Charlotte Charke
Encyclopedia
Charlotte Charke (13 January 1713 – 6 April 1760) was an English
actress, playwright
, novelist, autobiographer, and noted transvestite. She acted on the stage from the age of 17, mainly in breeches role
s, and took to wearing male clothing off the stage. She assumed the name "Charles Brown" and called her daughter "Mrs. Brown." She suffered a series of failures in her business affairs after working in a variety of trades commonly associated with men, from valet, to sausage maker, farmer, pastry chef, and tavern owner, but finally achieved success under her own name as a writer, ending her life as a novelist and memoirist.
Colley Cibber
and the musician/actress Katherine Shore. Although she had many siblings, most died before living out their first year of existence. According to her autobiography, her brothers and sisters resented her arrival when she was young and many of them maintained their dislike throughout their lives.
She was educated in the liberal arts
and learned Latin
, Italian
, and geography
at Mrs. Draper's School for girls between 1719 and 1721 and then moved to live with her mother in Middlesex
. She suggested that her gender identification with men showed up early in her life, as she recalled impersonating her father as a small child, and, when she moved in with her mother, she taught herself shooting, gardening, and horse racing, but this may also be normal dress-up for a child, and especially one with a famous father. In 1724, she and her mother moved to Hertfordshire
, and there she continued engaging in country sports and education, focusing on subjects and pursuits usually associated with males. According to her anecdotes, she also "studied medicine" there and, in 1726, tried to set herself up as a doctor (she was thirteen years old). Colley Cibber, however, stopped her when the bills for her supplies came due.
, where her father was manager, and in 1729, when she was sixteen, she was courted by the composer and violinist Richard Charke
, and the two were married on 4 February 1730. Once married, Charlotte, no longer a minor to her parents, began to appear on stage. She made her debut on 8 April 1730 in the stereotypically ultra-feminine minor role of Mademoiselle in The Provok'd Wife, by John Vanbrugh
, at Drury Lane. She had to stop performing soon thereafter, however, when she discovered that she was pregnant. Her daughter, Catherine, was born in December 1730, and a month later, January 1731, Charlotte was back on stage as Lucy in The London Merchant
by George Lillo
. In July of that year she made her first appearance in a breeches role
as Tragedo in the same play and followed that the next year with Roderigo in Othello
. She would later appear as Mrs. Slammerkin in The Beggar's Opera
and the tomboyish Hoyden in The Relapse
. Around this time, Charke began wearing male clothing off the stage as well, although intermittently.
In 1733, Colley Cibber sold his controlling interest in the Drury Lane Theatre to John Highmore, and Charlotte felt that it should have gone instead to herself and her brother, Theophilus Cibber
. In fact, it is likely that the sale was at a vastly inflated price and that Colley's goal was simply to get out of debt and make himself a profit (see Robert Lowe in his edition of Cibber's Apology). Theophilus, who likely knew of the scheme, grew bolder in demands when his father was not liable for payment and organized an actors' revolt. Charles Fleetwood
then came to control the theatre, and Charke went to the Haymarket Theatre
and began appearing in many male parts on that stage. She returned to Drury Lane for the role of Cleopatra but eventually walked out to have her own company in the summer of 1735 in Lincoln's Inn Fields
. She wrote her first play, The Art of Management, in September 1735. It was an explicit attack on Fleetwood, who attempted to buy up all printed copies of the play to prevent its circulating.
