Also prominent is Susanna Rowson, a novelist, actress, and early female playwright. Although born into a British military family, Rowson often wrote plays that dealt with patriotic American themes and spent much of her career on the American stage.
The theatrical jewel of these volumes is the divine Sarah Siddons: She raised the tragedy to the skies, wrote William Hazlitt, and embodied to our imagination the fables of mythology, of the heroic and dignified mortals of elder time. She endured much tragedy herself, including a crippling debilitating illness and the deaths of five of her seven children. Siddons played major roles in both comedy and tragedy, not the least of which was a performance as Hamlet.
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