Mary Catherine Bolton, stage name Polly Bolton, later known by her married name of Lady Thurlow (1790/91–1830), was an English actress, remembered particularly for playing Ophelia.
Life Bolton was the daughter of James Richard Bolton, an attorney. She made her first appearance on the stage on 8 October 1801, in The Beggar's Opera as "Miss Bolton"
In 1811, she played the part of Ophelia in Hamlet opposite John Kemble,Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (1985), p. 82. giving a performance described as "in a decorous style, relying on the familiar images of the white dress, loose hair, and wild flowers, to convey a polite feminine distraction".Helen Small, Love's Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity, 1800-1865 (1998), p. 83.John C. Coldewey, W. R. Streitberger, Drama: Classical to Contemporary (Prentice Hall, 2000), p. 444.
On 13 November 1813, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, she married Edward Hovell-Thurlow, 2nd Baron Thurlow (1781–1829),'Actresses and their Matches' in Tales and Readings for the People, Volume 1 (London: Palmer and Clayton, 1849), p. 176. and her stage career ended. They had three sons, including Edward Thomas Hovell-Thurlow, the 3rd Baron.James McMullen Rigg, Thurlow, Edward (1781-1829), in Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography, volume 56 (1898). At the time, it would not have been socially possible for a woman who had married into the ruling class to continue a career as an actress.Judith Anne Rosen, Performing Femininity in British Victorian Culture (University of California, Berkeley, 1995), p. 64.
Her descendant Roualeyn Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, 9th Baron Thurlow, inherited the title in 2013 and in 2015 was elected by his fellow peers to a vacant seat in the House of Lords.Lord Thurlow at parliament.uk, accessed 10 December 2017.
See also List of entertainers who married titled Britons
Notes
External links Mary Catherine Bolton, Lady Thurlow, at nationalgalleries.org