Mrs. Siddons

by Nina H. Kennard

It would seem difficult to such a worker as Mrs. Siddons to conceive the possibility of a woman not mastering the whole play if she had to act the part of Lady Macbeth, but we think Dr. Johnson must have been too severe when he called an actress who for years had held the stage with Garrick “a vulgar idiot.” And there is little doubt that the tradition of her acting in the part of Lady Macbeth still had a firm hold on the memory of the audience. As a proof of this we will here quote an incident that occurred the first night:—

“Just as I had finished my toilette, and was pondering with fearfulness my first appearance in the grand fiendish part, comes Mr. Sheridan knocking at my door, and insisting, in spite of all my entreaties not to be interrupted at this tremendous moment, to be admitted. He would not be denied admittance, for he protested he must speak to me on a circumstance which so deeply concerned my own interest, that it was of the most serious nature. Well, after much squabbling I was compelled to admit him, that I might dismiss him the sooner, and compose myself before the play began.

“But what was my distress and astonishment when I found that he wanted me, even at this moment of anxiety and terror, to adopt another mode of acting the sleeping scene! He told me that he had heard with the greatest surprise and concern that I meant to act it without holding the candle in my hand; and when I argued the impracticability of washing out that ‘damned spot’ that was certainly implied by both her own words and those of her gentlewoman, he insisted that if I did put the candle out of my hand it would be thought a presumptuous innovation, as Mrs. Pritchard had always retained it in hers. My mind, however, was made up, and it was then too late to make me alter it, for I was too agitated to adopt another method. My deference for Mr. Sheridan’s taste and judgment was, however, so great, that, had he proposed the alteration whilst it was possible for me to change my own plan, I should have yielded to his suggestion; though even then it would have been against my own opinion, and my observation of the accuracy with which somnambulists perform all the acts of waking persons.

“The scene, of course, was acted as I had myself conceived it, and the innovation, as Mr. Sheridan called it, was received with approbation. Mr. Sheridan himself came to me after the play, and most ingenuously congratulated me on my obstinacy.”

Let us try to recall the vision of Mrs. Siddons as she acted Lady Macbeth that night. It was in 1785. She was thirty years of age. The “timid tottering girl,” who had first appeared as Portia on that stage, was now a queenly woman, in the full meridian of her stately beauty. Success had developed her intellectually and physically, and she walked the stage in the plenitude of her power, almost like some superhuman being.

Her dress in the first and second acts was a heavy black robe, with a broad border, which ran from her shoulders down to her feet, of the most vivid crimson, over which fell a long white veil. In the third she changed this costume for another black dress, with great gold bands lacing it across, and gold ornaments round her neck and in her hair. Both of these dresses strike us as being “stagey,” but she never had the art of dressing herself; so great, however, was her power, that all minor accessories of dress and scenery were forgotten. For the sleep-walking scene Sir Joshua had designed clouds of white drapery swathing the pale drawn face; they lent an appalling weirdness to her appearance, whilst the glassy stare she managed to throw into her eyes completed the horror.

The audience were spellbound; they only saw that woe-worn face, and heard that voice, broken with agony and remorse. It was a night of nights, for her and them, and yet no applause, no success, turned her from concentration on the purpose and issue of her art.

“While standing up before my glass,” she tells us, “and taking off my mantle, a diverting circumstance occurred to chase away the feelings of the anxious night, for, while I was repeating, and endeavouring to call to mind the appropriate tone and action to the following words, ‘Here’s the smell of blood still,’ my dresser innocently exclaimed, ‘Dear me, Ma’am, how very hysterical you are to-night! I protest and vow, Ma’am, it was not blood, but rose-pink and water; for I saw the property-man mix it up with my own eyes.’”

These were, indeed, the palmy days of the English stage. With a self-collected, courageous energy, artists then saw and recognised the greatest, and strained every nerve to attain it. Scenic effect was of minor importance; the development of mental action, the portrayal of passion, were the end and aim of the actor’s art, to which everything else was subsidiary. They spent years upon the evolving of one heroic conception, not with regard to its details of upholstery and scene-painting, but with regard to the presentment of the poet’s imagination which they undertook to represent.