Joanna Baillie's Circle

A recent issue of The Coleridge Bulletin published some new letters from Sara Coleridge, daughter of poet and dramatist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was surprised to learn that she was acquainted with the playwright Joanna Baillie, and the two had a number of friends in common.

I had known that Baillie frequently corresponded with the painter Thomas Lawrence and the writer Walter Scott, but the letters reveal that her circle also included not just Sara Coleridge, but other notables including the poet Maria Jane Jewsbury and the playwright William Sotheby.

Writing to Jewsbury on November 3rd, 1830, Sara Coleridge noted "Mrs. Baillie we often see and are more & more delighted with her" and that Baillie had "been staying a few days with Mr. Sotheby." Sotheby's play Julian and Agnes had been performed at Drury Lane in 1801, the year after Baillie's De Monfort premiered there. Both plays featured the same leads, the brother-sister duo of John Kemble and Sarah Siddons.

Two years later, Sara Coleridge wrote that "Mrs. J. Baillie has been at the point of death with a low fever, but is happily recovered." Baillie ended up living well into her 80s, and didn't die until 1851. She rose to fame after the first volume of her Plays on the Passions was published in 1798.

That volume included her comedy The Tryal, which will be getting a staged reading next month at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds. You can find more information about it here.

BARS 2024

I’ve been in the United Kingdom for the 2024 conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies in Glasgow.

 

The conference kicked off on Tuesday with a talk by Michelle Levy on women writers and publishing. Though we often think of authors in the 18th and 19th centuries as selling their copyrights outright, Levy noted that this often was not the case. She gave particular attention to the poet Phillis Wheatley, who appears to have received half of the print run of her poems to sell herself for her own profit.

 

Next, I chaired a panel on Faustian Romanticism. Three speakers addressed how the Faust dramas of Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe influenced British Romantic writers. Martin Potter discussed Faustian elements in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, while also addressing the E.T.A. Hoffmann short story “The Sandman.” Liz Wan talked about how William Godwin’s novel St. Leon could be read as a Faust story, and Maddy Potter addressed Faustian elements in both John Polidori’s The Vampyre and Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer.

 

Later in the afternoon, I went to a panel on P.B. Shelley, since multiple speakers were scheduled to address Shelley’s play The Cenci, with which I have a particular interest. Anna Mercer compared the play to Mary Shelley’s novel Valperga, which also features a Beatrice who suffers a horrible fate. She mentioned that Mary Shelley even quoted from her husband’s play in her journal long after he had died. Nora Crook later went into detail about the various manuscripts that the Shelleys might have had access to that discussed the story of Beatrice Cenci. She also drew parallels between the play and G.E. Lessing’s Emilia Galotti.

 

The final panel I attended on Tuesday was on remediating the supernatural. Natalie Tal Harries mentioned that Walter Scott collected books on witchcraft and demonology and justified his use of superstition in a note on his poem The Lady of the Lake. Orianne Smith also discussed Scott, focusing on his novel Guy Mannering, a book from which Sarah Siddons often performed readings after her retirement from the stage. The character of Meg Merrilies in the book became a favorite in stage adaptations of the novel. Haya Alwehaib spoke last, comparing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with The Arabian Nights. We then headed over to Glasgow City Chambers for a drinks reception in a beautiful setting.

 

Wednesday there was a plenary roundtable with Elizabeth Edwards, Craig Lamont, and Tim Fulford. My big activity for the day, though was chairing a session on Romanticism’s legacies in fantasy literature. Will Sherwood talked about William Blake’s influence on J.R.R. Tolkien, noting that while most people focus on how Tolkien’s work as a medievalist influenced his fiction, he was greatly influenced by Romantic writers as well. Annise Rogers discussed the Romantic legacy in Ben Aaronovitch’s fantasy series The Rivers of London. Jason Whittaker then spoke on the influence William Blake had on Glasgow’s own Alasdair Gray, who like Blake was both a writer and a visual artists. That evening, the conference banquet was held at Òran Mór, a restaurant in a former church that is graced by murals designed by Gray.

