Mr Siddons stars in Wolverhampton

The entertainers on this playbill have travelled to Wolverhampton from Cheltenham’s prestigious Theatre Royal to stage a performance of Macbeth.

In the lead part is a certain Mr Siddons, a well-established actor in London and the provinces.

While quite a draw for the Wolverhampton crowd, Mr Siddons wasn’t thought to be as celebrated as his wife, the famous Sarah Siddons, who was revered for her portral of Lady Macbeth.

On this night, Lady Macbeth is played by the somewhat lesser known…Mrs Macnally.

Any group of performers from a patent (or official) theatre royal such as Cheltenham could call themselves “servants of their majesties”.

This was not a sign of Royal patronage, rather than a way of emphasising that they were from a licensed theatre and benefitting from the cachet of this status.

And the playbill advertising this performance to the good people of Wolverhampton sells this fact.

The play is a crowd-pleaser…a banker for the management.

In this popular adaptation of “Macbeth”, the role of the weird sisters or witches has been expanded and includes singing!

The play is referred to, without irony, as “the celebrated Historical Play of Macbeth with all the Original Music, Composed by Locke”.

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
(Macbeth, Act I, Scene 4)

At this time, Shakespeare productions were freely adapted, plots could be changed, new characters introduced, and lines rewritten.

Cheltenham was a popular place for the wealthy elite to take the waters.

The Theatre Royal there opened in 1782, some 15 years before this performance in Wolverhampton. The Cheltenham Theatre Royal was in York Passage near the High Street and it was visited by King George III and the Royal Family when they visited the town.

The company have adopted their name and the Royal coat of arms – probably this is the work of their original Cheltenham-based manager John Boles Watson (1748 – 1813).

This Irishman was a former actor whose ill-health rescued him from the itinerant life of an actor.

He went on to create a circuit of around forty or more theatres that included the Theatre Royal Gloucester which opened in 1791 and the theatre in Cirencester.