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Jane Austen and celebrity culture:

Shakespeare, Dorothy Jordan and
Elizabeth Bennet
Jocelyn Margaret Harris

University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Version of record first published: 24 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Jocelyn Margaret Harris (2010): Jane Austen and celebrity culture:
Shakespeare, Dorothy Jordan and Elizabeth Bennet, Shakespeare, 6:4, 410-430
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2010.527364

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Shakespeare
Vol. 6, No. 4, December 2010, 410
430

Jane Austen and celebrity culture: Shakespeare, Dorothy Jordan and

Elizabeth Bennet
Jocelyn Margaret Harris*

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University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Jane Austen imitated Shakespeare throughout her entire career, from Sense and
Sensibility to Sanditon. To make up her characters, she mapped material from
Shakespeare and other authors on to family members and celebrities. For
Elizabeth Bennet, I argue that she remembered Dorothy Jordan, the most famous
comic actress of her day. Jordan was particularly renowned for her roles in Much
Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, and Twelfth Night, the
plays alluded to in Pride and Prejudice. The distinctive set of attributes that
marked Jordans celebrity status reappears in Elizabeth. Austen knew about
Jordan, and may have seen her before she starting revising First Impressions
into Pride and Prejudice. Jordan was considered best at low parts, and her
unconventional femininity, her energy, her way of exhibiting her legs, and her
signature wild hair inform Elizabeths challenge to Miss Bingley about the
definition of a truly accomplished woman. Neither musical nor beautiful, Jordan
was particularly admired, like Elizabeth, for her brilliant, dark, expressive eyes.
She was often painted, and when Austen hunted for a portrait of Mrs Darcy in
yellow, as though she were a real person, she may have known that Jordan wore
a yellow breeches suit as Rosalind. Dramatic events in the actresss life 1811 to
1812 could have sparked the revision of First Impressions into Pride and
Prejudice. Thus, Austen read Shakespeare through the performances of
Dorothy Jordan.
Keywords: Alls Well That Ends Well; As You Like It; Much Ado About Nothing;
Twelfth Night

In 1769, David Garricks Jubilee turned Shakespeare into a celebrity, known and
beloved by an entire nation. Jane Austen shared in that sense of imaginary community,
for her lifetime of easy reference to Shakespeare proves him to be as much part of her
constitution as Henry Crawford declares it to be of an Englishmans. One gets
acquainted with him without knowing how, says Henry: His thoughts and beauties
are so spread abroad that one touches them every where, one is intimate with him by
instinct. Edmund Bertram agrees that one is familiar with Shakespeare in a degree
from ones earliest years, adding, to know him pretty thoroughly, is, perhaps, not
uncommon1 (Mansfield Park 338). Austen often imitates Shakespeare, in the
eighteenth-century sense of translating a predecessor into her own time and place.
She alludes to King Lear in Sense and Sensibility (1811), transforms Midsommer nights
dreame wholesale into Emma (1816), and resolves Persuasion (1818) by means of The

*Email: jocelyn.harris@otago.ac.nz
ISSN 1745-0918 print/1745-0926 online
# 2010 Jocelyn Margaret Harris
DOI: 10.1080/17450918.2010.527364
http://www.informaworld.com

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Winters Tale.2 At the end of her life, a quotation about mortality from Alls Well that
Ends Well shadows the sparkling satire of Sanditon.
In Pride and Prejudice, Austen plunders Shakespeare both locally and substantially, for Elizabeth spars with Darcy as Beatrice spars with Benedicke; she refers to
Viola and Orsino; her relationship with Darcy parallels Hellens with Bertram; and
although she generally resembles Rosalind, she can sound and look like Phebe. When
Darcy and Elizabeth talk Shakespeare, use his similies [sic], and describe with his
descriptions, as Edmund puts it (Mansfield Park 338), when they assume the voices
of Beatrice and Benedicke, Viola and Orsino, Hellen and Bertram, or more comically
Phebe and Rosalind disguised as Ganimed, they admit that they could love.3
Austen mapped material from Shakespeare and others on to celebrities of the
day, in spite of having expressed a very great dread of what she called such an
invasion of social proprieties. She thought it fair to note peculiarities, weaknesses,
and even special phrases, but said it was her desire to create not to reproduce as
she was much too proud of my own gentlemen ever to admit they are merely Mr. A
or Major C (Austen-Leigh 196). But Sir Walter Elliot resembles her snobbish
relative Samuel Egerton Brydges as closely as Mary Crawford and Lydia Bennet
resemble her flirtatious cousin Eliza de Feuillide. In Mansfield Park, she mentions
ships commanded by her brothers, as well as Charless gift (Wiltshire, Mansfield Park
721 n13; 705
6 n1); in Persuasion, the careers and characteristics of the naval men
often match those of Francis and Charles (Harris, Revolution 74
84).
If Austen could allude to her family, celebrities must have been fair game. To
make Captain Wentworth into an exemplary Englishman, she combined aspects of
Nelson and Captain Cook with Othello and Byrons Turkish heroes.4 Elsewhere, Mr
Woodhouse mimics the health-conscious George III, Crawford recalls the musical,
charming, self-indulgent Crown Prince and dandyish Sir Walter Elliot critiques both
the Prince Regent and Beau Brummell (Murray; Sales 72). The name Wentworth
invokes Lady Henrietta Wentworth, mistress to the Duke of Monmouth; the
Dowager Dalrymples gestures to both the courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott and
General Sir Hew Dalrymple, nicknamed Dowager for his craven capitulation over
the Treaty of Cintra; and that of Anne Elliots school-fellow Miss Hamilton, later
Mrs Smith, glances at Emma Hamilton, Nelsons mistress (Harris, Revolution 154,
224 n. 88; Persuasion 152). In Northanger Abbey, Austen draws on a 13-year-old
mystery about the fortune of Bath philanthropist Ralph Allen, and in Sense and
Sensibility she winks knowingly to the notorious Dashwoods of West Wycombe
(Barchas Mapping, Hellfire Jane 4). In Mansfield Park (1814), identified as a
particularly complex representation of a specific Regency crisis (Sales 72), Crawford
channels Garrick as well as Richardsons Lovelace. The fact that the names Yates
and Crawford derive from those of famous tragediennes provides further proof of
Austens special fascination with Shakespeare, the theatre and theatrical celebrities.5
I shall therefore follow up Penny Gays provocative suggestion that for Elizabeth
Bennet, Austen read Shakespeare through the most popular actress in Britain for 30
years: the scandalous, the immensely famous Dorothy Jordan (1762
1816).6
Shakespeares woman, as Charles Lamb called her (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 3), was
particularly acclaimed for her dramatic illustrations (Essay 23) of the very plays
alluded to in the novel: Twelfe Night, As You Like it, Alls Well That Ends Well and
Much Adoe About Nothing.7 In 1813, her performance as Rosalind was praised as

