Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

CHAPTER TEN; "CYMBELINE" AT THE QUEEN'S THEATRE. 1872.
157.
On October 24, 1867* the new Queen's Theatre, Long Acre,
opened. It had been converted from an assembly hall (St.
Martin's Hall) by the part-editor of the Daily Telegraph.
Lionel Lawson who leased it to Henry Labouch!ere; the
nominal lessee was the actor Alfred Wigan, whose name
appeared on the pro gramme s, and who was responsible for
the managing of the theatre. Labouchere, prominent as a
politician and journalist, founded Truth in 1877. When
the syndicate of which he was a member obtained the lease
of the theatre, he was M.P. for V/indsor.
Henrietta Hodson appeared on the opening night of the
new theatre as Jacintha in Charles Reade's The Double
Karriage. On January 8, 1868, she appeared as Lucy Garner
in Byron's Dearer than Life, and in the following April she
appeared as Oliver Twist in John Oxenford's version of the
novel. Sykes was played by Henry Irving, The Artful
Dodger by J.L. Toole. During 1868 Miss Hodson married
Labouchere. Ellen Terry, who was a member of the company,
remembered Miss Hodson as "appearing in the burlesques and
farces without which no theatre bill in London at that time
was complete." Ellen Terry had found herself in the same
company as Miss Hodson when she joined J.H. Shute's stock
company at Bristol in 1861:
Miss Plodson was a brilliant burlesque actress,
a good singer, and a capital dancer. She had
k'reat personal charm, too, and was an enormous
favourite with the Bristol public. I cannot
exactly call her a "rival" of my sister Kate's,
for Kate was the "principal lady" or "star", and
Henrietta Hodson the "soubrette", and, in burlesque,
the "principal boy". Nevertheless, there
were certainly rival factions of admirers, and
the friendly antagonism between the Hodsonites and
the Terryites used to amuse us all greatly.^