by Annette Rubery | Dec 5, 2023 | Architecture, Theatre History, Woffington
York Watergate, Embankment Gardens, London, Dec 2023. On my way to review an exhibition at the Courtauld, I had a closer look at the York Watergate in Embankment Gardens. It was built around 1626 in the grounds of York House: the Duke of Buckingham’s mansion. The...
by Annette Rubery | Dec 1, 2023 | Theatre History
I am still reeling from the news that Robert D. Hume, the American theatre historian, died last week. I debated whether to write anything about him here because I was not a colleague or friend and did not know him very well – beyond the exchange of a few emails....
by Annette Rubery | Nov 29, 2023 | Opera, Theatre History
Bedford Row, London, November 2023. I wrote the other day (in Operatic foundations: A relic of the Haymarket theatre) about the curious stones in the front garden of a law office in Bedford Row and how I think they once formed the foundation of John Vanbrugh’s...
by Annette Rubery | Nov 12, 2023 | Opera, Theatre History
"Little Whig" in the front garden of a law office on Bedford Row. I had read there was an important relic of John Vanbrugh’s Italian opera house in the Haymarket to be seen in Bedford Row. The first Haymarket theatre was co-managed, at least in the first...
by Annette Rubery | Jan 6, 2023 | Theatre History, Woffington
Figure 1: Peg Woffington by John Lewis, oil on canvas, feigned oval 1753. National Portrait Gallery, London. On January 29th 1753 at Smock Alley playhouse in Dublin, Peg Woffington performed in drag as Lothario in Nicholas Rowe’s tragedy The Fair Penitent (Greene...
by Annette Rubery | Jan 20, 2022 | Book review, Theatre History
Dr Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds, Wikimedia Commons. Celebrity was still a relatively new concept in the eighteenth century. Often seen as an ignoble version of ‘fame’ or ‘glory’, celebrity has its roots in Grub Street, where it flourished in the rich soil of...
