Sarah Siddons of feminine propriety. Commissioned and completed in 1784, Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait, "Sarah Siddons as The Tragic Muse", is characterized by Reynolds' inspiration, contextualisation of the Muse, and distinctive brush work and paint palette. 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. 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
To Mrs Siddons the role that each of the poets had within the poem, "To Mrs Siddons" is considered one of Lamb's earliest known poems. However, the poems have been seen as different from Lamb's other poems, as William Hazlitt, Lamb's contemporary, points out: "Lamb's first compositions were in verse—produced slowly, at long intervals,—and with self-distrust, which the encouragements of Coleridge could not subdue. With the exception of a sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, whose acting, [...] had made a deep impression upon him, they were exclusively personal." The 1796 edition of the poem reads: Of the various individuals that Coleridge's "Sonnets on Eminent