Antony and Cleopatra: Mrs. Faucit (1789-1857) as Cleopatra

Cleopatra mocks Antony (1.3.83-5) in J. P. Kemble's Covent Garden staging, 1813

As seen here, ladies' costumes on stage were by this time a little less distracting and less obviously anachronistic than Augustan ones, but William Hazlitt still considered Faucit's performance as merely “the affected levity of a modern lady” (Morning Chronicle, 16 Nov. 1813). She was known variously as Harriet Elizabeth Diddear, later Mrs. John Saville Faucit and then as the second Mrs. William Farren the younger.

Samuel De Wilde (Painter); Henry Cook (Engraver); 1814. Courtesy of the H. Beard Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum.