by Annette Rubery | May 21, 2023 | History, Literature
New leaves on our cutting of Johnson's Fourth Willow, Spring 2023. Photograph: Annette Rubery. Dr Johnson figure, carved from the wood of the Third Willow. Houghton Library, Harvard. Photograph: Annette Rubery. When the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon wanted the...
by Annette Rubery | Apr 4, 2023 | History, Opera
"Rehearsal of an Opera" by Marco Ricci (c. 1709). Catherine Tofts is in the foreground dressed in white. For most people, a trip to Venice involves taking a ride in a gondola, posing for photos on the Rialto bridge and eating gelato. For my husband and I, it also...
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...
by Annette Rubery | Dec 12, 2021 | Theatre History
David Garrick by Nathaniel Dance-Holland. © Folger Shakespeare Library. Pantomime has a long and complex history but was well underway as a form of popular entertainment in Britain by the middle of the eighteenth century. With its roots in commedia dell’arte, it...
