Mary Anne Keeley
(1805 - 1899)
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Mary
Anne
Keeley in haar Hosenrolle
Mary Anne
Keeley née Goward was an English actress and actor-manager.
She was
born at Ipswich on 22 november 1805, her father was a brazier and
tinman. Her sister Sarah Judith
Goward was the mother of Lydia Foote.
Goward's
singing talents were noticed by the Ipswich writer Elizabeth Cobbold
and she
encouraged her to take to the stage. After some experience in the
provinces,
she first appeared on the stage in London on 2 July 1825 in the opera
Rosina.
It was not long before she gave up singing parts in favour of drama
proper,
where her powers of character-acting could have scope.
In June
1829 she married Robert Keeley (1793-1869), an admirable comedian, with
whom
she had often appeared.
Between 1832 and 1842 they acted
at Covent Garden, at
the Adelphi with John Buckstone, at the Olympic with Charles Mathews,
and at
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with William Charles Macready. In 1836 they
visited
America. In 1838 she made her first great success as Nydia, the blind
girl, in
a dramatized version of Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii,
and
followed
this with an equally striking impersonation of Smike in Nicholas
Nickleby.
Nicholas
Nickleby (volledige titel: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas
Nickleby) is een victoriaanse roman van Charles Dickens over het leven
en de belevenissen van een jonge man die in het levensonderhoud moet
voorzien van
zijn moeder en zus, nadat zijn vader is overleden.
In 1839
came her decisive triumph with her picturesque and spirited acting as
the hero
of a play founded upon Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. So dangerous
was
considered the popularity of the play, with its glorification of the
prison-breaking
felon, that the Lord Chamberlain ultimately forbade the performance of
any
piece upon the subject. It is perhaps mainly as Jack Sheppard that
Keeley lived
in the memory of playgoers, despite her long subsequent career in plays
more
worthy of her remarkable gifts.
Under
Macready's management she played Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, and
Audrey
in As You Like It. She managed the Lyceum Theatre with her husband from
1844 to
1847; acted with Benjamin Webster and Charles Kean at the Haymarket;
returned
for five years to the Adelphi; and made her last regular public
appearance at
the Lyceum in 1859.
A public
reception, organised by the artist Walter Goodman, was held for her at
this
theatre on her 90th birthday. To mark this birthday, Keeley addressed a
message
to fellow-actresses by way of a letter to The Gentlewoman, which was
reported
in the Court Circular column in The Times:
My 90th
birthday message to my sisters of the stage: I send you all my love,
and say
God bless you; and may you live as long as I have, and be just as
happy! MARY
ANNE KEELEY Nov. 22, 1895.
Keeley died
in 1899 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.
Mary Anne
and Robert Keeley had two daughters, Mary Lucy (circa 1830-1870) and
Louise
(1835-1877), both of whom followed their parents on to the stage. Mary
Lucy
married the writer Albert Richard Smith, while Louise married the
criminal
advocate Montagu Williams, later Queen's Counsel.
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