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J. M. Harris

perfect; in 1815, Coleridge recalled that her verse-speaking of Shakespeare was the
best he had ever heard (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 270, 181).
Commentators routinely merged Jordans real-life characteristics with her roles,
distinguishing her from other actresses through an instantly recognizable, even
fetishized cluster of strengths and vulnerabilities that Joseph Roach calls the charismata
and stigmata of the celebrity (36; Nussbaum 21). And if Tom Mole argues that celebrity
culture in the Romantic era functioned to define and enforce gender roles (4), Austen
seems to refract in Elizabeth Bennet a recognizably Shakespearean configuration of
desirable femininity through the life, roles, performance idiom, personality and
appearance of the celebrated Dorothy Jordan, mistress to the Duke of Clarence.

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Dorothy Jordan and Elizabeth Bennet

Many echoes between Shakespeare and Pride and Prejudice have been identified; the
more elusive ones between Jordan and Elizabeth Bennet may be accessed via the
cultural consensus about the roles, life, character and appearance of the actress. In
her correspondence, Austen was perpetually alert to gossip about private figures. In
her fiction, she might well register and even partially reproduce widely circulated
mythologies about such public ones as Jordan.
From 1776 to 1812, actresses fuelled a new cult of celebrity (Asleson 1), but from
the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth, Jordan-Mania (Byrne 61)
especially swept a country already obsessed by theatre, filling the contemporary ether
with news, reviews, gossip and representations of the actress.8 Austen was familiar
with roles made famous by Jordan, such as Roxalana in Isaac Bickerstaffs The Sultan
(1755), a play performed in 1789 by the family at Steventon;9 in June 1805, Austen
may have joined family members to act his Spoilt Child, a farce made popular by
Jordan (Byrne 25). Austen undoubtedly knew about Jordan, for on 8
9 January 1801
she wrote to Cassandra, You speak with such noble resignation of Mrs Jordan & the
Opera House that it would be an insult to suppose consolation required (Letters
71).10 On 1 October 1807, Janes favourite niece Fanny Knight, Henry Austen and his
wife Eliza de Feuillide, all enthusiastic theatregoers, saw Jordan in The School for
Scandal and A House to be Sold!! (Le Faye, Outlandish Cousin 164). On 7 March 1814,
Austen herself would seek out Jordan, at 51 still superlative, said Byron, in the
comic role of Nell in Charles Coffeys The Devil to Pay, expecting to be very much
amused. On 10 March, she may have seen her play Miss Hoyden (Tomalin, Austen
242, 331 n6).
Austen was always a keen playgoer, seeing for instance The Hypocrite in London
on 20 April 1811, though not Sarah Siddons, as she hoped (Le Faye, Chronology
399
400). Her published letters before 1811
12 do not mention Jordan, but what
opportunities might have arisen within the three and a half years from 27 May 1801
to 14 September 1804 when no letters survive? Her regular visits to the well-off
Edward Knights at Godmersham were delightfully animated, as she said of the
summer of 1805, when she and Cassandra dined out frequently and went to balls in
nearby Canterbury (Le Faye, Family Record 150; Austen, Letters 127). When Austen
stayed there from 3 September to 28 October 1802 (Le Faye, Family Record xxiv), did
she seize the chance to see Jordan, who played Rosalind, Laetitia in The Belles
Stratagem, and Peggy from The Country Girl to crowded houses in Canterbury and
Margate from 22 August to 11 September 1802? Jordan nearly burnt to death after

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413

her gown caught fire, and concluded her last scene in her petticoat (Aspinall 49;
Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 185). Letters no longer exist from 30 August 1805 to 7 January
1807
except for a verse dated 24 July 1806
nor from 22 February 1807 to 17 June
1808, nor from 30 January to 5 April 1809, nor from 26 July 1809 to 20 April 1811,
after the move from Southampton to Chawton. But did Austen ever visit Henry in
London, where Jordan played Rosalind from 1776 to 1817? Or Bath, where Jordan
played annually from 1808 (Aspinall 67)?11
Jordan was said to be unique: there was no one else like her, said Hazlitt (3.83).
Whether Austen saw the actress for herself or only heard about her, her particular set
of defining signs appears re-embodied in Elizabeth: transgressions of rank and
gender; resistance to accusations of defilement; the signature epithets arch,
playful, sportive, bewitching, good-humoured and frank; ability to
combine the comic and the serious; alleged lack of gentility and low manner of
exhibiting her body; health, energy and unconventional femininity; brilliant, dark,
expressive eyes; and wild mop of hair signifying unaffected naturalness.12 Most
tantalizingly, the coincidence in timing between the height of Jordans exposure in the
popular press and Austens revision of the manuscript First Impressions into Pride
and Prejudice raises the possibility of a causal connection.

Figure 1. Dorothea Jordan as Peggy by John Ogbourne, published by John Boydell, and
Josiah Boydell, after George Romney (1788). Copyright the National Portrait Gallery.

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J. M. Harris

Figure 2. Henry Fuseli, Beatrice Listening to Hero, & Ursula (1791). Copyright Trustees
of the British Museum.

