[3] Hugh Kelly described her: Blest with a person wholly without fault; Tho' polish'd, gay, and natural, though taught, See where that Wilford elegantly moves, Leads up the graces, and commands the loves.

[1] On 9 (or 16) August 1767 at Chelsea,[5] when she was about twenty years old, Mary Wilford married George Jackson Bulkley (1742–1784) in Haymarket.

Nevertheless, Mary Bulkley went with Dodd to Dublin in 1774, but had poor reviews because "Some recent transactions had excited strong prejudices against them.

On 19 September 1792, at the age of forty-four, she died in "wretched pecuniary circumstances" in Dumfries, where she was buried in St Michael's churchyard, "not far from where Burns lies.

[2] In 1769 she was involved in a horsemanship display, assisting Mr Hyam who "would drink a glass of wine standing upright on two horses at full speed.

For example, The Good-Natur'd Man (as Miss Richland, 1768), She Stoops to Conquer (as Constantia Hardcastle, 1773), and The Rivals (as Julia Melville, 1775).

[20] In that environment, Bulkley performed in all the Shakespeare comedies, but also played the tragic heroine Cordelia in King Lear, and Portia in The Merchant of Venice.

[2] In 1773, the première of She Stoops to Conquer by Goldsmith was received at Covent Garden with "great applause," being the "only new comedy that had appeared in (the) theatre for some years."

[26][27] In 1775 and 1776 they were in several plays at Shrewsbury Theatre: in 1775 these were Jane Shore by Nicholas Rowe, The English Tars in India, The Country Girl, and The Life and Death of Julius Caesar.

[28] A 1775 review in the Shrewsbury Chronicle says: "The performance was universally well received; Mr Dodd and Mrs Bulkley, both in play and farce, displayed, as usual, the most pleasing and excellent abilities as comedians, and gave general satisfaction.

[32][33][34] On the other hand, during the 1779–1780 season, the audience hissed her on one occasion because it had become public knowledge that she had "taken the son of her long-term lover to her bed".

[35] She interrupted a performance of the Merchant of Venice, in which she was playing Portia, to respond onstage that, "as an actress she had always done her best to oblige the Public; and as to her private character, she begged to be excused".

However, on Bulkley's arrival in January 1782 a spat with the acting manager of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, Jackson, about which parts she should take, occasioned a long letter to the Caledonian Mercury, requesting public support.

[36] Jackson replied with a long, detailed response in February, below a Royal Theatre playbill omitting Bulkley's name, saying that he would take no notice of her letters.

[39] They also played in The Constant Couple by George Farquhar, and The Rivals, as well as The Maid of the Oaks and An Englishman in Paris by Samuel Foote which both featured a minuet performed by Williamson and Bulkley.

[2] By April 1785, Bulkley was still performing in Edinburgh, but without Williamson, in The Clandestine Marriage,[43] The Jealous Wife and A Trip to Scarborough, The Critic, and reciting the epilogue Belles Have At Ye All by Thomas Covey.

[42][46][47] By 1788 Bulkey was performing with Williamson in Edinburgh again, in Much Ado About Nothing, The Sultan, and The Provok'd Husband[48] by John Vanburgh and Colley Cibber, Tender Husband, by Richard Steele, The Wonder; A Woman Keeps a Secret, Belles Have At Ye All, The Maid of the Oaks, The School for Wives, Young Quaker by John O'Keeffe, The Deuce Is In Him, and performing a dance called Jamie's Return, besides the Williamson and Bulkley minuet.

She was nearing the end of her life and was perhaps already ill, but she was apparently working regularly, and still received praise from the manager, Jackson:[52] How admirably Mr King is supported by Mrs Barresford's performance – her merits as an actress are universally allowed; and, for my own part, I cannot say that ever I saw her in any character she did not support according to my most sanguine expectations.

[62] She played the Queen in Hamlet, and was in the farce Three Weeks After Marriage again, The Fashionable Lover with her usual minuet, and Tit For Tat by Charlotte Charke.