Despite this giving actresses a larger amount of control, women were still viewed as "extreme representations of femininity - they were good or bad, comic or tragic, prostitutes or virgins, mistresses or mothers".

[5] Their on-stage roles and personal biographies blurred - leading many actresses to use these extreme representations of femininity to create a persona that could be viewed both on and off stage.

This brought her to the attention of David Garrick, who sent his deputy to see her as Calista in Nicholas Rowe's Fair Penitent, the result being that she was engaged to appear at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

So good was she that "Her pathetic embodiment of domestic woe created a sensation, flooding the audience with tears and exciting critics to hyperbolic praise.

[18] "She read, in the 'I have given suck' soliloquy, a 'tender allusion [to] the maternal mother yearning for her babe'; it is therefore in Lady Macbeth that Siddons found the highest and best scope for her acting abilities.

She was tall and had a striking figure, brilliant beauty, powerfully expressive eyes, and solemn dignity of demeanour which enabled her to claim the character as her own.

[21] The performer would need to sustain the illusion for the whole duration of the play as opposed to a breeches role which is much more brief and gained comedic success from the character's poor delivery at representing the opposite sex.

[5] By "cleverly blurring the distinction between the characters she played on stage with representations of herself offstage (as much portraiture of the period invokes)" Siddons was able to present a duality to her admirers.

[5] She avoided claims of sexual licentiousness, and the only damage to her career was faced toward its end, when caricatures and satirical prints emerged detailing the physical decline and stoutness of her body.

By cleverly blurring the distinction between the characters she played on stage and her presentation offstage,[25] Siddons combined her maternal persona with depictions of British femininity.

[25] In performing these domestic moments with the result of public triumph, Siddons was able to reiterate the characteristics that made her such a popular celebrity and icon; "her devotion to her family and her humble, behind-the-scenes existence".

[25] Siddons' role off stage, then, appears to be that of the ordinary wife and mother and this was crucial in a time when women were expected to stay at home, rather than provide for their family.

Macready relates that when she played Aphasia in Tamburlaine, after seeing her lover strangled before her eyes, so terrible was her agony as she fell lifeless upon the stage, that the audience believed she was really dead, and only the assurance of the manager could pacify them.

[27] On the night of 2 May 1797, Sarah Siddons's character of Agnes in George Lillo's Fatal Curiosity suggested murder with "an expression in her face that made the flesh of the spectator creep."

[28] This 'Siddons Fever' was a common occurrence with Richards even suggesting it was part of the amusement: "The theatrical vogue for the audience to shriek whatever the heroine did originated with Sarah.

Despite her reservations about Siddon's "frequent bursts of voice beyond what natural passion warranted," Baillie wrote to Sir Walter Scott, "take it all in all was fine & powerful acting; and when it has ceased we of this generation can never look to see the like again.

This portrait, as Heather McPherson writes, became the known depiction of tragedy, infused with contemporary ideas about acting and representation of the passions in Siddons' melancholy expression and deportment.

[31] Mary Hamilton's correspondence with her fiancé illuminated its seamless transition from "the artist's studio to the theatrical stage", practical venues that interlocked in the eighteenth century and formed a large part in creating the very idea of celebrity.

[17] William Hamilton's Mrs Siddons and Her Son, in The Tragedy of Isabella gained much traction due to the mutually beneficial relationship between painter and actress.

[32] A contemporary biographer recalled "carriages thronged to the artist's door; and, if every fine lady who stepped out of them did not actually weep before the painting, they had all of them, at least their white handkerchiefs ready for that demonstration of sensibility".

[33] As noted in Campbell's biography, Siddons returned to the role some six years later, and in 1802 she left Drury Lane for its rival establishment, Covent Garden.

Eventually, after tumultuous applause from the pit, the curtain reopened and Siddons was discovered sitting in her own clothes and character – whereupon she made an emotional farewell speech to the audience.

"[35] William Hazlitt, in his later accounts, stated that her performances lacked the grandeur they had shown in 1785: the "machinery of her voice is slow, there is too long a pause between each sentence [and the] sleeping scene was more laboured and less natural".

As Lady Macbeth, her pregnancy not only provided "a further reminder of the domestic life of both the actress and the character", adding a maternal aspect to her portrayal, but also created "a new level of tension in the play not present if the couple is perceived as barren.

Siddons' gravestone was one of the few to be preserved, and it remains in good condition beneath a wrought iron canopy, despite some erosion and the modern addition of a protective cage.

One wrote: "This lady, who, at no very distant period, was not less eminent for the splendour of her mental endowments, than for the towering majesty of her person and demeanour, paid the great debt of nature on Wednesday morning, at nine o'clock.

[citation needed] Siddons's portrayal of the prostitute Millwood in a 1796 production of The London Merchant inspired the novel George Barnwell by Thomas Skinner Surr.

[45] Actress Bette Davis, who played Margo Channing in the film, posed as Siddons in a 1957 re-creation of the Reynolds portrait staged as part of the Pageant of the Masters.

However, in 1952, a small group of distinguished Chicago theatergoers formed the Sarah Siddons Society, and began to give a genuine award by that name.