She took the consequential step of joining Henry Fielding
in the Haymarket in 1736. For him she appeared as Lord Place, a parody of her father, Colley Cibber, in Fielding's Pasquin of 1737. The play was a powerful attack on Robert Walpole
and his government, and Colley Cibber was satirized for his fawning attachment to Walpole and his undeserving occupation of the place of poet laureate. Walpole led Parliament
into passing the Licensing Act of 1737
, which closed all non-patent
theatres and forbid the acting of any play that had not passed official censor
s. Charlotte Charke's famously antagonistic relationship with both of London's government-recognized patent theatre
s meant that she would have great difficulty finding legitimate employment as an actress. For his part, her husband Richard, who had remained at Drury Lane, had already become estranged from Charlotte through his constant and costly affairs. He fled his heavy gambling debts by moving to Jamaica
, where he soon died. Charlotte was suddenly without either occupation or husband, alienated from her powerful father, and herself a single mother, all at the age of twenty-four. It was at this point that Charlotte Charke began wearing male clothes with frequency even off the stage.
. This was a puppet
theatre, and she used her wooden cast to perform a number of satirical plays. Many of the stringed figures were caricatured after current politicians and actors, including, of course, her father Colley. Her puppet shows were popular; nor could the government shut them down, as, technically, no human actors appeared onstage at Punch's. She decided to take her theatre on tour throughout the rest of the nation, but, while traveling, she fell seriously ill, likely with nervous exhaustion. Medical bills, according to her autobiography, cost her the theatre, and she was obliged to sell her puppets at a serious loss. She sent young Catherine off with begging notes to her friends and relatives, but no one in her family was willing or able to help her monetarily. Her father in particular was furious with her for the actors' rebellion at Drury Lane and her unflattering impression of him in Pasquin under his old enemy Fielding.
According to the autobiography, the principal aid she received at this stage of her life was from other actors. Dressing as a man could of course be explained as one way to avoid being recognized by her many creditors, but it was also clearly Charke's preference. While trying to raise money from friends, she was arrested for debt and imprisoned. According to her an intriguiging passage of her Autobiography, it was the coffee-house keepers and prostitutes of Covent Garden
who banded together to raise the money for her bail, and these women, knowing her well, jokingly referred to her as "Master Charles" as if she were a young gentleman.
In fact, she had by now begun appearing in public almost exclusively as a male. She called herself "Charles Brown" and, some time later, began to refer to her daughter as "Mrs. Brown." She boasted further that a young heiress fell in love with her, believing her to really be a man, and proposed marriage. This resulted, not surprisingly, in disappointment for both Charke and the hopeful heiress. Unable to earn a living in the sanctioned theatres, Charlotte began to work any job she could in order to support herself and Catherine, but she was always attracted to jobs she could perform as a man. Therefore, she was a valet
to Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey
, and then even took up as a sausage
maker. Anglesey was famous as a bigamist
and libertine, and lived with a paramour during Charlotte's employ. Charlotte claimed that when Anglesey was not entertaining guests, the trio would dine together as friendly equals. As a valet's service would indeed be personal, normally including dressing one's master for the day, the entire arrangement would have been quite unusual. (Anglesey was soon a central party to an infamous scandal, being dispossessed of his lands—but allowed to continue using his title—after a court ruled that he had sold his young kinsman, James Annesley
, who had a better claim to the inheritance, into slavery.)
In 1742, Charlotte got a new acting company in the New Theatre in St. James's, and she produced her second play, Tit for Tat, or, Comedy and Tragedy at War. In the flush of early success, she borrowed money from her uncle and opened the Charlotte Charke Tavern in Drury Lane. This failed due to thieving by her customers and her own generosity; she sold it at a loss. In the summer season, she appeared in a series of male roles. At this point, she was "Charles Brown" in public in London on an everyday basis. She joined with Theophilus Cibber at the Haymarket in 1744 and then joined William Hallam's company. She married John Sacheverell in 1746, but scholars cannot determine anything about this man, and Charke refers to him only in passing in her autobiography, and not even by name. Whatever the nature of the marriage, it was cut short by Sacheverell's death. It did give Charke a new surname under which to appear for a time.