As a reviewer first noted in 1813, the contests of wit between Elizabeth and Darcy
resemble those between Beatrice and Benedicke (Wiltshire, Recreating 70
71).
Like Jordan, too, she attracts a man of higher status because she refuses to pay court:
The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were
disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your
approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them. Had you
not been really amiable you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you
took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your heart,
you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you. (Pride and
Prejudice 380)

The cross-status attraction between Darcy and Elizabeth parallels other liaisons of
the time between noble lovers and celebrities such as the Prince of Wales and Mary
Robinson (Gay, Theatre 91). Austen reveals her sympathies when she models
Persuasions Mrs Smith on Robinson (Harris, Revolution 198
201), or writes of the
Princess of Wales, Poor Woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is
a Woman, & because I hate her Husband (Letters 208).
Jordans life was often indistinguishable from her roles: for 15 seasons she starred
in Garricks adaptation of Wycherleys Country Wife, The Country Girl (1785
1800),
a play in which, as Austen knew (Letters 48), an earl marries a woman of obscure
birth. In The Devil to Pay, too, Jordans character turns from a cobblers wife into an

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415

aristocratic mistress. Pride and Prejudice mirrors that plays obsession with social
mobility, rank and manners (Byrne 62
64), as when Lady Catherine de Bourgh
declares, Your alliance will be a disgrace, speaking of her as of no importance to
the world, and wholly unallied to the family! (Pride and Prejudice 355). Miss
Bingley sneers at Elizabeths low connections in Meryton and Cheapside, laughing
heartily at her sisters pun about London: That is capital. Darcy, who agrees that
the existence of their dear friends vulgar relations must very materially lessen
their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world, notes the
inferiority of her connections, but in Austens radical conclusion, Lady Catherine
condescended to wait on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its
woods had received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but from the
visits of her uncle and aunt from the city (Pride and Prejudice 36
37, 52, 388). Like
Jordan, the unmarried working mother who crossed every social barrier, going from
penniless provincial to royal intimacy in a few years, without ever growing affected or
pretentious (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 7), Elizabeth rejects affectation (Pride and
Prejudice 91). Even when mistress of Pemberley, she remains as lively and sportive
as Jordan (Pride and Prejudice 387
88).
Austen took serious risks, however, by creating her heroine in Jordans image.
Lewd caricatures played on the slang meaning of jordan for chamber-pot to
represent her relationship with the Duke as shameful,13 and Lady Catherine says of
Elizabeth, Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted? (Pride and Prejudice
32, 36, 357). Leigh Hunt called Jordan notorious for her private life (239), but
when asked, suppose some of your female readers should take it into their heads to
be Mrs Jordan?, he replied, My female readers are not persons to be so much
afraid for . . . [t]he stage itself has taught them large measures both of charity and
discernment. Like Hunt, Austen may have remembered how Mrs Jordan won over
her audience in November 1791 after being traduced (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 126
28).
Jordan surmounted the scandal, largely because the woman and the actress were
seen as one, a child of nature who could somehow perform herself, deny the
mediating effects of theatrical performance, and combat innuendoes about her
immorality (Perry, Spectacular 92, 81). Her appeal as a performer was more in her
person and natural manners than in her acting; she took strong hold of the
affections, at least of the male part of her audience (Hogan 5.2.1357
58). Jordan
carried on to the stage her own combination of playfulness, sweetness and witchery
that admirers commonly called arch (Ranger),14 as in the arch smile of the Jordan
(Beckford 31). So too with Elizabeth. When she looks archly, her resistance does not
injure her with the gentleman; the mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner
makes it difficult for her to affront anybody; she replies archly, and speaks with
an arch smile (Pride and Prejudice 26
27, 52, 91, 174). After the proposal,
Elizabeths spirits rise to playfulness again (Pride and Prejudice 380). Jordan was
often said to bewitch her audiences: in 1808, Austen could have encountered
Elizabeth Inchbalds phrase bewitching nature in her remarks on Jordans Country
Girl for The British Theatre, and Coleridge admired the exquisite witchery of
Jordans tone (Inchbald 16.4; Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 214). In Pride and Prejudice, Darcy
had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by Elizabeth, for her lively,
playful disposition (52, 12) first attracts his attention, then holds it for ever.
Jordan was called a contemporary Wonder for accomplishments equally
radiant, versatile, and attractive, a performer in whom are blended the refinements

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J. M. Harris

of Elegance, the archness of Mirth, and the Rusticity of Nature. As early as 1786,
her laugh was said to be tinged with the most exquisite humour, exciting at once
merriment and delight (Essay 4
5, 10); in 1807, Hunt called her laughter the
happiest and most natural on the stage (81); in 1815, Hazlitt would recall that Mrs
Jordans excellences were all natural to her. It was not as an actress but as herself,
that she charmed everybody. Her face, her tones, her manner, he said, were
irresistible. Her smile had the effect of sunshine, and her laugh did one good to hear
it . . . She was all gaiety, openness, and good-nature. She rioted in her fine animal
spirits,15 and gave more pleasure than any other actress, because she had the greatest
spirit of enjoyment in herself (3.83). Elizabeth matches Jordan in merriment. Being
not formed for ill-humour, she tells the story of Darcys rudeness with great spirit
among her friends, for she delighted in any thing ridiculous (Pride and Prejudice
90, 12).
Hunt praised Jordan for charming openness mingled with the most artless
vivacity, saying that the reason she uniquely pleased in the performance of frank
and lively youth, in Shakespeares Rosalind and the broad sensibilities of the
Country Girl was that with this frankness, she unites a power of raillery, which
she manages with inimitable delicacy (80). When Darcy says he knows enough of
Elizabeth to be certain that she would acknowledge any irrevocable decision against
him frankly and openly, she replies, Yes, you know enough of my frankness to
believe me capable of that. After abusing you so abominably to your face, I could
have no scruple in abusing you to all your relations (Pride and Prejudice 367).
Jordans raillery, said Hunt, was more effective from the contrast it presents with the
usual good-nature of the speaker, and from the peculiar obnoxiousness of that object
which can rouse so unexpected and unusual a reprover (81). The same is true of
Elizabeths.
Here Pride and Prejudice especially recalls As You Like It. The dates in which
Jordan popularized the play (1776
1817) coincide almost exactly with the lifespan of
Austen, who created in Elizabeth a Rosalind-like heroine, unashamed of her
physical energy and her womans tongue, as Gay puts it (As You Like It 85).16 Mrs
Bennets remark that a gentlemen in love with Jane wrote some verses on her, and
very pretty they were (Pride and Prejudice 44) gestures to Orlando writing verses to
Rosalind (Gay, As You Like It 12), but Elizabeths objection to Darcys proud and
repulsive manners and his pride (Pride and Prejudice 207, 10) derives rather from
Phebes complaint about Ganimed. As Rosalind reports, Shee saies I am not
faire, that I lacke manners,/She calls me proud, and that she could not loue me,/Were
man as rare as Phenix (Shakespeare, As You Like It 18.2103
5). Even in his
proposal, Darcys sense of her inferiority
of its being a degradation forces
Elizabeth to speak of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the
feelings of others, on which she has built a immoveable dislike. Darcy, she says, is
the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry (Pride and
Prejudice 189, 193). His letter is all pride and insolence (Pride and Prejudice 204).17
Rosalind tells Phebe, it is my studie/To seeme despitefull and vngentle to you
(Shakespeare, As You Like It 20.2406
7), as Elizabeth accuses Darcy of offending
and insulting her (Pride and Prejudice 190). Phebe declares that,
I loue him not, nor hate him not; and yet
Haue more cause to hate him than to loue him;

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For what had he to doe to chide at me?

