To Mrs Siddons

"To Mrs Siddons" was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published in the 29 December 1794 Morning Chronicle as part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series.

In his letters to his childhood friend Mary Evans, Coleridge would mention various performances that he witnessed when he would slip into London.

"[4] The 1796 edition of the poem reads:[5] As when a child on some long winter's night Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees Mutter'd to wretch by necromatic spell; Or of those hags, who at the witching time Of murkey midnight ride the air sublime, And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: Cold Horror drinks it's blood!

(lines 1–14) Of the various individuals that Coleridge's Sonnets on Eminent Characters discusses, representatives from the theatre industry was limited to Siddons, as an actress, and Richard Sheridan, a playwright.

It is possible that these references are to William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Hamlet, or Richard III along with Nicholas Rowe's Tragedy of Jane Shore.

Besides the allusions to plays, the beginning of the poem compares Siddons's acting having a power over Coleridge as a children's story.