CHAPTER XV

IT has been said that, since the Eumenides of Eschylus, tragic poetry had produced nothing so terrible and sublime as the Macbeth of Shakespeare. It may be said with equal probability that, since the happy invention of man invested dramatic fiction with seeming reality, nothing superior, perhaps equal, to the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. Siddons has

been seen.

She had experienced much of the illiberality of criticism, to which it seems not to have suited her temper or taste through life to pay any court. The distributors of daily and monthly fame had not scrupled to assert that the sagacious actress, conscious of the limits of her powers, had wisely avoided the boundless demands of Shakespeare, and devoted herself to the tender effusions of inferior spirits; that a melodious flow of declamation was a happiness but of the ear; a majestic person and an expressive as well as beautiful countenance accidental advantages of nature; but that the burst of passion, the bold inspiration of positive genius, superior to all precedent and trammel and tuition, of these gifts she had positively nothing, and was of a temperament too cold and systematic ever to suspect even the want of them.

To use the language of the late Dr. Parr when speaking of Warburton, on the 2nd of February, 1785, from her towering and distant heights she rushed down upon her prey, and, disdaining the ostentatious prodigalities of cruelty, destroyed it at a blow.' She acted Lady Macbeth on that night, and criticism and envy and rivalry sunk at once before her. The subject was as fortunate to her as to the great poet himself, and from that hour her dominion over

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the passions was undisputed, her genius pronounced to be at least equal to her art, and Sir Joshua's happy thought of identifying her person with the Muse of Tragedy confirmed by the immutable decree of the public.

The reader or spectator of Shakespeare's Macbeth is not inquisitive as to his real history, and would not be a little surprised were it laid before him. The gracious Duncan, too, besieging Durham without success, is said, soon after his return, to have been slain by his people, thus closing a rather inglorious reign of only six years. The death, on which his immortality was built, is assigned by the celebrated Chronicon Elegiacum.

But astonishment will succeed surprise, for the reader is next to learn that the epithet gracious' is quite as applicable to Macbeth himself as to Duncan; and the historic doubts' as to Richard the Third may be revived, on perhaps surer ground, in relation to the actual qualities of the usurper of Scotland. He seems,' says a learned inquirer, to have been an able and beneficent prince. The Chron. Eleg. represents fertile seasons as attendants of his reign, which Winton confirms. If a king makes fertile seasons it must be by promoting agriculture and diffusing among his people the blessings of peace. Had he paid more attention to his own interests, and less to those of his subjects, the crown might have remained in his family. But, neglecting the practice of war, he fell a martyr to his own virtues.'1

But, if he was really guilty of the murder of Duncan, he took at least the usual road of expiation, for he certainly made a pilgrimage to Rome in the papacy of Leo the Ninth.

It was to gratify Malcolm 111. and his descendants that he was represented, like Caliban, to be the son of a devil, and connected with witches. Happily for us, Shakespeare, as to these often-compared tyrants, Richard and Macbeth, was acquainted only with the histories written under the patronage of their enemies. Macbeth was supplanted at last by a foreign force, and reigned in great tranquillity seventeen years.

Particulars so curious and so little known I would not suppress. They suggest to my mind one important reflection. In the play of Macbeth the hurry which presses on the events of his life, from his coronation to his death, allows the poet little time to dilate upon the particular disposition of such a man; yet I cannot but think that had he known of this pious excursion he would have made fine use of it in the gloomy reveries of Macbeth, have shown him struggling between the efficacy of religious ceremony and magical illusion, and that it would have supplied some dreadful images to the perturbed slumbers of his more fiend-like wife.

The first scene of Lady Macbeth is decisive of the whole character. She lets out in a few lines the daring steadiness of her mind, which could be disturbed by no scruple, intimidated by no danger. The occasion does not change the nature here as it does in her husband. There is no struggle after any virtue to be resigned. She is as thoroughly prepared in one moment as if visions of greatness had long informed her slumbers, and she had awaked to meditate upon every means, however dreadful, that could secure her object.

When Mrs. Siddons came on with the letter from Macbeth (the first time we saw her), such was the impression from her form, her face, her deportment-the distinction of sex was only external-her spirits' informed their tenement with the apathy of a demon. The commencement of this letter is left to the reader's imagination. They met me

in the day of success,' shows that he had previously mentioned the witches. Her first novelty was a little suspension of the voice, they made themselves—air': that is, less astonished at it as a miracle of nature than attentive to

it as a manifestation of the reliance to be built upon their assurances. She read the whole letter with the greatest skill, and, after an instant of reflection, exclaimed

'Glamis thou art, and Cawdor-and shalt be

What thou art promised.'

The amazing burst of energy upon the words shalt be' perfectly electrified the house. The determination seemed as uncontrollable as fate itself. The searching analysis of Macbeth which she makes was full of meaning-the eye and the hand confirmed the logic. Ambition is the soul of her very phrase

'Thou'dst have, great Glamis.'

Great Glamis! this of her husband! metaphysical speculation, calculated estimate as if it had regarded Cæsar or Pompey. He is among the means before me-how is such a nature to be worked up to such unholy objects?

Hie thee hither,' says the impatience which longs to begin its strife with the antagonist virtue-' Hie thee hither,

'That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,

And chastise with the valour of my tongue,' etc.

But a different style of beauty was called forth by the hasty entrance of a servant to announce the coming of the King that night into the very meshes she is about to spread for his destruction. Shakespeare alone, perhaps, would have written the daring compromise of all decorum which bursts from the exulting savage upon this intelligence—

'Thou 'rt mad to say it.'

Aware of the inference to be drawn from an earnestness so marked, he immediately cloaks the passion with a reason why the intelligence could not seem true. The actress, fully understanding the process, after the violence of the exclamation, recovered herself with slight alarm, and in a lowered tone proposed a question suited to the new feeling:

Is not thy master with him? who, were 't so,

Would have inform'd for preparation.'

The murmured mysteriousness of the address to the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts' became stronger as she proceeded :

'Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers.'

A beautiful thought, be it observed; as if these sources of infant nourishment could not even consent to mature destruction without some loathsome change in the very stream itself which flowed from them.

When the actress, invoking the destroying ministers, came to the passage

'Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief,'

the elevation of her brows, the full orbs of sight, the raised shoulders, and the hollowed hands, seemed all to endeavour to explore what yet were pronounced no possible objects of vision. Till then, I am quite sure, a figure so terrible had never bent over the pit of a theatre, that night crowded with intelligence and beauty in its seven front rows.

The salutation of Macbeth-the remark upon the abstraction on his countenance which follows her brief intimation of all that is to be done-all claimed notice.

'O never

Shall sun that morrow see.'

Macbeth himself (Smith) sunk under her at once, and she quitted the scene with an effect which cannot be described; in short, the triumph of Nature, rightly interpreted by the greatest writer and greatest actress that had ever laboured for the delight and instruction of mankind.

The following scene is the beautiful reception of Duncan at Inverness. The honoured hostess received his Majesty with all the exterior of profound obligation. She was too pure an actress to allow a glance of triumph to stray towards the spectators.

Macbeth, conscious of his design, is even neglectful of his duty as a host; he is absent from the royal banquet, and his absence provokes inquiry. His lady, bending steadily to her purpose, is equal to all occasions, and now