prime donne in
Italian Opera. Mrs. Tofts had made much money when in 1709 she quitted the stage with disordered intellect; her voice being then unbroken, and her beauty in the height of its bloom. Having recovered health, she married Mr. Joseph Smith, a rich patron of arts and collector of books and engravings, with whom she went to Venice, when he was sent thither as English Consul. Her madness afterwards returned, she lived, therefore, says Sir J. Hawkins,
'sequestered from the world in a remote part of the house, and had a large garden to range in, in which she would frequently walk, singing and giving way to that innocent frenzy which had seized her in the earlier part of her life.'
She identified herself with the great princesses whose loves and sorrows she had represented in her youth, and died about the year 1760.
The
Emperor of the Moon
is a farce, from the French, by Mrs. Aphra Behn, first acted in London in 1687. It was originally Italian, and had run 80 nights in Paris as
Harlequin I'Empereur dans le Monde de la Lune