BRACEGIRDLE, ANNE (c. 1674-1748), English actress, is said to have been placed under the care of Thomas Betterton and his wife, and to have first appeared on the stage as the page in The Orphan at its first performance at Dorset Garden in 1680. She was Lucia in Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia at the Theatre Royal in 1688, and played similar parts until, in 1693, as Ara minta in The Old Bachelor, she made her first appearance in a comedy by Congreve, with whose works and life her name is most closely connected. In 1695 she went with Betterton and the other seceders to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where, on its opening with Congreve's Love for Love, she played Angelica. This part, and those of Belinda in Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife, and Almira in Congreve's Mourning Bride, were among her best impersonations, but she also played the heroines of some of Nicholas Rowe's tragedies, and acted in the contemporary versions of Shakes peare's plays. In 1705 she followed Betterton to the Haymarket, where she found a serious competitor in Mrs. Oldfield, then first coming into public favour. The story runs that it was left for the audience to determine which was the better comedy actress, the test being the part of Mrs. Brittle in Betterton's Amorous Widow, which was played alternately by the two rivals on suc cessive nights. When the popular vote was given in favour of Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Bracegirdle quitted the stage. Her private life was the subject of much discussion. Colley Cibber remarks that she had the merit of "not being unguarded in her private char acter," while Macaulay does not hesitate to call her "a cold, vain, and interested coquette." She was certainly the object of the adoration of many men, and she was the innocent cause of the killing of the actor William Mountfort, whom Captain Hill and Lord Mohun regarded as a rival for her affections. During her lifetime she was suspected of being secretly married to Congreve. She was buried (Sept. 18, 1748) in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.
See Genest, History of the Stage; Colley Cibber, Apology (edited by Bellchambers) ; Egerton, Life of Anne Oldfield; Downes, Roscius Anglicanus.