Mr Garrick shews uniform, unabating excellence; scarce a look, motion, or tone, but takes possession of our faculties, and leads them to a just sensibility. 1
Garrick’s Lady Macbeth was Hannah Pritchard, who “in that horrible part had all the merit so well-drawn a character could confer.” 2
Up to that time, Shakespeare was played in contemporary dress—famous paintings of Garrick and Pritchard by Henry Fuseli and Johann Zoffany show the actors dressed in eighteenth-century costume. Charles Macklin was the first producer to attempt historical accuracy, in his 1773 staging of the play. While scenery and costumes were approved, the elderly Macklin’s performance was not well received and the rivalry between Macklin’s and Garrick’s supporters led to riots and the production’s closure.
The most famous historical Lady Macbeth was Sarah Siddons playing opposite her brother, John Philip Kemble, at Drury Lane in the last years of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. While the character of Lady Macbeth has been notoriously demonized, from Malcolm’s description of her as “fiend-like” onward, successive generations of actors have tried to humanize her. Sarah Siddons writes of an altogether more sympathetic character in her
Memoranda
entitled “Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth”:
In this astonishing creature one sees a woman in whose bosom the passion of ambition has almost obliterated all the characteristics of human nature; in whose composition are associated all the subjugating powers of intellect and all the charms and graces of personal beauty. You will probably not agree with me as to the character of that beauty … according to my notion, itis of that character which I believe is generally allowed to be most captivating to the other sex,—fair, feminine, nay, perhaps, even fragile. 3
Despite the tenor of Siddons’s remarks, there seems to be general agreement that this account, written many years later, is hardly an accurate picture of her own performance. As her biographer Roger Manvell suggests, “she always played Lady Macbeth against her own inner conception of how it should be done.” 4 Manvell goes on to point out, “from the first the impression she created in the audience was far from this—she inspired sheer awe and terror.” 5
Although Kemble treated Shakespeare’s three witches seriously, he nevertheless deployed a chorus of fifty or more singing, dancing, comic witches. The witches were traditionally played by men, usually the company comedians, the argument being that the tragedians were all busy elsewhere. J. P. Kemble’s niece Fanny Kemble complained in her journal that “It has always been customary,—heaven only knows why,—to make low comedians act the witches, and to dress them like old fishwomen … with as due a proportion of petticoats as any woman, letting alone witch, might desire, jocose red faces, peaked hats, and broomsticks.” 6
Kemble’s Macbeth has been described as essentially “a noble character who degenerates into evil.” 7 The leading actor of the next generation was Edmund Kean, a much less orthodox character who presented Macbeth as “a determined, ruthless man who disintegrates through guilt and fear.” 8 The critic William Hazlitt, generally an admirer of Kean, thought his Macbeth “deficient in the poetry of the character.” 9
William Charles Macready played the part for many years with a variety of different leading ladies including Mary Amelia Huddart, Helen Faucit, the American Charlotte Cushman, and Fanny Kemble. His productions strove for historical accuracy in their staging. His performance was contrasted unfavorably, however, with Samuel Phelps’s at Sadler’s Wells, which drew general praise:
Since Edmund Kean’s, we have seen nothing better for vigour and vivid effect. It is essentially distinct from and stands in contrastto Mr Macready’s, which, however fine and classical in its conception, is
Garrick’s Lady Macbeth was Hannah Pritchard, who “in that horrible part had all the merit so well-drawn a character could confer.” 2
Up to that time, Shakespeare was played in contemporary dress—famous paintings of Garrick and Pritchard by Henry Fuseli and Johann Zoffany show the actors dressed in eighteenth-century costume. Charles Macklin was the first producer to attempt historical accuracy, in his 1773 staging of the play. While scenery and costumes were approved, the elderly Macklin’s performance was not well received and the rivalry between Macklin’s and Garrick’s supporters led to riots and the production’s closure.
The most famous historical Lady Macbeth was Sarah Siddons playing opposite her brother, John Philip Kemble, at Drury Lane in the last years of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. While the character of Lady Macbeth has been notoriously demonized, from Malcolm’s description of her as “fiend-like” onward, successive generations of actors have tried to humanize her. Sarah Siddons writes of an altogether more sympathetic character in her
Memoranda
entitled “Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth”:
In this astonishing creature one sees a woman in whose bosom the passion of ambition has almost obliterated all the characteristics of human nature; in whose composition are associated all the subjugating powers of intellect and all the charms and graces of personal beauty. You will probably not agree with me as to the character of that beauty … according to my notion, itis of that character which I believe is generally allowed to be most captivating to the other sex,—fair, feminine, nay, perhaps, even fragile. 3
Despite the tenor of Siddons’s remarks, there seems to be general agreement that this account, written many years later, is hardly an accurate picture of her own performance. As her biographer Roger Manvell suggests, “she always played Lady Macbeth against her own inner conception of how it should be done.” 4 Manvell goes on to point out, “from the first the impression she created in the audience was far from this—she inspired sheer awe and terror.” 5
Although Kemble treated Shakespeare’s three witches seriously, he nevertheless deployed a chorus of fifty or more singing, dancing, comic witches. The witches were traditionally played by men, usually the company comedians, the argument being that the tragedians were all busy elsewhere. J. P. Kemble’s niece Fanny Kemble complained in her journal that “It has always been customary,—heaven only knows why,—to make low comedians act the witches, and to dress them like old fishwomen … with as due a proportion of petticoats as any woman, letting alone witch, might desire, jocose red faces, peaked hats, and broomsticks.” 6
Kemble’s Macbeth has been described as essentially “a noble character who degenerates into evil.” 7 The leading actor of the next generation was Edmund Kean, a much less orthodox character who presented Macbeth as “a determined, ruthless man who disintegrates through guilt and fear.” 8 The critic William Hazlitt, generally an admirer of Kean, thought his Macbeth “deficient in the poetry of the character.” 9
William Charles Macready played the part for many years with a variety of different leading ladies including Mary Amelia Huddart, Helen Faucit, the American Charlotte Cushman, and Fanny Kemble. His productions strove for historical accuracy in their staging. His performance was contrasted unfavorably, however, with Samuel Phelps’s at Sadler’s Wells, which drew general praise:
Since Edmund Kean’s, we have seen nothing better for vigour and vivid effect. It is essentially distinct from and stands in contrastto Mr Macready’s, which, however fine and classical in its conception, is
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