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Unit 9: Macbeth: History and its Impact on 18th and 19th Century

decisive inflection on “We fail.” Siddons imagined the character as a fragile and delicate blonde Notes
who subdued Macbeth by the dual exercise of intellect and beauty, moved by the memory of her
father and the babe to whom she had “given suck.” She achieved every part of the role except the
blonde fragility, which was beyond her stately, statuesque appearance.
William Charles Macready proved a workmanlike Macbeth in his revival of 1837, which featured
new scenic effects and innovative staging. John Bull recorded his admiration of the scene in which
the murder of Duncan is discovered, and the march of the army from Birnam Wood. “In the latter
each man was completely screened by the immense bough he carried; and the scenic illusion by
which a whole host was represented stretching away into the distance, and covered as by one leafy
screen, which was removed at the same time that the soldiers in the foreground threw down theirs,
had all the reality of a dioramic effect.” Macready himself made memorable several moments: his
imperious command to the witches-”Stay and speak,” his desperate recoil from Banquo’s ghost, the
dropping of his truncheon on hearing that Lady Macbeth is dead, his half-drawn sword over the
messenger who announces the approach of Birnam Wood, and the remarkable energy of the fight
in which he died.

Illustrate that William Charles Macready proved a workmanlike Macbeth in his revival
of 1837, which featured new scenic effects and innovative staging.
Samuel Phelps (1804-1878) is credited with removing the last vestiges of adaptation from Macbeth
during his management of Sadler’s Wells between 1844 and 1862. Unlike his contemporaries, who
rearranged the play to avoid scene shifts and made drastic cuts to allow scope for spectacle, Phelps
made only minor cuts and transpositions.
Charles Kean and his wife Ellen Tree staged a spectacular, long-running Macbeth at the Princess’s
Theatre in 1853, famed for its historically accurate scenery and costumes. Kean apparently turned
in a performance considerably less ferocious than his wife’s. The Leader reported, “When the witches
accost him, his only expression of ‘metaphysical influence’ is to stand still with his eyes fixed and
his mouth open ... In Charles Kean’s Macbeth all tragedy has vanished; sympathy is impossible,
because the mind of the criminal is hidden from us. He makes Macbeth ignoble, with perhaps a
tendency towards Methodism.”
The last great pair of the 19th Century were Henry Irving and Ellen Terry at the Lyceum Theatre in
1874 and later in 1889. Terry’s Lady Macbeth was less fearsome than sympathetic, according to The
Times. “Her matted red hair, hanging in long tresses and her ruddy cheeks mark her as a raw-boned
daughter of the North, and she wears an appropriate dress of garish green stuff embroidered with
gold. There is nothing of the martial or adventurous spirit in her composition to bring her into
harmony with her barbarous surroundings. On the contrary, she is a woman of warm sympathies
living in the tenderest relation with her husband.”

The 20th Century has seen numerous great revivals, especially Orson Welles’ “Voodoo”
Macbeth at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem (1936), Margaret Webster’s famous production
with Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson (1941) which set a standard for decades to come,
and Glen Byam Shaw’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre production with Laurence Olivier and
Vivien Leigh (1955). Kenneth Tynan argued that in the role of Macbeth Olivier “shook hands
with greatness,” and proclaimed the performance “a masterpiece: not of the superficial,
booming, have-a-bash kind, but the real thing, a structure of perfect forethought and
proportion, lit by flashes of intuitive lightning.”

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