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British Drama

Notes impromptu; that kind of impromptu which results from the application of well-disciplined powers
and rich stores of thought to subject suggested by occasion. I am inclined to regard Macbeth as, for
the most part, a specimen of Shakespeare’s unelaborated, if not unfinished, writing, in the maturity
and highest vitality of his genius. It abounds in instances of extremest compression and most daring
ellipsis, while it exhibits in every scene a union of supreme dramatic and poetic power, and in
almost every line an imperially irresponsible control of language. Hence, I think, its lack of
completeness of versification in certain passages, and also some of the imperfection of the text, the
thought in which the compositors were not always able to follow and apprehend.”

9.1.1 The Stage History of Macbeth
Evidence suggests that Macbeth was written by command as one of the plays to be given before
King James I and the King of Denmark during the latter’s notable visit to England in the summer of
1606. Shakespeare’s company was the King’s Players, and it would be natural for them to be
commanded to produce a story of Scottish history touching on the ancestry of their patron. The title
role was created by the great Richard Burbage and his infamous queen by the boy-actress Edmans.

The play was first printed in the Folio of 1623, where the text shows some signs of
cutting and alteration. The lyrical episodes of Hecate and the witches are thought to have
been added by another playwright.
When Charles II ascended the British throne in 1660, he assigned Macbeth to William Davenant and
the Duke’s Company. Not content to produce the play in its original form, Davenant altered the
work considerably to indulge his two favorite hobbies. The first was his desire for operatic and
scenic splendor; the second, his pursuit of structural balance. The first he obtained by elaborating
the witches’ scenes, introducing all kinds of dancing, singing, and gibberish, some of it taken from
Middleton’s The Witch. The second was achieved by amplifying the role of Lady Macduff, for whom
he created numerous scenes between her and her lord symmetrically opposed to the bits between
Macbeth and his wicked wife. Macduff’s virtuous lady inveighs to him against ambition. Lady
Macbeth is given a new scene in which she is haunted by the ghost of Duncan, which induces her to
try to persuade Macbeth to give up ambition and the crown. Davenant’s bastardization, with Thomas
Betterton in the title role, drove Shakespeare’s original from the stage until 1744.
It was David Garrick who, during his management of the Drury Lane Theatre (1742-1776), revived
Macbeth as written by Shakespeare, playing the title role there every season except four. Although
he kept Davenant’s operatic witch scenes, he omitted the spurious Lady Macduff scenes, along with
her infamous murder scene and the bit with the Porter. He could not resist writing a new climactic
speech for Macbeth, in which the hero-villain mentions, with his dying breath, his guilt, delusion,
the witches, and horrid visions of future punishment. Garrick and his leading lady, Hannah Pritchard,
introduced a natural style of acting and became famous as the tortured hero and heroine. So urgent
was Garrick’s delivery that in one performance when he told the First Murderer “There’s blood
upon thy face,” the actor in question involuntarily replied, “Is there, by God?”
The next famous pair to assay these roles were John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) and his talented
sister, Sarah Siddons, at Drury Lane in the season of 1784 and for many years thereafter. Siddons
made an extraordinary innovation when in the sleep-walking scene she put the candle down, defying
the tradition of carrying the candle throughout. J. Boaden recorded in her Memoirs (1827), “She
laded the water from the imaginary ewer over her hands-bent her body to listen to the sounds
presented to her fancy, and hurried to resume the taper where she had left it, that she might with all
speed drag her husband to their chamber.” Her delivery of several lines has become legendary: the
long pause on “made themselves-air,” the sudden energy on “shalt be what thou art promised,” the
association of “my spirits in your ear” with the spirits she has just invoked, and the downward and

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