Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

TALBOYS.

Something in that.

BULLER.

A settler.

NORTH.

I entirely separate the two questions – first, how did the Manager of the Globe Theatre have the King's Seat at the Feast filled; and second, what does the highest poetical Canon deliver. I speak now, but to the first. Now, here the rule is – "the audience must understand, and at once, what that which they see and hear means" – that Rule must govern the art of the drama in the Manager's practice. You allow that, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

I do.

BULLER.

Rash – Talboys – rash: he's getting you into a net.

NORTH.

That is not my way, Buller. Well, then, suppose Macbeth acted for the first time to an audience, who are to establish it for a stock-play or to damn it. Would the Manager commit the whole power of a scene which is perhaps the most – singly – effective of the whole Play —

BULLER.

No – no – not the most effective of the whole Play —

NORTH.

The rival, then, of the Murder Scene – the Sleep-Walking stands aloof and aloft – to the chance of a true divination by the whole Globe audience? I think not. The argument is of a vulgar tone, I confess, and extremely literal, but it is after the measure of my poor faculties.

SEWARD.

In confirmation of what you say, sir, it has been lately asserted that one of the two appearings at least is not Banquo's – but Duncan's. How is that to be settled but by a real Ghost – or Ghosts?

NORTH.

And I ask, what has Shakspeare himself undeniably done elsewhere? In Henry VIII., Queen Katherine sleeps and dreams. Her Dream enters, and performs various acts – somewhat expressive – minutely contrived and prescribed. It is a mute Dream, which she with shut eyes sees – which you in pit, boxes, and gallery see – which her attendants, watching about her upon the stage, do not see.

SEWARD.

And in Richard III – He dreams, and so does Richmond. Eight Ghosts rise in succession and speak to Richard first, and to the Earl next – each hears, I suppose, what concerns himself – they seem to be present in the two Tents at once.

NORTH.

In Cymbeline, Posthumus dreams. His Dream enters – Ghosts and even Jupiter! They act and speak; and this Dream has a reality – for Jupiter hands or tosses a parchment-roll to one of the Ghosts, who lays it, as bidden, on the breast of the Dreamer, where he, on awaking, perceives it! I call all this physically strong, sir, for the representation of the metaphysically thought.

BULLER.

If Buller may speak, Buller would observe, that once or twice both Ariel and Prospero come forward "invisible." And in Spenser, the Dream of which Morpheus lends the use to Archimago, is – carried.

SEWARD.

We all remember the Dream which Jupiter sends to Agamemnon, and which, while standing at his bed's-head, puts on the shape of Nestor and speaks; – the Ghost of Patroclus – the actual Ghost which stands at the bed's-head of Achilles, and is his Dream.

NORTH.

My friends, Poetry gives a body to the bodiless. The Stage of Shakspeare was rude, and gross. In my boyhood, I saw the Ghosts appear to John Kemble in Richard III. Now they may be abolished with Banquo. So may be Queen Katherine's Angels. But Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about one person's seeing what another does not – or one's not seeing, rather, that which another does. Nor had Homer, when Achilles alone, in the Quarrel Scene, sees Minerva. Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about the bodily representation of Thoughts – the inward by the outward. Shakspeare and the Great Old Poets leave vague, shadowy, mist-shrouded, and indeterminate the boundaries between the Thought and the Existent – the Real and the Unreal. I am able to believe with you, Talboys, that Banquo's Ghost was understood by Shakspeare, the Poet, to be the Phantasm of the murderer's guilt-and-fear-shaken soul; but was required by Shakspeare, the Manager of the Globe Theatre, to rise up through a trap-door, mealy-faced and blood-boultered, and so make "the Table full."

BULLER.

Seward, do bid him speak of Lady Macbeth.

SEWARD.

Oblige me, sir – don't now – after dinner, if you will.

NORTH.

I shall merely allude now, as exceedingly poetical treatment, to the discretion throughout used in the SHOWING of Lady Macbeth. You might almost say that she never takes a step on the stage, that does not thrill the Theatre. Not a waste word, gesture, or look. All at the studied fulness of sublime tragical power – yet all wonderfully tempered and governed. I doubt if Shakspeare could have given a good account of everything that he makes Macbeth say – but of all that She says he could.

TALBOYS.

As far as I am able to judge, she but once in the whole Play loses her perfect self-mastery – when the servant surprises her by announcing the King's coming. She answers, 'thou'rt mad to say it;' which is a manner of speaking used by those who cannot, or can hardly believe tidings that fill them with exceeding joy. It is not the manner of a Lady to her servant who unexpectedly announces the arrival of a high – of the highest visitor. She recovers herself instantly. 'Is not thy master with him, who, wer't so, would have informed for preparation?' This is a turn colouring her exclamation, and is spoken in the most self-possessed, argumentative, demonstrative tone. The preceding words had been torn from her; now she has passed, with inimitable dexterity, from the dreamed Queen, to the usual mistress of her household —to the huswife.

NORTH.

In the Fourth Act – she is not seen at all. But in the Fifth, lo! and behold! and at once we know why she had been absent – we see and are turned to living stone by the revelation of the terrible truth. I am always inclined to conceive Lady Macbeth's night-walking as the summit, or topmost peak of all tragic conception and execution – in Prose, too, the crowning of Poetry! But it must be, because these are the ipsissima verba– yea, the escaping sighs and moans of the bared soul. There must be nothing, not even the thin and translucent veil of the verse, betwixt her soul showing itself, and yours beholding. Words which your "hearing latches" from the threefold abyss of Night, Sleep, and Conscience! What place for the enchantment of any music is here? Besides, she speaks in a whisper. The Siddons did – audible distinctly, throughout the stilled immense theatre. Here music is not – sound is not – only an anguished soul's faint breathings – gaspings. And observe that Lady Macbeth carries – a candle – besides washing her hands – and besides speaking prose – three departures from the severe and elect method, to bring out that supreme revelation. I have been told that the great Mrs Pritchard used to touch the palm with the tips of her fingers, for the washing, keeping candle in hand; – that the Siddons first set down her candle, that she might come forwards, and wash her hands in earnest, one over the other, as if she were at her wash-hand stand, with plenty of water in her basin – that when Sheridan got intelligence of her design so to do, he ran shrieking to her, and, with tears in his eyes, besought that she would not, at one stroke, overthrow Drury Lane – that she persisted, and turned the thousands of bosoms to marble.

TALBOYS.

Our dear, dear Master.

NORTH.

You will remember, my friends, her four rhymed lines– uttered to herself in Act Third. They are very remarkable —

"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy."

They are her only waking acknowledgments of having mistaken life! So – they forebode the Sleep-Walking, and the Death – as an owl, or a raven, or vulture, or any fowl of obscene wing, might flit between the sun and a crowned but doomed head – the shadow but of a moment, yet ominous, for the augur, of an entire fatal catastrophe.

SEWARD.

They do. But to say the truth, I had either forgot them, or never discovered their significancy. O that William Shakspeare!