At a typical moment of penury, Charlotte was offered the leading male role of Punch (of Punch & Judy fame) in a new puppet
theatre proposed by a Mr. Russell, due to her recognized abilities as both a comic performer and a proven manipulator of difficult stringed marionettes. The short season was an artistic and financial success for Charlotte, but before it could be repeated the theatre's founder was arrested debts and confined Newgate
Prison, where he died after having lost his fortune and his mind. Charlotte attempted to buy her friend's puppets from Russell's landlord, who had claimed them, but she could not meet his asking price and the little company likewise passed out of existence. An unproduced script Russell had written was also kept by the dead man's creditors as collateral, thus preventing Charlotte from staging it as she had promised its author. The script was thereafter lost as well.
Some time in 1747, Charke went on the road as a strolling player, traveling the West Country
with Charlotte's daughter in tow. In 1750, Catherine Charke married an actor named John Harman, despite Charlotte's aversion to him. During these peripatetic years, Charlotte was once imprisoned (with males) as a vagabond actor, worked as a (male) pastry cook, and set herself up as a farmer. Earlier she had run a grocery store. All her attempts at business ended alike in failure. Between 1752 and 1753, she wrote for the Bristol Weekly Intelligencer, and in 1754 she worked as a prompter
in Bath, under her own name but in men's clothing. She found many of the players difficult and untalented compared to those she had known in her privileged youth. At the end of the year, she decided to move back to London and make her living as a writer.
, The History of Mr. Henry Dumont and Miss Charlotte Evelyn and sold it for ten guinea
s. It was published in 1755, and the publisher's estimate of its value was apparently confirmed, as it did not sell especially well. However, Charke, like her father, was still famous and infamous, and she began writing her autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, which began to appear in instalments. These sold very well, and the instalments were collected and sold as a book, which went into two editions in the year. An abridged form appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, as well. This was one of the first autobiographies ever written by a woman.
Charke's tone is, like her father's, chatty, witty, relaxed, and intimate. It is a mixture of honesty and self-flattery, but with nothing like her father's self-aggrandizement. She wrote the autobiography, she said, to reconcile herself to her father. It did not work. He would not communicate with her, returning a letter unopened, and when he died in 1757, a very wealthy man, he left Charlotte a token ₤5. In response, Charke wrote The Lover's Treat, or, Unnatural Hatred, a novel about families at war with themselves.
In 1758, Catherine and her husband moved to America, and in 1759 Charke attempted to return to the stage in the breeches role of Marplot in Susanna Centlivre
's The Busybody. She died in April 1760 at her Lodgings in Haymarket, London, forty-seven years old.
Brookfield, Vt. : Pickering & Chatto, 1999.
Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Doran & company, inc., 1929.
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
actress, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, novelist, autobiographer, and noted transvestite. She acted on the stage from the age of 17, mainly in breeches role
Breeches role
A breeches role is a role in which an actress appears in male clothing .In opera it also refers to any male character that is sung and acted by a female singer...
s, and took to wearing male clothing off the stage. She assumed the name "Charles Brown" and called her daughter "Mrs. Brown." She suffered a series of failures in her business affairs after working in a variety of trades commonly associated with men, from valet, to sausage maker, farmer, pastry chef, and tavern owner, but finally achieved success under her own name as a writer, ending her life as a novelist and memoirist.
Early life
She was the twelfth and last child born to actor/playwright poet laureatePoet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style...
and the musician/actress Katherine Shore. Although she had many siblings, most died before living out their first year of existence. According to her autobiography, her brothers and sisters resented her arrival when she was young and many of them maintained their dislike throughout their lives.
She was educated in the liberal arts
Liberal arts
The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...
and learned Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
at Mrs. Draper's School for girls between 1719 and 1721 and then moved to live with her mother in Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
. She suggested that her gender identification with men showed up early in her life, as she recalled impersonating her father as a small child, and, when she moved in with her mother, she taught herself shooting, gardening, and horse racing, but this may also be normal dress-up for a child, and especially one with a famous father. In 1724, she and her mother moved to Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
, and there she continued engaging in country sports and education, focusing on subjects and pursuits usually associated with males. According to her anecdotes, she also "studied medicine" there and, in 1726, tried to set herself up as a doctor (she was thirteen years old). Colley Cibber, however, stopped her when the bills for her supplies came due.
