Hannah Pritchard
| Hannah Pritchard | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1711 |
| Died | 1768 |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Actress |
Hannah Pritchard (1711–1768) was an English actress who regularly played opposite David Garrick. She performed many significant Shakespearean roles and created on stage many important female roles by contemporary playwrights.
She was born in 1711, and married in early life a poor actor named Pritchard. As Mrs. Pritchard she acted in 1733, at Fielding and Hippisley's booth, Bartholomew Fair, the part of Loveit in an opera called A Cure for Covetousness, or the Cheats of Scapin. She sang with great effect "Sweet, if you love me, smiling, turn". A duet between her and an actor called Salway was very popular, and she was berhymed by a writer in the Daily Post, who spoke of this as her first essay, and predicted for her "a transportation to a brighter stage".
This was soon accomplished, since she appeared at the Haymarket Theatre on 26 Sept. 1733 as Nell in The Devil to Pay of Coffey. She was one of the company known as the "Comedians of his Majesty's Revels", the more conspicuous members of which had seceded from Drury Lane. During her first season she was seen as Dorcas in the Mock Doctor, Phillis (the country lass) in The Livery Rake Trapp'd, or the Disappointed Country Lass, Ophelia, Edging in the Careless Husband, Cleora in the Opera of Operas, or Tom Thumb the Great, an alteration of Fielding's Tragedy of Tragedies, Lappet in The Miser, Phædra in Amphitryon, Hob's Mother in Flora, Sylvia in the Double Gallant, Shepherdess in the Festival, Peasant Woman in the Burgomaster Trick'd, and Belina in Miller's Mother-in-Law. Two or three of the last-named parts are original. Her appearance during her first season in so wide a range of parts seems to indicate more experience than she can be shown to possess. Two Miss Vaughans, who might have been her sisters, but neither of whom could have been herself, had previously been heard of.
Returning with the company to Drury Lane, she played there, 30 April 1734, Mrs. Fainall in The Way of the World. At Drury Lane she remained until 1740-1, going in the summer of 1735 to the Haymarket, where she was Beatrice in The Anatomist, Lady Townly, and the original Combrush in the Honest Yorkshireman.
...
Wikipedia