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6.-FALSE ACTING OF THE TWO PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS.

WE cannot here examine into the several varieties of expression which, in the representation of the hero, have marked respectively the acting of a Garrick or a Kemble, a Kean or a Macready,-resulting from their personal peculiarities, their particular mannerisms, or their different conceptions as to matters of detail. We have to do at present only with the one grand misconception which has pervaded all these personations,— that of regarding Macbeth as a man originally good, sympathetic, tender-hearted, generous, and grateful, until the ambitious and treacherous purpose of murdering his king is first suggested to him by the weird sisters, and then confirmed in him by the instigations of his wife. This capital error at the outset has betrayed the actors, like the critics, into mistaking the language of his selfish apprehensions for the expressions of compunction and remorse, and his equally selfish bewailings over his own difficulties and downfall, for generous effusions of sympathetic humanity. John Kemble's view of the matter, which we find recorded under his own hand, so fairly represents the constant stage notion upon the subject, that a general indication of it will suffice to shew the still subsisting theatrical creed respecting Macbeth's character.

In the year 1785, then, the year in which Mrs. Siddons first acted Lady Macbeth on the London stage, there appeared, in the form of an octavo pamphlet, a posthumous essay, from the pen of Mr. Thomas Whately (uncle of the present Dr. Whately, archbishop of Dublin), known also as the author of Observations on Modern Gardening,'-under the title of Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakespeare.' The piece itself, however, is but a fragment of a larger work which its author had projected-extending only

to the completion of a running parallel between the character of Macbeth and that of Richard the Third. This essay, which acquired and has retained a high critical reputation, produced from John Kemble, in the following year, another pamphlet, inscribed to Edmund Malone, and entitled Macbeth Reconsidered; an Essay intended as an Answer to part of the Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakespeare.' Mr. Kemble, however, limits his strictures to a refutation, which we think just and conclusive, of Mr. Whately's denial of personal courage as a quality inherent in Macbeth. To the rest of the essayist's argument he thus emphatically expresses his assent:"The writer of the above pages cannot conclude without saying, he read the Remarks on some of Shakespeare's Characters' with so much general pleasure and conviction, that he wishes his approbation were considerable enough to increase the celebrity which Mr. Wheatley's [Whately's] memory has acquired from a work so usefully intended and so elegantly performed." In Mr. Whately's view of the matter, then (which, indeed, we find still appealed to as an authority), we shall see what was Kemble's "conviction" as to the essential qualities in the character of Macbeth.

Having already argued the whole matter so elaborately from the simple evidence of Shakespeare's text, we shall here confine ourselves to citing from Mr. Whately's pages those passages which most strikingly exhibit in his mind that leading view of Macbeth's qualities, the fallacy of which we have demonstrated at length in our foregoing examination. Mr. Whately, then, tells us at the very outset:

"The first thought of succeeding to the throne is suggested, and success in the attempt is promised, to Macbeth by the witches he is therefore represented as a man whose natural temper would have deterred him from such a design, if he had not been immediately tempted and strongly impelled to it.

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Agreeably to these ideas," he continues, "Macbeth appears to be a man not destitute of the feelings of humanity. His lady gives him that character:

I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness,
To catch the nearest way.-

Which apprehension was well founded; for his reluctance to commit the murder is owing, in a great measure, to reflections which arise from sensibility:

He's here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject;
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself.-

Immediately after, he tells Lady Macbeth

We will proceed no further in this business;

He hath honour'd me of late.

And thus giving way to his natural feelings of kindred, hospitality, and gratitude, he for a while lays aside his purpose.

"A man of such a disposition will esteem, as they ought to be esteemed, all gentle and amiable qualities in another; and therefore Macbeth is affected by the mild virtues of Duncan, and reveres them in his sovereign when he stifles them in himself.”—Pp. 11, 12.