Actress
Like her brothers and sisters, she had an interest in the theatre. She spent time at Drury LaneTheatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
, where her father was manager, and in 1729, when she was sixteen, she was courted by the composer and violinist Richard Charke
Richard Charke
Richard Charke was an English violinist, composer, operatic baritone, and playwright.-Biography:Charke was born in London. He initially worked as a dancing-master before being appointed by Colley Cibber as leader of the orchestra at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1729...
, and the two were married on 4 February 1730. Once married, Charlotte, no longer a minor to her parents, began to appear on stage. She made her debut on 8 April 1730 in the stereotypically ultra-feminine minor role of Mademoiselle in The Provok'd Wife, by John Vanbrugh
John Vanbrugh
Sir John Vanbrugh – 26 March 1726) was an English architect and dramatist, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse and The Provoked Wife , which have become enduring stage favourites...
, at Drury Lane. She had to stop performing soon thereafter, however, when she discovered that she was pregnant. Her daughter, Catherine, was born in December 1730, and a month later, January 1731, Charlotte was back on stage as Lucy in The London Merchant
The London Merchant
The London Merchant is playwright George Lillo's most famous work. A tragedy that follows the downfall of a young apprentice due to his association with a prostitute, it is remarkable for its use of middle and working class characters...
by George Lillo
George Lillo
George Lillo was an English playwright and tragedian. He was a jeweler in London as well as a dramatist. He produced his first stage work, Silvia, or The Country Burial, in 1730. A year later, he produced his most famous play, The London Merchant...
. In July of that year she made her first appearance in a breeches role
Breeches role
A breeches role is a role in which an actress appears in male clothing .In opera it also refers to any male character that is sung and acted by a female singer...
as Tragedo in the same play and followed that the next year with Roderigo in Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
. She would later appear as Mrs. Slammerkin in The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
and the tomboyish Hoyden in The Relapse
The Relapse
The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, Virtue Rewarded....
. Around this time, Charke began wearing male clothing off the stage as well, although intermittently.
In 1733, Colley Cibber sold his controlling interest in the Drury Lane Theatre to John Highmore, and Charlotte felt that it should have gone instead to herself and her brother, Theophilus Cibber
Theophilus Cibber
Theophilus Cibber was an English actor, playwright, author, and son of the actor-manager Colley Cibber.He began acting at an early age, and followed his father into theatrical management. In 1727, Alexander Pope satirized Theophilus Cibber in his Dunciad as a youth who "thrusts his person full...
. In fact, it is likely that the sale was at a vastly inflated price and that Colley's goal was simply to get out of debt and make himself a profit (see Robert Lowe in his edition of Cibber's Apology). Theophilus, who likely knew of the scheme, grew bolder in demands when his father was not liable for payment and organized an actors' revolt. Charles Fleetwood
Charles Fleetwood
Charles Fleetwood was an English Parliamentary soldier and politician, Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1652–55, where he enforced the Cromwellian Settlement. At the Restoration he was included in the Act of Indemnity as among the twenty liable to penalties other than capital, and was finally...
then came to control the theatre, and Charke went to the Haymarket Theatre
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...
and began appearing in many male parts on that stage. She returned to Drury Lane for the role of Cleopatra but eventually walked out to have her own company in the summer of 1735 in Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London, UK. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in developing London", as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner observes...
. She wrote her first play, The Art of Management, in September 1735. It was an explicit attack on Fleetwood, who attempted to buy up all printed copies of the play to prevent its circulating.
