Susannah Cibber
Susannah Cibber (1714-1766)
Susannah Cibber was the daughter of the composer Thomas Arne, and made her name as a singer. She was trained by Handel, who recognised her intelligence and ability to convey feeling. She came to the stage as the wife of Theophilus Cibber, having been coached by her father-in-law the famous actor and playwright Colley Cibber. Once again, it was her ability to project emotion that brought her attention, and she went on to partner David Garrick in many classic roles. She made an ideal sentimental heroine for her time, with her slender, refined persona, and a voice that was the embodiment of pathos; “her songs seemed to rise from a frame too frail to support such rushes of sentimentality”. The parts that she excelled in and claimed as her own followed her idea of herself as one above the common class of actress, that she was a new type of performer for the age of sensibility. She would only play women of moral worth, who never stepped out of line for their own gain. She excelled as Desdemona to Garrick’s Othello, with Thomas Davies, biographer of Garrick, heralding their partnership as “formed for illustration of each other’s talents”. Her unhappy private life with her husband who was a drunkard and a bully, and subsequent affair with a married man who brought her love and comfort, meant that she was never really granted access to the upper echelons of society where she felt she belonged.
Mary Nash has written a fascinating biography of Cibber’s life, an actress who was a prisoner of her situation. Her father gave her aspirations, but at that time, without a good marriage they would never come to fruition. As Ellen Moody remarks in her excellent blog post: “Susannah’s story is a function of the power of men in this era legally, socially, in just about every way that provides agency.”
The Provoked Wife: The Life and Times of Susannah Cibber by Mary Nash
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2668069-the-provoked-wife
Ellen Moody blog:
NPG
Susannah Maria Cibber (née Arne)
by Thomas Hudson
oil on canvas, feigned oval, engraved 1749
30 in. x 24 3/4 in. (762 mm x 629 mm)
NPG 4526