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By Root 1374 0

competition for the good costumes. Even the most talented actress struggled onstage without a gorgeous dress in velvet or silk and jewels for attracting light to the face. As one actress complained, a performer "may as well be dead as not in the fashion."3 Mary had the difficult job of implementing Sheridan's wardrobe cutbacks. He wrote in his notebook, "New Performers and old ones on new salaries to provide their own white silk stockings." Players often tore their stockings on the splintered scenery and had to replace them at the cost of a shilling per pair, as well as buying their own gloves, all out of a salary that could be as low as £1 a week. The performers were livid about Sheridan's cutbacks and blamed Mary, declaring her so mean that she would cut off the "flowing robe of a tragic performer to gain for herself the covering of a footstool, or the materials for a velvet pincushion."4 As Mary's messenger, Emma would have taken the heat of their anger.

Emma's contact with the actresses was an education. As one theater biographer gossiped, the stage employed "many Ladies and Gentlemen respectable now, whose previous situations in life would have precluded them the possibility of mixing in virtuous society."5 Few actresses led perfectly virtuous lives. Many became the mistresses of wealthy men in return for money, clothes, and patronage; the rest tended to have affairs with other actors. Although Mrs. Frances Abington had been a courtesan for the celebrated madam Charlotte Hayes, she was "more indebted to her vivacity than to her beauty," and so by 1778 she had become the theater's lead comedienne.6 Thanks to her famed sense of style on and off the stage, she was also employed as a fashion consultant, called in by the social elite for emergency fashion disasters and panics before balls and weddings. Margaret Cuyler, another comedienne, was dubbed one of the "Most Fashionable Votaries of Venus" (i.e., a courtesan) by the Rambler's Magazine of 1783 but maintained a successful career. The third leading actress, Elizabeth Farren, only three years older than Emma, was acting on provincial stages before the age of ten (she was so poor that the other actresses lent her clothes to wear onstage), and she made her debut at Drury Lane at about the same time as Emma arrived. After a glittering career, she married the Earl of Derby and was even selected to walk in the procession of the Princess Royal at her wedding. Mary Robinson capitalized on her connection to the aristocracy in a different way: she began an affair with the Prince of Wales when he saw her play Perdita in The Winter's Tale, and then extracted a substantial pension from him. Emma learned an important lesson from her new mistresses: a dubious background did not prevent a woman from entering the most eminent society.

As Emma watched from the wings, she realized that acting was more difficult than she had thought. Players had to work hard, accept low pay, and battle against other actors trying to undermine them or seize their position. Only the stars were paid if absent because of illness or if the theater closed (after the death of a royal, they were shut for two weeks). New plays were rehearsed in only a fortnight, and casts had to rehearse several plays at the same time. One actress might have up to forty different parts in a season of 150 nights, and many also worked as singers and dancers. They needed excellent memories, for it was difficult to hear the prompter. Forgetting a line was not only ridiculed by the crowd but heavily fined by the management. The competitive environment bred venomous jealousy, and some even attacked or, like Peg Woffington, stabbed their rivals onstage. They all wanted to outdo each other with fine clothes—and they besieged maids such as Emma with demands and threats.

In the morning, the theater's maids were kept busy running errands or helping the other servants with cleaning or watering the trees in front of the stage. Rehearsals of up to four pieces began on the main stage at ten, while the musicians and dancers also practiced. Wearing