She took the consequential step of joining Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
in the Haymarket in 1736. For him she appeared as Lord Place, a parody of her father, Colley Cibber, in Fielding's Pasquin of 1737. The play was a powerful attack on Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
and his government, and Colley Cibber was satirized for his fawning attachment to Walpole and his undeserving occupation of the place of poet laureate. Walpole led Parliament
Parliament of Great Britain
The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland...
into passing the Licensing Act of 1737
Licensing Act
Licensing Act may refer to several Acts of Parliament:*Licensing Order of 1643, an Act imposing pre-publication censorship and prompting Milton to write Areopagitica*Licensing of the Press Act 1662, an Act regulating the printing industry...
, which closed all non-patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
theatres and forbid the acting of any play that had not passed official censor
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
s. Charlotte Charke's famously antagonistic relationship with both of London's government-recognized patent theatre
Patent theatre
The patent theatres were the theatres that were licensed to perform "spoken drama" after the English Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Other theatres were prohibited from performing such "serious" drama, but were permitted to show comedy, pantomime or melodrama...
s meant that she would have great difficulty finding legitimate employment as an actress. For his part, her husband Richard, who had remained at Drury Lane, had already become estranged from Charlotte through his constant and costly affairs. He fled his heavy gambling debts by moving to Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, where he soon died. Charlotte was suddenly without either occupation or husband, alienated from her powerful father, and herself a single mother, all at the age of twenty-four. It was at this point that Charlotte Charke began wearing male clothes with frequency even off the stage.
Mr. Brown and poverty
In 1738, she was granted the unusual privilege of a license to run Punch's Theatre at St. James'sSt. James's
St James's is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. It is bounded to the north by Piccadilly, to the west by Green Park, to the south by The Mall and St. James's Park and to the east by The Haymarket.-History:...
. This was a puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
theatre, and she used her wooden cast to perform a number of satirical plays. Many of the stringed figures were caricatured after current politicians and actors, including, of course, her father Colley. Her puppet shows were popular; nor could the government shut them down, as, technically, no human actors appeared onstage at Punch's. She decided to take her theatre on tour throughout the rest of the nation, but, while traveling, she fell seriously ill, likely with nervous exhaustion. Medical bills, according to her autobiography, cost her the theatre, and she was obliged to sell her puppets at a serious loss. She sent young Catherine off with begging notes to her friends and relatives, but no one in her family was willing or able to help her monetarily. Her father in particular was furious with her for the actors' rebellion at Drury Lane and her unflattering impression of him in Pasquin under his old enemy Fielding.
According to the autobiography, the principal aid she received at this stage of her life was from other actors. Dressing as a man could of course be explained as one way to avoid being recognized by her many creditors, but it was also clearly Charke's preference. While trying to raise money from friends, she was arrested for debt and imprisoned. According to her an intriguiging passage of her Autobiography, it was the coffee-house keepers and prostitutes of Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
who banded together to raise the money for her bail, and these women, knowing her well, jokingly referred to her as "Master Charles" as if she were a young gentleman.
In fact, she had by now begun appearing in public almost exclusively as a male. She called herself "Charles Brown" and, some time later, began to refer to her daughter as "Mrs. Brown." She boasted further that a young heiress fell in love with her, believing her to really be a man, and proposed marriage. This resulted, not surprisingly, in disappointment for both Charke and the hopeful heiress. Unable to earn a living in the sanctioned theatres, Charlotte began to work any job she could in order to support herself and Catherine, but she was always attracted to jobs she could perform as a man. Therefore, she was a valet
Valet
Valet and varlet are terms for male servants who serve as personal attendants to their employer.- Word origins :In the Middle Ages, the valet de chambre to a ruler was a prestigious appointment for young men...
to Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey
Viscount Valentia
Viscount Valentia is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It has been created twice. The first creation came in 1621 for Henry Power. A year later, his kinsman Sir Francis Annesley, 1st Baronet, was given a "reversionary grant" of the viscountcy, which stated that on Power's death Annesley would be...
