Anne Oldfield

English actor

• Born: 1683
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: October 30, 1730
• Place of death: London, England

A legendary beauty, Oldfield was possibly the best actress, and certainly the most famous, on the London stage of her time. She performed more than one hundred roles, acting in both comedy and tragedy and performing popular epilogues.

Early Life

The exact date of Anne Oldfield’s birth is unknown, and there is no baptismal record. Her parents were Anne Gourlaw and William Oldfield, who married on November 7, 1681, in St. Mary le Bone parish church. They lived on Pall Mall in the St. James district. Her father, a soldier or guardsman, died when Anne was a young child. Her paternal uncle then helped with her care and education, but Anne’s formal education was brief, and she hoped for a theatrical career.

In the spring of 1699, sixteen-year-old Oldfield was accepted at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which was one of the two main theater companies in London. The young playwright George Farquhar had heard her reading a play at the Mitre tavern and was deeply impressed with her speech, beauty, and wit. He introduced her to the eminent playwright Sir John Vanbrugh, who arranged for her to meet Christopher Rich, the manager and proprietor of Drury Lane. Rich hired her at 15 shillings per week, and Oldfield’s mother became employed as a seamstress for the actors.

A year later, in the spring of 1700, Oldfield had her first minor role. She played Alinda, the heroine of The Pilgrim (pr. 1621), a romantic comedy by John Fletcher and adapted by her patron Vanbrugh. Soon after, on July 6, 1700, she had her first newspaper advertisement in the Post Boy, an announcement of a benefit performance of The Pilgrim for Oldfield. (It was a common practice for actors to sell special theater tickets to supplement their incomes, especially in times of financial hardship.) Through the spring of 1703, she performed in a variety of roles, with some successful performances. During this period of apprenticeship, she met Colley Cibber, a principal company actor and a playwright who would become her lifelong colleague and friend.

Life’s Work

In the summer of 1703, Anne Oldfield became a virtual overnight success in the role of Leonora in John Crowne’s Sir Courtly Nice (pr., pb. 1685), performed for Queen Anne in Bath. This role had belonged to the company’s principal comic actress, Susannah Verbruggen, who, luckily for Oldfield, had fallen ill and stayed behind in London. Less than a year later, on March 20, 1704, Oldfield became the most highly paid actress in the Drury Lane company, entering a five-year contract for 50 shillings per week. She became unrivaled in comedy and established her position firmly in the competitive company hierarchy.

On December 7, 1704, Cibber’s comedy The Careless Husband premiered, and was an immediate success. Oldfield brilliantly performed the new role of the coquette, Lady Betty Modish, which became her most famous portrayal and the character with which she is most identified. Oldfield originated the character of Lady Modish and was the only actress to play the role during her lifetime. The Careless Husband was so successful that it ran every season until 1730.

Fierce competition existed between the two theater companies Drury Lane and the Lincoln’s Inn Fields during the early eighteenth century. On April 8, 1706, Drury Lane presented Farquhar’s new comedy, The Recruiting Officer, which was an instant success. Oldfield played the role of Sylvia, opposite one of her favorite leading actors, Robert Wilks. Later, from 1710 to 1734, Wilks, Cibber, and the character actor Thomas Doggett would form the celebrated actor-manager triumvirate that administered Drury Lane during one of its most glorious periods.

From 1706 until her early death in 1730, Oldfield was principally a comic actor, but she was also known as an exceptional tragic actor, and she was constantly originating roles. Oldfield performed in plays written by Susannah Centlivre, Cibber, James Carlisle, Thomas Betterton, Nicholas Rowe, Francis Beaumont, Fletcher, John Dryden, John Banks, Thomas Killigrew, and many others.

Socially, Oldfield was quite unconventional. She always earned her own living and was twice a mistress, living openly with two men, one after the other. She also had two children out of wedlock. The first of these two relationships began in 1700, when she met Arthur Maynwaring, a member of the landed gentry and an auditor in the customs office. Born in 1668, Maynwaring was about fifteen years older than Oldfield. Though never married, they lived together and had a son, also named Arthur. Maynwaring protected Oldfield from the unsolicited and often violent behavior of men that was a common threat to actresses at that time. Maynwaring also was Oldfield’s mentor, using his literary skills and wit to compose outstanding prologues and epilogues for her. As short performances separate from the main play, epilogues enabled individual performers to step outside their character and directly address the audience. Maynwaring also coached Oldfield, and she eventually became a popular epilogue performer. They remained together until his death in 1712.

