Mrs. Davison at the Theatre Royal, Queen Street, June 1819

On June the 4th, 1819, an advertisement in the Glasgow Herald, page 3, noted that Mr. Mason informed theatre-goers that, after undergoing a number of alterations and improvements, the Theatre Royal would open on the 7th of June, for the Summer Season. The comedy, The School for Scandal, was the first show, and Mrs. Davison, of the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden, was engaged for a few nights. She would be making her first appearance, for three years, at the theatre, playing Lady Teazle.

The advertisement noted that a “succession of London Performers are engaged, and will make their appearance in the course of the Summer.”

On Friday, the 11th of June, the third night of Mrs. Davison’s engagement, she performed in the comedy The Inconstant, followed by the farce, The Wedding Day. On Saturday, The Jealous Wife and Three Weeks after Marriage. On Monday she was to play Letitia Hardy in The Belle’s Stratagem.

On page two of Friday the 11th of June’s Herald, under Theatre, the paper commented: “The Comedy of the Provoked Husband, performed last night, is of the first order.- The language is easy and natural, and the characters are admirably drawn. … The elegant, lively, but unthinking Lady Townly was admirably depicted by Mrs. Davison, who exhibited in the earlier scenes all the gay frivolity of fashionable life, and where tears are mingled with embraces, evinced much feeling”.

Towards the end of June, Mrs. Davison was preparing for her departure from Glasgow, and her benefit was scheduled for Wednesday the 30th of June. at the Theatre Royal. She took the role of Mrs. Bell in the comedy, Know Your Own Mind. After this, were a “Variety of Scotch Songs”, followed by a “CELEBRATED FARCE, never performed out of London, (in which MRS. DAVISON will sustain six different characters)”. Called The Actress of All Work, she played: Maria, and actress of provincial celebrity; Bridget, a country gawky; Flourish, a first rate London actress; Goody Stubbens, a deaf old lady of 80; Lounge, a literary fop; and Mademoiselle, an opera singer from Paris.

Tickets were available from Mrs. Davison, at Mrs. Wright’s, 57 Maxwell Street, and at Mr. Finlay’s, where places for the boxes may be taken.