 

My own paper was scheduled for Thursday. I began the day at a panel on the Gothic. Samiha Begum discussed Ann Radcliffe, a writer who appears as a character in my own play The Mysteries of the Castle of the Monk of Falconara. Radcliffe, who was influenced by the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa, was propelled to fame with her novel The Romance of the Forest and received 500 pounds for her next book, The Mysteries of Udolpho at a time at which the average royalty payment for a novel was only 80 pounds. Interestingly enough, gossip recorded by Anna Seward held that Radcliffe had written Joanna Baillie’s anonymously published Plays on the Passions. I was also interested to hear Jakob Lipski speak on the 1803 historical novel Thaddeus of Warsaw and Laura Eastlake discuss links between vampires and volcanos.

 

In my completely neutral, unbiased, unprejudiced opinion, however, my panel was the best. It began with Bethan Elliott discussing the plays of Baillie (not Radcliffe). She quoted from an 1804 letter Baillie wrote to fellow dramatist William Sotheby. Though Sotheby (who had not had the success on stage that Baillie achieved) urged her to focus on “reading” plays rather than “acting” plays, Baillie held that the qualities that make a play good for acting also make it good for reading. Baillie was not snobbish about how her plays were performed, either, and in 1810 wrote to Walter Scott about being pleased that one of her plays had been performed at a fair. The one play Baillie wrote that she did not think was fit for performance was The Martyr, but that was because of its religious subject matter, not because she didn’t deem it an “actable” piece.

 

My paper was on J.H. Amherst’s play The Death of Christophe King of Hayti. Its depiction of armed women was naturally interesting to the third panelist, Sarah Burdett, who has written extensively on that subject. Her paper was on stage adaptations actresses had written of the poems of Walter Scott. Sarah Smith, who was a favorite of Scott’s, wrote adaptations of both The Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake performed at the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin. Eliza Macauley, an actress who had a difficult relationship with the Crow Street Theatre, wrote an adaptation of Scott’s Marmion that took a character who only appears in a single Canto of the poem and made her the center of the adapted drama.

 

On Friday, conference delegates could opt for a trip to New Lanark and the Falls of Clyde, which provided some very dramatic landscapes. All in all, it was a wonderful conference!

Reviewed in COLERIDGE BULLETIN

Noted scholar Julie Carlson has reviewed my new book Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas: British Tragedy on the Regency Stage in the latest issue of The Coleridge Bulletin.

The journal is published by The Friends of Coleridge, which celebrates the life and work of the poet and dramatist Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of the tragedy Remorse, among other works. My book contains a chapter on Remorse, which made it an apt piece to be reviewed in the journal.

Carlson is a major figure in the study of British Romanticism, and is perhaps best known for her 1994 book In the Theatre of Romanticism: Coleridge, Nationalism, Women. I was thrilled to find she's reviewed my own book, noting that it offers a "bold corrective" to those who resist acknowledging Coleridge's standing as a practical playwright.

My book emphasizes the roles of actors in shaping dramas during the Regency period in Britain. In the case of Remorse, the magnificent Julia Glover played a crucial role in the play's success. Though Glover is not as well known as other actors I examine in the book--including Sarah Siddons, Edmund Kean, and Eliza O'Neill--she helped to make Remorse a rousing success on stage.

As Carlson notes in her review, during the rehearsal process Coleridge exhibited a "new receptiveness to the revolutionary power of women and the strength of their influence." This is no doubt attributable at least in part to Glover, who has been sadly neglected by historians of the theatre.

I hope other publications review the book with the sensitivity and insight Carlson displayed.

Robert Dighton's Caricatues

The author Dion Clayton Calthrop said in an article about the Regency-era artist Robert Dighton, “The essence of caricature is polite laughter and polished attack.” That description seems to fit Dighton’s theatrical portraits, which are well worth a look.

Dighton was born in 1752 and lived until 1814. He first exhibited his work at the Free Society of Artists when he was only seventeen, and he continued to exhibit from 1769 to 1773. In 1775 he exhibited some drawings at the prestigious Royal Academy, but his fame came from more popular works.

