Mrs. Siddons

by Nina H. Kennard

One night, Mr. Rogers tells us, having heard the story from her own lips, when she was about to drive away from the theatre, Mr. Sheridan jumped into the carriage. “Mr. Sheridan,” said the dignified Muse of Tragedy, “I trust that you will behave with propriety; if not, I shall have to call the footman to show you out of the carriage.” She owned that he did behave himself. But as soon as the carriage stopped, he leaped out, and hurried away, as though wishing not to be seen with her. “Provoking wretch!” she said, with an indulgent smile, which even she, encased in all her panoply of prudish decorum, could not suppress.

At last even her patience was worn out, and at the close of her brother’s first year of management she retired from the theatre. Sheridan dared to boast they could do without her. A scheme was then hatching in the ever-fertile Irish brain of the proprietor that was destined to revolutionise the dramatic world of London. He discovered that the taste of the day, and the requirements of his own pocket, demanded a larger and more luxurious building than Old Drury; the walls that had re-echoed to the grand tones of Betterton, the musical love-making of Barry, and the passionate declamation of Garrick, was to be pulled down to satisfy the greed and the ambition of Sheridan. Immediate proposals for debentures amounting to £160,000 were issued, and, wonderful to relate, taken up in a very short time. But, alas! to cover the interest of this enormous sum, it was determined to build a house nearly double the size. Neither Mrs. Siddons nor her brother seems to have considered the disastrous consequence this would exercise on their art. The perfect acoustics and compact stage of the old house were to be swept away to give place to an immense dome-shaped space, and an expanse requiring undignified energy of motion to traverse. The immediate consequence was evident; recourse had to be taken to stage artifice to manage the entrance and the exit, while gesture had to be more violent, expression more exaggerated, and voice unduly raised to produce an effect.

In Garrick’s Drury, also, the front row of boxes was open like a gallery, and everyone who occupied them was obliged to appear in full dress. The row of boxes above these again were given up to the bourgeoisie, while the lattices at the top were the portion destined to those whose reputation was doubtful, and who by their unseemly behaviour might disturb the decorum of the audience. Garrick was master of his art, and knew how to value the criticism and sympathy of the crowd. Under his management the two-shilling gallery was brought down to a level with the second row of boxes. By that arrangement a player had the mass of the audience under his immediate control; and that mass, uninfluenced by fashion or prejudice, unerring in its judgment, is the dread of an inferior actor, the delight of a great one.

While the theatre was still in process of erection, the company performed at the Opera House in the Haymarket, or, as it was called, the King’s Theatre. The new house was opened on April 21st, 1794, with Macbeth.

“I am told,” Mrs. Siddons writes to Lady Harcourt, “that the banquet is a thing to go and see of itself. The scenes and dresses all new, and as superb and characteristic as it is possible to make them. You cannot conceive what I feel at the prospect of playing there. I daresay I shall be so nervous as scarcely to be able to make myself heard in the first scene.”

This banquetting scene in Macbeth was made the subject of sarcastic hints in the daily press on the old score of her avarice:—

“The soul of Mrs. Siddons (Mrs. Siddons whose dinners and suppers are proverbially numerous) expanded on this occasion. She speaks her joy on seeing so many guests with an earnestness little short of rapture. Her address appeared so like reality, that all her hearers about her seized the wooden fowls”....

The great actress soon felt a great mistake had been made. “I am glad to see you at Drury Lane,” she said to a colleague, “but you are come to act in a wilderness of a place, and, God knows, if I had not made my reputation in a small theatre, I never should have done it.”

It was indeed “a wilderness of a place.” The mere opening for the curtain was forty-three feet wide, and thirty-eight feet high, or nearly seven times the height of the performers. Miss Mellon laughingly said she “felt a mere shrimp” when acting in it. The result might be foreseen. Had not the great actress indeed made her reputation on a small theatre, never would she have made it here. We, who only know of Mrs. Siddons by immediate tradition, are inclined to think that she ranted, and destroyed her effects by exaggeration of gesture and expression. There is little doubt we are justified in so thinking, and that the increased size of the theatre and audience were to blame.

What a world of significance lies also in her words: “The banquet is a thing to go and see of itself.” A new era had begun; the stage, and everything belonging to it, ought to be taken out of the domain of every-day life, and, by appealing to the intellectual comprehension of the audience, raise them to an understanding of the grandeur of conception and passion of a Shakespeare. Garrick acted Othello in a cocked hat and scarlet uniform, and yet impressed his audience with a pathetic and intense reality. Mrs. Siddons acted Lady Macbeth in black velvet and point lace, and yet imparted a majesty and grace to the impersonation never before seen on the English stage. Now we see the Mephistopheles, Sheridan, inducing her to barter away her reputation and ideal of great art for the substantial benefits of increased gains and larger audiences.