to each well-thinking mind A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined. —FULKE GREVILLE London could talk of nothing but Jessica O’Neil. When the curtain had fallen on her first performance the audience had burst into a wild tumult of applause. The management had announced a new play for the following evening, but hundreds of voices had shouted back, demanding another performance of Romeo and Juliet. The manager had yielded, and Romeo and Juliet ran the next night as well. The critics were universally enthusiastic. The Morning Chronicle wrote, “It was not altogether the matchless beauty of form and face, but the spirit of perfect innocence and purity that seemed to glisten in her speaking eyes, and breathe from her chiselled lips.” The Morning Post raved, “A sense of innate delicacy, of rare sensibility glowing through the fervour of her words, and the presence of passion and growing strength, rendered her performance a delight to behold.” And William Hazlitt, writing for the Champion, thought “she perfectly conceived what would be generally felt by the female mind in the extraordinary and overpowering situations in which she was placed.”
