Sarah Siddons

Author : Jo Willett
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2024-07-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781399018654

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Sarah Siddons by Jo Willett Pdf

Sarah Siddons grew up as a member of a family troupe of travelling actors, always poor and often hungry, resorting to foraging for turnips to eat. But before she was 30 she had become a superstar, her fees greater than any actor - male or female - had previously achieved. Her rise was not easy. Her London debut, aged just 20, was a disaster and could have condemned her to poverty and anonymity. But the young actress – already a mother of two - rebuilt her career, returning triumphantly to the capital after years of remorseless provincial touring. She became Britain’s greatest tragic actress, electrifying audiences with her performances. Her shows were sell-outs. Adored by theater audiences, writers, artists and the royal family alike, Sarah grasped the importance of her image. She made sure that every leading portrait painter captured her likeness, so that engravings could be sold to her adoring public. In an eighteenth-century world of vicious satire and gossip, she also battled to manage her reputation. Married young, she took constant pains to portray herself as a respectable and happily married woman, even though her marriage did not live up to this ideal. Sarah’s story is not just about rags to riches; this remarkable woman also redefined the world of theater and became the first celebrity actress.

Author : Fiona Ritchie
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2022-11-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781350073302

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Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble by Fiona Ritchie Pdf

Siblings Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) and John Philip Kemble (1757–1823) were the most famous British actors of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. Through their powerful acting and meticulous conceptualisation of Shakespeare's characters and their worlds, they created iconic interpretations of Shakespeare's major roles that live on in our theatrical and cultural memory. This book examines the actors' long careers on the London stage, from Siddons's debut in 1782 to Kemble's retirement in 1817, encompassing Kemble's time as theatre manager, when he sought to foreground their strengths as Shakespearean performers in his productions. Over the course of more than thirty years, Siddons and Kemble appeared opposite one another in many Shakespeare plays, including King John, Henry VIII, Coriolanus and Macbeth. The actors had to negotiate two major Shakespeare scandals: the staging of Vortigern – a fake Shakespearean play – in 1796 and the Old Price Riots of 1809, during which the audience challenged Siddons's and Kemble's perceived attempts to control Shakespeare. Fiona Ritchie examines the siblings' careers, focusing on their collaborations, as well as placing Siddons's and Kemble's Shakespeare performances in the context of contemporary 18th- and 19th-century drama. The volume not only offers a detailed consideration of London theatre, but also explores the importance of provincial performance to the actors, notably in the case of Hamlet – a role in which both appeared across Britain and in Ireland.

Author : Shelley Bennett,Mark Leonard,Shearer West
Publisher : Getty Publications
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 1999-09-02
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780892365579

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A Passion for Performance by Shelley Bennett,Mark Leonard,Shearer West Pdf

A Passion for Performance: Sarah Siddons and Her Portraitists brings together three engaging essays – by Robyn Asleson, Shelley Bennett and Mark Leonard, and Shearer West – that recreate the eventful life, both on and off the stage, of the great eighteenth-century actress Sarah Siddons. Siddons was renowned for her bravura performances in tragic roles, and her fame was enhanced by the many portraits of her painted by the leading artists of the day. The greatest of these was Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse, a painting now in the Huntington Art Collections and recently studied at the Getty Center. A Passion for Performance places this magnificent portrait within the context of Siddons’s career as an actress and cultural icon. Includes a chronology of Siddons’s life by volume editor Robyn Asleson.

Author : Gillian Perry,Joseph R. Roach,Shearer West
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Actresses
ISBN : 1855144115

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The First Actresses by Gillian Perry,Joseph R. Roach,Shearer West Pdf

Featuring a range of large-scale, public and more intimate portraits of actresses, The First Actresses provides a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality from Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. Ranging from oil paint to porcelain, these portraits illustrate the enduring popularity of portraits of women performers. Crucially the book seeks to reassess the traditional association between actress and'prostitute', and the moral ambiguity of women playing male roles. Portraiture became an important vehicle for the expression of concerns about female sexuality, social status, decorum, gender and celebrity. The authors also chart the commercialisation of the spectacle of the actress, as well as the connections between the eighteenth-century 'star system' and modern celebrity culture. Organised thematically, sections include: 'Painting Acresses' Lives', 'Nell Gwyn and Covent Garden Goddesses', 'Divas, Dancing and the Rage for Music: Painting Women in Musical Performance', 'Beauty, Ageing and the Body Politic of the Eighteenth-Century Actress' and 'Star Systems'. Illustrated with remarkable paintings by major artists of the period, a fascinating and lucid text reveals the many ways in which women performers enabled artistic innovation and creativity, provoked intellectual debate and contributed to the popularity and visibility of the theatre. Accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 20 October 2011 - 8 January 2012

Author : Philip H. Highfill,Kalman A. Burnim,Edward A. Langhans
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1973
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0809315262

