Mrs Sterling and Benjamin Webster

A carte-de-visite portrait of the actors Fanny Sterling, known professionally as Mrs Sterling, and Benjamin Webster. They are seen here as they appeared in Masks and Faces, a comedy by Tom Taylor and Charles Reade first performed in 1852 at Theatre Royal, Haymarket, then under the management of Benjamin Webster.

The plot concerned the real life eighteenth-century actress Peg Woffington. 'The possibility of making a very interesting play out of slender materials was never more satisfactorily proved than in the present instance. A woman accepts an offer of marriage from a man whom she subsequently discovers to be already wedded; and then, instead of acting upon selfish motives, and wreaking her vengeance upon one or both the persons who occasion her so much misery, or yielding to the temptations of a love pure in its origin, she grandly sacrifices her own happiness to theirs. This is all. Yet our authors have contrived to vary and add to their themes so ingeniously and substantially, that the attention is constantly employed, though never diverted from the main objects of the drama' (Morning Post, 22 November 1852).

While Mrs Sterling took the part of Peg Woffington, Mr Webster played 'that of Triplet, a poor poet, painter, and musician [...]. A man of keen sensibilities, and lofty aspirations, who writes fine-art tragedies which no manager will read, and paints pictures which nobody will look at. He has a sickly wife and three children, this unfortunate, and they all live cooped up together in a wretched garret on a fourth floor, in a back street, with little fresh air, and less food' (Ibid.)

The first production proved so popular that the following year Reade wrote a novel, Peg Woffington, to capitalise on the success of the play.

Photographed by the Southwell Brothers of London.