“The soul of Mrs. Siddons (Mrs. Siddons whose dinners and suppers are proverbially numerous) expanded on this occasion. She speaks her joy on seeing so many guests with an earnestness little short of rapture. Her address appeared so like reality, that all her hearers about her seized the wooden fowls”.... The great actress soon felt a great mistake had been made. “I am glad to see you at Drury Lane,” she said to a colleague, “but you are come to act in a wilderness of a place, and, God knows, if I had not made my reputation in a small theatre, I never should have done it.” It was indeed “a wilderness of a place.” The mere opening for the curtain was forty-three feet wide, and thirty-eight feet high, or nearly seven times the height of the performers. Miss Mellon laughingly said she “felt a mere shrimp” when acting in it. The result might be foreseen. Had not the great actress indeed made her reputation on a small theatre, never would she have made it here. We, who only know of Mrs. Siddons by immediate tradition, are inclined to think that she ranted, and destroyed her effects by exaggeration of gesture and expression. There is little doubt we are justified in so thinking, and that the increased size of the theatre and audience were to blame. What a world of significance lies also in her words: “The banquet is a thing to go and see of itself.” A new era had begun; the stage, and everything belonging to it, ought to be taken out of the domain of every-day life, and, by appealing to the intellectual comprehension of the audience, raise them to an understanding of the grandeur of conception and passion of a Shakespeare. Garrick acted Othello in a cocked hat and scarlet uniform, and yet impressed his audience with a pathetic and intense reality. Mrs. Siddons acted Lady Macbeth in black velvet and point lace, and yet imparted a majesty and grace to the impersonation never before seen on the English stage. Now we see the Mephistopheles, Sheridan, inducing her to barter away her reputation and ideal of great art for the substantial benefits of increased gains and larger audiences. A different class of entertainment now invaded the classic boards. We can see _Timour the Tartar_, _Tekeli, or the Siege of Montgatz_, _The Miller and His Men_, _Pizarro_, and a host of spectacular pieces, mounted to draw numerous and uncritical audiences. This first season was a fatiguing and anxious one for the great actress, more especially also that she was in delicate health. Her daughter Cecilia was born this year, 1794, on 25th July. Her husband wrote to a friend:—