Born: 1775, Ireland
Died: 18 June 1803
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Maria Ann Campion
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Bridget Hourican. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Pope, Maria (1775–1803), actress, was born Maria Ann Campion in Waterford, daughter of a merchant and member of an old Cork family. Her father died around 1788, leaving her mother, a younger sister, and herself impoverished. Her mother solicited Hitchcock, prompter at Crow St. theatre, then under the management of Richard Daly, and Maria entered the company, making her debut on 13 February 1790 as Monimia in ‘The orphan’. She was so paralysed with fear that Hitchcock had to thrust her on to the stage and then rush to catch her as she fainted. She recovered to play all the great Shakespearean heroines for Daly, remaining at Crow St. until January 1792, when she left to join the company of Frederick Jones at Fishamble St.; two years later her sister, Miss A. Campion, was also a member of that company. Maria spent the summers touring the provinces, appearing in Cork and Waterford (1792) and Galway (1793). By the time she played in Belfast (1795) she was hailed as the ‘first female ornament of the Irish stage’ (Belfast News Letter, 14 Apr. 1795). That year she moved to England, spending almost two years in Tate Wilkinson’s Yorkshire circuit, playing under the name ‘Mrs Spenser’. She was then briefly at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, where she met William Thomas Lewis, who procured her an engagement at Covent Garden. She made her London debut as ‘Mrs Spenser’ on 13 October 1797, playing her old part of Monimia to great acclaim. She was slender, pretty, expressive in face and voice, and was praised by The Times, the Briton, the European Magazine, and the Monthly Mirror, who all singled out the unaffected simplicity of her performance, though the Monthly Mirror noted the inadequacy of her voice.
She married (24 January 1798) the well-known Irish actor Alexander Pope and thenceforth appeared on billings as ‘Mrs Pope’. She was engaged with her husband by Covent Garden at a salary of £8, and over the next five years appeared in a variety of roles running from light comedy to tragedy, always in Covent Garden except for a brief run as Juliet in Drury Lane in 1801. While playing Desdemona on 10 June 1803 she took ill in the third act and suffered a stroke a week later, leading to her early death on 18 June at home in Half Moon St., Piccadilly. She was buried on 25 June in Westminster abbey, in the same grave as the first Mrs Pope, the celebrated actress Elizabeth Younge (1740–97). She had one son who died in infancy, and a daughter. Of five portraits, two were painted by her husband; one by Martin Archer Shee hangs in the Garrick club.