MARY

See also:

• ANNE (1665-1714)
• ANNE (1693-1740)

ANNE

See also:

• MARY ANNE KEELEY (18o6–1899)

KEELEY (18o6–1899)  , English actress, was born at Ipswich on the 22nd of November 1805 or 18o6 . Her maiden name was Goward, her father being a brazier and tinman . After some experience in the provinces, she first appeared on the stage in London on the 2nd of July 1825, in the opera Rosina . It was not long before she gave up " singing parts " in favour of the drama proper, where her powers of character-acting could have scope . In June 1829 she married Robert Keeley (1793–1869), an admirable comedian, with whom she had often appeared . Between 1832 and 1842 they acted at Covent Garden, at the Adelphi with Buckstone, at the Olympic with Charles Mathews, and at Drury Lane with Macready . In 1836 they visited America . In 1838 she made her first great success as Nydia, the blind girl, in a dramatized version of Bulwer Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii, and followed this with an equally striking impersonation of Smike in Nicholas Nickleby . In 1839 came her decisive triumph with her picturesque and spirited acting as the hero of a play founded upon Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard . So dangerous was considered the popularity of the play, with its glorification of the prison-breaking felon, that the lord chamber-lain ultimately forbade the performance of any piece upon the subject . It is perhaps mainly as Jack Sheppard that Mrs Keeley lived in the memory of playgoers, despite her long subsequent career in plays more worthy of her remarkable gifts . Under Macready's management she played Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, and Audrey in As You Like It .

She managed the

Lyceum with her husband from 1844 to 1847; acted with Webster and Kean at the Haymarket; returned for five years to the Adelphi; and made her last regular public appearance at the Lyceum in 1859 . A public reception was given her at this theatre on her 9oth birthday . She died on the 12th of March 1899 . See Walter Goodman, The Keeleys on the Stage and off (London, 1895) .