Fictional Characters
(In order of appearance)
DANIEL MCGANN
bookseller-printer
SOPHIE HAMILTON MCGANN
dramatist-printer
LORD LEMORE
REVEREND MR. MEEKER
HUNTER ROBERTSON
juggler-dance master-actor-manager
JEAN HUNTER ROBERTSON
singer
RORY ROBERTSON
harpist
HARRIET MCGANN ASHBY
bookseller-printer
LORNA BLOUNT
dancer
MARY ANN SKENE
prostitute
MAVIS PIGGOTT
actress-dramatist
RODERICK DARNLY (
LATER
VISCOUNT GLYN
AND
EARL OF LLEWELYN)
SIR PETER LINDSAY-HOYT, BARONET
MRS. HOOD
housekeeper
TREVOR BEDLOE
estate factor
VAUGHN DARNLY, VISCOUNT GLYN
ROWENA DARNLY, COUNTESS OF LLEWELYN
BASIL DARNLY, EARL OF LLEWELYN
MR. BEEZLE
barrister
CAPTAIN MARSHALL
sea captain
MR. LASLEY
barrister
Historical Figures
MRS. FRANCES ABINGTON, 1737–1815
actress
DOMINICO ANGELO, C. 1760S
Drury Lane special effects director
JOHN ARTHUR, 1708?–1772
Orchard St. theater manager-actor
WILLIAM BATTIE, 1703–1776
physician
JOHN BEARD, 1716–1791
Covent Garden manager
DAVID BEATT, c. 1760s,
playhouse manager
APHRA BEHN, 1640–1689
novelist-dramatist
JAMES BOSWELL, 1740–1795
journalist-barrister-biographer
MR. BRYAN, c. 1760s
Orchard St. prompter
EDMUND BURKE, 1729–1797
Irish statesman-philosopher
EDWARD CAPELL, 1713–1781
Deputy Examiner of plays-Shakespeare scholar
DOROTHEA CELESIA, 1738–1790
dramatist
SUSANNAH CENTLIVRE, c. 1667–c.1723
dramatist
KITTY CLIVE, 1711–1785
actress-dramatist
MR. COLLINS, d. 1783
Drury Lane doorkeeper
GEORGE COLMAN, 1732–1794
theater manager-dramatist
WILLIAM CREECH, 1745–1815
publisher
TOM DAVIES, 1712–1785
actor-bookseller-printer
SAMUEL DERRICK, 1724–1769
author-master of ceremonies, Bath
CHARLES DIBDIN, 1745–1814
songwriter-dramatist
DAVID DOUGLASS, c. 1770s
American Company manager
THADDEUS FITZPATRICK, c. 1760s
rioter
SAMUEL FOOTE, 1720–1777
dramatist-actor-manager
DR. FORD, C. 1770S
Drury Lane Patentee
DAVID GARRICK, 1717–1779
actor-manager-dramatist-Patentee
EVA-MARIA GARRICK, 1724–1822
dancer
GEORGE GARRICK, 1723–1779
theater servant
KING GEORGE III, 1738–1820
King of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales
ANNE CATHERINE GREEN, c. 1767–1777
printer-publisher
ELIZABETH GRIFFITH, 1727–1793
dramatist
THOMAS HARRIS, d. 1820
Covent Garden manager-Patentee
ELIZA HAYWOOD, c.1693–1756
novelist-dramatist
JOHN HENRY, c. 1770s
American Company manager
WILLIAM HOPKINS, d.1780
Drury Lane prompter
WILLIAM HUNT, c. 1760s
Stratford town clerk
MR. JACKSON, c. 1760s
Tavistock Street costumer
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1709–1784
lexicographer-writer-critic
JAMES LACY, 1696–1774
Drury Lane theater manager
WILLOUGHBY LACY, 1749–1822
actor-Drury Lane Patentee
MR. LATIMORE, c. 1760s
Stratford Jubilee architect
ELIZABETH LINLEY, 1754–1792
singer (later Mrs. Richard Sheridan)
THOMAS LINLEY, 1732–1795
composer-Drury Lane Patentee
JAMES LOVE, 1721–1774
actor
MRS. JAMES LOVE, c.1719–1807
actress
SALLY LUNN, c. 1680
Bath baker
SIR JAMES MANSFIELD, 1733–1821
Chief Justice, Court of Common Pleas
DR. JOHN MONRO, 1715–1791
Bethlehem Hospital director
HANNAH MORE, 1745–1833
dramatist-essayist
CONSTABLE MUNRO, c. 1760s
city of Edinburgh
RICHARD (“BEAU”) NASH, 1674–1762
master of ceremonies, Bath
JOHN PAYTON c.1760s
Stratford innkeeper
MRS. (PERKINS) PHILLIPS, c. 1760–1780
Green Canister apothecary
HANNAH PRITCHARD, 1709–1768
actress
MR. & MRS. REYNOLDS, c. 1770s
Annapolis tavern keepers
THOMAS ROSOMAN, c.1746–1772
Sadlers’ Wells owner
FRANCES SHERIDAN, 1724–1766
novelist-dramatist
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 1751–1816
dramatist-manager-Parliamentarian
THOMAS SHERIDAN, 1719–1788
actor-manager-educator
PEG WOFFINGTON, 1720–1760
actress
Book 1
1761-1762
Thro’ all the drama—whether damned or not—
Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Epilogue,”
The Rivals
One
E
DINBURGH,
M
AY 1761
Sophie, lass! Quickly! Hide your book!” Daniel McGann urged his daughter, as he peered anxiously through the square windowpanes at the front of his small book shop. Outside, a group of dour, somberly attired men were striding like avenging angels along Edinburgh’s High Street. “’Tis the kirk elders!” he confirmed, wringing his ink-stained hands. “They’re coming this way!”
