Playing for Revolutionaries

Abstract

?he American, French, and aborted Irish Revolutions in the last quarter of the eighteenth century mark the beginning of the modern era in artistic as well as political terms. Charlotte Melmoth’s forty-year career on the stage spans those revolutions, beginning in her native Ireland in 1773 where she became a leading Shakespearean actress and opera singer before emigrating in 1793 and establishing herself as Americas principal actress of Lady Macbeth. Significant for her teaching as well as performing a range of dramatic texts and musical roles that extends from Shakespeare to opera and Irish song in the vernacular, Melmoth participated in the aesthetic revolution underway in theatre artistry that Denis Diderot posed as a paradox in his letters and essay on acting. Because so little notice has been given to Melmoth previous to this investigation, her history receives a longer treatment than do those of the better-known players of Lady Macbeth in succeeding chapters.