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Theatre and Performance Studies
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Elizabeth Craven; miniature picture; eighteenth-century comedy; theatre; celebrity; genre; cross-dressing
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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Chasing Eliza: Shifting And Static Women In Elizabeth Craven's The Miniature Picture, Heather A. Ladd
Chasing Eliza: Shifting And Static Women In Elizabeth Craven's The Miniature Picture, Heather A. Ladd
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Georgian actress and author Mary Robinson famously wore a miniature portrait of her royal lover, the Prince of Wales, whom she captivated in the Shakespearean breaches role of Perdita. Intriguingly, Robinson’s final stage appearance was as the cross-dressing heroine of The Miniature Picture (1781), a three-act comedy penned by writer and socialite Lady Elizabeth Craven, later Baroness Craven and Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The play’s action, initiated by the threat of exposure, is driven by Eliza Camply, who aims to retrieve her miniature from the man who left her. Craven, like the actress playing her enterprising protagonist Eliza Camply, was no …