Early 19th Century English Theatre Royal Covent Garden Flyer, Framed

Description

Title: Early 19th Century English Framed Antique Poster Flyer, Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. The Orphan & Bobinet the Bandit.
Origin: … more Title: Early 19th Century English Framed Antique Poster Flyer, Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. The Orphan & Bobinet the Bandit.
Origin: England.
Place: Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden.
Date: 1815.
Printer: B. Machath.

Description: Remnant antique poster flyer features The Orphan, the headline theatrical performance, and Bobinet the Bandit, a comic musical entertainment. The performance played on December 5, 1815. Item is matted and framed under glass.

Overall measures: 15 L x .5 W x 19.25 H (sight 8 L x 11.75 H) inches.

About the headline performance: The Orphan; The management of the Covent Garden Theatre was fortunate enough, about this period, to secure the services of Miss O'Neill. Her success at the provincial theatres was remarkable, and payed handsomely for yer services. Her range of characters was in the loftier walks of tragedy, and great praise was awarded for her powerful acting. The poster gives reference to Otway's tragedy of the "Orphan" performance that premiered on 2 December 1815. The play was performed, with Conway as Polydore, Charles Kemble as Castalio, and Miss O'Neill as Monimia.
In the Theatrical Inquisitor, the following notice of her performance:
"Miss O'Neill, as Monimia, full answered our most sanguine anticipations, and we shall select one passage of her performance which alone, afforded a most delicious treat to the intelligent observer. We allude to that in which she discloses her marriage to Polydore:
"Oh ! I am his wife :
I am Castalio's wife !"

was delivered in a manner that beggars all description.

An admirer of Miss O'Neill's beauty has thus vented his feelings in rhyme : --
"Ah ! would I were in Conway's place,
Poor Romeo's part enacting ;
Yet looking but in Juliet's face,
i should forget my acting."

To delineate the various expressions of her countenance is utterly impossible. She presented us with a most exquisitely finished picture of a sensitive mind in one of the most distracting situations. Madness and distress were portrayed in every feature. The emotion of her frame, the anguish of her look, the frenzy of her action, depicted the various conflicts of passion, so combined at one moment as to cause a revulsion in the human frame which overwhelmed the senses, and choked the utterance in a whirlwind of despair" (The Actor Or, a Peep Behind the Curtain, 46-47p.). less