4.9 Peg Woffington (1714-1760)

Woffington was the great early love of Garrick and a mercurial actress. She began her successes as Ophelia and collapsed on stage as Rosalind in 1757, never to act again. She excelled in comedy and the latter kind of "breeches" part, in which as a pretty woman she plausibly pretended to be a man - perhaps because she had a rather harsh voice. Dutton Cook writes: "the beautiful Mrs. Woffington, accepting the character of Veturia in Thomson's "Coriolanus," did not hesitate to assume the aspect of age, and to paint lines and wrinkles upon her fair face. But she was a great artist, and her loveliness was a thing so beyond all question that she could afford to disguise it or to seem to slight it for a few nights; possibly it shone the brighter afterwards for its brief eclipse." (Book of the Play)