A remark of hers to Cibber, shows how she entered into the spirit of her parts. Cibber had replaced Dicky Norris, who was ill, in the part of Barnaby Brittle, in the "Amorous Widow," in which Mrs. Oldfield played Barnaby's wife. The couple are a sort of George Dandin and his spouse. When the play was over, Cibber asked her, in his familiar way, "Nancy, how did you like your new husband?" "Very well," said she; "but not half so well as Dicky Norris." "How so?" asked Cibber. "You are too important a figure," she answered; "but Dicky is so diminutive, and looks so sneaking, that he seems born to be deceived; and when he plays with me, I make him what a husband most dislikes to be, with hearty good will." Genest cites Cibber, Chetwood, and Davies, in order to describe her adequately. "After her success in Lady Betty Modish," he says, "all that nature had given her of the actress seemed to have risen to its full perfection; but the variety of her powers could not be known till she was seen in variety of characters which, as fast as they fell to her, she equally excelled in. In the wearing of her person she was particularly fortunate; her figure was always improving, to her thirty-sixth year; but her excellence in acting was never at a stand. And Lady Townley, one of her last new parts, was a proof that she was still able to do more, if more could have been done for her." Davies, after noticing her figure and expression, says of her "large speaking eyes," that in some particular comic situations she kept them half shut, "especially when she intended to give effect to some brilliant or gay thought. In sprightliness of air and elegance of manner, she excelled all actresses, and was greatly superior in the clear, sonorous, and harmonious tones of her voice." How are Wilks and the inimitable She photographed for posterity? "Wilks's Copper Captain was esteemed one of his best characters. Mrs. Oldfield was equally happy in Estifania. When she drew the pistol from her pocket, pretending to shoot Perez, Wilks drew back, as if greatly terrified, and in a tremulous voice, uttered, 'What, thine own husband!' To which she replied, with archness of countenance and a half-shut eye, 'Let mine own husband then be in 's own wits,' in a tone of voice in imitation of his, that the theatre was in a tumult of applause." [Illustration: (Mrs. Oldfield)] From Cibber, again, we learn that she was modest and unpresuming; that in all the parts she undertook, she sought enlightenment and instruction from every quarter, "but it was a hard matter to give her a hint that she was not able to improve." With managers she was not exacting; "she lost nothing by her easy conduct; she had everything she asked, which she took care should be always reasonable, because she hated as much to be grudged as to be denied a civility."