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Peg Woffington - Wikipedia
She was the only Sir Harry Wildair during the remainder of her life. Triumphant in Dublin, Woffington now took the traditional route of successful Irish actors to London. Her success in the character of Wildair, in which she first appeared "by particular desire" on November 21, was even greater.
She went on to play the part over 20 times during that particular season, and in January , having moved to the Theater Royal at Drury Lane , assayed it once again in a royal command performance before Frederick Louis and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha , the prince and princess of Wales.
Margaret ('Peg') Woffington
Not long afterwards, in May , she made her first appearance with the newly arrived and already acclaimed young actor David Garrick , as Cordelia to his King Lear , and at about the same time began an affair with him which was to last for the next three years. In the following month, at the end of the London season, she and Garrick traveled to Dublin, where at the Smock Alley Theater they played opposite one another in Hamlet and in The Recruiting Officer. Woffington was, of course, already a favorite with Dublin theatergoers, but Garrick, on his first visit to Ireland, was a sensation, attracting huge and enthusiastic audiences.
Back in London, the two set up house together, for a time in company with another actor, Charles Macklin, and later as a couple, agreeing to share household expenses.
Margaret “Peg” Woffington
However, the relationship was increasingly strained by Garrick's carefulness with money and desire for respectability and by Woffington's relations with other men and her disregard of convention. Professional matters also may have come between them: By May of that year, the couple were living apart. Woffington acquired a villa outside London, at Teddington, and when Garrick and other players became embroiled in a dispute with the management of Drury Lane, she took no part in it.
By the beginning of the following year, however, the two were once more appearing together on stage, and the affair itself was apparently continuing. There were rumors that they were to marry, and they did reportedly come close to doing so, but Garrick's earlier disquiet about the relationship resurfaced, resulting in a permanent split.
Garrick was popularly regarded as having acted in an ungentlemanly manner in withdrawing his offer of marriage after such a long and public association. However, the breakdown of the relationship was probably inevitable: The decision to remain single was, as Elizabeth Howe points out in her study of English actresses, not uncommon, and, at a time when a married woman surrendered control of her earnings to her husband, was probably motivated as much by economic as by emotional considerations.
Un-like the great majority of her female colleagues, Woffington was in a position to command extremely high fees, and the estate which she would leave on her death suggests that she was an exceptionally capable manager of her own finances. In such circumstances, marriage might well be regarded as an undesirable surrender of the autonomy which she had enjoyed throughout her career.
However, she paid a price for this independence in the scurrilous rumors about her private life which circulated throughout her lifetime.
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The general perception of actresses as promiscuous, together with Peg's openness about her affairs, fuelled such gossip and greatly exaggerated the number of her lovers. George's Day, April 23, , but more probably in ; died in London, England, on February 16 some sources cite February 10 , ; illegitimate daughter of James O'Hara, 2nd Baron Tyrawley British ambassador and a Miss Seal; educated at a convent in Boulogne, France; married twice, once bigamously.
Her mother, a Quaker named Miss Seal, married a Captain Bellamy, and the child received the name George Anne, a mishearing of the name Georgiana during her christening. Lord Tyrawley acknowledged the child and had her educated in a convent in Boulogne; through him she came to know a number of notable people in London. On his appointment as ambassador to Russia, she went to live with her mother in London, made the acquaintance of Peg Woffington and David Garrick, and adopted the theatrical profession. George Anne Bellamy was a celebrated actress, notes an theatrical reference book, "whose private history is of rather a sensational order.
Bellamy was considered the better of the Juliets. Bellamy furnished the materials for her five-volume Apology to bookseller John Calcraft, who then asked Alexander Bicknell to whip them into shape; the memoirs containing her "amours, adventures, and vicissitudes" were published in , the year of her retirement, and achieved great popularity. An early "as told to," the last volume was published with the following title page: To the fifth volume of which is annexed, her original letter to John Calcraft, Esq.
According to her rival, George Anne Bellamy, her departure from Drury Lane was prompted by her jealousy of other actresses: Jealous of her status and professional integrity, she reacted strongly to any real or imagined slight, and her feuds with actresses such as Hannah Pritchard , Kitty Clive and the younger George Anne Bellamy were acrimonious and public. The quarrel with Bellamy culminated in an incident in when, during a performance of The Rival Queens , Woffington drove the other actress off the stage and stabbed her almost in view of the audience.
During the summer of , Woffington visited Paris, where she reportedly met Voltaire and visited the playhouses frequently, regarding the French actors as superior to the English in tragedy. She had already appeared in London in her first major tragic role, though to a mixed public and critical response, as Cleopatra in Dryden's All for Love.
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She was never to reach the same heights in tragedy as in comedy, but in the following season at Covent Garden, while continuing to appear in the comedy parts in which she had made her reputation, she also won new praise for roles such as Portia in Julius Caesar , Andromache in The Distress'd Mother , Calista in Rowe's The Fair Penitent and the Lady in Comus.
During the following two seasons at Covent Garden, Peg added more tragic parts to her repertoire. These included the Shakespearean heroines Desdemona and Lady Macbeth, as well as Arpasia in Tamerlane and Cleopatra again, this time with greater success than when she had played it previously.
In , as a result of a quarrel with Rich and of dissatisfaction with the regime at Covent Garden, Peg revisited Dublin. The —52 season was one of the most brilliant mounted by Sheridan's company, and Woffington's presence played a large part in this success. Soon after her opening as Lady Townley in The Provoked Husband , the Dublin Journal was reporting that her performances were attracting "the most crowded audiences hitherto known"; her two benefit performances were gala occasions, attended by the viceroy and the duke of Dorset, and the local critics and public were united in her praise.
Her performance as Sir Harry Wildair was particularly popular and was repeated several times during the season. If you have information to share please complete the form below. If you require information from us, please use our Archive enquiry service. If you wish to license an image, please use our Rights and Images service.
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Bellamy, George Anne (1727–1788)
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