HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROSE COGHLAN
(March 18, 1852 - April 2, 1932)

"A ripe and radiant beauty, buxom, blithe and debonair, delightful in high comedy and effective in serious characters or in the high lights of melodrama."  George Odell, critic

Born in Peterborough, England, her father was a friend of Charles Dickens. Her brother was Charles Coghlan who was brought to American by Augustin Daly to be a part of his prestigious company.
She made her theatrical debut when she was a child as one of the three sisters in Macbeth.  She came to America in 1871 to play in burlesque with Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes.

A career that lasted more than half a century included ten years as the leading lady in Wallack's Company until it disbanded in 1888. Her Lady Teazle in School for Scandal and Rosalind in As You Like It were declared unsurpassed on the American stage. During the 1890s and 1900s she appeared mostly in England. In 1893 she headed her own company and produced the first American production of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, playing Mrs. Arbuthnot. And in 1908 she toured the U.S. in a controversial production of Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession.   She specialized in women-centered plays: Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, and Charles Reade's Peg Woffington. She had a gift for making a woman's life appear richer and more meaningful than the scripts indicated.

Blessed with an approachable beauty, extraordinary taste in costume, and a rich throaty voice, she could play a villainess as well as a socialite or a country wife until her expanding figure in the decade after the turn of century caused managers to retain her only in comic roles.

From the Life and Times of Joseph Haworth: www.josephhaworth.com
An anecdote about playing Orlando in As You Like It opposite Rose's Rosalind.

They performed in an open-air production on the lawn at the Hotel Kenmawr in Pittsburgh on July 24, 1892.  The Forest of Arden was represented by three large trees and evergreen branches placed around the stage.  There was a line of incandescent lights on the ground forming footlights and fifteen calcium lamps on either side of the stage flooded the playing area.  A storm erupted right before curtain, and a steady rain fell throughout the first act. The audience (some one thousand from the highest circles of Pittsburgh society) raised umbrellas and hung in till the second act when the skies cleared.
      Miss Coghlan was in top form that night. She was frequently interrupted by enthusiastic demonstrations from the audience, and her voice projected in the open air as clearly as in a theatre.