Arabella Menage

[4] Her brother Frederick Menage (1788–1822) was also a dancer at Drury Lane, finding fame as Chimpanzee in the pantomime Perouse, or the Desolate Island at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (1801).

[6] Thomas Gilliland’s The Dramatic Mirror (1808) mentions that Bella Menage was "brought upon the stage in infancy", having been trained by Charles Didelot and James Harvey D'Egville, the latter making her "accomplished" in the hornpipe.

[1][5] Her dancing career commenced as Juliana, one of the infants in the afterpiece The Prisoner at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1792 aged 10,[7] appearing as Miss Menage Junior to differentiate her from both her mother and her older sister, Mary (born 1778), who were also dancers.

[8] She may have been the 'Miss E. Menage' mentioned by The London Stage who danced in The Enchanted Wood at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 25 July 1792 and on five other occasions that summer opposite her sister, Mary, the 'E' possibly being an error for 'B' for Bella.

[5] She appeared as a 'mere infant' in Colman's three-act play The Battle of Hexham, or Days of Old (1793) and as the Page in Cibber's comedy Love Makes a Man, or The Fop's Fortune.

[5] During this period she was Ethelinde in Caractacus (1808) opposite her former dance teacher James Harvey D'Egville in the title role[10] and was in Little Fanny's Love and The Lover's True Knot.