OBSERVATIONS ON

Macbeth and King Richard III. an Essay, in Answer to Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakespeare; by J. P. Kemble.'

MR EDITOR,

THOUGH arrived at that time of life when men are supposed partial to past times, I will fairly own the superior powers of my countrymen, of the present times, in writing and composition. Yet I may be allowed to remark, that the confidence of publication is at least equal to the abilities, in point of writing, possessed by the present generation. Authorship, formerly a rare and envied distinction, is now so common as to lift a man (I should say a person, for it is now as much a female as a male quality) but little above the mass of men around him; and if we cannot say, with quite as much justice as formerly, "Scribimus indocti doctique,"-for I will own there is more literature among us than our fathers and mothers possessed,-we may at least say, that every thing is published which is written, whether altogether worthy of publication or

not.

I am sorry, that in my opinion the present volume may be classed among those which it might be held unnecessary to publish, because our respect for the author would incline us to wish, that nothing should come from his pen which the public should think unworthy of him. It is indeed an answer to another book or pamphlet of Mr Whately, sanctioned by an editor of eminence, Mr Steevens. But if

[VOL. I.

the former book was " idle and unprofitable," that affords but an inadequate apology for multiplying the offence, by writing another of the same kind.

I am aware, however, that on the subject of which this little volume treats, a book may claim the attention of the public on slighter grounds than on any other topic. SHAKESPEARE is so much the god of British idolatry, that every work relating to him is popular. Hence the numberless critics and commentators who have been read with avidity, not from their own merits, either of learning or of taste, but merely because they criticised or commented on Shakespeare, and, like the scholiasts on Homer, have borrowed an importance from their illustrious subject, with little intrinsic value in their own productions. The works of Shakespeare are, "not to speak it profanely," the Bible of the drama to us. Their commentators, like those of that sacred book, are received with an interest which their subject only could confer on sometimes very dull and frivolous productions. One author of considerable eminence produced an Essay, very similar to Mr Kemble's, to prove the valour of Falstaff. Mr Kemble enters now for the first time the field of authorship, to vindicate the personal courage of Macbeth,-to controvert the degrading distinction which Mr Whately had supposed between that personage and Richard III. The first, according to that critic, "having not intrepidity, like Richard, but merely resolution, proceeding from exertion, not from nature,-betraying, in enterprize, a degree of fear,

though he is able, when occasion requires, to stifle and subdue it."

On this narrow ground Mr Kemble enters the list with Mr Whately, and his second, Mr Steevens, and provided with a great number of quotations from the tragedy, traces the character of its hero from its opening to its close, as one of determined courage and intrepidity,-a courage not excited by exertion to any particular purpose, but native to the person, and an inherent quality in his mind. I think Mr Kemble has made out the point for which he contends; but I feel in the two characters compared, a distinction more marked, in my opinion, and more important, than that on which Mr Kemble has written, with considerable labour, no fewer than 170 pages.

That distinction seems to me to consist, not in any particular quality, such as that of personal courage, but in the original structure of mind of the two persons represented, distinguished by Shakespeare with his usual intimate knowledge of human nature. That knowledge, with which Shakespeare seems gifted in an almost miraculous degree, enables him, beyond any other dramatist, to individualize his characters. There is nothing general, nothing given in the abstract; every character is a portrait, with those marked and peculiar features by which we immediately recognize the individual. Macbeth and Richard are both ambitious; but their ambition is differently modified, by the different dispositions which the poet has shewn them originally to possess.— There is a process, a gradation, in the crimes and ambition of Macbeth; Richard is from the beginning a villain,-a hard remorseless villain,with no restraint but his own interest or safety, acting from the impulse of his own dark mind alone, adınitting no adviser from without, no conscience from within. Macbeth requires a prompter for his ambition, a more than accomplice in his crimes. That prompter, and that accomplice, Shakespeare has given him in his wife; and with his wonted depth of discernment of the peculiar attributes of our nature, he has given her that rapid unhesitating resolution in wickedness, which, in female wickedness, is the effect of the weakness, and the quickly as well as strongly excited

feelings of the sex. In love, in hatred, in ambition, the overbearing passion of the moment quite unsexes them; the most timid become bold, the most gentle fierce, the most irresolute resolved. In the attainment of whatever favourite object, women are much less restrained than men, by reflections on the past, or calculations on the future. Lady Macbeth has none of those doubts or fears which come across the mind of her lord; she looks straight forward to the crown, and sees no bar, from humanity or conscience, in the way.

