Mary Catherine Bolton

Mary Catherine Bolton, later known by her married name of Lady Thurlow (1790/91–1830) was a notable English actress, remembered particularly for playing Ophelia.

Mary Catherine Bolton
by Samuel De Wilde and now in the Garrick Club
Born1790/91
Died28 September 1830
NationalityKingdom of Great Britain

Life

Bolton was the daughter of James Richard Bolton, an attorney. She made her first appearance on the stage on 8 October 1801, in The Beggar's Opera as "Miss Bolton"[1]

Mary Catherine Bolton as Ophelia in 1813

In 1811, she played the part of Ophelia in Hamlet opposite John Kemble,[2] giving a performance described as "in a decorous style, relying on the familiar images of the white dress, loose hair, and wild flowers, to convey a polite feminine distraction".[3][4]

On 13 November 1813, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, she married Edward Hovell-Thurlow, 2nd Baron Thurlow (1781–1829),[5] and her stage career ended.[6] They had three sons, including Edward Thomas Hovell-Thurlow, the 3rd Baron.[7] At the time, it would not have been socially possible for a woman who had married into the ruling class to continue a career as an actress.[6]

Her descendant Roualeyn Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 9th Baron Thurlow, inherited the title in 2013 and in 2015 was elected by his fellow peers to a vacant seat in the House of Lords.[8]

Notes
  1. "CollectionsOnline | Name". garrick.ssl.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-07-21.
  2. Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (1985), p. 82.
  3. Helen Small, Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865 (1998), p. 83.
  4. John C. Coldewey, W. R. Streitberger, Drama: Classical to Contemporary (Prentice Hall, 2000), p. 444.
  5. 'Actresses and their Matches' in Tales and Readings for the People, Volume 1 (London: Palmer and Clayton, 1849), p. 176.
  6. Judith Anne Rosen, Performing Femininity in British Victorian Culture (University of California, Berkeley, 1995), p. 64.
  7. James McMullen Rigg, Thurlow, Edward (1781-1829), in Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, volume 56 (1898).
  8. Lord Thurlow at parliament.uk, accessed 10 December 2017.
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