Siddons’s “Remarks” and her Reminiscences both contain sections that focus on the “personating” or imitation of Queens. In her discussion of Lady Mac- beth, Siddons describes the uncomfortable theatrical process of assuming a royal title under duress; and in her Reminiscences, she recreates her audience with the actual Queen, explaining that her talent for personating Queens was an invaluable skill to possess at court. Here the two narratives become even more directly tied to Siddons’s strategies for fashioning her celebrity. Once the murder of Duncan is accomplished, and Lady Macbeth becomes the “legitimate” Queen, her persona undergoes a significant trans- formation. Siddons writes, “The golden round of royalty now crowns her brow, and royal robes enfold her form; but the peace that passeth all under- standing is lost to her forever.”63 Siddons explains how she portrayed Lady
Macbeth’s “loss of peace” on stage: “Under the impression of her wretched- ness, I, from this moment, have always assumed the dejection of counte- nance and manners which I thought accordant to such a state of mind.”64
Suddenly, Lady Macbeth displays “striking indications of sensibility, nay ten- derness and sympathy”65 toward her husband. She becomes meek and repen-
tant: “The sad and new experience of affliction has subdued the insolence of her pride and the violence of her will,”66 and she loses her sharp ability to be
duplicitous.
In the famous banquet scene, where Macbeth encounters Banquo’s bloody ghost, Siddons describes the difficulty of conveying Lady Macbeth’s vulnerable position:
Dying with fear, yet assuming the utmost composure, she returns to her stately canopy; and, with trembling nerves, having tottered up the steps to her throne, that bad eminence, she entertains her wondering guests with frightful smiles, with over-acted attention, and with fitful graciousness; pain-
fully, yet incessantly, laboring to divert their attention from her husband.67
Here Siddons emphasizes Lady Macbeth’s discomfort with her newfound royal status; she “totters up the steps to her throne,” which Siddons labels a “bad eminence,” and is unable to naturally control her actions. She is overly
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solicitous and fitful. Siddons goes on to explain how difficult it is to perform this scene well: “What imitation, in such circumstances as these, would ever satisfy the demands of expectation? The terror, the remorse, the hypocrisy of this astonishing being . . . present, perhaps, one of the greatest difficulties of the scenic art, and cause her representative no less to tremble for the suffrage of her private study, than for its public effect”68
In her analysis, Siddons shifts the focus of this scene from Lady Mac- beth’s machinations to her own anxieties about performing the part. Siddons effectively invites the reader to equate their sympathy for Lady Macbeth’s inner monologue with an appreciation of Siddons’s (the actress’s) own private struggle to understand and perfect her portrayal of the role. Siddons suggests that Lady Macbeth should be pitied because she is suffering so much from the dreadful knowledge of the crime in which she has participated. She then proposes that she should be admired for her skill in performing this complex train of emotions. Thus, both of these “illegitimate” Queens—the usurp- ing Lady Macbeth and the ambitious actress Sarah Siddons—are asking to be exempt from harsh judgments about their presumptuous behavior: Lady Macbeth for her wrong doings, and Siddons for daring to inhabit a powerful and threatening female persona.
Interestingly, Siddons devotes a section of her memoir to her relationship with the real Queen. In narrating her interactions with Queen Charlotte, Siddons pays close attention to the negotiations of her carefully constructed performances. When she goes to the palace to read privately for the Queen, she describes the way that she felt in the awkward dress required: “One could not appear in the presence of the Queen except in a Dress (not elsewhere worn) called a saque, or Negligee, with a hoop, trebble ruffles and Lappets in which costume I felt not at all at ease.”69 During the performance, Siddons
refuses to pause to take “some refreshment.” She explains that she declined the honor, “altho’ I had stood reading till I was ready to drop, rather than run the risk of falling down by walking backwards out of the room (a cere- mony not to be dispensed with), the floor, too, being rubbed bright. I there- fore remained where I was, till Their Majestys retired.”70
As in her description of her anxious performance of Lady Macbeth in the banquet scene, Siddons is extremely aware of the theatrical conditions dur- ing her performances both on stage and off stage.71 Unlike critics’s represen-
tations of her effortless emotions and her natural gradations, or portraits that depict her in one powerful moment, Siddons illustrates that part of what she is always considering is the way her body appears to her audiences. If she walks backwards on the Queen’s slippery floor, she might fall—better to go on reading than spoil the illusion by humiliating herself. While considering
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these humiliations, she is also wearing a dress that she thinks is unflattering and uncomfortable. Here her performance as an actress and as a royal subject overlap; both roles require certain physical gestures and movements. Siddons adds that, after her reading, she hears from one of the ladies who was present that “Her Majesty had expressd herself surprised to find me so collected in so new a position, and that I had conducted myself as if I had been used to a court. At any rate, I had frequently personated Queens.”72
This witty remark demonstrates Siddons’s understanding of the extent to which identities are based on calculated performances and visual clues that she had practiced, rehearsed, and perfected. Although Siddons is required to “perform” specific acts because she is in the presence of royalty, she remains the dominant figure in this scene. In Siddons’s view, she is the one who understands how to manipulate the Queen’s responses. She is therefore still in control. The Queen’s authority here is symbolic and passive, similar to her presence in portraits. Siddons is the object of her gaze, but she is also an active subject in the scene. Siddons’s ability to parody and applaud her own talent for “personating” Queens illustrates her awareness of the dynamics of fashioning her celebrity. She implies that the only moment she couldn’t represent the Queen was when she was with the Queen herself; at the same time, she reveals her own anxieties about the reception of her performances. Audiences have to believe that she is a Queen so that she can assume a Queenly position; and even though she has perfected her royal affect, it is still only an effective illusion. Here Siddons’s strategies for fashioning celeb- rity are clearly articulated through her own ideas about her performances and the effect these acts had on her audiences.