It is very curious to mark how this fallacious prepossession betrays the essayist into citing that very soliloquy respecting Banquo, which we have pointed out as peculiarly illustrating the dark intensity of Macbeth's apprehensive selfishness,-as proving his humane and sympathetic nature:

"The frequent reference to the prophecy in favour of Banquo's issue is another symptom of the same disposition; for it is not always from fear, but sometimes from envy, that he alludes to it and being himself very susceptible of those domestic affections which raise a desire and love of posterity, he repines at the succession assured to the family of his rival, and which in his estimation seems more valuable than his own actual possession. He therefore reproaches the sisters for their partiality when

Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding. If 'tis so,
For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind,

Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list, &c.

"Thus, in a variety of instances, does the tenderness in his

character shew itself; and one who has these feelings, though he may have no principles, cannot easily be induced to commit a murder. The intervention of a supernatural cause accounts for his acting so contrary to his disposition. But that alone is not sufficient to prevail entirely over his nature; the instigations of his wife are also necessary to keep him to his purpose; and she, knowing his temper, not only stimulates his courage to the deed, but sensible that, besides a backwardness in daring, he had a degree of softness which wanted hardening, endeavours to remove all remains of humanity from his breast, by the horrid comparison she makes between him and herself :

I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I but so sworn,
As you have done to this.

:

"The argument is, that the strongest and most natural affections are to be stifled upon so great an occasion; and such an argument is proper to persuade one who is liable to be swayed by them; but is no incentive either to his courage or his ambition."-Pp. 13-15.

That Macbeth, indeed, is not naturally and inherently ambitious, we find Mr. Whately continually urging. Thus, again (page 27):—

"The crown is not Macbeth's pursuit through life: he had never thought of it till it was suggested to him by the witches: he receives their promise, and the subsequent earnest of the truth of it, with calmness. But his wife, whose thoughts are always more aspiring, hears the tidings with rapture, and greets him with the most extravagant congratulations: she complains of his moderation; the utmost merit she can allow him is, that he is not without ambition.' But it is cold and faint," &c.

The essayist's determinedly erroneous bias regarding the alleged tenderness of Macbeth's nature, shews itself in no place more curiously than in the passage (p. 71) where he tells us of "the sympathy he expresses so feelingly when the diseased mind of Lady Macbeth is mentioned;" except, indeed, it be in that subsequent paragraph (p. 73) where he actually tells us of the hero at his last extremity :

"The natural sensibility of his disposition finds even in the field an opportunity to work; where he declines to fight with

Macduff, not from fear, but from a consciousness of the wrongs he had done to him: he therefore answers his provoking challenge, only by saying,—

Of all men else I have avoided thee, &c.

and then patiently endeavours to persuade this injured adversary to desist from so unequal a combat; for he is confident that it must be fatal to Macduff, and therefore tells him,—

Thou losest labour, &c."

The general adhesion to Mr. Whately's views which we have cited above from Mr. Kemble's pamphlet, is sufficiently explicit; but, although the body of the latter essay is occupied almost exclusively with asserting Macbeth's personal intrepidity against the former writer's opinion, yet, in the course of it, the great actor does incidentally shew us in detail the coincidence which he avows in general terms, of his own leading conceptions of the character with those of Mr. Whately. Thus, at the outset, he speaks (p. 5) of "the simple character of Macbeth, as it stands before any change is effected in it by the supernatural soliciting of the weird sisters." And respecting Macbeth's declining of the combat with Macduff, he mistakes even more elaborately than Mr. Whately himself:

'When," says Mr. Kemble, "the thane of Fife encounters Macbeth in battle, the tyrant does not use the power upon his life which he believes himself possessed of, as instantly he would had he feared him; but, yielding to compunction for the inhuman wrongs he had done him, wishes to avoid the necessity of adding Macduff's blood to that already spilt in the slaughter of his dearest connexions,

Get thee back, &c.

Unmoved by Macduff's taunts and furious attack, Macbeth advises him to employ his valour where success may follow it, and generously warns him against persisting to urge an unequal combat with one whom destiny had pronounced invincible.' P. 21.

In the same spirit the writer, closing his essay with comparing, like his precursor Mr. Whately, the character of Macbeth with that of Richard, observes