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.

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.

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.

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of David Garrick, John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons and Edmund Kean to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.

Explores the connections between British and American Romanticism, focusing on the novels of Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64). This study argues that Inchbald and Hawthorne are representative of a larger British/American cultural confluence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Surveys the critical and creative responses of 18th-century actors, audiences, critics, editors, artists, and philosophers to Shakespeare's work and traces how those responses influenced subsequent responses.