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Life
1714-1760; born poor; part in a Lilliput [i.e., children’s] production of Beggar’s Opera at the Aungier St. Theatre, 1730; travelled to London with Madame Violante, 1931; returned to Dublin and found work at Smock Alley, under Elrington, through influence of Charles Coffey, 1732; played mediocre Ophelia (Smock Alley 1737) and other parts; great success in breeches part as Sir Harry Wildair, 1739 [part formerly played by men and rendered a breeches part by her, to be played later by Dorothy Jordan]; broke off with Taaffe, 1740; visited his fiancée in disguise as an officer, and revealed his duplicity, at a ball;
travelled to London with Coffey, 1740; persuaded Rich to accept her in part of Silvia (The Recruiting Officer), 1741; repeated breeches part, 1741; joined Garrick (her sometime lover) at Drury Lane; 1752, Dublin; Beefsteak Club; 1754, London, Covent Gdn.; celebrated roles incl. Sir Harry Wildair, Rosalind, Cordelia, Lady Anne (Richard III), Mrs Ford, Lady Townley, Portia, Isabella, Viola, Queen Katherine, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, the Queen in Hamlet; quarrelled with Mrs. Bellamy while acting in her Statira, drove her off the stage and stabbed her; d. after several years of illness; Peg Woffington by Charles Reade is based on an episode of her life involving a painting and disclosure scene. RR ODNB DIB OCEL OCIL.
Criticism
[John Magill, ed.,] A Supplement to the Memoirs of Mrs. Woffington, being the Achievements of a Pickle-herring, or the Life and Adventures of Buttermilk Jack (3rd edn. Dublin 1760); J. Fitzgerald Molloy, The Life and Adventures of Peg Woffington, with Pictures of the Period in which she lived (London: Downey 1897) [var 1884]; Jane Dunbar, Peg Woffington and Her World (1968), 245pp.; Brid Mahon, A Time to Love: The Life of Peg Woffington (Dublin: Poolbeg 1992).
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Commentary
Mrs Delany [q.v.] wrote of her, ‘Mrs Woffington is much improved ... Her person is fine, her arms a little ungainly, her voice disagreeable, but she pronounces her words perfecly well, and she speaks sensibly’. (In Autobiography; quoted in Mrs Esther Morris, ‘The Delanys of Delville’, Dublin Historical Record, 9, 4 (Dec. 1947-Feb.1948), pp.105-116; p.115.
Percy Fitzgerald, Lives of the Sheridans, 1886, Vol. 1, p.29; quotes from Hitchcock’s History of the Irish Stage: ‘The well-known Peg Woffington was playing at the Theatre, and seems to have exercised much influence over Sheridan who made her president of the Dublin Beefsteak Club, and caused some gossip by bringing her down to Quilca, where, it turned out, she had conformed to the Established Church. This actress was, indeed, to be mainly accountable for the serious troubles which were now at hand. A play full of dangerous political allusions, viz. Mahomet, &c. ... the handsome Woffington, who appealed to them [the audience] was not listened to. A frightful riot followed ..’ (p.231.)
G. C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman (Dublin: Talbot Press UP 1937), Peg Woffington, her name is something to conjure with - a wild creature, erring, wayward, lovable, mesmeric on and off the stage, with a beauty and spirit in her acting that left the playhouse delirious with wonder and delight. And ftn., Percy Fitzgerald in his Life of Mrs. Clive (1888) fails to confirm the statement made by others that she wrote a play called The Faithful Irishwoman. Note: An MS play, Peg Plunket or the Dublin Courtezans (MS 25992) [c.1730] was presented to the BM by Coventry Patmore; considered immoral (acc. Duggan).
Patrick Kennedy gives account of Peg Woffington from first appearnace in Fownes Court, nr. Anglesea St., appearing as under ten: ‘In time the little basket girl was the best representative of the high bred lady, which the theatres of London could supply; almshouses founded by her at Teddington still survive; her nother ‘had nothing to mind but going the rounds of the Catholic chapels and chatting with her neighbours’ (cited from Irish Quarterly Review). See Kennedy, Modern Irish Anecdotes (n.d.), p.177.