In December of 1806, Dighton published a portrait of Angelica Catalani, the famed opera singer who caused much controversy on the London stage. Rumored to be mistress to the brutal politician Lord Castlereagh, Catalani became a target of numerous xenophobic attacks. Dighton's hand-colored caricature of her is sympathetic, though, showing her in the opera Semiramide by Rossini.

Another famous caricature Dighton did was of the actor Stephen Kemble, who was famous for playing Falstaff without needing any extra padding for the role. Kemble allegedly weighed 18 stone, about 250 pounds. Sadly, Dighton's depiction of Kemble playing Hamlet is less than sympathetic.

By the way, Kemble was brother to both John Kemble and the enormously popular Sarah Siddons. Here's his vision of Siddons as Elvira in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play, Pizarro:

Dighton's son Richard followed him into the print-making business. Richard Dighton later engraved a portrait of William Farren, an actor known as "The Cock Salmon" (don't ask) who famously appeared as Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal, also by Sheridan.

Farren, by the way, essentially acted as stepfather to the Victorian actress Helen Faucit. Much to Faucit's embarrassment, Farren had carried on an illicit affair with her mother. The actor did eventually marry his live-in mistress, but only after Faucit's father died.

And you thought your parents were embarrassing....

My Book on Sale!

If you've been wanting to order a copy of my new book, Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas, but were putting it off because copies were too expensive, now is the time to get one, as the book is currently on sale for $24.99!

That's only if you get the hardcover edition, of course. If you want the e-book, you still have to pay $89. Yes, the illustrations are in color in the electronic version, but not only is there no substitute for paper, but the hard copy is currently cheaper, so why not get it?

Click here to order the book. I'm not sure how long the sale will last, so you might want to order it soon. The publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, is also advertising free shipping on select orders. Oh, and if you're in Europe, they're advertising books for €24.99 as well. (That's slightly more expensive at current exchange rates, but might be cheaper than paying conversion fees.)

The full title of the book is Romantic Actors Romantic Dramas: British Tragedy on the Regency Stage. It reinterprets British dramas of the Romantic era through the lens of the star actors for whom they were written. In addition to providing an overview of the period, the book provides four in-depth case studies of actors and the playwrights they influenced: Sarah Siddons and Joanna Baillie, Julia Glover and S.T. Coleridge, Edmund Kean and Lord Byron, and Eliza O'Neill and P.B. Shelley.

Hopefully, you'll find it insightful and filled with interesting surprises!

LEOPOLDSTADT Episode Airs Tomorrow

Tomorrow THEATER: All the Moving Parts on CUNY TV will be airing an episode on Tom Stoppard's new play Leopoldstadt featuring some commentary by yours truly.

The show will also feature Faye Castelow, Arty Froushan and Brendan Uranowitz, three of the 38 cast members in the play. Host Patrick Pacheco interviews them about the challenges of bringing Leopoldstadt to life. He also speaks to veteran Stoppard director Jack O'Brien and me about the writer's theatrical legacy.

You can catch the show tomorrow at 9:30 pm. It will then re-air on Saturday at 7:30 am and 3:30 pm, Sunday at 6:30 am, and then Monday at 7:00 am, 1:00 pm, and 11:00 pm. CUNY TV is available on NYC Metro 25.3, Spectrum/Optimum 75, RCN 77, and Verizon FiOS 30. If you've disconnected from cable, you can watch the show on its YouTube channel.

It was great fun filming the show. They were also kind enough to mention my new book Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas which is now available both in hardcover and as an ebook. The ISBN for the print book is 978-3-031-13709-9 and for the ebook is 978-3-031-13710-5. It runs 233 pages and includes images of Regency actors including Sarah Siddons, Julia Glover, Edmund Kean, and Eliza O'Neill.

