Hattie Shepparde

Hattie Shepparde (3 August 1846 – 22 September 1874) was an Australian actress who during her short career gained a growing reputation in her native land where she was highly regarded for ‘her intelligence, her ease, the grace of her manner and her thorough devotion to her art’.

Later in 1862, still with Jefferson, Shepparde played Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream; Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing; Julia in Henry Mayhew's farce The Wandering Minstrel; Eliza in Paul Pry and Mary in The Turnpike.

[5] Although still young Shepparde was gaining experience and improving as an actress, so when she joined the company of Emilia Don in 1865 in her native Tasmania she began to play somewhat bigger and more important roles including Louise in Not a Bad Judge; Mrs. Flighty in The Married Rake; Mrs. Wiley in Rural Felicity; Eugenia in Sweethearts and Wives; Julia in The Rivals; the dual roles of Zaide and Ardinehe in Ali Baba, or the Forty Thieves[5] and the Duchess de Grantete in Child of the Regiment.

"[8] For Duret she also played the Marchioness de Bellerose in The World of Fashion ("Miss Shepparde played the part of the Marchioness de Bellerose with considerable dignity, and gave evidence of a histrionic talent which must render her a favourite member of the company");[9] Mrs. Delcour in War to the Knife; Countess Beauvilliers in Nothing Venture, Nothing Win; Mrs. Crotchet in the comic drama Don't Lend Your Umbrella, and Prince Pompetti in Cinderella, or the Lover, the Lackey, and the Glass Slipper, a pantomime that used real ponies to draw Cinderella's carriage, sometimes to the amusement of the audience when they misbehaved on stage.

[5][10] For her benefit at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne in June 1873, Shepparde selected T. W. Robertson's Caste in which she played Esther Eccles and was Cynisca in W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea following which she was presented with a diamond bracelet by a Committee of 'influential citizens' at a reception.