Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

128.
Cymbeline was performed only five times, in a season which
included Love's Labour'8 Lost (as Princess of Prance, Mrs.
Young "looked and spoke like a lady"), Hamlet. The Fatal
Dowry and As You Like It - "for the purpose of introducing
Mrs. Charles Young in a second and more prominent
Shakespearean character, viz. aosalind." ? 4 Of her Rosalind,
The Athenaeum complained:
It is not by always speaking in a high key that
the sayings of Rosalind can be made emphatic;
there is in such a style o£ elocution the danger
of monotony to be avoided. ^
Mrs. Charles Young herself wrote to Clement Scott in
later years a letter which he reprinted in The Drama of
Yesterday and rJ?oday (London, 1899):
I made my first appearance in England at Sadler's
Wells in 1857 .*. I was there during the seasons
of 1tJ57-8 and '53-9, and also '60-1, when ilr.
Phelps became sole lessee and manager ... ¥y
first season commenced on September 13th, and I
made my first appearance on the 15th as Julia in
The Hunchback, and during that season of a little
over six months I played no less than twenty-one
characters. Between September 26th and October
21st, I acted for the first tirip Imogen in
Cymbeline, the Princess in Love's Labour's Lost
and ^osalind in AH You Like It. and had to find
and arrange all my costumes. 1iThat a difference
nowadays I
(1, 197-ii).
The later revivals of Oytabeline at Sadler's Wells offer
little of interest beyond the inadequacy of the Imogens,
the play being "repeated, with the admirable scenery and
accessories with which it was originally illustrated,"
O /T
with "everything well done, and not overdone"." The
Musical Transcript had regarded the 1854 revival as "merely
preparatory to some future display" and had regretted
being able to find no "attractive quality about the play