Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/599

This page has been validated.
NEU. NEW.
577

her address and influence, she recalled her father, who had espoused the canse of the princes of the blood, to his allegiance, and rescued him from his dangerous position. Through all the civil contentions that raged around her, the duchess preserved her independence and neutrality

NEUBER, CAROLINE,

Was born in the year 1692, the daugher of a German lawyer, Weissenborn. Her father was very strict with her, and in her fifteenth year she ran away with a student, a Mr. Neuber, whom she afterwards married. They soon after organized a strolling troop of actors, with which they performed at first in Weissenfels.

Madame Neuber felt her calling to become the regenerator of the German stage; she placed herself at the head of her troop, made laws for it, and introduced better morals among its members In 1726, she obtained a royal privilege to perform in Dresden and Leipzic; she erected her stage in the latter place, and performed the old-fashioned tragedies of the German stage, such as "King Octavins," "Courtship," "Fate and Death," "The Golden Apple," "Nero," etc After the death of King Augustus, 1733, Madame Neuber went to Hamburg. In 1737, she returned to Leipzic, and assnmed the reform of the stage, in conjunction with the celebrated author Gottsched.

The German harlequin was, after a long struggle, banished from the stage, and the victory celebrated by a piece called "The Victory of Reason." Her fame spread all over the continent. In 1740, she was invited by Duke Biron, the favourite of Anne of Austria, to come to Courland, and from thence to Petersburg. On her return to Leipzic, she quarrelled with her benefactor, Grottsched, and constant and bitter recrimination was the result; she even went so far as to burlesque the person of the professor on the stage. From that time, fortune forsook her; she was compelled to disband her troop, and died in great poverty, near Dresden, in 1760.

NEUMANN, MADAME,

Is author of a number of novels and legends. She writes under the cognomen of Sartori.

NEWCASTLE, MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF,

Youngest daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, was born at St John's, near Colchester, in Essex, towards the latter end of the reign of James the First. She lost her father in infancy, but her mother gave her daughters a careful education. Margaret early displayed a taste for literature, to which she devoted most of her time. In 1643, she WAS chosen maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, wife to Charles the First The Lucas family being loyal, Margaret accompanied her royal mistress when driven from this country to her native land. At Paris, she married, in 1645, the Marquis of Newcastle, then a widower, and went with him to Rotterdam, and afterwards to Antwerp, where they continued during the remainder of the exile; through which time they were often in great distress, from the failure of the rents due to her husband

On the accession of Charles the Second, the marquis, after sixteen years' absence, returned to England. The marchioness remained