Unfortunately, in spite of being a finalist for the Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows, I was not named as one of the fellows this year. However, the DGF has now named the fellows for this cycle: Aaron Coleman, Nicholas Connors, Joriah Kwamé, Matthew Libby, Zizi Majid, Julián Mesri, Gloria Oladipo, April Dae Okpwae, and SMJ. Congratulations to them all!

The Book Is Finally Out!

After a long wait, my new book Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas: British Tragedy on the Regency Stage is now available from publisher Palgrave Macmillan.

The book reinterprets British dramas of the Romantic era through the lens of the star actors for whom they were written. It is the first book-length study to examine the interplay of early 19th century actors and the dramatists writing for them.

I've tried to answer questions about how and why actors from the Romantic period influenced major writers. The work focuses on four pairs of actors and playwrights: Sarah Siddons and Joanna Baillie, Julia Glover and S.T. Coleridge, Edmund Kean and Lord Byron, and Eliza O'Neill and P.B. Shelley.

If you're interested in any of those people, you'll want a copy of this book. Unfortunately, both the e-book and the hardcover version are rather pricey at the moment, but Palgrave Macmillan does frequently have sales, so keep your eyes open for possible discounts to come.

In the meantime, ask your local library to order a copy. The hardcover is still not officially released, but you will be able to pre-order the physical book soon. Electronic versions are available already.

The cover image features Eliza O'Neill. Interior images include a mezzotint of Siddons, a toy theatre version of Coleridge's play Remorse, a close-up photograph of a screen owned by Lord Byron, and a cartoon comparing Siddons and O'Neill.

Rhetorical Gesture and Action

In 1807, the actor Henry Siddons, son of the famous tragedienne Sarah Siddons, published a treatise on acting--freely adapted from a German book--called Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action.

In the "Advertisement" at the beginning of the book, Siddons defends his free adaptation of a work by Johann Jakob Engel. While a straight-forward translation of Engel's work might have proved "sufficient" Siddons argues that "as the application of his principles, in the original work, was adapted to the business of the German Stage, and as his references and examples were chiefly taken from the German drama, it became an essential duty of the Editor to Anglicise the matter, as well as translate the language of his author."

Siddons makes sure to give examples from English plays that were well known at the beginning of the 19th century, including Joanna Baillie's De Monfort, Matthew G. Lewis's The Castle Spectre, and William Congreve's Love for Love, as well as popular works by Shakespeare, such as Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. He also makes explicit reference to his mother. At one point,  he writes: "If the first actress now on our stage had never been present at the bed of a dying person, her acting, under such circumstances, might probably have lost one of its most natural and affecting traits." This was Siddons's trick of having her fingers twitch, but nothing else, as she had once seen in a person near death.

The book also includes illustrations, one of which is reminiscent of a painting of Sarah Siddons together with a very young Henry. That painting, Mrs. Siddons and Her Son in the Tragedy of Isabella by William Hamilton, shows a tall, stately mother with a small child to the left. Similarly, the illustration for "Affection" shows a mother and son, and the book draws attention to the fact that (as in the painting) the two figures are on different planes. Siddons writes: "First of all, my friend, let us suppose an object of desire placed more high than the person desirous of obtaining it; or what comes to the same point, that the personages are not of an equal height."

How much was Siddons's guide used as a practical tool for actors? It's difficult to tell, but in addition to being raised by the most famous actress of the era (not to mention being nephew to the actor John Philip Kemble), Henry Siddons was a famous performer himself. He was the leading man at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh, where he originated the role of the Lord of Lorne in Baillie's The Family Legend.

Actors today might not want to follow the advice in the book, which as its title suggests is aimed at a rather rhetorical approach to performance, but it is a fascinating glimpse into the past.

London's 1782-83 Season

I was recently asked to give a presentation on the London theatre season for 1782-1783. This was the season that Sarah Siddons returned to the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane and revolutionized British acting.

Even before Siddons made her return, the public was primed for great things. All three London patent houses--Drury Lane, Covent Garden and the summer theatre at the Haymarket--had been redecorated, welcoming audiences to grander, more opulent interiors.

