Sheridan had been a schoolfellow with Tom Robinson at Harrow, but Tom encountered a very different man from the shy and shabby boy he had once known. Sheridan had taken over from Garrick on the great man’s retirement in 1776 and looked set to shine even brighter. He had all the right credentials: a playwright, the son of an actor-manager and a writer, the son-in-law of a renowned musician; his wife was a musician of rare gifts, the beautiful Elizabeth Linley. Sheridan had caused a scandal when he had eloped with Miss Linley and fought two duels in her honour. Drawing on his celebrity, in 1775 he rocked London with a play based on his amorous adventures, The Rivals. Though not conventionally handsome, with his florid complexion and rugged features, he was clever and charming, renowned for his wit and talent.
When Sheridan called on Mary at her home, he was just months into his new role as manager of the most famous theatre in London and was scouting for talent. Mary found Sheridan’s demeanour ‘strikingly and bewitchingly attractive’. He in turn was entranced by her beauty and asked her to read for him. Looking back, she remembered that she was not dressed properly, a state in which she always felt insecure. She was several months into a further pregnancy and her health was poor – she attributed this to the combined influence of the pregnancy and her continuance in breastfeeding Maria Elizabeth even though the girl was nearly 2. But she agreed to read some passages from Shakespeare. Mary was gratified that the celebrated Sheridan proved so gentle and encouraging. They were to become great friends. He asked her to prepare for a public trial, and read with her himself.
Then Sheridan got Garrick on board. With extraordinary loyalty to the girl who had let him down three years before, he agreed – despite ill health – to come out of retirement and tutor her once again. Garrick and Sheridan decided on Juliet for her debut role, in Garrick’s own adaptation of the play. Brereton would be Romeo. Mary ran through Juliet’s lines for the first time in the green room at Drury Lane. Garrick was ‘indefatigable at the rehearsals; frequently going through the whole character of Romeo himself, until he was completely exhausted with the fatigue of recitation’.2 Mary never forgot Garrick’s kindness and his willingness to give her a second chance. When he died three years later, she wrote an elegy in his memory:
Who can forget thy penetrating eye,
The sweet bewitching smile, th’ empassion’d look!
The clear deep whisper, the persuasive sigh,
The feeling tear that Nature’s language spoke?3
Mary’s stage debut was set for 10 December 1776. It was announced to the press some time in advance. Managers often paid newspapers to ‘puff’ their actors. Sheridan and Garrick both had reputations for their publicity skills: Sheridan had planted an article in the Morning Chronicle puffing The Rivals after its initial failure. Garrick owned shares in various newspapers and his friendship with the journalist Henry Bate ensured favourable reviews and publicity for his plays. So it was that a great deal was made of Mary’s educated background and ‘superior understanding’. Sheridan and Garrick’s choice of role was astute: they knew that the press would be very forgiving towards a beautiful young woman playing Juliet for the first time. Mary, meanwhile, took the prudent step of writing to Chatsworth to inform Georgiana of her intentions. It was vital to get the patronage of the ladies, as many theatrical prologues of the period testify. The Duchess gave her approval to her young protégée and with ‘zeal bordering on delight’ Mary readied herself for her debut.4
What was the theatre like when Mary Robinson first stepped onto the boards of Drury Lane? The Licensing Act of 1737, which had been introduced in order to keep a check on plays satirizing the Government, confined legitimate theatrical performances to two patent playhouses in London, the Theatres Royal Drury Lane and Covent Garden. During the summer season when the two licensed theatres were closed, the ‘Little Theatre’ in the Haymarket had a summer patent. Drury Lane, London’s oldest theatre, had at this time a seating capacity of about two thousand. In the late Georgian period theatre was an essential part of fashionable life. A vibrant cross-section of the London community came to sit in box, pit, and gallery. Liveried servants were sent to reserve seats when the doors opened at five o’clock in the afternoon. Critics and raffish young men paid three shillings each to squash onto a bench in the pit; the well-to-do sat in private boxes for five shillings; honest citizens and visitors to town crammed into two-shilling places in the first gallery; servants and the hoi polloi sat in the upper gallery for one shilling. An evening entertainment ran to about four hours. First there was an overture played by the orchestra, then the main play (a drama, musical, or opera), then an interlude (music or a dance), and then a shorter afterpiece, usually of a farcical kind. It was generally said that the main pieces were for the ‘quality’ and the afterpiece for the commoners. Certainly the upper galleries filled up halfway through the main performance, when punters could gain admission for half price at the end of the third act of a five-act play.
Garrick had transformed the theatrical profession. In 1762 he had banned the audience from sitting on the stage – previously drunken patrons occupying the stage seats had been known to molest actresses (on one infamous occasion a near rape took place in full view of the audience). He had also made major modernizations in lighting and scenery: he removed the great chandeliers from their traditional place above the stage and substituted them with oil lamps in the wings, which had tin reflectors attached and could be directed towards or away from the stage, giving a greater control over illumination. The waxing or waning of light at dusk or dawn could now be indicated. Garrick also employed the ingenious scene designer Philip de Loutherbourg, who specialized in stage illusions. He charmed his audiences by changing the tints of the scenery, throwing light through coloured silk screens that turned on pivots in the flies and wings. De Loutherbourg was thus able to conjure up moonlight, cloud and fire effects. House lights were not turned down, as the audience came to the theatre to look at each other as much as to look at the players.
When Mary made her debut, she was acting in the newly renovated theatre, recently remodelled by the celebrated Adam brothers. The ceiling had been raised 12 feet, improving the acoustic and giving a sense of space; it was designed in a sumptuous pattern of octagonal panels that rose from an exterior circular frame, diminishing towards the centre, giving the effect of a dome. The side boxes had also been heightened, with an improved view of the stage; they were decorated along the front with variegated borders inlaid with plaster festoons of flowers and medallions. The old square heavy pillars had been removed from each side of the stage and replaced with elegant slim pillars, inlaid with green and crimson plate glass, which supported the upper boxes and galleries. The boxes were lined with crimson spotted paper. New gilt branches with two candles each replaced the old chandeliers. The boxes in the upper tier – known as the ‘green boxes’, where prostitutes solicited rich patrons – were adorned with gilt busts, painted embellishments and gilt borders. There was crimson drapery edged with gold fringing over the stage.
The theatre was not, of course, decorated in any such way in the backstage space where Mary spent most of her time. This was a vast area – larger than the entire front of house – with a maze of stairs and passages, some of them sloped to take wheels and animals. There were twenty dressing rooms, with a dresser allocated to each room, though principal players usually had their own personal dressers. It was later rumoured that Elizabeth Armistead – actress, courtesan, and rival to Perdita – began her career as Mary’s dresser. The dressing rooms, unlike the auditorium, had stoves to keep the actors warm. Some even had water closets. Other water closets were in the corridor adjacent to the stage area. The ladies’ dressing rooms had a candle and a mirror for each actress, their space demarcated by chalk marks across the floor. A hairdresser would have prepared Mary’s coiffure, but actresses put on their own make-up, a powder compounded with a liquid medium, which was often harmful to the skin and sometimes extremely dangerous, especially if white lead was used in its composition. White skin and rouged cheeks was the favoured image. In the green room, immediately to the side of the stage, actors, singers, and their invited friends mingled before the performance began.
The theatre was crowded on 10 December, the audience