Elizabeth Farren was an English actress of the late 18th century.

Early life

Elizabeth Farren was the daughter of George Farren of Cork, Ireland, formerly a surgeon and apothecary, then later an actor, and his wife (née Wright) of Liverpool, Lancashire, the daughter of a publican or brewer.

At a very early age Elizabeth Farren, whose Christian name was sometimes shortened to Eliza, played at Bath and elsewhere in juvenile parts. In 1774 she was acting with her mother and sisters at Wakefield under Tate Wilkinson’s opponent, Whiteley. She played Columbine and sang between the acts of the previous tragedy (Wandering Patentee, i. 201). When fifteen years of age she played at Liverpool Rosetta in ‘Love in a Village,’ and subsequently her great part of Lady Townly.

London career

Her first London appearance was in 1777 as Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer

She Stoops to Conquer

She Stoops to Conquer is a comedy by the Irish author Oliver Goldsmith, son of an Anglo-Irish vicar, first performed in London in 1773. The play is a great favourite for study by English literature and theatre classes in Britain and the United States. It is one of the few plays from the 18th...

. Subsequent successes established her reputation and she became the natural successor to Frances Abington

Frances Abington

Frances "Fanny" Abington was a British Actress.-Biography:She was born Frances Barton, the daughter of a private soldier, and began her career as a flower girl and a street singer. As a servant to a French milliner, she learned about costume and acquired a knowledge of French which afterwards...

 when the latter left Drury Lane

Drury Lane

Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....

 in 1782. The parts of Hermione, Olivia, Portia and Juliet were in her repertory, but her Lady Betty Modish, Lady Townly, Lady Fanciful, Lady Teazle and similar parts were her favorites.

Introduced by Younger, her Liverpool manager, to Colman

George Colman the Elder

George Colman was an English dramatist and essayist, usually called "the Elder", and sometimes "George the First", to distinguish him from his son, George Colman the Younger....

, she made her first appearance in London at the Haymarket

Haymarket Theatre

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...

, 9 June 1777, as Miss Hardcastle. She was favourably received, and, after enacting Maria in Murphy’s Citizen, Rosetta, and Miss Tittup in Garrick's

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

 Bon Ton, she was trusted by Colman, 30 Aug. 1777, with Rosina in the Spanish Barber, or the Useless Precaution, his adaptation from Beaumarchais'

Pierre Beaumarchais

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary ....

 The Barber of Seville. She also spoke the epilogue to the play. On 11 July 1778 she was the original Nancy Lovel in Colman's Suicide. This was a ‘breeches’ part, to which her figure was unsuited, and she incurred some satire for shapelessness and forfeited the admiration of Charles James Fox

Charles James Fox

Charles James Fox PC , styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...

. Lady Townly in the Provoke Husband and Lady Fanciful in the Provoked Wife restored her to public favour.

On Sept. 1778, as Charlotte Rusport in the West Indian, she made her first appearance at Drury Lane. At this theatre or at the Haymarket, with occasional migrations into the country and with some not very explicable performances, ordinarily for single nights, at Covent Gardens, she remained until her retirement from the stage. Hailed as a worth successor to Mrs. Abington, who left Drury Lane in 1782, she soon took the lead in fine ladies. Berinthia in Sheridan's Trip to Scarborough, Belinda in Murphy's All in the Wrong, Angelica in Love for Love, Elvira in Spanish Friar, Hermione in the Winter's Tale, Olivia in Twelfth Night, Portia, Lydia Languish, Millamant, Statira, Juliet, and Lady Betty Modish are representative of over a hundred characters in which she was received with warmest favour. The parts she ‘created’ are not especially important. She was Lady Sash in the Camp, assigned to Sheridan, Drury Lane, 15 Oct. 1778; Mrs Sullen in Colman's Separate Maintenance, Drury Lane, 31 Aug. 1779; Cecilia in Miss Lee's

Harriet Lee

Harriet Lee was a novelist and playwright.Born the daughter of actor John Lee, Harriet Lee grew up in an artistic family. In 1786 she published The Errors of Innocence, an epistolary novel...

 Chapter of Accidents, Haymarket, 5 Aug. 1780; Almeida in Pratt's Fair Circassian, 27 Nov. 1781; and enacted the heroines of various comedies and dramas of Mrs. Cowley

Hannah Cowley

Hannah Cowley was an English dramatist and poet. Although Cowley’s plays and poetry did not enjoy wide popularity after the nineteenth century, critic Melinda Finberg rates Cowley as “one of the foremost playwrights of the late eighteenth century” whose “skill in writing fluid, sparkling dialogue...

, Mrs. Inchbald

Elizabeth Inchbald

Elizabeth Inchbald was an English novelist, actress, and dramatist.- Life :Born on 15 October 1753 at Standingfield, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, Elizabeth was the eighth of the nine children of John Simpson , a farmer, and his wife Mary, née Rushbrook. The family, like several others in the...

, General Burgoyne

John Burgoyne

General John Burgoyne was a British army officer, politician and dramatist. He first saw action during the Seven Years' War when he participated in several battles, mostly notably during the Portugal Campaign of 1762....