Covent Garden's renovation had been the most extensive. A contemporary account in Universal Magazine claimed that "Nothing remains of the old structure but the outside walls." Seating was increased, and boxes replaced the side doors to the stage, finally moving side entrances fully behind the proscenium.

The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden benefited from something else, as well. Frances Abington, the previous leading lady at Drury Lane, left in 1782 for Covent Garden, where she continued to perform until her retirement. When Drury Lane opened its season with a production of The Clandestine Marriage, a comedy David Garrick co-wrote with George Colman the Elder, the female lead was played by Priscilla Brereton, who was never considered a particularly strong actress. The receipts that night only totaled 200 pounds and four shillings.

By contrast, Covent Garden opened its season with Susanna Centlivre's comedy The Busy Body. That evening brought in a whopping 314 pounds and 18 shillings. While you might expect a theatre's opening night of the season to be a hit, Covent Garden continued to perform well for the rest of the month, too. They followed up their initial success with a production of Isaac Bickerstaff's musical drama The Maid of the Mill. That play brought in more than 270 pounds, easily beating out anything Drury Lane put on that month, including on its opening night of the season.

Drury Lane tried to draw audiences in with a production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which they had not done for three years, and featuring a new actress making her Drury Lane debut in the role of Viola. In spite of a strong cast that included Elizabeth Farren as Olivia, and the novelty of a new actress making her debut, receipts only totaled 144 pounds and 11 shillings. The next week Drury Lane brought out a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Receipts were better, but still couldn't break above 200 pounds. Only on its opening night had Drury Lane managed that feat.

The next month, though, Drury Lane scored a palpable hit with Siddons. The actress was returning to London after a long absence, having performed principally at Bath following her inauspicious debut at Drury Lane in 1775. In Bath, Siddons had honed her craft and developed a devoted following for her dramatic style. When she reappeared on the stage of Drury Lane in October 1782, this time in the title role of Isabella in Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage, she was an immediate sensation.

On the nights Siddons appeared on stage at Drury Lane, receipts were frequently over 200 pounds more than they were on evenings when she did not appear. Given that during the month of September, Drury Lane only just made it to collecting 200 pounds on opening night, and then never made that amount again for the rest of the month, we can see that the presence of Siddons more than doubled the amount the theatre took in on a given night.

Covent Garden collected nearly 36,000 pounds for the season as a whole, though, while Drury Lane took in something closer to 34,000 pounds. While Covent Garden's box office returns were larger, both houses had introduced substantial alterations to their physical buildings. Those investments were not included with ordinary expenses, and were made with an eye toward the long-term success of the ventures.

We might look at the introduction of Siddons in a similar way that we view the capital improvements to the theatre buildings themselves. Though in the short run, Siddons was unable to make Drury Lane more profitable than Covent Garden, she was laying the groundwork for Drury Lane to become a more prestigious, and hopefully more profitable theatre in future seasons.

The Debut(s) of Sarah Siddons

When David Garrick heard about "a Mrs. Siddons" who might "be a valuable acquisition to Drury Lane" he sent his friend the Reverend Bate to scout her.

Bate's letter to Garrick, dated August 21, 1775, praised the beauty of the actress, but spent more time emphasizing her magnificent control of her body and voice:

Her face, if I may judge from whence I saw it, is one of the most beautiful for stage effect ever I beheld; but I shall surprise you when I shall assure you that these are nothing to her action and general stage deportment, which are remarkably pleasing and characteristic--in short, I know no woman who marks the different passages and transitions with so much variety, and, at the same time, propriety of expression.

It's interesting to note that according to Bate's letter, Sarah Siddons's voice itself was "rather dissonant" and perhaps even "grating" at times. That seems amazing to us, who now think of the Siddons voice as legendary. We also generally think of Siddons's appearances as Hamlet as coming late in her career, but Bate claimed even back in 1775 that the actress "plays Hamlet to the satisfaction of the Worcestershire critics."

