Sarah Siddons (1755 - 1831). Sarah Siddons was a Welsh-born English actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. Contemporaneous critic William Hazlitt dubbed Siddons as tragedy personified. She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton, and Elizabeth Whitlock, and the aunt of Fanny Kemble. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character, Lady Macbeth, a character she made her own, as well as for fainting at the sight of the Elgin Marbles in London. The Sarah Siddons Society, founded in 1952, continues to present the Sarah Siddons Award annually in Chicago to a distinguished actress. Siddons was born Sarah Kemble in Brecon, Brecknockshire, Wales, the eldest daughter of Roger Kemble, a Roman Catholic, and Sarah Sally Ward, a Protestant. Sarah and her sisters were raised in their mother's faith and her brothers were raised in their father's faith. Roger Kemble was the manager of a touring theatre company, the Warwickshire Company of Comedians. Although the theatre company included most members of the Kemble family, Siddons' parents initially disapproved of her choice of profession. At that time, acting was only beginning to become a respectable profession for a woman. From 1770 until her marriage in 1773, Siddons served as a lady's maid and later as companion to Lady Mary Bertie Greatheed at Guy's Cliffe near Warwick. Lady Greatheed was the daughter of the Duke of Ancaster; her son, Bertie Greatheed, was a dramatist who continued the family's friendship with Siddons. In 1774, Siddons won her first success as Belvidera in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd. This brought her to the attention of David Garrick, who sent his deputy to see her as Calista in Nicholas Rowe's Fair Penitent, the result being that she was engaged to appear at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Owing to inexperience as well as other circumstances, her first appearances as Portia and in other parts were not well received and she received a note from the manager of Drury Lane stating that her services would not be required. She was, in her own words, banished from Drury Lane as a worthless candidate for fame and fortune. In 1777, she went on the circuit in the provinces. For the next six years she worked in provincial companies, in particular York and Bath. Her first appearance at Bath's Old Orchard Street Theatre was in autumn 1778 at a salary of E3 per week. This amount grew as her performances became better known, and as she began to appear in Bristol at the Theatre Royal, King Street, also run by John Palmer. Siddons lived with her husband and children in a Georgian house at 33 The Paragon in Bath, until her final performance there in May 1782. Having gradually built up a reputation, her next Drury Lane appearance, on 10 October 1782, could not have been more different. She was an immediate sensation playing the title role in Garrick's adaptation of a play by Thomas Southerne, Isabella, or, The Fatal Marriage. After Lady Macbeth she played Desdemona, Rosalind, Ophelia, and Volumnia, all with great success; but it was as Queen Catherine in Henry VIII that she discovered a part almost as well adapted to her acting powers as that of Lady Macbeth. She once told Samuel Johnson that Catherine was her favourite role, as it was the most natural. Siddons continued to act in the provinces, appearing at The Theatre, Leeds, in 1786 and consistently brought a thorough understanding to each of her roles. It was through her portrayals of Lady Macbeth and Isabella, particularly, that Siddons offered a new way of approaching character. Siddons has been credited for inventing and promoting textual accuracy above the theatrical traditions of her time: Siddons was unique for making herself familiar with the entire script, sitting offstage in order to hear the full play, and paying careful attention to her scene partners and to textual clues that could aid performance. It was the beginning of twenty years in which she became the undisputed Queen of Drury Lane. Her celebrity status was called mythical and monumental, and by the mid-1780s Siddons had established herself as a cultural icon. Yet her iconography and the fashioning of her celebrity differed greatly in comparison to her female counterparts. Siddons, according to Laura Engel, invented a new category of femininity for actresses: the Female Star. By cleverly blurring the distinction between the characters she played on stage with representations of herself offstage Siddons was able to present a duality to her admirers. At once she would project both thedivine and the ordinary, domestic and authoritative, fantastic and real.
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