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Michael R. Booth, John Stokes, and Susan Bassnett. Three Tragic Actresses: Siddons, Rachel, Ristori. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. x + 200. $49.95.
The co-authors of this volume each contribute an essay on one of three actresses named in the title-Sarah Siddons, Rachel Félix, and Adelaide Ristori. All three performers specialized in tragedy, and the brief introductory chapter suggests that the work of each performer redefined for her time the dramatic representation of female characters in tragedy. The introduction argues that these performers gained fame because their representations emphasized the significance of female heroines of tragedy in ways which fascinated their audiences. Although the three long essays employ different critical perspectives, all pay considerable attention to audience response as interpreted from sources such as diaries and letters, reviews, and other press accounts. Detailed bibliographical notes, numerous illustrations, and an index enhance the work's value to scholars.
Because Siddons, Rachel, and Ristori were based in different countries at different times, working with different theatrical conventions and repertoire, one effect of the juxtaposition of these essays is to make differences between performers' careers and strategies seem striking. The introduction, however, focuses on the similarities-in particular, on the ways these performers raised the status of the actress of tragedy and women characters in tragedy. In the process each actress "could move beyond the limits of the social worlds she inhabited as a woman; her theatre was therefore a profoundly paradoxical place, a public arena for the display of what was publicly disallowed, where the representation of suffering and desire might be the first signs of resistance" (9).
Michael Booth's discussion of Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge of English theater history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Siddons was a towering figure in British theater, renowned for the gravity, dignity, and heroism, combined with passion, with which she portrayed female characters; her performances were frequently described by her contemporaries as "sublime." Booth outlines Siddons's life economically and sympathetically. Born into the theatrical Kemble family, as an adult she sometimes acted with her brothers John Philip and Charles. When very young she married Henry Siddons, an actor who would not be as successful as she was, and they both spent a number of years in provincial theaters...