Garrick wrote back that Bate should "secure the lady" to appear at Drury Lane after she had her "lie in," as Siddons was heavily pregnant at the time. He also requested a list of roles that the actress had played, and Bate obliged, naming such parts as Jane Shore, Roxana (presumably from The Rival Queens), Calista (presumably in The Fair Penitent), and a number of Shakespearean roles, including Juliet, Cordelia, Horatio, Portia, and Rosalind, the last of which Bate had seen her perform.

In November, Siddons gave birth to a girl, apparently a bit earlier than expected. At the end of the following month, she made her debut at Drury Lane, billed as "A Young Gentlewoman" playing Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Unfortunately, the debut was not a success, and reviews were hostile. She later appeared as Lady Anne in Richard III, but the press attacked her again.

Garrick retired in 1776, and the new manager of Drury Lane, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, unsurprisingly chose not to reengage Siddons. It was years later that Sheridan's father Thomas saw Siddons performing in a provincial theatre. The decision was made to give the actress another chance, and her second debut at Drury Lane was set for October 10, 1782. She would be playing the leading role of Isabella in Garrick's adaptation of The Fatal Marriage by Thomas Southerne.

Two days before the big night, Siddons reportedly "was seized with a nervous hoarseness." Her voice came back on the morning of the performance, though, and so thorough was her triumph that by the end of the play "every speech was interrupted by bursts of applause," according to accounts. The rest is history.

The Family Legend

Joanna Baillie is probably best known for her tragedy De Monfort, but she also enjoyed considerable success with a later drama, The Family Legend.

Baillie rose to fame after publishing the first volume of her Plays on the Passions in 1798. After De Monfort, the strongest piece in that volume, was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1800, Baillie issued a second volume of Plays on the Passions in 1802. She published a volume of miscellaneous plays in 1804, but still held back The Family Legend from being published, in hopes of having it produced first.

A production at Drury Lane was not forthcoming, but Baillie's friend Walter Scott helped to secure a production in Edinburgh. Scott himself wrote the prologue to the play, which as the title suggests, is based on a legend about a feud between the Maclean and Campbell clans. The actor Daniel Terry played the Earl of Argyll, leader of the Campbell clan, and also recited Scott's prologue.

When the play opens, Argyll's daughter Helen has been married to the chief of the Maclean clan in order to resolve a feud between the two families. They have a baby son together, but many of the Macleans are furious that a half-Campbell is set to one day rule over them all. The vengeful Benlora, who was once imprisoned in a Campbell dungeon, calls Helen "a bosom worm, / Nursed in that viper's nest, to infuse its venom / Through all our after race."

In reality, Helen is not only virtuous, showing kindness to the misfortunate, but also fiercely loyal to the Maclean clan that she now regards as her new family. When her brother, the Lord of Lorne, comes in disguise to see her, she tells him:

                              here my place I'll hold

As dame and mistress of the warlike clan

Who yield obedience to their chief, my lord ;

And whatsoe'er their will to me may bear,

Of good or ill, so will I hold me ever.

The Lord of Lorne, it so happens, was played by Henry Siddons, son of the famous Sarah Siddons who had originated the role of Jane De Monfort in Baillie's earlier stage success. Lorne's sister Helen was played by Henry's wife Harriet. Though she had not been born in Scotland, Harriet (the daughter of the famed Scottish actor Charles Murray) was considered Scottish by Edinburgh theatre fans, who referred to her as "Our Mrs. Siddons" to distinguish her from her mother-in-law.

Harriet got to really show off her acting in the third act of the play, as the Macleans abandon her character on a tidal island to drown when the sea rises. Putting her trust in God, Helen raises her eyes to heaven and says:

Thou art i' the blue coped sky—th' expanse immeasurable;

I' the dark roll'd clouds, the thunder's awful home:

Thou art i' the wide-shored earth,—the pathless desert;

And in the dread immensity of waters,—

I' the fathomless deep thou art.

Awful but excellent! beneath thy hand,

With trembling confidence, I bow me low,

And wait thy will in peace.

