was solemn and august, in comedy alert, easy, and genteel, pleasant in her face and action, filling the stage with a variety of gesture.  She could neither sing nor dance, no not in a country dance.  She adhered to Betterton in all the revolutions of the theatre, which she quitted about 1707, on account of ill-health.”  She returned, however, for one night with Mrs. Bracegirdle, April 7, 1709, and performed Mrs. Frail in “Love for Love” for Betterton’s benefit.  She died at Acton in 1713.  Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mr. Betterton, and Mr. Varbriggen were sworn as Comedians in Ordinary to her Majesty, 30th Oct., 2 Anne (1703).  On the 3rd March, 1692, Mrs. Barry received L25 for acting in “The Orphan” before their Majesties, and on the 10th June, 1693, L25 for Caius Marius. (Lord Chamberlain’s Records, Warrant Books, No. 20, p. 151; No. 18, pp. 30, 242.)]

[Footnote 70:  Mrs. Anne Bracegirdle was the daughter of Justinian Bracegirdle, of Northamptonshire.  By the imprudence of her father, who ruined himself by becoming surety for some friends, she was early left to the care of Betterton and his wife, whose attentions to her she always acknowledged to be truly paternal.  By them she was first introduced to the stage, and, while very young, performed the page in “The Orphan.”  Increasing in years, and in ability, she became the favourite performer of the times.  Cibber describes her in these terms:  “Mrs. Bracegirdle was now but just blooming in her maturity; her reputation, as an actress, gradually rising with that of her person; never any woman was in such general favour of her spectators, which, to the last scene of her dramatic life, she maintained by not being unguarded in her private character.  This discretion contributed not a little to make her the Cara, the darling of the theatre:  for it will be no extravagant thing to say scarce an audience saw her that were less than half of them lovers, without a suspected favourite among them:  and though she might be said to have been the universal passion and under the highest temptations, her constancy in resisting them served but to increase the number of her admirers.  And this perhaps you will more easily believe, when I extend not my encomiums on her person beyond a sincerity that can be suspected; for she had no greater claim to beauty than what the most desirable brunette might pretend to.  But her youth and lively aspect threw out such a glow of health and cheerfulness, that, on the stage, few spectators that were not past it, could behold her without desire.  There were two very different characters in which she acquitted herself with uncommon applause:  if anything could excuse that desperate extravagance of love, that almost frantic passion of Lee’s Alexander the Great, it must have been when Mrs. Bracegirdle was his Statira:  as when she acted Millamant, all the faults, follies, and affectation of that agreeable tyrant were venially melted down into so many charms and attractions of a conscious beauty.”