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Hester Booth
Hester Booth was just 16 years old when she made her debut at
Drury
Lane theatre on 28 February 1706. Her speciality was the Harlequin
dance and she was so popular that she had her picture painted
on snuffbox lids. Harlequin, a character from the Italian Commedia
dell’arte was a hugely popular figure, a comic, clever servant
who could manipulate a situation to his (or her) advantage. Harlequins
wore costumes with brightly coloured patches that later became
diamond shaped.
Hester Booth also took part in one of the most significant ballets
of her day, creating the role of Venus in John Weaver’s The
Loves of Mars and Venus, at Drury Lane in 1717. This was
the first ‘ballet d’action’, in which mimed passages of ‘conversation’
alternated with danced episodes.
Hester Booth was not just a dancer but also a singer and a talented
actress. Another role for which she was well known was Cordelia,
the youngest daughter in Shakespeare’s play King Lear.
In this picture Hester is portrayed as a female Harlequin. Usually
Harlequin was a male servant but female Harlequins appear in France
from about 1695. In her hand is the slap stick. This was Harlequin’s
trademark magic bat, used for beating people in a comedy chase.
It was also used to magically transform the scenery by hitting
hinged flaps. ‘Slapstick’ comedy, the physical, buffooning type
of humour, takes its name from Harlequin’s bat.
Nancy Dawson
Nancy Dawson did not appear on the stage until she was 29 years
old. She is remembered for just one famous dance – the hornpipe
- which she performed in The Beggar’s Opera at the
Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1759. Her hornpipe dancing
has been immortalised by a ballad.
Read the Ballard of Nancy Dawson… This was sung to the
tune of Here we Go Round the Mulberry Bush.
Of all the girls in our town
The black, the fair, the brown
Who dance and prance it up and down,
There’s none like Nancy Dawson!
Her easy mien, her step so neat,
She foots, she trips, she looks so sweet,
Her every motion is complete,
I die for Nancy Dawson.
See how the Op’ra takes a run,
Exceeding Hamlet, Lear or
Lun,
Though in it there would be no fun,
Was’t not for Nancy Dawson
Though Garrick he had had his day
And forc’d the town his laws t’obey,
Now
Johnny Rich is come in play
With help of Nancy Dawson
Click on the highlighted words to find out more about the people
mentioned in the song.
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Introduction
Ballet at the Alhambra and Empire Theatres
