Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800

7 In Pursuit of the Dancer-Actress

The London theater companies of the early eighteenth century included several women who were both dancers and actresses. They were not dancers who occasionally took minor acting roles, nor were they actresses who sometimes danced when required. These women not only danced regularly in the entr’actes and took leading roles in danced afterpieces but they also had their own acting roles, often leading ones, in which they appeared season after season. Some of them had begun as dancers, adding acting to their skills after a few seasons; others had started as actresses and had later taken up dancing as well. They are best described as dancer-actresses. There had been dancing alongside drama in the London theaters from the Restoration onward, and actresses had danced as well as acted. The dancer-actress appears from the early 1700s, and she apparently disappears by about 1740. During this period, like most actresses, actors danced when the play required them to, but no leading actors danced in the entr’actes or afterpieces. Equally, no leading male dancers acted in mainpiece (or even afterpiece) plays. There were, thus, no men in the London theater companies who can be described as dancer-actors. By 183 7 In Pursuit of the Dancer-Actress M G contrast, there were several women in the London theaters of the early eighteenth century who had dual careers as both dancers and actresses. This essay pursues the careers, particularly the dancing careers, of three of the most successful dancer-actresses: Margaret Bicknell, Elizabeth Younger, and Hester Santlow. Between 1700 and 1730, when these three dancer-actresses were enjoying their stage careers, commentators and newspaper advertisements record how dance began to rival drama in its popularity with audiences. Dancing became ever more important in the London theaters, as the range and variety of entr’acte dances increased and pantomime afterpieces became a staple of the evening’s entertainment. Dancing also became more expressive. John Weaver produced his first dramatic entertainments of dancing at Drury Lane, and his Lincoln’s Inn Fields rival John Rich was quick to seize on his ideas. Weaver learned from, and exploited , the stage personalities and skills of Hester Santlow and Margaret Bicknell, as John Rich did those of Elizabeth Younger. This essay will investigate the evidence for their individual performance qualities and explore how their acting influenced their dancing. It will consider how both their stage personalities and their skills contributed to the development of expressive dancing on the London stage. Margaret Bicknell Margaret Bicknell’s first recorded stage appearance was at Drury Lane on 20 August 1702, when she performed a solo Scotch Dance.1 Performance records are very incomplete for the earliest years of the eighteenth century, so it is unlikely that this was her stage debut. On 1 July 1703 Mrs. Bicknell was billed in the acting role of Hoyden in John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse. Again, it is unlikely that this was her debut as an actress, although she may well have begun her acting career during the 1702–3 season.2 From 1703/4 to 1705/6 Margaret Bicknell was billed only as a dancer; her repertory included a Harlequin duet, which she danced at Drury Lane on 22 December 1703. Her first billing of the 1706–7 season was at the Queen’s Theater on 7 November 1706 as an actress, in the role of Edging in Colley Cibber’s The Careless Husband. Mrs. Bicknell acted, but apparently did no dancing, at the Queen’s Theater from 1706/7 to 1708/9. Her next billing as a dancer was not until 16 March 184 M G 1710, still at the Queen’s Theater, when she and John Thurmond Junior danced between the acts of George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer (in which Mrs. Bicknell may have played the part of Rose). Between 1706 and 1710 the Lord Chamberlain ordered several changes both to the genres of entertainment permitted at Drury Lane and the Queen’s Theater and to the companies of the two theaters, trying to resolve the rivalry between drama and musical entertainments, particularly Italian opera.3 Dancers were among those forced to change companies, and female dancers were particularly vulnerable as the number of players employed in the London theaters fell as a result of the Lord Chamberlain’s actions. Margaret Bicknell was not the only female dancer who turned to acting in an attempt to...