The anonymous gentleman was smitten. He had just attended the American Company’s performance of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, King of Britain, and he simply had to share his enthusiastic admiration of one player’s artistry. On September 6, 1770, the Maryland Gazette published his letter (signed “Y.Z.”) and a poem (credited by Y.Z. to “A Friend of mine,” but very likely by the same writer) extolling the attributes of actress Nancy Hallam.
Organized in 1752 by William Hallam and managed by his brother Lewis, the American Company was the first professional theater company to perform in England’s mainland American colonies. After Lewis Hallam died, his widow married actor David Douglass, who merged the troupe with his own company based in Jamaica. From 1758 to 1774, the American Company performed a wide repertoire of works, including fourteen of Shakespeare’s plays, before audiences from New England to the Carolinas. Annapolis was one of the touring ensemble’s regular stops.
Nancy Hallam was the niece of Sarah Hallam Douglass. She may have performed with the troupe as a child before training as a singer in England from 1760 to 1765. With the American Company by 1766, she took on ingénue roles at first then graduated to lead characters in 1769. In Cymbeline, Miss Hallam played one of Shakespeare’s so-called “breeches roles,” the part of Imogen, a virtuous princess who disguises herself as a young man named Fidele to escape the threat of death. And Y.Z. was quite taken with her performance.
The unnamed author would not “expatiate on the Merits of the whole Performance, but confine myself principally to one Object.” Upon learning that Nancy Hallam was to be the leading lady, “I instantly formed to myself, from my Predilection for her, the most sanguine Hope of Entertainment. But how was I ravished on Experiment! She exceeded my utmost Idea. Such Delicacy of Manner! Such classical Strictness of Expression! The Musick of her Tongue! The Vox liquida, how melting!”
Despite “the horrid Ruggedness of the Roof, and the untoward Construction of the whole House,” Miss Hallam’s talent was unconstrained by the physical limitations of the theater itself (fortunately, a new theater would be constructed on West Street in time for the 1771 season). “How true and thorough her Knowledge of the Character she personated! Her whole Form and Dimensions how happily convertible, and universally adapted to the Variety of her Part.” The anonymous Y.Z.’s equally anonymous Friend “was so deeply impressed by the bewitching Grace and Justness with which the Actress filled the whole Character, that, immediately on going Home, he threw out warm from the Heart, as well as Brain, the Verses” which followed.
The poem “To Miss HALLAM” praised the talent and skill of both William Shakespeare and Nancy Hallam. Thanks to the actress’s “strange dramatic Pow’r,” the Bard’s story “Has charm’d my Ears once more.” Shakespeare wrote “Beyond the Rules of Art,” exploring the realms of both Mind and Heart, and Hallam’s “magic Pow’rs, to please” brought his words to life on stage “with Grace and Ease.” Shakespeare’s “forceful Scenes” could be challenging to play, yet Hallam was up to the task. She had the dramatic range to play either tragedy or comedy, to convey solemnity with a look or “invite to Love” with a song. On top of all that, Nancy Hallam was as attractive as a classical goddess, with “Cytherea’s Face” and “Dian[a]’s faultless Form.”
In the last stanza, the poet introduced a budding local genius into the exclusive company of Shakespeare and Hallam. Charles Willson Peale was no longer “self-tutor’d,” having returned to Annapolis after two years of training under painter Benjamin West in London, but he was still in the early stages of earning a reputation and paid commissions for his work. The poet set Peale a challenge: could his talented eye and brush capture Miss Hallam’s expressive image and spirit?
Peale’s artistry met the test. By the time the American Company returned to Annapolis in September 1771, Peale’s full-length portrait of Nancy Hallam was on view in the painter’s display room. Another anonymous poem appeared in the Maryland Gazette in November 1771, this time addressed “To Mr. PEALE, on his painting Miss Hallam in the Character of Fedele in Cymbeline.” William Shakespeare and Nancy Hallam received their due praise once again, but now Charles Willson Peale was the principal focus of the unsigned author’s poetic attention:
Shakespeare’s immortal Scenes our Wonder raise, And next to him thou claim’st our highest Praise. When Hallam as Fedele comes distress’d, Tears fill each Eye, and Passion heaves each Breast; ... Thy Pencil has so well the Scene convey’d, Thought seems but an unnecessary Aid: How pleas’d we view the visionary Scene, The friendly Cave, the Rock and Mountain green; Nature and Art are here at once combin’d, And all Elysium to one View confin’d.
Peale’s 1771 portrait of Nancy Hallam is now in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg.
So who was the mysterious Y.Z.? Peale biographer Charles Coleman Sellers attributed the 1770 verses to proprietary official William Eddis, but other scholars point to Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the newly installed rector of St. Anne’s Church. In his memoirs, Boucher noted that he “wrote some verses on one of the actresses; and a prologue or two” while enjoying the vibrant cultural life of colonial Annapolis. Both Eddis and Boucher had skill with a pen, but my money’s on the bachelor clergyman being the secret admirer of Nancy Hallam.
Read the September 6, 1770 issue of the Maryland Gazette starting here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001281/html/m1281-1110.html
Glenn E. Campbell
HA Senior Historian
