Author: Dudley, Mary
Biography:
DUDLEY, Mary, formerly White (1755-1835: ancestry.co.uk)
Baptised on 4 May 1755, she was born in Berrow, Somerset, to James and Eleanor White. Her elder sister was the actor Elizabeth Hartley who was born in about 1750 and died in 1824. In 1785 Mary White married Henry Bate Dudley (q.v.) who had been involved with Elizabeth in what became known as “the Vauxhall affray.” They had no children. She died at Croom Hill, Greenwich, on 4 June 1835. Passages Selected by Distinguished Personages. On the Great Literary Trial of Vortigern and Rowena, which went to four volumes and several editions, is attributed to Mary Dudley and her husband. Extracts from it were also published in the Morning Herald, owned and edited by Henry Bate Dudley. Vortigern, by William Henry Ireland (q.v.) who claimed it was a lost play by Shakespeare, was booed off the stage by a sceptical audience at Drury Lane on 2 Apr. 1796. Until Ireland published a revised version of the play in 1799 it was known only in manuscript. The conceit of Passages Selected is that the play was subjected to a literary trial in which "distinguished" individuals, including politicians, judged whether their chosen passage was genuine or not. It is not evident that the Dudleys had access to Ireland's manuscript and their work only glancingly satirizes the play: its main target is those sitting in judgement. Mary Dudley is not known to have published anything else. (ancestry.co.uk 6 Aug. 2024; The Sun [London] 6 June 1835; W. H. Ireland, Vortigern [1799]; Robert Miles, Romantic Misfits [2008]).