Mary Catherine Bolton
Mary Catherine Bolton, later known by her married name of Lady Thurlow (1790/91—1830) was a notable English actress, remembered particularly for playing Ophelia.
Bolton was the daughter of James Richard Bolton, an attorney. She made her first appearance on the stage on 6 October 1806, in The Beggar's Opera.[1]
In 1811, she played the part of Ophelia in Hamlet opposite John Kemble,[2] giving a performance described as "in a decorous style, relying on the familiar images of the white dress, loose hair, and wild flowers, to convey a polite feminine distraction".[3][4]
On 13 November 1813, at St Martin's-in-the-Fields, she married Edward Hovell-Thurlow, 2nd Baron Thurlow (1781—1829),[5] and her stage career ended.[6] They had three sons, including Edward Thomas Hovell Hovel-Thurlow, the fourth baron.[7] At the time, it would not have been socially possible for a woman who had married into the ruling class to continue a career as an actress.[6]
Her descendant Roualeyn Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 9th Baron Thurlow, inherited the title in 2013 and in 2015 was elected by his fellow peers to a vacant seat in the House of Lords.
Notes
- ↑ Debrett's Peerage
- ↑ Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (1985), p. 82
- ↑ Helen Small, Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865 (1998), p. 83
- ↑ John C. Coldewey, W. R. Streitberger, Drama: Classical to Contemporary (Prentice Hall, 2000), p. 444
- ↑ 'Actresses and their Matches' in Tales and Readings for the People, Volume 1 (London: Palmer and Clayton, 1849), p. 176
- 1 2 Judith Anne Rosen, Performing Femininity in British Victorian Culture (University of California, Berkeley, 1995), p. 64
- ↑ James McMullen Rigg, Thurlow, Edward (1781-1829), in Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, volume 56 (1898)
External links
- Mary Catherine Bolton, Lady Thurlow, at nationalgalleries.org