Like Kean and Siddons, Cooke started his career as a provincial actor before he became famous on the London stage.57 In December 1801 Cooke returned to Bath where he played Richard III, Shylock and Sir Archy MacSarcasm. In that season, the same time that Mrs Austen was writing of him, he also played Iago to Elliston’s Othello. Cooke wrote in his journal: ‘I received the greatest applause and approbation from the audiences.’58
The last five seasons at the Orchard Street Theatre before the opening of the new playhouse in 1805 saw the introduction of several London actors onto the Bath stage. The appearance of such London stars gave prominence to the playhouse, and, coupled with the allure of Elliston, ensured its reputation as a theatre of the highest standing. Austen was fortunate in residing in Bath at a time when the theatre was in ‘the zenith of its glory’,59 and where she could see her favourite actor performing all the major roles. Elliston’s most famous roles in comedy were Charles Surface, Doricourt, Ranger, Benedick, Marlow, Lord Ogleby, Captain Absolute, Lord Townley and Dr Pangloss. In tragedy, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Douglas, the Stranger, Orestes and Rolla were just a few of the characters that her ‘best Elliston’ made his own.60
Elliston was unusual in being a player of tragic and comic parts. Leigh Hunt declared Elliston ‘the only genius that has approached that great actor [Garrick] in universality of imitation’. Though Hunt preferred him in comedy, he described him as ‘the best lover on the stage both in tragedy and comedy’.61 Others praised his diversity. Byron said that he could conceive nothing better than Elliston in gentlemanly comedy and in some parts of tragedy.62 His obituary stated that ‘Elliston was undoubtedly the most versatile actor of his day’.63 Even William Oxberry’s disparaging memoir conceded that ‘Mr Elliston is the best versatile actor we have ever seen’.64 Charles Lamb honoured him with high praise in his ‘Ellistonia’: ‘wherever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre’.65
Elliston finally moved on to the London stage, where Austen saw him perform. She complained, however, of the falling standards of Elliston’s acting when she saw him in London. Austen’s observations on his demise reveal her familiarity with his work from the Bath years. With the majority of Austen’s letters from this time missing, destroyed after her death, much has been lost, for, as her London letters reveal, she was a discerning and perceptive critic of the drama.
When Austen left Bath in 1806 to live with Frank Austen and his wife, Mary, in Southampton, she was forced to make do with the French Street Theatre, a far cry from Bath’s Theatre Royal. It was also during the first few months at Southampton that Austen wrote her two little playlets on baby-care. Frank Austen’s young wife was pregnant with their first child, and writing the plays proved a welcome diversion during the winter evenings. Austen also attended the public theatre in Southampton. In her list of expenses for 1807 she noted that she had spent 17s. 9d. for water parties and plays during that year.66
The French Street Theatre in Southampton was served mainly by provincial companies, but stars from the London stage made occasional visits. Sarah Siddons and Dora Jordan made visits of a few days in 1802 and 1803.67 The less talented Kemble brother, Charles Kemble, and his wife played there for a few nights in August 1808.68 John Bannister (1760–1836), one of the most popular comedians of the London stage, was also well known to the provinces. His Memoirs record that he played the provinces during the summer months from 1797 to 1812. In the course of his career he took on the roles of some 425 characters.69
Although there is no record by Jane Austen of the plays that she saw at the French Street theatre, her niece recorded one of the performances that she attended with her two aunts. In September 1807 Edward Knight and his family visited his mother and sisters in Southampton. Austen’s attachment to her niece Fanny Knight is revealed in her description of her as ‘almost another sister’ (Letters, p. 144). Austen had amused her niece with private theatricals in 1805, and when Fanny came to stay they visited the playhouse. Fanny recorded in her journal that on 14 September 1807 the party saw John Bannister in The Way to Keep Him and the musical adaptation of Kotzebue’s Of Age Tomorrow for his benefit.70
Bannister’s role in Arthur Murphy’s comedy The Way to Keep Him was Sir Bashful Constant, a man of fashion in possession of the shameful secret that he is in love with his own wife, his ‘Cara Sposa’.71 Jane Austen employed this fashionable Italianism to brilliant effect in Emma. For Emma, there is no clearer mark of Mrs Elton’s vulgarity than her references to her husband as ‘Mr E.’ and ‘my caro sposo’: ‘A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr E., and her caro sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and under-bred finery’ (E, p. 279). Scholars have debated the source of Austen’s use of the phrase, but no one has noticed its presence in Murphy’s comedy, where, spoken by the coxcomb Sir Brilliant Fashion, it surely got a laugh in the theatre.
Bannister was best known for his low roles. Leigh Hunt claimed that ‘no actor equals him in the character of a sailor’.72 The sailor, Jack Junk, in Thomas Dibdin’s adaptation of Kotzebue’s The Birth-Day was one of his best-loved roles. Bannister was also praised for his ability to transform himself into many different roles: ‘The greatest comedians have thought themselves happy in understanding one or two characters, but what shall we say of Bannister, who in one night personates six, and with such felicity that by the greatest part of the audience he is sometimes taken for some unknown actor?’73 Leigh Hunt was thinking, in particular, of A Bold Stroke for a Wife, where Bannister transmigrated into five different characters. However the comic after-piece, Of Age Tomorrow, that Austen saw in Southampton was also used as a vehicle for Bannister’s versatility.
Thomas Dibdin adapted Of Age Tomorrow from Kotzebue’s Der Wildfang. Dibdin had already adapted Kotzebue’s The Birth-Day and The Horse and Widow.74 Michael Kelly, in his Reminiscences, records that Bannister persuaded Kelly and Dibdin to adapt Der Wildfang for Drury Lane.75 Kelly describes Of Age Tomorrow as a great favourite. The ballad ‘No, my love, no’, according to Kelly, was ‘the most popular song of the day … not only to be found on every piano-forte, but also to be heard in every street’.76
Dibdin’s musical farce showed Bannister adopting three different disguises in his endeavours to woo his lover, Sophia, who is guarded by a dowager aunt, Lady Brumback, who stands to lose half her fortune if her niece marries. Bannister’s disguise as Fritz the frizeur was extremely popular, especially for his comic rendering of a story of his master breaking his leg over a bannister, to which Lady Brumback remarks, ‘Poor fellow! I wish there were no Bannisters in the world’.77 Kelly wrote: ‘Bannister’s personification of the Hair Dresser, was excellent; had he served a seven years’ apprenticeship to the trade, he could not have been more au fait in it, nor have handled the comb, curling