Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part IV:

Helen Faucit, Fanny Kemble and Lucia Elizabeth Vestris by their Contemporaries

The three actors considered in Part IV of our successful Lives of Shakespearian Actors series were all women who made considerable and long-lasting contributions to the dramatic arts.

Helen Faucit, who came from an acting family, joined the Covent Garden Theatre company in 1836, where she acted alongside both William Charles Macready and Charles Kemble. Macready, although ambivalent about Faucit’s ambitions, considered her the best actress of the period. As her career progressed, she became known for her ability to embody Ideal Womanhood, an identification that was strengthened by Faucit’s marriage to Sir Theodore Martin and confirmed by Martin’s valedictory biography of his wife. Despite her identification with the concept of Ideal Womanhood, which to a great extent was based on her portrayals of Shakespeare’s heroines, Faucit continued her work in the theatre after marriage, living her life as both Helen Faucit and Lady Martin. Helen Faucit’s theatrical representations of women both crystallized and influenced Victorian views of femininity.

Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble came from an acting dynasty. Eldest daughter of Charles Kemble and niece of Sarah Siddons, she became an accomplished actor in her own right. Aside from acting, Fanny published a number of plays and memoirs and a collection of poetry.

Lucia Elizabeth Vestris began her performing career as a contralto opera singer. However, it was in male roles in burlesques that she achieved a new level of fame, if not notoriety. She went on to manage several theatres: at Covent Garden she re-introduced Love’s Labour’s Lost and restored much of the text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Inaugurating a tradition of women playing the role, she cast herself as Oberon in the production.

This facsimile edition is backed up by full scholarly apparatus and will appeal to those undertaking research in Shakespearian Studies, Nineteenth-Century Studies and the History of the Theatre and Performance.

Related titles

• Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part I : David Garrick, Charles Macklin and Margaret Woffington by their Contemporaries
• Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part II : Edmund Kean, Sarah Siddons and Harriet Smithson by their Contemporaries
• Lives of Shakespearian Actors, Part III : Charles Kean, Samuel Phelps and William Charles Macready by their Contemporaries

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