He said mine eyes were black, and my haire black,
And, now I am remembred, scornd at me. (Shakespeare, As You Like It 15.1849
53)

Although Darcy scorns Elizabeth similarly for lacking beauty, she comes to realize
that she certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago (Pride and
Prejudice 265). How you must have hated me after that evening, says Darcy, and
she replies, Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take
a proper direction (Pride and Prejudice 369). Like Phebe defending Ganimed, But
sure hees proud; and yet his pride becomes him;/Heell make a proper man
(Shakespeare, As You Like It 15.1836
37), Elizabeth assures her father, I love him.
Indeed he has no improper pride (Pride and Prejudice 376).
Rosalind rebukes Phebe: what though you haue no beauty . . . Must you
therefore be prowd and pittilesse? . . . But Mistriss, know your selfe, downe on your
knees,/And thanke heauen, fasting, for a good mans loue (Shakespeare, As You Like
It 15.1779
80). Once Elizabeth realizes just how much Darcy is esteemed and valued,
she also grows absolutely ashamed of herself for being blind, partial, prejudiced,
absurd, for acting from vanity, not love. In her humiliation, she says, Till this
moment, I never knew myself (Pride and Prejudice 208). Phebes leatherne hand
betrays her rustic origins (Shakespeare, As You Like It 18.12), as Elizabeths walking
and country town indifference to decorum result in a brown and coarse
appearance (Pride and Prejudice 36, 270). Nevertheless, this young woman of
inferior birth will marry into what Lady Catherine calls respectable, honourable,
and ancient, though untitled families (Pride and Prejudice 355
56).
In Alls Well That Ends Well, too, the handsome, noble Bertram scorns Hellen the
physicians daughter for her poverty, appearance and inferior status. After she cures
the king, he offers her to four noble boyes of Ice, who will none haue of her
(Shakespeare, 6.932): Darcy says coldly that I am in no humour at present to give
consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men (Pride and Prejudice 12).
Shakespeares Proud scornfull boy asks leaue to vse/The helpe of mine owne eies
in choosing a wife (Alls Well That Ends Well 6.990, 46
47), and when Miss Bingley
asks Darcy, pray when am I to wish you joy? he answers her with equal scorn:
A ladys imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to
matrimony in a moment (Pride and Prejudice 27).
If the king accuses Bertram of contempt and disdaine (Shakespeare, Alls
Well That Ends Well 6), Darcy, as handsome, fine, and noble as Bertram, is also
discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not
all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding,
disagreeable countenance. To dance would be insupportable, he says, for apart
from Bingleys sisters, there is not another woman in the room, whom it would not a
punishment to stand up with. He is discovered to be the the proudest, most
disagreeable man in the world, and Mrs Bennet calls him
a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that
there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so
very great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to
have given him one of your set downs. I quite detest the man. (Pride and Prejudice 10

13)

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Unlike Shakespeares monarch, however, Mr Bennet never sets down the man who
rebuffed his daughter. But as the king says, Honours thriue/When rather from our
acts we them deriue/Then from our fore-goers (Shakespeare, Alls Well That Ends
Well 6.974
76), and once Mr Bennet hears how Darcy has acted for Lydia, he
consents to Elizabeth marrying this proud, unpleasant man (Pride and Prejudice
376
77).
Bertrams remorse for his contempt of Hellen, whom he believes to be dead,
prompts the king to say, That thou didst loue her, strikes some scores away/From
the great compt. Granted a second chance, Bertram promises to loue her dearely,
euer, euer dearly (Shakespeare, Alls Well That Ends Well 23.2575, 2836), and Darcy
expresses himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in
love can be supposed to do (Pride and Prejudice 366). Like Hellen, Elizabeth
receives a second proposal to the same woman (Pride and Prejudice 341); like
Bertram, Darcy apologises, though at far more satisfactory length: my behaviour to
you at the time, had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot
think of it without abhorrence . . . The recollection of what I then said, of my
conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been for
many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never
forget: Had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner. But it was some time,
he confesses, before he allowed the justice of her words. As he says to his dearest,
loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at
first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled (Pride and Prejudice
367
69).
Like several of Shakespeares heroines, Elizabeth is more than half the wooer.
Hellen idolizes Bertram as her bright particular star (Shakespeare, Alls Well That
Ends Well 1.86), asks for him as a reward, then pursues him until she gets him. Once
Elizabeth knows what Darcy is really like, she essentially proposes to him through
Lady Catherine, saying, if I am that choice, may I not accept him? and foreseeing
herself as the wife of Mr. Darcy. She speaks of marrying your nephew, of my
marriage to Mr. Darcy, and of his marrying me as though it were a done deal
(Pride and Prejudice 355
57). Forming a desperate resolution to go boldly on
with him alone, and while her courage was high, she elicits a repeat proposal
from Darcy (365
68). As Mr Bennet remarks truly, you are determined to have
him (376). At the end of Alls Well That Ends Well, the king says, I have forgiuen
and forgotten all (Alls Well That Ends Well 22.2527), and Elizabeth says of Darcys
bitter letter, The feelings of the person who wrote, and the person who received it,
are now so widely different from that they were then, that every unpleasant
circumstance attending it, ought to be forgotten. As in Shakespeares comedies,
The adieu is charity itself (Pride and Prejudice 368).
Jordan was especially renowned for being both comic and serious. When she first
played Viola in 1785, it was said that, her great powers . . . cannot be better
displayed in the wonderful contrast of her Country Girl and Viola. In one all archness
and vivacity; in the other serious, gentle, tender and sentimental (Hogan 5.2.842).
Joshua Reynolds spoke similarly of the tender and exquisite Viola of Shakspeare
[sic], where she combines feeling with sportive effect, and does as much by the music
of her melancholy as the music of her laugh (Boaden 1.221), and Lamb, who
particularly praised her Hellen and Viola, would report that in Twelfe Night her voice
sank, with her steady, melting eye, into the heart:

