A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Cibber, (Mrs. Susanna Maria)
CIBBER, (MRS. SUSANNA MARIA),
For several years reckoned, not only the first actress in England, but supposed by many to excel the celebrated Mademoiselle Clairon, of the continent; was the daughter of Mr. Arne, an upholsterer, who resided in King-street, Covent-garden, and sister to the celebrated Dr. Arne.
Miss Arne was born 1715. Her education was suitable to a young woman who had then the hopes of a very ample fortune: she made great proficiency in whatever was taught her, having a most remarkably lively genius, and a very tenacious memory; but dancing and music more particularly engaged her attention; and her brother's early eminence in the latter science, enabled him to give her such useful lessons, as soon put her upon a level with most of the capital singers of that period. She had, however, at this time, no thoughts of coming upon the stage; but her father dying, and the state of his affairs turning out very different from what was expected, she was prevailed upon to exert her musical talents in public, and introduced to Mr. Fleetwood in the year 1734. He engaged her, as a singer, at Drury-lane theatre the ensuing season, at a salary of a hundred pounds, and a benefit.
Mr. Theophilus Cibber, about this time, lost his first wife, and Miss Arne's beauty, accomplishments, and unblemished reputation, induced him to pay his addresses to her in form. Mr. Colley Cibber was at first averse to the match, thinking his son entitled to a woman of fashion and fortune. The match nevertheless, unfortunately for Miss Arne, took place, and they were married in 1735. Great cordiality subsisted between them for some time; and Colley Cibber, who by the amiable deportment of his daughter-in-law, and seeming reformation of his son, was induced to take the young couple into favour, undertook to teach Mrs. Cibber the art of acting, that she might obtain a better salary, (they were at that time very poor) and more rank upon the stage.
Upon her first attempt to declaim in tragedy, as he informs us, he was surprised at such a variety of powers united. She had been two years upon Drury-lane stage as an actress, when her husband, by the most reiterated villainy, introduced and encouraged a gentleman to seduce his wife, with whom she afterwards lived. By this occurrence she was estranged some years from the stage, returning about the year 1742.
She now appeared in almost every capital character in tragedy. Her voice was beyond description plaintive and musical, yet far from deficient in powers for the expression of resentment or disdain, she possessed an equal command of features; and though she latterly lost the bloom of heath, and grew thin, yet there still remained so complete a symmetry and proportion in the different parts of her form, that it was impossible to view her figure and not believe her in the prime of youth. Her success in comedy was not equal to the applause she met with in tragedy.
She translated The Oracle, a piece in two acts, from the French of Saintfoix, which was performed for her benefit in the year 1750, and received with applause. She was a Roman Catholic, and died 1766, at her house in Scotland-yard, Whitehall, of a rupture in one of the coats of the stomach; her disorder having equally surprised and baffled the physicians who attended her.