Dorothea Plowden

Dorothea Plowden
portrait by Richard Cosway
Died5 June 1827 Edit this on Wikidata
Hammersmith Edit this on Wikidata
OccupationLibrettist Edit this on Wikidata
Spouse(s)Francis Plowden Edit this on Wikidata
ChildrenCapt. Charles Francis Plowden, Anna Maria Plowden Edit this on Wikidata
Parent(s)
  • Griffith Philipps Edit this on Wikidata

Dorothea Plowden (died 5 June 1827)[1] was a British songwriter and librettist.

Dorothea Plowden was the daughter of Griffith Phillips, MP for Carmarthen. She married the Catholic writer Francis Plowden in 1779.[2][3] They had two sons and three daughters, one of whom married Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald.[4] She was the subject of a portrait by Richard Cosway and a portrait with her sister by Angelica Kauffman.[5]

She wrote the libretto of a 3-act comic opera, Virginia, with music by Samuel Arnold. Virginia was based on Mary Pix's The Innocent Mistress (1697) and Aphra Behn's The Widow Ranter (1690). It premiered at the Drury Lane Theatre on 30 October 1800. The play was poorly received and ran only that night.[6] David Erskine Baker wrote that it was "condemned the first night"[7] while John Genest wrote that it "is a poor Opera [...] in this piece the absurdity is greater than usual."[8] Plowden published her libretto and in its preface blamed the opera's failure on changes made by John Philip Kemble.[9]

Plowden published a number of songs, including "The Coy, Blushing Sylvia".[10]

Dorothea Plowden died on 5 June 1827 in Hammersmith at the home of her son-in-law, the Earl of Dundonald.[2]

References

  1. ^ Catholic Record Society (Great Britain) (1913). Obituaries. Princeton Theological Seminary Library. London : Privately printed for the society.
  2. ^ a b Gillow, Joseph (1885). A literary and biographical history, or bibliographical dictionary, of the English Catholics : from the breach with Rome, in 1534, to the present time... Wellcome Library. London : Burns & Oates ; New York : Catholic pub. soc. co.
  3. ^ Plowden, Walter Francis Courtenay Chicheley (1914). Records of the Chicheley Plowdens A. D. 1590-1913; with four alphabetical indices, four pedigree sheets, and a portrait of Edmund, the great Elizabethan lawyer. Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. London, Heath, Cranton & Ouseley ltd.
  4. ^ Rope, H. E. G. (1919). "An English Historian of Ireland: Francis Plowden". The Irish Monthly. 47 (556): 552–562. ISSN 2009-2113. JSTOR 20505391.
  5. ^ Plowden, Barbara Mary (1887). Records of the Plowden family. p. 121.
  6. ^ Hoskins, Robert H. B. (1998). The theater music of Samuel Arnold : a thematic index. Internet Archive. Warren, Mich. : Harmonie Park Press. ISBN 978-0-89990-082-7.
  7. ^ David Erskine Baker (1812). Biographia Dramatica. Internet Archive. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, T. Payne, Etc.
  8. ^ "Some account of the English stage : from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830. In ten volumes v.7". HathiTrust. hdl:2027/hvd.32044100890680. Retrieved 2024-06-16.
  9. ^ Mann, David (1996). Women playwrights in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1660-1823. Internet Archive. Bloomington : Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-33087-1.
  10. ^ Potter, Frank Hunter (1916). Reliquary of English Song. G. Schirmer.