Maria Theresa Kemble

Maria Theresa Kemble (1774–1838), née Marie Thérèse Du Camp, was an Archduchy of Austria-born English actress, singer, dancer and comic playwright on the stage.

She was born in Vienna, Archduchy of Austria, Holy Roman Empire on 17 January 1774 and brought to England where she appeared as Cupid at the age of six years old in Jean-Georges Noverre's ballet at the Opera House.

[3] She was then secured by Thomas King for the Drury Lane Theatre, where on 24 October 1786, she played Julie, a small part in John Burgoyne's Richard Cœur de Lion.

She created the first version of Lindamira in Richard Cumberland's The Box-Lobby Challenge and she stood in for the singers Nancy Storace and Anna Maria Crouch.

In 1799 William Earle printed a piece called Natural Faults, and accused Miss De Camp in the preface of having stolen his plot and characters.

A solitary reappearance was made at Covent Garden on the occasion of the début as Juliet of her daughter Fanny Kemble, 5 October 1829, when she played Lady Capulet.

[4] Her brother Vincent De Camp occasionally acted fops and footmen at Drury Lane and the Haymarket, and was subsequently an actor and a cowkeeper in America.