Margaret Hughes, celebrated as the first professional actress on the English stage, dies on 1 October 1719.
Margaret Hughes died on 1 October 1719, at approximately 89 years of age, having lived through the entirety of the Restoration theatrical revolution she helped inaugurate and well into the reign of King George I. Her long life spanned the closure of the theatres under Puritan rule, their reopening under Charles II, and the subsequent decades in which women's participation in the performing arts became firmly, if not always comfortably, established.
By the time of her death, Hughes had long since retired from the stage. Her later life had been shaped significantly by her relationship with Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a cousin of King Charles II and a renowned military commander, with whom she had a daughter, Ruperta. Following Prince Rupert's death in 1682, Hughes reportedly lived through periods of financial difficulty, having spent lavishly during their relationship, and there are accounts of her later years being marked by gambling debts and diminished fortune.
Her death marked the passing of one of the founding figures of English professional theatre for women. Although historical debate continues regarding whether she or a contemporary such as Anne Marshall was truly the very first woman on the English stage, Hughes's legacy as the pioneering Desdemona and as a leading actress of the King's Company was firmly established well before her death and has persisted in theatrical history and popular culture ever since, including modern retrospectives such as Guinness World Records' profile of her as 'the original Desdemona.'