Charlotte Saunders Cushman

Charlotte Saunders Cushman , 1816-76, one of the first outstanding American actresses, b. Boston. Cushman turned from opera to drama and in 1835 first played Lady Macbeth, the role in which she was said to be unequaled. Her portrayals of Romeo and Hamlet won her popular favor, but her most celebrated role was Meg Merrilies in Scott's Guy Mannering. An actress of dramatic power and regal bearing, she was the first of her profession to be elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans (1915).

Bibliography: See biography by J. Leach (1970); J. Markus, Across an Untried Sea (2000).

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders (1816–76), great American tragedienne. She excelled in such parts as Lady Macbeth, which she played in 1836 for her début in New York, Mrs Haller in Kotzebue's The Stranger, and above all Meg Merrilies in a dramatization of Scott's Guy Mannering. She also played Lady Gay Spanker in the first American production of Boucicault's London Assurance (1841). In 1845 she was seen in London at the Princess's in the above parts, as well as Rosalind in As You Like It, Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, and Portia in The Merchant of Venice. In 1839 she first played another famous role, Nancy in an adaptation of Dickens's Oliver Twist. Being of a somewhat masculine cast of countenance, she also played a number of male roles, including Hamlet, Romeo to the Juliet of her younger sister Susan, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Claude Melnotte in Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons. During the last years of her life she gave many successful Shakespeare readings. In 1907 a Charlotte Cushman Club was established in Philadelphia which still flourishes.