Autograph quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet John Cooper / Caroline Heath 1856

COOPER, John (1793-1870) and HEATH, Caroline (1835-1887). Autograph quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, signed by Cooper and Heath. Royal Princess's Theatre, London: 3 and 6 June 1856.
 
Single card, approximately 215 x 130 mm. Cooper's quotation and signature to the upper portion, dated 3 June 1856; Caroline Heath's large signature beneath, dated 6 June 1856. Some light marking, with mounting residue and surface loss to the reverse; about Very Good.
 
A pleasing piece of Victorian theatrical ephemera signed by two members of Charles Kean's company at the Royal Princess's Theatre. Cooper writes two lines from Hamlet, Act V, Scene II:
"There is a Providence that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we will". Caroline Heath adds her signature three days later.
 
John Cooper was a veteran Shakespearean actor. His final years on the stage were spent under Charles Kean at the Princess's Theatre, where his Shakespearean roles included Henry IV, the Duke of York in Richard II and Kent in King Lear. Caroline Heath was then a young member of the same company. At precisely this period she was appearing as Florizel in Kean's celebrated 1856 production of The Winter's Tale, first performed at the Princess's Theatre on 28 April. Contemporary photographs of Heath in the role survive in the Royal Collection, which records that Queen Victoria attended the production on four occasions.