Jane Scott

Broad Grins; Or, Whackham and Windham, the Wrangling Lawyers (Dodo Press) Jane Scott

Jane M. Scott (1779-1839) was a British theatre manager, performer, and playwright. With her father, John Scott (1752-1838), Jane developed the Sans Pareil Theatre (later named the Adelphi), where they offered music and light shows. They gathered a theatrical company and by 1809 the theatre was licensed for musical entertainments, pantomime, and burletta. She wrote more than fifty stage pieces in an array of genres: melodramas, pantomimes, farces, comic operettas, historical dramas, and adaptations, as well as translations. The Sans Pareil was significant in the move towards "free" theatre and away from the monopolies that dominated licensed theatre at the time. Scott retired in 1819 and married John Davies Middleton (1790-1867). She lived in Surrey until her death, in 1839.