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A card from Kirk's London Cry pack (c. 1754) showing a hawker of shrimps. Compare to Marcellus Laroon's Crab Crab any Crab (c.1688). Laroon uses a blank background, whereas Kirk depicts actual locations, Laroon perhaps intended his images for an international market.
OTD in 1758, Covent Garden staged The Englishman Returned from Paris. This two-act comedy, written by Samuel Foote (pictured), was a sequel to an earlier piece about a man "who before was a brute [and] is now become a coxcomb from being absurdly averse to every thing foreign".
OTD in 1745, The Devil to Pay was performed at Covent Garden. This ballad opera, adapted by Coffey and Mottley, helped to launch the career of Kitty Clive (pictured), whose portrayal of the central character, Nell, turned her from an belligerent wife into a sentimental heroine.
On the blog: Rivalry between two 18th-century theatrical managers resulted in the British tradition of staging pantomimes at Christmas. https://t.co/QIosKe3jC6
Watercolour drawing of Peg Woffington by Thomas Rowlandson (used on the cover of Helen Brooks’ Actresses, Gender and the Eighteenth-century Stage). Seated before a mirror. Done after 1800, based on the mezzotint by Faber, after Eccardt. In the collection @Wndrcastle Library.
Engraving of Peg Woffington by J. Faber, Jr., 1745 from a painting by J.C. Eccardt. Half-length, full face holding a large volume. Reproduced in The First Actresses, p. 42. Clearly the inspiration for the cover of Janet Camden Lucey's Lovely Peggy (1952).
David Garrick and George Anne Bellamy as Romeo and Juliet. This was Theo Cibber’s version which followed Otway’s revision (Caius Marius) of 1680 in having Juliet wake up in the tomb before Romeo dies. C18th audiences preferred this plot twist to the original. 🎃 👻
The sprained left foot has made a slight improvement but I am housebound for 14 days’ rest. This will be me visiting Bath, in the wheelchair, in due course.
An actual picture of my left foot - either a sprain/strain or trapped nerve I reckon.
Check out this wondrous illustration of the room at Covent Garden Theatre where John Rich's Sublime Society of Beefsteaks met (taken from Brother Walter Arnold's The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, 1871).