Background
Hannah Pritchard was born in 1711.
Hannah Pritchard was born in 1711.
Hannah Pritchard acted in 1733, at Fielding and Hippisley's booth, Bartholomew Fair, the part of Loveit in an opera called A Cure for Covetousness, or the Cheats of Scapin. She sang with great effect "Sweet, if you love me, smiling, turn". A duet between her and an actor called Salway was very popular, and she was berhymed by a writer in the Daily Post, who spoke of this as her first essay, and predicted for her "a transportation to a brighter stage". first attracted attention as a singer at Bartholomew's Fair in 1733. She was soon playing a wide variety of parts, mostly comedy, at the Haymarket, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. When Garrick became patentee of Drury Lane in 1747 she joined his company and played with him for twenty years, her last appearance being as Lady Macbeth - one of her greatest roles - in April 1768, a few months before her death. Her talents were highly thought of by the critics of the day.
Johnson calls her "a mechanical player". In private life he declared she was "a vulgar idiot; she would talk of her gownd, but when she appeared upon the stage seemed to be inspired by gentility and understanding".
Campbell declares that she "never rose to the finest grade, even of comedy, but was most famous in scolds and viragos".
She married in early life a poor actor named Pritchard. She had a daughter and a son.