Fortunately, Helen does not drown. Fisherman rescue her and return her to Lorne and his friend, Sir Hubert de Grey. In Act IV, they bring her back to her father's castle. Lorne wants revenge, but his father cautions him that they must be careful. Then, a messenger arrives with false news from the Maclean clan that Helen died tragically in an unforeseen illness and was bitterly mourned. This sets the stage for Act V, when Helen's deceitful husband and the other members of the Maclean clan arrive at Argyll's castle wearing black and bewailing the innocent woman they tried to murder.

How does the play end? No spoilers here, but it should be sufficed to say that medieval Scottish clans were not generally known for their tendency to forgive and forget. The play was a hit in Edinburgh, and in 1815 it was produced at Drury Lane as well. I'd love to see a modern production of the piece!

O'Neill's London Debut

On October 6th, 1814, the actress Eliza O'Neill made her London debut at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. She played the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and for years afterward, the night would not be forgotten.

One contemporary said of her that "for grace, sweetness, delicacy, and refinement, she was unequalled." The painter Sir Thomas Lawrence marveled at how natural O'Neill's acting was, comparing her (as many people did) to Sarah Siddons, who had retired from the stage by that time.

Born in 1791 into a theatrical family, O'Neill allegedly made her first stage appearance being carried onstage in her father's arms. The family performed for years in her native Ireland, going back and forth between the Drogheda and Dundalk Theatres. These were decidedly small affairs, so she was quite fortunate to be spotted by a talent scout and invited to perform in Belfast.

O'Neill insisted that her entire family join her in Belfast, so her father, three brothers, sister, and a sister-in-law were all given engagements at the new theatre. It was O'Neill, however, who was undoubtedly the star, and the newspapers in Belfast were extremely favorable in their revues. After two years, the whole family moved to Dublin, where a dispute between a theatre manager and a star actress led to O'Neill getting an opportunity to appear as Juliet at the Crow Street Theatre.

After her successful appearance as Juliet, the manager of the theatre offered her a contract, agreeing to take on her father and brother as well. It was in Dublin that John Philip Kemble first spied the actress. "She has great talent and some genius," was Kemble's assessment. He offered her an engagement in London. Again, O'Neill asked that she be able to take her family with her. Kemble refused to employ them, but did agree to allow her brother Robert to accompany her as a personal protector and to have access to the theatre's green room.

And so it was that O'Neill was finally able to bring her celebrated Juliet to London. The actor William Charles Macready, recalling O'Neill's debut, hailed her "beauty, simplicity, and grace," as well as her "native elegance" and "feminine sweetness." Others commented on how as Juliet her character blossomed after she fell in love, and then fell into a heart-breaking despair. If she was ever perceived in a negative light, it was because audiences found her too boisterous and vehement for an era that still extolled classicism.

In fact, O'Neill helped to usher in a new era of Romantic acting. That January, Edmund Kean had made his debut at Drury Lane, and audiences were looking for a more emotional approach to the stage than had been taken by the previous generation. O'Neill obliged them, at least until 1819. That was when she left the stage to marry William Wrixon Becher, Esq., who soon after the marriage became a baronet. Thus, the once impoverished actress ended her life as Lady Becher.

Many theatre fans no doubt wished she had continued on the stage, but the former actress seemed happy in her retirement. She and her husband raised a family in Ireland, and she ended up living to the ripe age of 81. In any case, the revolution in acting she helped to bring about continued, and performers throughout the rest of the nineteenth century tended to adopt her emotion-filled style.

Happy Birthday, Sarah Siddons!

Today is the birthday of the actress Sarah Siddons, who was born in Wales on July 5th, 1755.

Her father Roger Kemble was Roman Catholic, and her mother Sarah Ward Kemble (who went by "Sally") was Protestant, so they decided to raise Sarah and the other girls as Protestants, while her brother John Kemble and the other boys were raised Catholic.

Sarah Siddons, who married in 1773, played a variety of roles, including Belvidera in Venice Preserv'd, Calista in The Fair Penitent, Isabella in The Fatal Marriage, and of course Lady Macbeth. Less attention has been given to her performances in another Shakespearean role: Hamlet.

