On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
vacancy , he gazes all around in agonized and fluctuating apprehension , as if the awful presence must still be somewhere at the banquet , until he gradually becomes reassured : * Why , so , being gone , I am a man again /
Now this is the truth ; Shakspeare ' s truth ., that is . Kemble ' s version was a spice of modern philosophy . The tragedy is based upon the reality of the supernatural . We cannot subscribe to tne doctrine of certain of the best critics we know , that Macbeth is an illustration of superstition . The hero believes nothing for which the poet does not vouch . He is deceived by the ambiguous
promise of the fiend , but it was a fiend that made the promise . The Weird Sisters are the Destinies of the play ; the Scottish Pates . His error ( according to Shakspeare ) was in trusting the demons , not in believing them to be demons . Even Lady Macbeth , an infidel of the age , though she laug hs at the ghost and the dagger , solemnly invocates those whose ' sightless substances
wait on nature ' s mischief' by the accredited mode of adjuration . We may perhaps even regard her as nerved , by their possession , for her daring crimes . Such possession held its place in religion and history long after the days of Elizabeth . Having said thus much of Macbeth , we cannot dismiss the play without observing
that we never saw a finer lyric poem than the countenance and action of Macread y during the combat with Macduff . There was not the Kemble trick of the tinkling of the trembling sword against the crossed sword of his antagonist , but there was that rapid succession of the intensest emotions , pervaded by a concentrating energy , which characterizes a noble Pindaric .
But the finest of Macread y ' s performances , which includes its "bein g the finest thing that the British stage can at present exhibit , is King Lear . Mr . Campbell speaks of it as ' masterly / but complains that he missed John Kemble ' s eyes . That were bettor than to have missed Macready ' s brains and nerves . We
have never seen a personation impl ying so much of the best intellectual and moral qualities comoined with such artistical perfection . Without adverting to any particular beauty , or any of the many touches which made throats swell or tears flow , we would observe of the actor ' s conception of the character , that , with a soul akin to that of the inspiring bard , he seized on the exac t
point and condition , in the natural history of mind and body , at which , and at which alone , the aged king and father secures our respect , pity , and sympathy , in the highest degree . It was saw that Garrick would have turned in his grave with envy at the success of Mrs . Siddons ' s Lady Macbeth ; she would have wept and knelt to the power of Mac ready ' a King Lear .
Untitled Article
550 CampbeWi Life of Mrs . Siddan * .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 550, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/20/
-