In 1714, Oldfield met Charles Churchill, the illegitimate son of General Charles Churchill, younger brother of the duke of Marlborough. General Churchill had recognized the younger Charles as his legitimate heir, so Charles had received an inheritance when his father died in 1714. Oldfield, who had her own substantial salary of about œ400 per year, would live with Churchill, and the two had a son, also named Charles. Churchill helped establish Oldfield in his society of nobility, and she finally had many aristocratic friends, including the earl and countess of Bristol. Churchill and Oldfield remained together until her death in 1730.

On April 28, 1730, Oldfield made her last stage appearance in The Provok’d Wife (pr., pb. 1697), by Vanbrugh and Cibber, and then retired because of illness. In constant pain and with a negative prognosis from her physicians, she drafted her will on June 27, 1730. She died from what was most likely cancer of the reproductive system on October 30, 1730, at the age of forty-seven. Instead of a burial at Covent Garden at St. Paul’s Church, where actors usually were interred, Churchill arranged for Oldfield to be buried with great ceremony and gentlemen pallbearers at Westminster Abbey. However, his request for a monument in her honor was denied.

Significance

Anne Oldfield was one of the earliest stage stars, whose talent, glamour, and personal life aroused immense public reaction, both favorable and critical. On one hand, she originated or created about seventy new roles, ranging from tragic heroines or martyrs to idealized aristocratic female characters. On the other hand, her private life was unconventional and controversial because of her success and independence and because she had two children but was never married.

Oldfield was the first theatrical personality whose death elicited widespread public notice. Within a week of her death in 1730, Authentic Memoirs, a biography of Oldfield, was published by an anonymous author. Daily newspapers printed eulogies and poetry. In 1731, William Egerton published Faithful Memoirs of the Life, Amours, and Performances of That Justly Celebrated, and Most Eminent Actress of Her Time, Mrs. Anne Oldfield. Her legend and the fascination with her life continued. Mildred Aldrich’s Nance Oldfield, a stage adaptation of a fictional story by Charles Reade, appeared in 1894. The anecdotal The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield, by Edward Robins, was published in1898. The Player Queen, a romantic novel by Constance Fecher, was published in 1968 and then reissued in 1977 in paperback as The Lovely Wanton.

Bibliography

Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy. History of the Theatre. 9th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2002. This standard, indispensable work on the history of theater provides a section on the English theater up to 1800 and explores the development of theater during Oldfield’s lifetime as well. Includes maps, more than 530 illustrations and photos, an index, and a bibliography.

Cibber, Colley. An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber: With an Historical View of the Stage During His Own Time. Edited by Byrne R. S. Fone. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2000. A close friend of Oldfield, Cibber provides the most complete account of her career in his significant autobiography, first published in 1740. Notes, with bibliographic references.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Plays of Colley Cibber. Edited by Timothy J. Viator and William J. Burling. Vol. 1. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. As Cibber’s favorite actress, Oldfield performed in many of his plays. This book includes two of those plays: Love’s Last Shift and Love Makes a Man. Includes an index.

Fyvie, John. Tragedy Queens of the Georgian Era. New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1972. The third chapter of this work provides contemporary descriptions of Oldfield. Includes illustrations and an index.

Gore-Browne, Robert. Gay Was the Pit: The Life and Times of Anne Oldfield, Actress, 1683-1730. London: Max Reinhardt, 1957. This early biography covers Oldfield’s personal life and acting career, with quotations from many plays. Includes one of her portraits and an index.

Lafler, Joanne. The Celebrated Mrs. Oldfield: The Life and Art of an Augustan Actress. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989. A thoroughly researched biography covering Oldfield’s early life, apprenticeship, successful stage career, personal life, and legend. Illustrated, including several portraits of the actor. Appendices list her roles (in order of performance), complete repertory, and prologues and epilogues. Includes an index and extensive footnotes.