, and then even took up as a sausage
Sausage
A sausage is a food usually made from ground meat , mixed with salt, herbs, and other spices, although vegetarian sausages are available. The word sausage is derived from Old French saussiche, from the Latin word salsus, meaning salted.Typically, a sausage is formed in a casing traditionally made...
maker. Anglesey was famous as a bigamist
Bigamy
In cultures that practice marital monogamy, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. Bigamy is a crime in most western countries, and when it occurs in this context often neither the first nor second spouse is aware of the other...
and libertine, and lived with a paramour during Charlotte's employ. Charlotte claimed that when Anglesey was not entertaining guests, the trio would dine together as friendly equals. As a valet's service would indeed be personal, normally including dressing one's master for the day, the entire arrangement would have been quite unusual. (Anglesey was soon a central party to an infamous scandal, being dispossessed of his lands—but allowed to continue using his title—after a court ruled that he had sold his young kinsman, James Annesley
Viscount Valentia
Viscount Valentia is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It has been created twice. The first creation came in 1621 for Henry Power. A year later, his kinsman Sir Francis Annesley, 1st Baronet, was given a "reversionary grant" of the viscountcy, which stated that on Power's death Annesley would be...
, who had a better claim to the inheritance, into slavery.)
In 1742, Charlotte got a new acting company in the New Theatre in St. James's, and she produced her second play, Tit for Tat, or, Comedy and Tragedy at War. In the flush of early success, she borrowed money from her uncle and opened the Charlotte Charke Tavern in Drury Lane. This failed due to thieving by her customers and her own generosity; she sold it at a loss. In the summer season, she appeared in a series of male roles. At this point, she was "Charles Brown" in public in London on an everyday basis. She joined with Theophilus Cibber at the Haymarket in 1744 and then joined William Hallam's company. She married John Sacheverell in 1746, but scholars cannot determine anything about this man, and Charke refers to him only in passing in her autobiography, and not even by name. Whatever the nature of the marriage, it was cut short by Sacheverell's death. It did give Charke a new surname under which to appear for a time.
At a typical moment of penury, Charlotte was offered the leading male role of Punch (of Punch & Judy fame) in a new puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
theatre proposed by a Mr. Russell, due to her recognized abilities as both a comic performer and a proven manipulator of difficult stringed marionettes. The short season was an artistic and financial success for Charlotte, but before it could be repeated the theatre's founder was arrested debts and confined Newgate
Newgate
Newgate at the west end of Newgate Street was one of the historic seven gates of London Wall round the City of London and one of the six which date back to Roman times. From it a Roman road led west to Silchester...
Prison, where he died after having lost his fortune and his mind. Charlotte attempted to buy her friend's puppets from Russell's landlord, who had claimed them, but she could not meet his asking price and the little company likewise passed out of existence. An unproduced script Russell had written was also kept by the dead man's creditors as collateral, thus preventing Charlotte from staging it as she had promised its author. The script was thereafter lost as well.
Some time in 1747, Charke went on the road as a strolling player, traveling the West Country
West Country
The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...
with Charlotte's daughter in tow. In 1750, Catherine Charke married an actor named John Harman, despite Charlotte's aversion to him. During these peripatetic years, Charlotte was once imprisoned (with males) as a vagabond actor, worked as a (male) pastry cook, and set herself up as a farmer. Earlier she had run a grocery store. All her attempts at business ended alike in failure. Between 1752 and 1753, she wrote for the Bristol Weekly Intelligencer, and in 1754 she worked as a prompter
Prompt (theatre)
The prompt in a theatre is traditionally the person who prompts or cues actors when they forget their lines or neglect to move on the stage to where they are supposed to be situated....
in Bath, under her own name but in men's clothing. She found many of the players difficult and untalented compared to those she had known in her privileged youth. At the end of the year, she decided to move back to London and make her living as a writer.