The developement of Macbeth's character is one of the finest things in that admirable drama. What has been criticised as a barbarous departure from dramatic rule in Shakespeare, in the construction of his plays, affords, in truth, the means of tracing the growth and progress of character, the current of the human mind, in which he excels all other dramatists, much more completely than an adherence to the unity of time could have allowed.The bursts of passion may be shown in a moment; a story may be compressed, at least in its most interesting parts, into very small compass; but the growth, the gradual ripening of character, cannot be traced but in a considerable space of time. We must be led through many intermediate transactions, before such a character as that of Macbeth can be exhibited to us, changed, by steps so natural as to gain our fullest belief, from the brave and gallant soldier whom Duncan honours, into the bloody and relentness tyrant who wades through blood to the throne, and remains steeped in blood to maintain himself there, yet retains enough of its original tincture of virtue (or at least the sense of virtue) and humanity, as to interest us in his fall at the close of a life sullied by every crime, and which, but for the art of the poet, we should devote to pure unmitigated hatred. In truth, the same intimate knowledge of the human heart that enabled him to unwind the maze of Macbeth's former conduct, guides the poet in that softening which he has given to his character in the closing scenes. ing the bustle of the chase of ambition, such feelings have no room to unfold themselves; but if any pause occurs (such as here the death of the Queen) they re-assert the power which

Dur

they originally possessed; and such is the case with this " fiend of Scotland." His nature is not obdurate like that of RICHARD; he looks back on his past life, when he is softened by the sense of that forlorn and deserted situation in which he stands, compared with that of the murdered DUNCAN.

"Duncan is in his grave. After life's fitful fever he sleeps well," &c. "My way of life

Is fallen into the sear and yellow leaf," &c. Hence that scarce unwilling pity which we afford him, abated only, not extinguished, by the recollection of his past atrocities.

Personal regard for Mr Kemble makes me, I confess, unwilling to dwell upon a work which I think unworthy of him. I will only quote one or two passages which fall particularly within the scope of his own profession, as a specimen of the style of the book. "A play is written (says Mr Kemble) on some event, for the purpose of being acted; and plays are so inseparable from the notion of action, that, in reading them, our reflection, necessarily bodying forth the carriage which it conceives the various characters would sustain on the stage, becomes its own theatre, and gratifies itself with an ideal representation of the piece. This operation of the mind demonstrates, that Mr Whately has in this place once more misconstrued Shakespeare; for there is no risk in saying, that the eye of a spectator would turn, offended, from the affront offered to credibility, by the impassive levity of manner set down for Banquo in the REMARKS." Page 53.

This is perfectly just; but we apprehend that the imagination of the reader would go a step higher than that to which Mr K. here conducts it. It is no doubt natural for a person who has often witnessed scenes represented on the stage (it is more particularly natural for Mr Kemble) to refer them to that representation; but a person conversant with men and books, but who had never seen a play, would refer them to the events actually happening in real life, and the language and deportment of those concerned in them, to the language and deportment which, in such real circumstances, they would have held. The ductility of our imaginations, in supposing ourselves spectators of events at Rome or Athens placed be

fore us in the stage, has been often remarked. This scenic deception is of a very peculiar kind; it puts the reality a little way off, but does not altogether hide it from our view. We see Mr Kemble and Mrs Siddons, we know them for Mr K. and Mrs S.; but we judge of and feel for them as Coriolanus and Volumnia. It is an improvement on dramatic representation (which in this place I may mention to the honour of Mr Kemble) to bring the scene before us with all the mechanical adjuncts which may assist the deception. The dress of the performers, the streets and temples of the scene, the statues of the temples, and the furniture of apartments, should certainly be brought as near as possible to the costume and other circumstances belonging to the country and place of the representation; and this is what Mr Kemble, both as an actor and manager, has accomplished, to the great and everlasting improvement of the British stage.

In another passage, Mr K. considers the moral effect of this drama, and contradicts the idea of Mr Steevens in the following passage.

