part of Lady Randolph. Mrs. Crawford's Lady Randolph had undoubtedly been once a great performance; but I have already noticed, that from the first night of her reappearance at Covent Garden, after an absence of five years, the general opinion regarded her as a brokendown actress. The tragedy of "Douglas" was got up for Mrs. Crawford's reappearance, on the 13th November, 1783, and Mrs. Siddons did not perform Lady Randolph at Drury Lane till more than a month afterwards, so that she had plenty of time to rally her courage. Indeed, when we contemplate Mrs. Siddons in the blaze of her beauty, competing with this toil and age worn rival, it is almost cruel to exult in her victory. Mrs. Siddons omitted Mrs. Crawford's scream in the far-famed question, "Was he alive?" but she gave the character its appropriate beauty, and made the tragedy itself more permanently popular. The only other new characters which she acted during her second season, were the Countess of Salisbury, in a tragedy of that name, and Sigismunda, in Thomson's "Tancred and Sigismunda." In neither of those pieces could she be said to be worthily employed. The "Countess of Salisbury" had first appeared some thirty years before, on the Dublin stage, where the popularity of Barry and of Mrs. Dancer, afterwards Mrs. Barry, supported it. Small as its merit was, its real author, Hall Hartson, was accused of having had it from his college tutor, Dr. Leland, the translator of Demosthenes : the charge against Hartson, of purloining this tragedy, was as unfounded as the claim of the piece itself to popularity. The Morning Chronicle for March 8, 1784, says, "The performance of the Countess of Salisbury, by Mrs. Siddons, turned out but an unhappy experiment, the play being so infamously underwritten, that even her great acting could not keep it from ridicule; and when Smith came on the stage to give it out for a second representation, he was saluted with a horselaugh." Whilst acting in "Tancred," for her second benefit, April 24th,* she was at least adorning the drama of an acknowledged poet, and that which is generally thought the most successful of Thomson's plays. We are told† that Garrick was very great in Tancred, and that Mrs. Cibber was harmony itself in Sigismunda. Mrs. Siddons, in the opinion of those who remembered her great predecessor in the part, fell nothing short of her, in the eloquence of her eye and gesture, and she made the death of Sigismunda tenderly perfect. Yet, in spite of this assurance, and of all my reverence for the poet of the Seasons, and the Castle of Indolence, I cannot imagine the powers of our actress in *Tancred, Kemble; Siffredi, Bensley; Osmond, Farren. + Murphy's Life of Garrick. voked to the sphere where they ought to have moved, in this verbose tragedy. The spell of Thomson's enchantment seems to be broken the moment he enters on the drama; he had cultivated his genius into a rich, soft soil, too luxuriant for dramatic poetry. The main issue of the plot of "Tancred" depends on the father of Sigismunda, Siffredi, whose inconsistency is enough to spoil a better tragedy. At first, the old chancellor of Sicily is all self-denial and conscientiousness, the beau ideal of political morality. So far so good; but he turns out an inhuman father, a false guardian, and a legal swindler. He has taken Prince Tancred into his house, and, after causing his attachment to his daughter by domestication, he chooses rather to break both their hearts than his own political views for the good of Sicily. In a heated moment Tancred gives Sigismunda a carte blanche, with his signature. The old lawyer, with a treachery unworthy of the lowest attorney, gets this paper from his daughter, and fills it up with a promise on the part of Tancred that he will marry Constantia, the daughter of his father's murderer. In Poetry, the feigned description of improbable animals is as susceptible of detection as in Natural History, and such a medley of morality and mischief as Siffredi, probably never existed in nature. Mrs. Siddons concluded her second season the 13th of May, 1784, with a sixth performance of Belvidera. Between the 8th of October and this last night she acted fifty-three times, that is, allowing for the oratorios in Lent, nearly once in every three nights of the company's performance. Isabella and Mrs. Beverley were her most frequent characters. Before the end of the season Mr. and Mrs. Siddons left their lodgings, in the Strand, and took and furnished a comfortable house, in Gower street, and she now returned the visits of her friends in her own carriage. Strand Gower Carriage |