Charlotte Charke as writer
In 1754, Charke wrote her first novelNovel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, The History of Mr. Henry Dumont and Miss Charlotte Evelyn and sold it for ten guinea
Guinea
Guinea , officially the Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea , it is today sometimes called Guinea-Conakry to distinguish it from its neighbour Guinea-Bissau. Guinea is divided into eight administrative regions and subdivided into thirty-three prefectures...
s. It was published in 1755, and the publisher's estimate of its value was apparently confirmed, as it did not sell especially well. However, Charke, like her father, was still famous and infamous, and she began writing her autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, which began to appear in instalments. These sold very well, and the instalments were collected and sold as a book, which went into two editions in the year. An abridged form appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, as well. This was one of the first autobiographies ever written by a woman.
Charke's tone is, like her father's, chatty, witty, relaxed, and intimate. It is a mixture of honesty and self-flattery, but with nothing like her father's self-aggrandizement. She wrote the autobiography, she said, to reconcile herself to her father. It did not work. He would not communicate with her, returning a letter unopened, and when he died in 1757, a very wealthy man, he left Charlotte a token ₤5. In response, Charke wrote The Lover's Treat, or, Unnatural Hatred, a novel about families at war with themselves.
In 1758, Catherine and her husband moved to America, and in 1759 Charke attempted to return to the stage in the breeches role of Marplot in Susanna Centlivre
Susanna Centlivre
Susanna Centlivre born Susanna Freeman, also known professionally as Susanna Carroll, was an English poet, actress and one of the premier dramatists of the 18th century. During her long career at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she became known as the Second Woman of the English Stage after Aphra Behn...
's The Busybody. She died in April 1760 at her Lodgings in Haymarket, London, forty-seven years old.
Gender issues
Charke's Narrative has received renewed attention in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Part of this has come from scholars who have viewed her as a transgressive figure, a woman who challenged and redefined gender. She has also been viewed as an openly lesbian figure. However, the Narrative has little sure evidence of lesbianism, and none for open lesbianism, and Charke indicates that her transvestitism was very rarely met with shock or outrage. Those who met her as "Mr. Brown" and knew her actual sex did not seem to be, in her account, very disturbed by her clothing or very interested in her sexual orientation. Thus, some have even seen in Charke's transvestitism and possible lesbianism a sign of how loosely female gender was policed and controlled, or how thoroughly actors and actresses were outside of social norms. Whatever contemporaries perceived of Charke's habits and orientation, her constant financial difficulties and vocational limitations are, at the least, examples of the openness and restrictions of the mid-18th century economic system in England.Further reading
- Morgan, Fidelis The Well Known Troublemaker - A life of Charlotte Charke 1989, London: Faber
- Shevelow, KathrynKathryn ShevelowKathryn Shevelow is a professor at the University of California San Diego. She is a specialist in eighteenth-century British literature and culture. In 1999, she won the Earl Warren College Outstanding Teaching Award, and in 2005 she received UCSD's Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award...
Charlotte: Being a True Account of an Actress's Flamboyant Adventures in Eighteenth-Century London's Wild and Wicked Theatrical World 2005, Henry Holt & Co. - A narrative of the life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke / by Charlotte Charke ; edited by Robert Rehder. Charke, Charlotte, 1713-1760.
Brookfield, Vt. : Pickering & Chatto, 1999.
- The art of management; or, tragedy expell'd. By Mrs. Charlotte Charke, 1713-1760. London : printed by W. Rayner, and sold at the pamphlet-shops, 1735.
- Stage favourites of the eighteenth century, by Lewis Melville [pseud.] with a frontispiece in colour Benjamin, Lewis Saul, 1874-1932.
Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Doran & company, inc., 1929.
External links
- http://www.lssu.edu/faculty/pfields/charke.php http://www.lssu.edu/faculty/pfields/charke.php
- http://www.unifr.ch/das/CompromisesMain%20FolderRS/Robert_Rehder/Essays/The_Woman_Mr_Brown_1.html http://www.unifr.ch/das/CompromisesMain%20FolderRS/Robert_Rehder/Essays/The_Woman_Mr_Brown_1.html