"Mr Steevens says-One of Shakespeare's favourite morals is, that criminality reduces the brave and pusillanimous to a level.'-(Mr Steevens probably meant to say, that criminality reduces the brave to a level with the pusillanimous.)- Every puny whipster gets my sword, exclaims Othello, for why should honour outlive honesty?-Where I could not be honest, says Albany, I was never valiant. -Jachimo imputes his want of manhood to the heaviness and guilt within his bosom.-Hamlet asserts, that conscience does make cowards of us all; and Imogen tells Pisanio, he may be valiant in a better cause, but now he seems a coward. Shakespeare, vol. x. p. 297.

"Is there, among these instances, one that approaches to any thing like a parallel with Macbeth? The sophistry of such perverse trifling with a cader's time and patience, completely exposes itself in the example of Jachimo, who is indeed most unwarily introduced on this occasion. Mr Steevens, for some cause or other, seems determined to be blind on this side; otherwise, he must have seen, if consciousness of guilt be, as he says, the measure of pusillanimity, that, by his own rule.

Jachimo should have been the victor in his combat with Posthumus; for he ought to have been braver than his adversary, in the same proportion as a vain mischievous liar is still less atrociously a wretch than an ungrateful murderer. Mr Steevens concludes: "Who then can suppose that Shakespeare would have exhibited his Macbeth with increasing guilt, but undiminished bravery?' Shakespeare, vol. x. p. 297.

"The only answer to this dogmatical question is,-Every body;-that is, every body who can read the play, and understand what he reads. Mr Steevens knew that Shakespeare, skilfully preparing us for the mournful change we are about to witness in Macbeth, paints in deep colours the irregular fury of his actions, and the remorse that preys on his heart;-he knew, that the blood-stained monster

- Cannot buckle his distemper'd cause Within the belt of rule ;'*that he feels

• His secret murders sticking on his hands;'t and that the poet finishes this terrific picture of self-condemnation and abhorrence, by adding :

'His pester'd senses do recoil, and start When all that is within him doth condemn Itself for being there :'+

"But the learned Editor quite forgets that, in the same scene, good care is taken that the tyrant shall not so far forfeit all claim to our esteem, as to fall into contempt, and be entirely odious to our sight. His original valour remains undiminished, and buoys him up with wild vehemence in this total wreck of his affairs in spite of us, he commands our admiration, when we see him-hated, abandoned, overwhelmed by calamity, public and domestic, still persist, unshrinking, to brave his enemies, and manfully prepare against the siege with which their combined armies threaten him in his almost ungarrisoned fortress :-

Cath. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies ;'§And the English general presently after says to him :

Siw. We learn no other, but the confident tyrant

Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure Our sitting down before it.'||

Macbeth, Act V. Scene II. + Ibid. Ibid. § Ibid. Ibid. Act V. Scene IV.

Shall e'er have power on thee.Then fly, false Thanes,

And mingle with the English epicures : The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear, Shall never sagg with doubt, nor shake with fear!'+

But the moral effect of this play seems very little connected with the courage or personal valour of Macbeth; it is produced by the delineation which the poet has given of the progress of his criminal ambition; to warn us against the first deviation from rectitude, the first yielding to. temptations arising from

our self-interest or desire of advancement, if our road to such objects lies through crime and inhumanity; to

Mr Steevens' edition has, for an ob vious cause, been used in the quotations from Shakespeare from this Essay: It is time, however, to protest, in the strongest terms, against the unwarrantable liberties he continually takes with his author. If Heminge and Condell were, in fairness, chargeable with all the faults which Mr Steevens, their unsparing censor, industriously lays to their account, still they have not done Shakespeare all the injury he would receive, if the interpolations, omissions, and transpositions, of the edition of 1803 should ever be permitted to form the text of his works. This gentleman certainly had many of the talents and acquirements expected in a good Editor of our poet; but still he wanted more than one of the most requisite of them. Mr Steevens had no ear for the colloquial metre of our old dramatists: it is not possible, on any sical desire, and the pains he takes, to fetter other supposition, to account for his whimthe enchanting freedom of Shakespeare's numbers, and compel them into the heroic march and measured cadence of epic versification. The native wood notes wild, that could delight the cultivated ear of Milton, must not be modulated anew, to indulge the fastidiousness of those who read verses by their fingers.'

+ Macbeth, Act V. Scene III.