, in Edinburgh, he played Edgar to the Lear of Edmund Kean. After his highly successful debut at Drury Lane as Romeo (November 1820) he again acted with Kean, as Iago to the latter’s Othello. Cooper was a competent, if rather mechanical, actor. Among his best parts were Iago and the Ghost in Hamlet. He was the originator of several roles, including William Wyndham in Dimond’s Royal Oak, Virginius in Knowles’s tragedy of that name and, most notable of all, the Doge in Byron’s Marino Faliero.

Helen (or Helena) Faucit (1814 to 1898)

Helen Faucit was one of the finest actresses of her generation. She was the grand-daughter of John Diddear – the actor who had been manager of the Theatre Royal for a time at the beginning of the 19^th century – and the daughter of the actor Saville Faucit who married Diddear’s daughter Harriet. With her sister, Harriet, also an actress, Helen used to spend holidays in Richmond, lodging at No. 3 The Green, now known as Gothic House. It was there, as a small child, she had a brief meeting with the ageing actor, Edmund Kean. Her own story of how she entered her profession is related in her book On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters (1885). It seems that, one summer’s day in 1833 during one of her stays in Richmond, she and Harriet had entered the empty theatre on The Green and as "a little frolic" had, on the stage, enacted the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Unknown to them the manager, Willis Jones, had been listening in his private box and was so impressed by Helen’s Juliet that he persuaded her family to let her play the part before the public. So her first public performance was on 30^th September 1833 with Helen appearing in the playbill simply as "A Young Lady (her First Appearance on any Stage)". In the same performance, Harriet played Lady Capulet. Helen was to play Juliet many times during her brilliant career; it was to become one of her most celebrated roles. She first appeared in London, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in January 1836 as Julia in Sheridan Knowles’s The Hunchback, a role she had already played at Richmond in October 1833. Later she worked with such famous actors as Macready and Samuel Phelps. Her success in Paris equalled that in England: she was highly praised by the critic Theophile Gautier and Alexandre Dumas contemplated writing a play for her. In 1851 Helen married Theodore Martin, later becoming Lady Martin when her husband was knighted in 1880. Her best work was done in revivals of Shakespeare’s plays and in new verse dramas, many of which were written specially for her. On of the finest parts she created was that of Pauline Deschappelles in The Lady of Lyons by Lord Lytton; she first played the role in February 1838. Perhaps her greatest success in tragedy occurred in Dublin in February 1845 when she played Antigone. Joseph Knight summarised her unique qualities in the following words "As a representative of wifely devotion, virginal grace and moral worth it is difficult to know whom to oppose against her."