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Figure 3. John Hoppner, Mrs Jordan as Viola in Twelfth Night. Copyright the English
Heritage Photo Library.
There is no giving an account of how she delivered the disguised story of her love for
Orsino. It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave it into an harmonious
period . . . but, when she had declared her sisters history to be a blank, and that she
never told her love, there was a pause, as if the story had ended
and then the image
of the worm in the bud came up as a new suggestion
and the heightened image of
Patience still followed after that, as by some growing (and not mechanical) process,
thought springing up after thought, I would almost say, as they were watered by her
tears. (Hogan 5.1.cxxi)

Like Viola (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night 29.971), Elizabeth cannot tell her love.
Her mothers attack on Darcy consequently causes her a misery of shame, Lady
Catherines visit forces her into a little falsehood, and her fathers raillery mortifies
her most cruelly (Pride and Prejudice 337, 359, 363
64). And if the disguised Viola
says to Orsino, I am a Gentleman (Twelfth Night 5.554), Elizabeth says to Lady
Catherine, I am a gentlemans daughter; so far we are equal (Pride and Prejudice
356). Like Jordan, then, Elizabeth combines the arch and the serious. She hopes she
never ridicules what is wise or good, even as she teases Mr Darcy (57). Her vivacity is
always underpinned with heartfelt sentiment, like Jordans. When Mr Bennet reminds
her that she has always hated Darcy, she replies with tears in her eyes, I do, I do like
him, and, I love him (376).

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Figure 4. Mrs. Jordan, the Actress. Silhouette by Mrs Millicent Brown of Mrs Jordan as
Hippolyta, once in the collection of Lady Dorothy Nevill. Reproduced from E. Nevill Jackson,
The History of Silhouettes. London: The Connoisseur, 1911.

Although successful in Shakespearean roles, Jordan was considered best at low

parts. In 1807, Hunt blamed what he called Jordans deficiency in gentility on her
frequent male attire, the levelling familiarities of her profession, and her bad or
inappropriate habits of acting rakes and romps (xlv, 82
84).18 Elizabeth is likewise
criticized for romping behaviour when she dashes to Janes bedside. In breeches parts
such as Viola, Rosalind or Peggy the Country Girl, Jordan sported the best leg ever
seen on the stage (Genest 8.431),19 as Elizabeth may well sport hers when crossing
field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with
impatient activity, and finding herself at last within view of the house, with weary
ancles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise. Her
petticoat, observes Mrs Hurst, is six inches deep in mud, with the gown which
had been let down to hide it, not doing its office (Pride and Prejudice 32, 36). James
Boaden talks of Jordan jumping, with her elastic spring on to the stage (1.28), as
when she burst in as the hoydenish Country Girl, demanding, where are the best
fields and woods to walk in? Putting on mens clothes, she asked if I must keep on
my petticoats, for fear of shewing my legs? (Acts 2
3). When Elizabeth makes her
own surprise entrance before the assembled company at Netherfield, Austen puts the
complaint that she makes an exhibition of herself into the jealous and

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conventional mouth of Miss Bingley, as if in defiance of Hunt,20 for like him,

Bingleys sister pronounces Elizabeths manners very bad indeed, a mixture of pride
and impertinence; she had no conversation, no stile, no taste, no beauty. She calls
her almost wild after scampering about the country . . . Her hair so untidy, so
blowsy (Pride and Prejudice 35
36).
Jordans most striking feature was her dishevelled mop of brown curls, a totemic
sign by which her intimate person became as familiar to the public as the heraldic
trappings of monarchy (Roach 37). It also signalled her status as a theatrical
performer, her class and her femininity, for Jordan personified the natural actress
in a context of Rousseauesque ideas and contemporary debates about natural
acting styles. Compared to the studied acting of Sarah Siddons, her spontaneity,
vivacity and lack of affectation signified original genius,21 for Comedy is founded
in Nature; Tragedy is supported by Art, explained the essayist (5, 2). In an act of
public intimacy characteristic of the celebrity (Roach 16), Jordans sincerity sunk
the actress in the woman: she seemed only to exhibit herself, and her own wild
fancies, and utter the impromptus of the moment (Boaden 1.20). Reynolds, who
warmly admired Jordans acting, especially in her revealing breeches roles, said that,
she vastly exceeded everything that he had seen, and really was what others only
affected to be (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 86). By creating Elizabeth, a character who acts
naturally, Austen reveals a preference for Jordans natural acting in comic roles,
just as by basing Crawford on Garrick, she endorses his more realistic style.22
Jordans most popular non-Shakespearean roles as well as her Shakespearean
ones were energetic, unconventional and often cross-dressed: Peggy, Priscilla
Tomboy in The Romp, Miss Hoyden in Sheridans A Trip to Scarborough,23 the
mischievous Little Pickle in The Spoilt Child and the spirited Hippolita in Cibbers
She Would and She Would Not. As Gay comments, the stages potential physical
freedom for women is paralleled in this novel in the country, a space in which
Elizabeth can run on in [a] wild manner both verbally and physically (Pride and
Prejudice 42; Theatre 91). Hunt wrote,
though [Jordan] was neither beautiful, nor handsome, nor even pretty, nor accomplished, not a lady, nor anything conventional or comme il faut whatsoever, yet was so
pleasant, so cordial, so natural, so full of spirits, so healthily constituted in mind and
body, had such a shapely leg withal, so charming a voice, and such a happy and happymaking expression of countenance, that she appeared something superior to all those
requirements of acceptability. (cited in Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 213)

The Irish Mrs Jordan, with her provincial dialect (Inchbald 3), matched Peggy
in not being a conventional town lady. Garricks heroine has seen nobody to
converse with, but the country people about em (Country Girl 1.1), and Darcys
offensive observation, In a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and
unvarying society, prompts Mrs Bennets triumphant riposte, of which Wycherley
himself would have been proud, I assure you there is quite as much of that going on
in the country as in the town (Pride and Prejudice 42
43).
In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Hursts accusation that Elizabeth is unladylike leads
to Miss Bingleys listing of the attributes of an accomplished woman: music,
dancing, drawing and the modern languages, together with a certain something in
her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions.