Geoffrey Ashton, review of Pictures in the Garrick Club: A Catalogue ed. by Kalman A. Burnim & Andrew Wilton [1997]), in TLS (27 June 1997), quotes a comment on a ‘splendid portrait of Woffington [which] shows her posed aslant a sofa, wearing an alluring low-cut dress of golden satin, contemplating, with lowered eyes, a man’s (Garrick’s?) miniature portrait’: a number of portraits of unknown ladies … have been called Woffington, and the subject should be approached with caution’.
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References
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow: Longmans 1988): Charles Reade: Peg Woffington is the subject of Masks and Faces (1852), a play by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor, on which Reade based his novel, Peg Woffington (Bentley 1853) [dealing with her affair with Sir Charles Vane, the distress of his wife Mabel, and ending with her moral conversion and early death, following a famous scene in which she masquerades in a portait frame to overhear Mabel at prayer.
See also ...
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies, Vol.II [of 2] (London & Dublin 1821), pp.634-29.
[...] At what period Garrick became acquainted with Miss Woffington, is not ascertained; by computation, it must be some time before his appearance at Goodman’s-fields, or immediately afterwards, as we find them both engaged at the Dublin theatre in tbc summer of 1742, and both embarking on that expedition in the month of June the same year. Upon their return from Dublin, Miss Woffington lodged io the same house with Macklin; and as Garrick often visited there, there was a constant course of society between the parties; a fourth visitor too sometimes made his appearance there, but in private - who was a titled gentleman of distinction, and was much enamoured with Miss Woffington’s many agreeable qualifications. It, however, unfortunately happened one night, that Garrick had occupied Miss Woffington’s chamber when his lordship took it into his head to visit his favourite Dulcinea. A loud knocking at the door announced his arrival, when Garrick, who had always a proper presentiment of danger about him, jumped out of bed, and gathering up his clothes {637}
as well as he could, hurried up to Macklin’s apartment for security. Macklin was just out of his first sleep when he was roused by his friend, who told him the particular cause of disturbing him, and requesting the use of a bed for the remainder of the night; but what was Garrick’s surprise when, on reviewing the articles of his dress which be brought up with him, “in the alarm of fear,” he found he had left his scratch wig below in Miss Woffington’s bed chamber. Macklin did all he could to comfort him - the other lay upon tenter-hooks of anxiety all night. - But to return to his lordship: he had scarcely entered the apartment, when, finding something entangle his feet in the dark, he called for a light, and the first object he saw was this unfortunate scratch, which, taking up in his hand, he exclaimed with an oath - “Oh! Madam, have I found you out at last? so here has been a lover in the case!” and then fell to upbraiding her in all the language of rage, jealousy, and disappointment. The lady heard him with great composure for some time; and then, without offering the least excuse, “begged him not to make himself so great a fool, but give her her wig back again.” “What! Madam, do you glory in your infidelity? Do you own the wig, then?” “Yes, to be sure I do,” said she. “I’m sure it was my money paid for it, and I hope it will repay me with money and reputation too.” This called for a farther explanation: at last she very coolly said, “Why, my lord, if you will thus desert your character as a man, and be prying into all the little peculiarities of my domestic and professional business, know that I am soon to play a breeches part, and that wig, which you so triumphantly hold in your hand, is the very individual wig I was practising in a little before I went to bed: and so, because my maid was careless enough to leave it in your lordship’s way - here I am to be plagued and scolded at such a rate, as if I was a common prostitute.” This speech had all the desired effect: his lordship fell upon his knees, begged a thousand pardons, and the night was passed in harmony and good humour. Garrick heard these particular with transport the next morning, praised her wit and ingenuity, and laughed heartily at at lordship’s gullibility. The connexion between Mrs. Woffington and Garrick soon after this became more united. They kept house together; and, by agreement, each bore the monthly expenses alternately.
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See full copy in RICORSO > Library > Criticism > History > Legacy - via index, or as attached.
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Notes
Portraits (1): Peg Woffington by J. B. Van Loo, c.1742 (cited in see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition [Catalogue] (Ulster Museum 1965). [See under Burnim, infra.]
Portraits (2) Peg Woffington appears as Mrs Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor - a mezzotint 1751 (n.a.), Theatre Museum, London, whcih is reproduced in Brian de Breffny, ed., Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1983), p.249.
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