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A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800 by Philip H. Highfill,Kalman A. Burnim,Edward A. Langhans Pdf

Like the works already published, these latest volumes of the Biographical Dictionary deal with theatre people of every ilk, ranging from dressers and one-performance actors to trumpeter John Shore (inventor of the tuning fork) and the incomparable Sarah Siddons. Also prominent is Susanna Rowson, a novelist, actress, and early female playwright. Although born into a British military family, Rowson often wrote plays that dealt with patriotic American themes and spent much of her career on the American stage. The theatrical jewel of these volumes is the "divine Sarah" Siddons: "She raised the tragedy to the skies," wrote William Hazlitt, and "embodied to our imagination the fables of mythology, of the heroic and dignified mortals of elder time." She endured much tragedy herself, including a crippling debilitating illness and the deaths of five of her seven children. Siddons played major roles in both comedy and tragedy, not the least of which was a performance as Hamlet.

Author : Thomas Campbell
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1834
Category : Actors
ISBN : HARVARD:32044100863364

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Life of Mrs. Siddons by Thomas Campbell Pdf

Author : Thomas Campbell
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 1834
Category : Actresses
ISBN : HARVARD:HN7LMF

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Life of Mrs. Siddons by Thomas Campbell Pdf

Author : Tony Howard
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2007-02-22
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780521864664

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Women as Hamlet by Tony Howard Pdf

A study of actresses playing the role of Hamlet on stage and screen.

Author : Richard Evan Meyer
Publisher : Getty Publications
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Art
ISBN : 0892366761

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Representing the Passions by Richard Evan Meyer Pdf

Through an interlocking series of texts and images, this work explores how extreme sensations such as wonder, misery, ecstasy and rage have been portrayed at different moments in Western culture. Moving across multiple fields of creative endeavour and intellectual inquiry - from classical artefacts to Chicano art, political protest to operatic performance, Rene Descartes's writings on the soul to the Internet's digitised flesh - it reveals how the passions have elicited, eluded and transformed the act of representation.

Author : Thomas Campbell
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 1834
Category : Actors
ISBN : HARVARD:HN7LMG

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Life of Mrs. Siddons by Thomas Campbell Pdf

Author : Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1934110248

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Joseph L. Mankiewicz by Joseph L. Mankiewicz Pdf

Talks with the master director of such classics as All About Eve, The Barefoot Contessa, and Cleopatra

Author : Richard Wendorf
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780674809673

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Sir Joshua Reynolds by Richard Wendorf Pdf

Sir Joshua Reynolds explores the ways in which portrait-painting is embedded in the social fabric of a given culture as well as in the social and professional transaction between the artist and his or her subject. In addition to providing a new view of Reynolds, Wendorf's book develops a thoroughly new way of interpreting portraiture.

Author : Russ McDonald
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0820325066

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Look to the Lady by Russ McDonald Pdf

"McDonald also discerns parallels and distinctions in the approaches of Siddons, Terry, and Dench to the vocation of acting - specifically to Lady Macbeth and other great Shakespearean roles. Look to the Lady also helps us to better understand the place and function of the theater in British national life and what constitutes "great acting" at various historical moments." "Throughout, McDonald blends learned commentary on the history and culture of the stage with entertaining details about the appearance, personality, genealogy, and private life of each actor. Including some rarely seen images and drawing on previously untapped reviews and anecdotes, this is a lively introduction to the burgeoning field of performance criticism."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Richard Brilliant
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Art
ISBN : 0948462191

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Portraiture by Richard Brilliant Pdf

"General and theoretical study devoted entirely to portraiture. Drawing on a broad range of images from Antiquity to the twentieth century, which includes paintings, sculptures, prints, cartoons, postage stamps, medals, documents and photographs ... Richard Brilliant investigates the genre as a particular phenomenon in Western art that is especially sensitive to changes in the perceived nature of the individual in society ... Brilliant presents a thematic and cogent analysis of the connections between the subject-matter of portraits and the beholders's response--the response he or she makes to the image itself and to the person it represents ... the power of this imaginative transaction between the subject, the artist and the beholder ... With 85 illustrations, 10 in full colour"--Back cover.

Author : James Morwood,David Crane
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 1995-12-14
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0521464668

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Sheridan Studies by James Morwood,David Crane Pdf

This book is a systematic attempt to establish Sheridan as a major figure in the history of English comedy. Leading scholars address Sheridan's role not only as an outstanding playwright, but also as the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and his subsequent career as a Member of Parliament. The essays examine the theatrical world in which Sheridan worked, discuss his major plays, and include a modern director's observations on the production of his work today. This is combined with an important re-evaluation of Sheridan's achievements as a master of rhetoric in the political arena, to provide a much needed contemporary assessment of this multifaceted man and his work.