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But Bingley and Darcy rate sisterly affection and extensive reading more highly
(Pride and Prejudice 36, 39), just as those country sisters Cassandra and Jane Austen
educated themselves by their extensive reading. Peggy has little of beauty but her
youth, nothing to brag of but her health (1.1), and Darcy admires in Elizabeth the
brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, and fine eyes brightened by
the exercise (Pride and Prejudice 33, 36). Her lively talents, her ease and
liveliness (Pride and Prejudice 376, 312), all testify to her youthful energy and
health. Elizabeth despises hypocrisy and affectation, for her character is as genuine
as her complexion.24 Her flouting of the sexual conventions embraced by the Bingley
sisters shows that like Jordan, she contributed to the refiguring of femininity away
from stereotypes of the languishing, passive female that dominated the eighteenthcentury novel and sentimental drama (Gay, As You Like It 85).
Jordan was unaccomplished in music. Although her songs sold briskly (Tomalin,
Mrs Jordan 71), the interest of her voice arose not from what may be called musical
feeling, but the impression of the subject. Thus, though sometimes a little untrue, we
love her songs, and forbear to weigh them in the diatonic or chromatic scales
(Hogan 5.2.1394). Her strong, clear voice, though not particularly sweet, was called
natural (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 52 n.; Perry, Spectacular 162). Elizabeths
performance at singing and playing is likewise pleasing, though by no means
capital. Being easy and unaffected, she is listened to with much more pleasure
than Mary, though not playing half so well (Pride and Prejudice 25).
Nor was Jordan considered a beauty. Though peculiarly pleasing, she was
never handsome (Genest 8.431).25 At the ball, Mr Darcy refuses to accept
Mr Bingleys opinion that Elizabeth is very pretty, saying, she is tolerable; but not
handsome enough to tempt me (Pride and Prejudice 11
12). Darcy, who sees only
a collection of people in whom there was little beauty and no fashion (Pride and
Prejudice 16), at first scarcely allows Elizabeth to be pretty:
he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked
at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that
she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered
uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery
succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye
more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge
her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were
not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. (Pride and
Prejudice 23)

Garricks Harcourt says similarly of Peggy, wit to me is more than beauty:

I think no woman ugly that has it; and no handsome woman agreeable without it
(Country Girl I.i). As the essayist remarked:
The severity of Criticism has denied to this great Actress the attribute of personal
Beauty. To mere beauty her real friends will readily relinquish the claims which might be
made in her favour; she possesses those attractions which are beyond all Beauty, and
above all Praise. Her countenance presents to the spectator a representation of strong
expression and animated diversity: the vivid brightness of her eye illustrates every
speech with ineffable power and unerring brilliancy . . . We may truly say of Mrs.
JORDAN, that all her attitudes are expressions . . . HER general action, her lively
behaviour, and her serious deportment, are all supremely graceful; she seems to possess

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423

that intuitive elegance, which others arrive at by long study and repeated application.
(Essay 9
11)

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Darcy likewise meditates on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in
the face of a pretty woman can bestow.26 Responding to Miss Bingleys hypocritical
fears that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes,
Darcy replies, Not at all . . . they were brightened by the exercise. To Miss Bingleys
further witticisms on fine eyes, including, what painter could do justice to those
beautiful eyes? Darcy replies that it would not be easy, indeed, to catch their
expression, but their colour and shape, and the eye-lashes, so remarkably fine, might
be copied (Pride and Prejudice 27, 36, 46, 53).
Oblivious of Elizabeths attractiveness to Darcy, Miss Bingley returns to her
theme:
I must confess that I could never see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her
complexion has no brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her nose wants
character; there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of
the common way; and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I never
could perceive any thing extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish look,
which I do not like at all; and in her air altogether, there is a self-sufficiency without
fashion, which is intolerable.

As she reminds Darcy, he had said, She a beauty!
I should as soon call her
mother a wit. But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you
thought her rather pretty at one time. Darcy can contain himself no longer. Yes,
he replies, but that was only when I first knew her, for it is many months since I have
considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance (Pride and
Prejudice 271). When James Boaden was asked if Jordan had been handsome, he
answered simply: had you seen her as I did, the question would never have occurred
to you! (1.275). This correspondence in unconventional beauty runs so deep that
those eager to know what Elizabeth Bennet
and her legs
looked like might seek
out images of Dorothy Jordan, whose brilliant, dark, expressive eyes were copied by
at least 85 painters, sculptors, silhouettists and caricaturists. In May 1786, for
instance, everyone who counted saw John Hoppners large allegorical painting, Mrs
Jordan as the Comic Muse supported by Euphrosyne, who represses the advances of
a Satyr, at the Royal Academy (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 69).27 Many of these auratic
images were engraved, reproduced and circulated widely in print-shop windows
(Highfill 260
64; Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 71).
On 24 May 1813, four months after Pride and Prejudice was published, Austen
hunted for portraits of Mrs Bingley and Mrs Darcy at the exhibition in Spring
Gardens, London. Although very well pleased with one of Mrs Bingley in green and
excessively like her,28 she went in hopes of seeing one of her Sister, but there was
no Mrs Darcy. She added, I dare say Mrs D. will be in Yellow. Cross-dressed as
Ganimed, Jordan evidently wore a yellow breeches suit, for so Hugh Douglas
Hamilton portrayed her in 1786
87 and William Beechey in 1787.29 Austen wrote,
I may find her in the Great Exhibition which we shall go to, if we have time;
I have
no chance of her in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynoldss Paintings which is now
shewing in Pall Mall, & which we are also to visit (Letters 212). By the Great
Exhibition, she meant the British Academy show, opened at Somerset House on

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J. M. Harris

Figure 5. William Beechey, Mrs Jordan as Rosalind. Reproduced by permission from

Claire Tomalin, Mrs Jordans Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King,
London: Viking, 1994.

3 May 1813 (Letters 417 nn. 5
6). Portraits of Jordan and other actresses frequently
hung both there (Perry, Spectacular 73) and in the popular Shakespeare Gallery in
Pall Mall.30 Seeing that the Gallery specialized in portraits of celebrity actors in
signature roles, it was an obvious place to seek out Mrs Darcy in yellow, as though
she really existed.
Although Reynolds painted Siddons as Melpomene the tragic muse, he never
represented Jordan as the comic Thalia: his Sitter Book shows only that she visited
him early in 1789 (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 86). As Austen reported, We have been both
to the Exhibition & to Sir J. Reynolds,
and I am disappointed, for there was
nothing like Mrs D. at either.
I can only imagine that Mr D. prizes any Picture of
her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye.
I can imagine he wd
have that sort [of] feeling
that mixture of Love, Pride & Delicacy.31 But, Setting
aside this disappointment, I had great Amusement among the Pictures; & the
Driving about, the Carriage been [sic] open, was very pleasant. Like the merry Mrs
Jordan, she was ready to laugh all the time, at my being where I was (Letters 213

14).
Thus, it seems that Austen read some of Shakespeares plays through the life and
characteristics of the actress who performed them with such bewitching archness and
natural energy. Her appropriation of Jordans well-known characteristics for the
heroine of her light & bright & sparkling novel (Letters 203) raises the possibility
that events in the actresss life prompted a thorough-going revision of the manuscript

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Figure 6. Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Dorothy Jordan (1786
87). By kind permission of

Viscount De LIsle from his private collection at Penshurst Place, Kent, England.

