13. The Tragicomic Demise of Mrs. Fitzherbert
The Beggar’s Opera’s audience eventually collected itself after bursting its stitches laughing at Polly Peachum, wiped the tears from their eyes, and resumed watching the play. Not so, Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was unable to suppress the laughter that seized her. As a contemporary source described it: “Mrs. Fitzherbert, the widow of a Northamptonshire clergyman, had been with some friends to Drury Lane on the evening of 17 April 1782 to see the transvestite ‘Beggar’s Opera’ in which Charles Bannister played Polly. This lady was overcome by laughter to the extent that she had to leave before the end of the second act. She continued in hysterics until the morning of 19 April, when she died“.
The Gentleman’s Magazine put it more succinctly soon thereafter: “Not being able to banish the figure from her memory, she was thrown into hysterics, which continued without intermission until she expired on Friday morning“. The incident caused waves at the time, as it was pregnant with what were, for its era, several class transgressions. The presence of a clergyman’s widow at a comic play was highly unusual in of itself, and her uncontrollable laughter in public even more. That might have been expected from a fishwife back then, but not from a woman whose gentility was deemed a given back then.