Talk:Sarah Siddons

Sources

I don't know what sources were used in the writing of this article but I checked the information here against the very long ODNB article and this one seems accurate. So, I included the ODNB as a reference and removed the "lack of sources" tag. scribblingwoman 04:10, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

New file Sarah Siddons by J. Dickinson.jpg

Recently the file File:Sarah Siddons by J. Dickinson.jpg was uploaded and it appears to be relevant to this article and not currently used by it. If you're interested and think it would be a useful addition, please feel free to include it. Dcoetzee 04:02, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Portrait added.

Tovojolo (talk) 18:33, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

External links modified

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Welsh, English, Irish...

@Ritchie333 and Glane23: I'm not sure that it's strictly correct to characterize her as a "Welsh-born English actress", given that only her father was English. Her mother was Irish. Is there a reliable source for specifically calling Siddons just "English" in light of that? If not... well, "Welsh-born English-Irish actress" seems ridiculously clunky, and it may be preferable to stick with the simpler and objectively factual "Welsh-born actress" in the lead. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 17:33, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

This National Portrait Gallery source says Siddons "continued to dominate the London stage until her farewell in 1812", which is kind of close. It might simply be best to go with British actress. You might want to ask Megalibrarygirl who's the girl with the mega library databases, or Martinevans123 who's knowledgeable about all things west of Offa's Dyke. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:42, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

"Welsh-born" refers to (duh) where she was born, but "English" refers to where she did her acting. They're orthogonal concepts, but both are correct. For anything prior to <waves hands vaguely> 1900-ish (or maybe as early as the 18th century; I'm hazy on the details), using "British" as "English+" is actually misleading. For Welsh, specifically, it may be close enough; but had she been born in Ireland it would have been actively problematic. Even after the union, and ignoring legal formality, culturally these were distinctly different nationalities (with attendant stereoptypes). Case in point, in a c. 1850 work I'm currently transcribing over at Wikisource, the author laments that an admired Irishman stayed with his stupid and provincial countrymen in Ireland, rather than come to England where his genious would have been allowed to flourish and would have been encouraged by the enlightened English. Edmond Malone, roughly contemporary with Mrs. Siddons, was very much an Irishman, but is considered an English scholar (and politically he was royalist, nationalist, and favoured the English).
Anyways, my point is that if we're to avoid the problem by just using one, we need to pick one of the specifics rather than make it more general: Siddons was Welsh and Malone was Irish. Calling either of them British is both inaccurate and misleading. --Xover (talk) 18:12, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

You will be pleased to know that Brecon is definitely in Wales. (My father's family were all from just up the road in Builth, pretty much at the centre of Wales. Brecon is a great place for a Jazz Festival. I might add.) I find it curious that, 250 years on, these questions of English/ Welsh/ British, etc., are sometimes still just as difficult to answer. I'm more intrigued as to why she was born in Brecon at all - the article for her Roger Kemble makes no mention of the town. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

@Martinevans123: consider my edit earlier today about her birthplace. My guess is that the company was on tour in Wales, and they were passing through town on a short-term gig. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 22:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

A perfectly reasonable explanation. But one wonders just how theatrical Brecon was in 1755? Not the hurly-burly showbiz metropolis that was swanky Builth Wells, obviously....Martinevans123 (talk) 22:40, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

What he said. It could go either way, thus my reverts. I'm happy with whatever is the consensus. Geoff | ^{Who, me?} 17:32, 30 September 2018 (UTC)