First Impressions into Pride and Prejudice, based punctiliously on an almanac for
1811
12.32 Austens first identifiable date is 15 October; her last before Christmas
1812 (Chapman, in Pride and Prejudice 402
8), presumably just before she sold the
copyright on 29 November 1812 (Gilson 24). At that exact time Jordan was very
much in the news. Crowds already gathered wherever she went, but on 2 October
1811, just 13 days before Austen began revising, it became the talk of the town that
the Duke of Clarence had requested a separation from the mother of his 10 children.
Public sympathy swung markedly behind Jordan, and talk would not die down until
she routed the London Times in February 1813 (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 268).33
In January 1812, Jordan moved into a house in Cadogan Street, just round the
corner from Henry and Eliza Austen in Sloane Street. As Tomalin writes, the family
may have noticed the arrival of the five younger FitzClarence children in February
1812, brought to the back door by the Duke, and their departure again in June, when
their mother returned them sadly to his care, judging it in their best interest (Austen
225). When Austen writes that Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her
feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather
have cried (Pride and Prejudice 364), she seems to know, as the world knew, that
immediately after the arrival of the Dukes letter discarding her, Jordan insisted on
going on stage, but when she attempted to laugh, the afflicted woman burst into

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J. M. Harris

tears (Boaden 2.272). But with the loss of Austens letters from 6 June 1811 to
29 October 1812, precisely when she was revising her novel, any connection between
Jordans life and Austens re-writing of her manuscript remains not proven.

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Austen, Shakespeare and Sanditon

Just as she had always done, Austen turns to Shakespeare for one last time in
Sanditon. Here, as Rhonda Keith realized, her application of his phrase chilly &
tender to the West Indian heiress Miss Lambe (Sanditon 421) invokes the clown in
Alls Well That Ends Well. As he says, I am for the house with the narrow gate,
which I take to be too little for pompe to enter: some that humble themselues may;
but the manie will be too chill and tender, and theyle bee for the flowrie way that
leads to the broad gate and the great fire (Shakespeare 18.2367
71). He alludes to
Matthew 7.13
14: Enter in at the strayte gate: for wyde is ye gate and broade is the
waye that leadeth to destruccion: and many ther be which goo yn therat. But strayte
is the gate and narowe ys the waye which leadeth vnto lyfe: and feawe there be that
fynde it (Tyndale). Austens quotation from Alls Well That Ends Well, about a sick
king loosing of hope by time resonates throughout Sanditon, for here a woman
who was confronting what Shakespeare calls Vncertain life, and sure death (1.16,
6.855) bravely mocks hypochondria, inflated health claims, and speculative developers on their primrose paths to hell.
Between 8 August 1815 and 6 August 1816, Austen wrote Persuasion, a novel
darkened by her own illness and by Waterloo. Reminders of mortality and the vanity
of human wishes are everywhere to be found in this posthumously published work,
just as Thomas Rowlandson placed his Triumph of Death, the final illustration to
William Combes English Dance of Death (1814
16), outside the Pump Room at Bath
(Harris, Revolution 180
81). Sanditon, as a continuation of these concerns and in the
shadow of Alls Well That Ends Well, looks deadly serious as well as comic. At the
end of her life, the reference to Alls Well That Ends Well suggests that she applied
Shakespeares meditation about the after-life to Sanditon, a town built upon sand.
How Austen herself became a celebrity is another story, but it is clear that she knew
Shakespeare pretty thoroughly, both read and performed. Familiar with him from
her earliest years and intimate with him by instinct, she talked creatively with him,
around him, and about him throughout her entire career.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Stuart Sherman, Janine Barchas, Patricia Bru ckmann, Felicity Nussbaum,
Janet Aikins Yount, Lance Bertelsen and the reviewers for their helpful comments. I rely
throughout on Claire Tomalins fine biography of Dorothy Jordan.

Notes
1. References, unless otherwise stated, are to Chapmans edition of Jane Austen.
2. Harris, Memory ch. 6 and Conclusion; Shakespeare, in index to Memory; Appendix to
Harris, Revolution.
3. For a comprehensive and finely nuanced discussion of criticism about Austen as the
Prose Shakespeare, see Wiltshire, Recreating ch. 3 and nn. To my knowledge,
however, no-one has linked Elizabeth with Hellen and Phebe.

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4. See Harris, Revolution ch. 6.

