Emily Fowler

Susannah Fowler (31 July 1847 – 1897), known by her stage name Emily Fowler, was an English actress, singer and theatre manager. Beginning in musical burlesques, she later played in contemporary drama and English classics. Although she was well-known on the London stage from 1869 to 1881, she is probably best remembered today for creating roles in three of W. S. Gilbert's early works. Early life and career Fowler was born in Rochdale, the daughter of a cabinet-maker, Samuel Matthew Fowler, and his wife Sophia née Fox. She took her stage name, Emily, in honor of her grandmother. She had three siblings, Clarissa, Sophia and Samuel. Her family moved to London before 1860, when her father died. As a teen, Fowler appeared in music hall. In 1867, she joined the Royalty Theatre as a chorister and was soon made a replacement in the breeches role of Gnatbrain in F. C. Burnand's long-running musical burlesque of Black-Eyed Susan. The same year she married John Frederick Fenner, a chorister at the Royalty. The union did not last long, and both parties later married bigamously; he died in 1877. She soon created another burlesque breeches role at the Royalty, Florestein, in W. S. Gilbert's The Merry Zingara (1868). Peak career In 1869, at the Gaiety Theatre, she created the role of Alice in Gilbert's Robert the Devil (1869) and also played Butts (a maid) in the companion piece, a play, On the Cards. There she also originated the roles of Paraquita ("Queen of Kokatouka") in Columbus (1869). Now aged 22, Fowler took over the management of the Charing Cross Theatre for the 1869–1870 season. There she played Mephistopheles in a new burlesque, Very Little Faust and More Mephistopheles (1869) and starred as the hero, Hassan, in a burlesque by Arthur O'Neil of Arabian Knights and several more plays and burlesques, some by Wybert Reeve. The theatre historian Kurt Gänzl speculates that Reeve was Fowler's financial backer. She also originated the leading part of Hans in the last piece of the season, The Gentleman in Black, a comic opera written in 1870, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Frederic Clay.