Maria Theresa Kemble
Maria Theresa Kemble | |
---|---|
Born | 17 January 1774 |
Died | 3 September 1838 Addlestone, Surrey, England | (aged 64)
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | dancer, singer and actor |
Spouse | Charles Kemble |
Maria Theresa Kemble (1774–1838), née Marie Thérèse Du Camp, was an Austrian-born English actress, singer, dancer and comic playwright on the stage. She was the wife of actor Charles Kemble and mother of Fanny Kemble, part of the Kemble acting dynasty.
Early life
She was the daughter of Jeanne Dufour and George De Camp who were both performers. She was born in
Stage success
In 1792 she was employed as a leading actor to play Macheath in the
For her benefit, 3 May 1799, she gave at Drury Lane her own unprinted play of First Faults. In 1799 William Earle printed a piece called Natural Faults, and accused Miss De Camp in the preface of having stolen his plot and characters. In a letter to the
As a Kemble
Accompanying the Kembles to Covent Garden, she made her first appearance there, 1 October 1806, as Maria in the Citizen, and remained there for the rest of her acting career. Her comedy, The Day after the Wedding, or a Wife's First Lesson, 1808, was played at Covent Garden for the benefit of her husband, who enacted Colonel Freelove, 18 May 1808; she was Lady Elizabeth Freelove. Match-making, or 'Tis a Wise Child that knows its own Father, played for her own benefit on the 24th, is also assigned to her. It was not acted a second time, nor printed.
She also assisted her husband in the preparation of Deaf and Dumb. Among the parts now assigned her were Ophelia, Mrs. Sullen, Violante, Beatrice in
Last years
She then disappeared from the stage until 1818–19, when she played Mrs. Sterling, and was the original Madge Wildfire in Daniel Terry's musical version of Heart of Midlothian. For her own and her husband's benefit she played Lady Julia in 'Personation,’ 9 June 1819, when she retired. A solitary reappearance was made at Covent Garden on the occasion of the début as Juliet of her daughter Fanny Kemble, 5 October 1829, when she played Lady Capulet.
She died at Chertsey, Surrey, on 3 September 1838.
Family members
Besides Fanny Kemble, her daughter Adelaide Kemble was known on the stage. A son John Mitchell Kemble was a classical scholar.[4]
Her brother Vincent De Camp occasionally acted fops and footmen at Drury Lane and the Haymarket, and was subsequently an actor and a cowkeeper in America. Her sister Adelaide, an actress in a line similar to her own, was popular in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Selected roles
- Judith in The Iron Chest by George Colman the Younger (1796)
- Elinor Bloomly in Cheap Living by Frederick Reynolds (1797)
- Leonora in The Inquisitor by Thomas Holcroft (1798)
- Elinor in Cambro-Britons by James Boaden (1798)
- Lady Selina Vapour in Fashionable Friends by Mary Berry (1802)
- Miss Betty in The Land We Live In by Francis Ludlow Holt (1804)
- Fanny in A Prior Claim by Henry James Pye (1805)
- Mrs Templeton in Education by Thomas Morton (1813)
Notes
- ^ a b "CollectionsOnline | G0392".
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15323. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 0-8093-0919-X
- ^ Knight 1892, pp. 378–379.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Knight, John Joseph (1892). "Kemble, Maria Theresa". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 30. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 378–379.
External links
- Works by Maria Theresa Kemble at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)