Siddons first played Hamlet in Worcester in 1775. By this time, she had made her first failed debut at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and was banished to the provinces. Two years later, she repeated the role, this time acting opposite her brother John, who played Laertes.

At that point, neither Sarah nor her brother were particularly famous, but as Siddons performed more frequently in Bath, which was second only to London in terms of the importance of its theatre scene, her reputation grew. She was already a star in Bath when she played Hamlet again in 1781, this time in Bristol. There appear to have been other appearances of Siddons in this role in Manchester and Liverpool around this time, though the exact dates are a bit unclear.

In 1782, Siddons made a second debut at Drury Lane, and this time she was a success. From then on, she was an outright celebrity, and she performed as Hamlet in Dublin during the 1802-3 season, and then again in 1805. When Siddons took on breeches roles in comedies, for instance playing Rosalind in As You Like It, she was ridiculed in the press, but her gift was never for comedy. As the greatest tragic performer of her day, however, she seems to have longed to play what was considered the greatest tragic role in the canon.

When she did play Hamlet, it was neither in traditional breeches, nor in a regular skirt, at least when she appeared in Dublin. We know this because a theatre fan named Mary Sackville Hamilton created watercolor sketches of some of Siddons's costumes. After seeing Siddons perform Hamlet in Dublin, she sketched out a costume for the noble Dane that was neither male nor female. We can still see legs, but a long black cloak creates the illusion of a skirt. The result is a costume that conveys androgyny rather than a single clear gender.

Reviews of Siddons's Hamlet were mixed. She studied fencing meticulously in order to get the duel scene right, and critics were surprised at how good she was in this scene. Once critic remarked that he "was never better pleased than by seeing her" in the role. An anonymous diarist recorded: "Mrs. Siddons enters with wonderful judgment into the various feelings of this very difficult character." However, the biographer Percy Fitzgerald wrote that "the general effect was that of a burly ill-formed man."

For whatever reason, Siddons never attempted to perform the part in London, but it seems to have been one she personally enjoyed. For that reason, I leave you with a sketch of her costume in that role, courtesy of the British Museum.

The Siddons of Bath

The Irish actress Sarah Smith was supposed to be the next big thing in the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, the most promising bright new stars sometimes disappoint.

Not a lot is known about Smith's early years. She was probably born in Liverpool around 1783. As a child, she appeared onstage in Elizabeth Inchbald's comedy Every One has his Fault at a theatre in Salisbury.

At 16, Smith played Joanna in a regional production of The Deserted Daughter by Thomas Holcroft. After that, she went to Edinburgh, where she worked for Stephen Kemble. Smith apparently tried to leave the stage, but ended up working the circuit in the North of England for a while, before moving on to Birmingham and then Bath.

It was in Bath that Sarah Siddons had found an audience, and with that great tragedienne in mind, some people started referring to Smith at the "Siddons of Bath" given her star turns in tragedies. Thomas Harris saw her there and invited her to come perform at his theatre in Covent Garden in London. On October 2, 1805, she made her London debut in John Vanbrugh's play The Provoked Husband. As was the case with Siddons's first debut in London, though, it seemed the city was not quite ready for her yet.

In 1808, Smith went to Ireland, where audiences embraced her acting. London audiences began to warm to her eventually, and in 1811 she joined the rival company to Covent Garden at Drury Lane. The theatre at Drury Lane had burned down in 1809, so for a while the company had to perform elsewhere, but in 1812 their new theatre opened with a production of Hamlet. This is the same theatre there today, so if you go to London you can see the very building in which Smith performed. After a successful reopening, the company turned to a new play by an established writer, and at the beginning of 1813 they premiered Remorse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I've blogged about Remorse before, so I'll just say that everyone was expecting Smith to be the star, but she sadly did not shine. The following year she married the actor George Bartley, and her marriage seems to have been a happy one. The couple travelled to America in 1818 and made quite a bit of money touring.

Here's a picture of Smith playing Imogen in Cymbeline. It was never her most famous role, but I still would like to have seen her in it.