The Shakespeare Ladies Club (or Shakespeare Ladies' Club) refers to a group of upper class and aristocratic women who petitioned the London theatres to produce William Shakespeare's plays during the 1730s. In the 1700s they were referred to as "the Ladies of the Shakespear’s Club," or even more simply as "Ladies of Quality," or "the Ladies." Known members of the Shakespeare Ladies Club include Susanna Ashley-Cooper, Elizabeth Boyd, and Mary Cowper. The Shakespeare Ladies Club was responsible for getting the highest percentage of Shakespeare plays produced in London during a single season in the eighteenth century; as a result they were celebrated by their contemporaries as being responsible for making Shakespeare popular again.
History
The Shakespeare Ladies Club was organized in late 1736 with the expressed goal of persuading "London’s theatrical managers to give Shakespeare a greater share in their repertoires." The Ladies wanted to see more Shakespeare on stage because they preferred his plays to the inappropriate libertine content in Restoration comedies and the Italian operas that were dominating the London stage at the time. Within four years the Ladies’ Club had succeeded: one in every four performances in London during the 1740–41 season was a Shakespeare play. Shakespearean scholar Michael Dobson points out that this is "a record which even during Garrick’s professedly Bardolatrous management of Drury Lane was never challenged."
In addition to being responsible for the highest percentage of Shakespeare's plays performed in a single season during the eighteenth century, the Ladies’ Club was also responsible for Shakespeare's memorial statue in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Fundraising for the memorial statue began in 1738 and the statue was placed in Westminster Abbey in 1741. There were at least two benefit performances of Shakespeare plays done as part of the Ladies' Club's fundraising efforts. One was a performance of Julius Caesar on 28 April 1738 at Drury Lane. The other was a performance of Hamlet on 10 April 1739 at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (also known as the Royal Opera House).
Recognition by contemporaries
In January 1737 every performance of a Shakespeare play at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (except for one command performance of Hamlet for the Prince and Princess of Wales) was done "At the Desire of several Ladies of Quality." While such a heading was not unusual in the early eighteenth century, it is significant that it occurred for every performance that month. As the Ladies’ gained influence over Drury Lane their popularity and success began to be recognized in prologues to performances of new plays and new adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. For the premiere of The Universal Passion, an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing by James Miller, the prologue included an "ecstatic eulogy of the Shakespeare Ladies Club":
Britannia thus, with Folly’s Gloom overcast, Has slumb’ring lain near half a Cent’ry past, But now what Joy! to find the Night is o’er! To see the Lamp of Science shine once more; To see the Reign of Farce and Dulness end, And Albion’s noble Fair to Shakespear’s Sense attend. ‘Twas this gave Birth to our Attempt to-night, Fond to bring more of his rich Scenes to light: But conscious how unequal to the Task, Our Bard scarce dares your Clemency to ask: . . . . To You, ye Fair, for Refuge now he flies And as you smile or frown, he lives or dies: You are the ablest Judges of this Play, Since Love’s almighty Pow’r’s his Theme today: To your Protection Shakespear’s Offspring take, And save the Orphan for the Father’s Sake.
On 4 March 1737 the manager of the New Haymarket Theater added "a New Prologue in the Characters of Shakespear’s Ghost, the Squire, Mr. Student, and Mr. Bays, concluding with an address to the Ladies of the Shakespear’s Club" to a performance of Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John.
The benefit performance of Julius Caesar on 28 April 1738 included an epilogue from James Noel which echoed "Miller's metaphor of the Ladies' Club as mothers" responsible for the birth of Shakespeare as the nation's poet:
But here what humble thanks, what praise is due, Ow'd to such gen'rous virtue, ow'd to you! With grief you saw a bard neglected lie, Whom towring genius living raised so high. With grief you saw your Shakespeare's slighted state, And call'd forth merit from the grave of fate. Let others boast they smile on living worth; You give a buried bard a brighter birth.