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Charlotte
By Kathryn Shevelow
435 pages
Bloomsbury £18.99
Dateline: 23rd October, 2005
Charlotte Charke was described in her newspaper obituary as "a
Gentlewoman remarkable for her Adventures and Misfortunes". This
almost unbelievable woman lived up to this billing and was a mix of
the strangest ingredients. She was an actress and writer; and proved
herself several times over to be the worst businesswoman imaginable.
Her notoriety though, derived more from the fact that she was a cross-dresser
who might have been a lesbian when the practice and the term were unknown.
It is amazing how the theatre is capable of throwing up astounding
characters well worthy of biography. While few people today may have
heard of Charlotte Charke, her father Colley Cibber is known as one
of the greatest actors of the late 17th and earlier 18th centuries and
also - despite a lack of real talent for the role - a politically-appointed
Poet Laureate.
The Cibbers were a colourful family to say the least. Colley Cibber
was a comic actor of genius and talented theatrical manager who had
a reputation for high living. His son Theophilus followed in the family
stage tradition but is now equally famous for the treatment of his wife,
Susannah an actress and singer for whom Handel wrote parts of The
Messiah.
She was the daughter of composer Thomas Arne and since her husband
was as dissolute and spendthrift as his father, he eventually set up
a ménage a trois in which he effectively sold his wife's
services to another man. Not content with this is source of income,
he then tried blackmail and a court case ensued that would surely have
been the delight of the News of the World had it then existed.
Charlotte was capable of competing with both of these relatives, from
a remarkably early age. Acting was in her blood and as a child of four,
she publicly paraded in her father's clothing much to the confusion
and delight of the family and neighbours. Throughout childhood, she
got into odd scrapes, nothing stranger than when she set herself up
as an apothecary; and practically a doctor to a whole neighbourhood.
She married early to a man, Richard Charke, who was as much of a scoundrel
as her brother and the couple were soon estranged at a time when divorce
was only possible by Act of Parliament. Worse, a wife was still a man's
possession and much of the money that Charlotte earned went straight
into the pockets of her husband - or possibly the prostitutes with whom
he consorted.
By the time that she had left their teens, Charlotte had become an
accomplished actress and an occasional actor-manager. She was also a
sort of Rory Bremner of her day, primarily imitating other famous members
of her family to the extent that her offended father would no longer
speak to her and cut off her inheritance.
Her main collaborator in the production of seditious dramatic representations
was Henry Fielding, now far better remembered as the novelist who wrote
Tom Jones.
Soon Charlotte's main strength came through and this was as an actress
who specialised in either breeches parts, where women dressed as men
as part of a plot, or in travesty. The latter is a description of performances
in which women took male parts. For example Charlotte was well known
for playing Captain Macheath in The Beggar's Opera.
Regrettably, Fielding overstepped the mark a few times too often in
winding up Walpole's government and the Germanic King George II. As
a result, all of the playhouses other than those under Royal Charter
were closed and the Lord Chamberlain was given the right to censor plays.
This caused immense problems to the British Theatre from that time for
almost 250 years until 1968 when the post of Censor was finally abolished.
The resourceful Charlotte, bailiffs never far behind, then took up
a number of different employments to maintain herself and her daughter
Kitty. The most interesting of these was the creation of a puppet theatre
that has been described as a forerunner of the television programme
Spitting Images, since the puppets imitated real life characters
of the day.
The book's heroine now attained her notoriety as a cross-dresser or
transvestite. Initially, she only apparently acted in this way on stage
but by the time that her stage career had finished while she was still
in her early twenties, she would dress as a man in the street much to
the discomfort, and probably distaste, of her family.
She also managed to get jobs in which she very literally acted as a
man, for example as a waiter and as manservant to an Irish Lord.
Things got even worse and she joined a troupe of "Travelling Tragedizers",
strolling players who could at any moment be arrested for vagrancy,
just for attempting to ply their trade. This actually happened and landed
Charlotte in jail for a night, surrounded by men condemned to execution
or transportation.
By this stage, she had become "Charles Brown" with a close
companion known as Mrs Brown. At this range, Ms Shevelow can only speculate
as the exact nature of the relationship between this unorthodox couple.
This book not only paints a wonderful portrait of a memorable character
but steeps its readers in the theatre and life of the 18th century.
If nothing else, those who were not aware of its history will never
look at London's Covent Garden District in quite the same light again.
Charlotte is a cracking read that will appeal to lovers of the
theatre. This very entertaining work also has much to commend it to
the general reader.
Philip Fisher
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