The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1810 — John Shaqi
The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1810Arnold, Samuel James
History
The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1810
Arnold, Samuel James
Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals
Mrs. Merry remained a widow for more than four years: she then, on the
first of January 1803, married Mr. Wignell, the manager of the
Philadelphia theatre, who died in seven weeks after their marriage. For
three years and a half she retained the name of Wignell, when the
present manager solicited her hand so successfully that she consented,
and took the name of Warren, on the 15th of August, 1806. By this
marriage the property and management of the Philadelphia theatre
devolved upon Mr. Warren; than whom, exclusive of the personal
attachment that subsisted between them, she could not have pitched upon
any one person more competent to the care of her property or the
direction of the theatre; or one more worthy of the sacred trust of
being a parent and a guardian to her infant daughter. For near two years
they lived together in a state of ease and felicity which bid fair to
last for years, when he being obliged to attend his company to their
customary summer stations, Mrs. Warren, then in a far advanced state of
pregnancy, desired to go along with him. Aware of the fatigue, the
inconveniences, and the privations to which she would, in all
likelihood, be exposed, during her journey southward, and still more in
her _accouchement_, which must necessarily take place before his return,
he endeavoured to prevail upon her to stay behind. But "Fate came into
the list," and she would go. Arrived at Alexandria, he took a large
commodious house, and put it in a condition sufficiently comfortable;
Mrs. Warren was in lusty health, and as the time approached all was fair
and promising. By one of those turns, however, which it pleases
Providence for his own wise purposes frequently to ordain, to mock our
best hopes and baffle our most sanguine expectations, this admirable
woman was, contrary to every antecedent prognostic, visited in her
travail with epileptic fits, in which she expired, "leaving," (as the
sublime Burke no less truly than pathetically said on the death of
doctor Johnson,) "not only nothing to fill her place, but nothing that
has a tendency to fill it."
Here, we let the curtain drop. Neither her private nor her public
character can derive additional lustre from any pen.
PORTRAIT OF THE CELEBRATED BETTERTON.
Mr. Thomas Betterton, dramatist and actor, was born in Tothill-street,
Westminster; and after having left school, is said to have been put
apprentice to a bookseller. It is supposed he made his first appearance
on the stage about the year 1657, at the opera house, which was then
under the direction of sir William Davenant. He went over to Paris to
take a view of the French scenery, and on his return, made such
improvements, as added greatly to the lustre of the English stage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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