Sophie sprang from her stool in front of the diminutive hearth that was the shop’s only source of heat. She quickly shoved her copy of Fielding’s
Tom Jones,
along with Rousseau’s novel
La Nouvelle Heloise,
beneath a pile of pungent chunks of peat stored in a wooden box next to the fire. Without further instructions, she grabbed several other books that she, even at the age of sixteen, knew would be judged “ungodly” by the gaggle of religious fanatics bearing down on her father’s book-and-printing establishment. Swiftly she stashed the offending volumes behind a row of Bibles displayed prominently on one of the front shelves and reserved precisely for just such an emergency.
Daniel McGann, his gray periwig slightly askew and his upper lip sheened with sweat, was greatly alarmed that for the second time in scarcely a month his shop was the apparent target of the wrath of Calvinist churchmen from nearby St. Giles Cathedral. The local Presbyterian clergy had long voiced disapproval of the novels, plays, and engravings that had made McGann’s one of the most popular gathering places for the
literati
in Edinburgh. From the angry looks on their faces today, the zealots seemed determined to drive McGann’s out of business.
Somber bells in the church tower overhead tolled the noon hour as Daniel McGann reached beneath a counter and pushed several parcels wrapped in outdated theater playbills into Sophie’s hands.
“Out the back portal with you!” he croaked over the tolling bells. “Deliver the thin packet to Lord Lemore and the thick one to the Canongate Playhouse.” As his daughter bolted toward the rear exit, he called after her, “Hurry, now! And mind that you collect the siller for ’em! We’ve scarcely two Scots pennies in the till.”
Making her escape, Sophie heard the sound of the front door opening as the imperious men in black once again invaded her father’s domain. She sped through the back room that housed the small wooden hand press and a variety of implements that comprised their modest printing business. Several sheets from a recently completed order hung drying on lengths of cord stretched across the back of the low-ceilinged chamber. As she rushed through the squat door at the rear of the press room that was permeated with a perpetual smell of carbon black and linseed oil, she prayed—blasphemously, she supposed—that no offending political broadside, pamphlet, or chapbook would be inadvertently discovered by the raiding churchmen. Pausing to listen, she heard a chorus of angry voices fill the front chamber.
“Vile works!
Abominations!”
a voice thundered from inside the shop. “You, sir, traffic in the Devil’s commerce!”
Those squawking black vultures should leave us alone!
Sophie thought defiantly as she darted down the narrow alleyway shadowed by St. Giles’s bell tower looming overhead.
Inside her father’s book shop, the churchmen were systematically pulling books from the shelves and flinging them onto the flagstones beneath their feet.
“We’ve given you ample warning, McGann,” the Reverend Mr. Meeker pronounced, “yet
still
you trade in the works of Satan!”
Daniel McGann stared with growing dismay at the pile of volumes by the likes of Defoe, Molière, and the dramatist William Congreve, heaped on the floor next to his desk.
“Surely you don’t consider Shakespeare—” Daniel began to protest, as he watched several of the bard’s comedies join the pile.
“’Tis bawdry!” Reverend Meeker retorted. “Full of jesters and fools mouthing blasphemy. ’Tis intolerable!”
Briefly, Daniel imagined how his wife, Margaret, would have responded to such an invasion, such absurd pronouncements. When Margaret was alive, her dark head bent over her weekly correspondence with the best book agents in London, he had boldly challenged the arguments and actions of these kirk zealots and had been a leader in local efforts to beat back the meddling churchmen’s attempts to dictate cultural and religious standards to the entire city.
But that was before the bleak winter when the tumor had first appeared on his wife’s neck, the malignancy that had squeezed the breath and life out of the poor woman by the time nearby Whinny Hill was splashed with autumn heather. These days, he could barely summon the energy to peruse his stock of books, much less battle the fanatics holding forth from the pulpit next door. Many buyers had stayed away and sales were dwindling. When he was forced to sack his clerk, Sophie, bless her, had taken over minding the accounts‚ and had acquired a working knowledge of the shop’s inventory. She had even learned the skills necessary to run the small printing press in the back chamber where broadsides, chapbooks, and playbills earned them much needed extra income.
“Have you been struck
dumb,
McGann?” demanded the rotund Reverend Meeker. “I’m asking you to forswear selling such ungodly texts in future, or stand ready to accept the dire consequences that God shall mete out! What
say
you?”