, Miles Peter Andrews

Miles Peter Andrews

Miles Peter Andrews was an 18th century English playwright, gunpowder manufacturer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1796 to 1814.-Biography:...

, and of other writers. The last original part she played was the heroine of Holcroft's

Thomas Holcroft

Thomas Holcroft was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer.-Early life:He was born in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London. His father had a shoemaker's shop, and kept riding horses for hire; but having fallen into difficulties was reduced to the status of hawking peddler...

 Force of Ridicule, 6 Dec. 1796, a piece which was damned the first night and remains unprinted. On her last appearance, 8 April 1797, she played Lady Teazle. Great interest attended her final performance, at the close of which Wroughton recited some not very brilliant lines of farewell. A large audience was attracted, and Miss Farren, after speaking the farewell lines of her part, burst into a passion of tears.

Farren had a figure slight, above the middle height, and suited to the disposition of drapery, in which she was happy; her face was expressive and animated, she had a blue eye and a winning smile, and a voice cultivated rather than sweet. In sentiment she was less happy than in vivacity, and the serious portions of the screen scene in the ‘School for Scandal’ were held inferior to the other portions of an impersonation that won the praises of the best judges.

A portrait of Miss Farren was in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club

Garrick Club

The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:The Garrick Club was founded at a meeting in the Committee Room at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Wednesday 17 August 1831...

 c.1900.

Retirement and later life

On 1 May 1797 she married Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby

Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby

Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby PC , styled Lord Strange between 1771 and 1776, was a British peer and politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries...

 (1752–1834) by whom she had a son and two daughters. Lady Derby died on 23 April 1829 at Knowsley Park

Knowsley Hall

Knowsley Hall is a stately home near Liverpool within the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley, in Merseyside, England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building, and is the ancestral home of the Stanley family, the Earls of Derby. The hall is surrounded by of...

, Lancashire.

In the many scandalous productions of her day, though much satire is expended on the origin of Miss Farren, no imputation is cast upon her fair fame. She had a short sentimental attachment to John Palmer and was admired and followed by Fox. Lord Derby treated her with much respect, introducing her to his female friends and obtaining her the patronage of the Duke of Richmond, at whose house in Whitehall she presided over a series of amateur performances. In distinction of manner and refinement of bearing she appears to have had no rival except Mrs. Abington

Frances Abington

Frances "Fanny" Abington was a British Actress.-Biography:She was born Frances Barton, the daughter of a private soldier, and began her career as a flower girl and a street singer. As a servant to a French milliner, she learned about costume and acquired a knowledge of French which afterwards...

, against who she was often pitted. Hazlitt

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...

 speaks of ‘Miss Farren, with her fine-lady airs and graces, with that elegant turn of her head and motion of her fan and tripping of her tongue’ (Criticisms and Dramatic Essays, 1851, p. 49). Richard Cumberland

Richard Cumberland (dramatist)

Richard Cumberland was a British dramatist and civil servant. In 1771 his hit play The West Indian was first staged. During the American War of Independence he acted as a secret negotiator with Spain in an effort to secure a peace agreement between the two nations. He also edited a short-lived...

 (Memoirs, ii. 236) mentions her style as ‘exquisite.’ George Colman the younger

George Colman the Younger

George Colman , known as "the Younger", English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was the son of George Colman "the Elder".-Life:...

 (Random Recollections, 1. 251) says of ‘the lovely and accomplished Miss Farren’ that ‘no person ever more successfully performed the elegant leveties of Lady Townly.’ Tate Wilkinson

Tate Wilkinson

Tate Wilkinson , English actor and manager, was the son of a clergyman.His first attempts at acting were badly received, and it was to his wonderful gift of mimicry that he owed his success. His imitations, however, naturally gave offence to the important actors and managers whose peculiarities he...

 credits her with ‘infinite merit’ (Wandering Patentee, iii. 42). Boaden (Life of Siddons, ii. 318) says that after her retirement comedy degenerated into farce. Walpole spoke of her as the most perfect actress he had ever seen, and Mrs. Siddons

Sarah Siddons

Sarah Siddons was a Welsh actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton and Elizabeth Whitlock, and the aunt of Fanny Kemble. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character,...

, on the day of Miss Farren’s marriage, condescended the loss of ‘our comic muse.’

See the life-size portrait of her by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, shown at the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 annual exhibition in 1790.

[Works cited; Memoirs of the Present Countess of Derby, late Miss Farren, by Petronius Arbiter, esq., London, 4to, n.d. (1797); The Testimony of Truth to the Exalted Merit, or a Biographical Sketch of the Countess of Derby, London, 4to, 1797 (a reply to the preceding); John Genest

John Genest

-Life:He was the son of John Genest of Dunker's Hill, Devon. He was educated at Westminster School, entered 9 May 1780 as a pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. 1784 and M.A. 1787. He took holy orders, and was for many years curate of a Lincolnshire village...

, Account of the English Stage; Monthly Mirror, April 1797; Thespian Dictionary; Tea-Table Talk, by Mrs. Mathews, 1857.]

External links