Mary Catherine Bolton

Mary Catherine Bolton
by Samuel De Wilde and now in the Garrick Club
Born 1790
Died 28 September 1830
Nationality Kingdom of Great Britain

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.

Life

Bolton was the daughter of James Richard Bolton, an attorney. She made her first appearance on the stage on 8 October 1801, in The Beggar's Opera as "Miss Bolton"[1]

Mary Catherine Bolton as Ophelia in 1813

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-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.[8]

Notes

  1. ↑ "CollectionsOnline | Name". garrick.ssl.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-07-21.
  2. ↑ Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (1985), p. 82
  3. ↑ Helen Small, Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865 (1998), p. 83
  4. ↑ John C. Coldewey, W. R. Streitberger, Drama: Classical to Contemporary (Prentice Hall, 2000), p. 444
  5. ↑ 'Actresses and their Matches' in Tales and Readings for the People, Volume 1 (London: Palmer and Clayton, 1849), p. 176
  6. 1 2 Judith Anne Rosen, Performing Femininity in British Victorian Culture (University of California, Berkeley, 1995), p. 64
  7. ↑ James McMullen Rigg, Thurlow, Edward (1781-1829), in Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, volume 56 (1898)
  8. ↑ Lord Thurlow at parliament.uk, accessed 10 December 2017
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