5. See Harris, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. Both Gay (Theatre) and Byrne
demonstrate Austens extensive knowledge and use of the theatre.
6. Gay, As You Like It 85.
7. See Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 6, 77
78, 324
25; Highfill 250
51. In a revival of Garricks
Jubilee in 1785, Siddons appeared as the Tragic Muse and Jordan as a cross-dressed
Rosalind. A week before, Jordan had played Viola; five days afterwards, she played Olivia,
with Jubilee as an afterpiece (Bate 821
82).
8. Joseph Roach remarks that the celebrity of eighteenth-century actors and actresses was at
least anticipatory and perhaps generative of modern celebrity because their images began
to circulate widely in the absence of their persons, a privilege once reserved to duly
annointed sovereigns and saints (196). The online Burney newspaper collection contains
thousands of references to Jordan, and Google lists many more in other print media. See
also Nussbaum on the celebrity and power of women players.
9. For Austens borrowings from Roxalana for Pride and Prejudice, see Gay, Theatre 73
74.
10. Cassandra Austen tried to see Jordan as Lady Teazle from Sheridans School for Scandal,
played in the same year (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 178). She planned to go with Henry and his
friend Mrs Smithson (Nokes 233).
11. Gay writes that Austen undoubtedly went to the theatre in London and Bath as well as
Southampton (Theatre 6
13, 17
22), and Byrne notes that Austens residence in Bath
1801
6 coincided with an unprecedented time of prosperity, brilliancy and progress in the
theatre (see ch. 2). In Southampton, Austen spent some of her meagre income on plays (Le
Faye Journeys; Viveash). For Jordans roles, see Highfill 250
51; Tomalin, Mrs Jordan
333
39.
12. Bellamy, for instance, notes Jordans attributes as sportive, sprightly, native ease, arch
glance, bewitching, and hair wildly floating (2.10).
13. For the ritual humiliation of celebrities, see Tuite.
14. Arch meant flirtatious and seductive, while constantly deferring desire. See Perry,
Spectacular passim.
15. Hazlitt may recall Austens phrase high animal spirits for the laughing, romping, wild
Lydia Bennet (45). Yount suggests to me in a private communication that Lydia represents
the low aspects of Jordans public persona. Although Lydia herself does not cross-dress,
she makes Chamberlayne pass for a lady in womens clothes (Pride and Prejudice 221).
16. See also McMaster 156.
17. For what Austen might have taken from Samuel Richardsons Sir Charles Grandison for
the proposals of Mr Collins and Mr Darcy, see Harris, Memory 112
20.
18. Genest would declare that Jordans throwing herself into genteel comedy betrayed a
lamentable want of judgment, for her natural manner was any thing but elegant
(8.431). See Straub for the threat posed to eighteenth-century gender ideology by sexual
ambiguity (133
35). The acting profession as a whole, she says, is denigrated in class
terms because of its commodified specularization (157), a problem clearly worsened by
cross-dressing such as Jordans.
19. Roach shows how celebrities communicate a message combining semi-divinity with seminudity, accessibility with transcendence (4, 16).
20. Perry remarks that exhibitions of womens portraits were fraught with contradictions
about desirable femininity (Spectacular 184).
21. See Bate 97
98; Perry, Spectacular ch. 3, altered and expanded from her Staging;
Harris, Richardson.
22. See Harris, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park.
23. Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 87. When Priscilla Tomboy plans to run away with Captain Sightly,
she sings: Dear me, how I long to be married,/And in my own coach to be carried;/Beside
me to see,/How charming twill be!/My husband, and may be,/A sweet little baby (25). Cf.
the untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy and fearless Lydia Bennet showing off her
wedding ring as she bows and smiles beside her husband in the carriage, claims precedence
over her unmarried sisters, and demands congratulations for marrying a charming man
(Pride and Prejudice 315
17). Like Priscilla, Lydia laughs continually.
24. See Harris, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park.

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J. M. Harris

25. Roach comments that the It factor requires physical attraction, but not beauty (4).
26. For what Austen might have taken from Richardsons Harriet Byron for Elizabeth, see
Harris, Memory 105
6.
27. For the complex sexual innuendo in Hoppners portrait, see Perry, Spectacular 45
48, 55,
81
82.
28. Rainbolt identifies the sitter as Mrs Harriet Quentin, who became the Regents mistress in
1813 (Eglantine 5.442).
29. Tomalin and Dejardin 36; Tomalin, Mrs Jordan between 320 and 321, 340 n10. Highfill
does not list Beecheys portrait, which is in private hands.
30. The Gallery was founded by John Boydell, who commissioned paintings illustrating
Shakespeare from which to make prints. It opened in May 1789 (Clayton), moving to Pall
Mall on 18 January 1806.
31. Cf. Hannah More: if a man select a picture for himself from among all its exhibited
competitors, and bring it to his own house, the picture being passive, he is able to fix it
there; while the wife, picked up at a public place, and accustomed to incessant display, will
not, it is probable, when brought home, stick so quietly to the spot where he fixes her, but
will escape to the exhibition-room again, and continue to be displayed in every subsequent
exhibition, just as if she were not become private property, and had never been definitely
disposed of (6.201).
32. Chapman argues that so intricate a chronological scheme cannot have been patched on
to an existing work without extensive revision, although Austens phrase lopt and
cropt suggests a process of condensation. If his conclusions are accepted, he says, we
must modify the assumption that Pride and Prejudice is substantially the same book as the
lost manuscript First Impressions. In spite of two references to the closing decade of the
eighteenth century, he feels a certain difficulty in supposing that, in publishing Pride and
Prejudice in 1813, Miss Austen definitely conceived its action as taking place some ten
years (or more) earlier (Pride and Prejudice xiii; Appendix on Chronology 400
8).
33. The Dukes greed, gluttony, gambling, promiscuity, ambition and pro-slavery stance had
been caricatured for years, but in 1811
13, his dismissal of Jordan enlarged the list. See,
for instance, The r*l lover, or, the admiral on a lee shore (January 1812), where the
Duke in admirals uniform proposes to Catherine Tylney-Long before a portrait of Jordan
and her children. The accompanying verses from Peter Pindars contemptuous satire, The
R*l Brood; or, an Illustrious Hen and her Pretty Chickens, appeared in at least
12 editions in 1812 (BM notes). After much nagging, the Duke gained titular promotions
to Admiral in 1798 and Admiral of the Fleet in 1811 (Ziegler 95; Parissien 27). One can
only imagine the response of the Austen family.

References
Asleson, Robyn. Introduction. Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture
1776
1812. Ed. Robyn Asleson. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003. 1
21.
Aspinall, A. Mrs Jordan and her Family. Being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the
Duke of Clarence later William IV. London: Arthur Barker, 1951.
Austen, Jane. Jane Austens Letters. Ed. Deirdre Le Faye. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.
***. The Novels of Jane Austen. Ed. R.W. Chapman 3rd ed., 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P,
1923. 1932
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***. Sanditon. Minor Works. Ed. R.W. Chapman London: Oxford UP, 1954, repr. 1958.
Austen-Leigh, James Edward. Memoir of Jane Austen. Ed. Kathryn Sutherland. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2002.
Barchas, Janine. Hell-fire Jane: Austen and the Dashwoods of West Wycombe. EighteenthCentury Life 33.3 (2009): 1
36.
***. Mapping Northanger Abbey: or, Why Austens Bath of 1803 Resembles Joyces
Dublin of 1904. Review of English Studies 60.245 (2008): 431
59.
Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and the Rival Muses: Siddons versus Jordan. Notorious Muse.
81
103.
Beckford, William. Azemia. Ed. Robert J. Gemmett. 1797. Kansas City: Valancourt, 2010.
Bellamy, Thomas. Miscellanies; in Prose and Verse. 2 vols. London, 1794
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Boaden, James. The Life of Mrs. Jordan; Including Original Private Correspondence, and
Numerous Anecdotes of her Contemporaries. 2 vols. 2nd ed. London: Edward Bull, 1831.
Byrne, Paula. Jane Austen and the Theatre. London: Hambledon, 2002.
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