The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-04-25 00:00:00

no womanl

band, no pleased terror at the thought of his past dan-
gers.' We must, however, beg to observe, that she shews
what she knows to be far more gratifying to her husband
at that moment, the most eager and passionate sympathy
in the great master wish and purpose of his own mind. In
this epistle, be it well observed, after announcing to her
the two-fold prediction of the weird sisters, and its partial
fulfilment, he concludes :—` This have I thought good to
deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness ; that thou
mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant
of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart,
and farewell.' Can anything more clearly denote a tho-
rough union between this pair, in affection as well as am-
bition, than that single expression—My dearest partner
of greatness ? And, seeing that his last words to her had
contained the injunction to lay their promised greatness to
her heart as her chief subject of rejoicing, are not the first
words that she addresses to him on their meeting, the
most natural, sympathetic, and even obedient response to
the charge which he has given her

" Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor !
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
Thy letters have transported me beyond
The ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.'

" We do maintain that there is no less of affectionate
than of ambitious feeling conveyed in these lines—nay
more, that it is her prospect of his exaltation, chiefly, that
draws from her this burst of passionate anticipation,
breathing almost a lover's ardour. Everything, we say,
concurs to show that, primarily, she cherishes the scheme
of criminal usurpation as his object—the attainment of
which, she mistakingly believes, will render him happier
as well as greater.
" She is fully aware, indeed, of the moral guiltiness of
her husband's design —that he would wrongly win •'
and of the suspicion which they are likely to incur, but the
dread of which she repels by considering, What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power into ac-
count ?' Nor is she inaccessible to remorse. The very
passionateness of her wicked invocation, Come, come,
you spirits,' &c., is a proof of this. We have not here
the language of a cold-blooded murderess—but the vehe-
ment effort of uncontrollable desire, to silence the ' still,
small voice' of her human and feminine conscience. This
very violence results from the resistance of that milk of
human kindness' in her own bosom, of which she fears
the operation in her husband's breast.
" Of religious impressions, indeed, it should be care-
fully noted that she seems to have even less than her
husband. _ . . . _

---..-.
" On the other hand, it is plain that she covets the
crown for her husband even more eagerly than he desires
it for himself. With as great or greater vehemence of
passion than he, she has none of his excitable imagination.
Herein, we conceive, lies the second essential difference of
character between them ; from whence proceeds, by neces-
sary consequence, that indomitable steadiness to a pur-
pose on which her heart is once thoroughly bent, which so
perfectly contrasts with the incurably fluctuating habit of
mind in her husband. She covets for him, we say, the
golden round' more passionately even than he can covet
it for himself—nay, more so, it seems to us, that she
would have coveted it for her own individual brows. Free
from all the apprehensions conjured up by an irritable
fancy—from all the horrible imaginings' that beset Mac-
beth—her promptness of decision and fixedness of will are
proportioned to the intensity of desire ; so that, although
he has been the first contriver of the scheme, she has
been the first to resolve immovably that it shall be carried
into effect.

" Fearing that his nature' may shrink at the moment
of execution, she determines, if necessary, to commit the
murder with her own hand. Hence her invocation to the
spiiits that tend on mortal thoughts,' to unsex' her,
&c. ; and hence that part of her reply to Macbeth's an-
nouncement of Duncan's visit :
" He that's coming
Must be provided for : and you shall put
• This night's great business into my despatch;
• Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom !
. . . . Only, look up clear—
To alter favour ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me.

" But now it is that all his previous apprehensions of
odium and of retribution rise up to his imagination against
the deed, in more terribly vivid and concentrated array ;
to oppose which he feels within him no positive stimulant
but that of pure ambition. This finally proves insufficient;
and he falls back to the counter-resolve, ' We will proceed
no further in this business.' But he finds, immovably
planted behind him, sarcastic reproof from the woman
whom he loves, if he loves any human being ; and, which
makes it most formidable of all, from the woman who, he
knows, devotedly loves him. Her exordium is fearful
enough :

" Was the hope drunk,
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time,
Such I account thy love.'
" Then comes the bitter imputation of moral co-
wardice :

" Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour,
As thou art in desire,' &c.
" And his effort to repel the charge—
' " I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none'—
only serves to bring upon him, most deservedly, the wi-
thering and resistless retort :
" What beast was it, then,
That 'mute you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man ;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both :
They have made themselves—and that their fitness now
Does unmake you.'
_ _

" No longer daring to plead his fear of public opinion,
Macbeth now falls back upon his last remaining ground of
objection, the possibility that their attempt may not
succeed—

" 'lf we should fail ?'—
Her quiet reply, ' We fail,' is every way most character-
istic of the speaker—expressing that moral firmness in
herself which makes her quite prepared to endure the con-
sequences of failure—and, at the same time, conveying the
most decisive rebuke of such moral cowardice in her hus-
band as can make him recede from a purpose merely on
account of the possibility of defeat—a possibility which,
up to the very completion of their design, seems never
absent from her own mind, though she finds it necessary
to banish it from that of her husband :

" ' But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.' "

This view of the two characters is obviously the most
poetical, and certainly the most natural ; and, in our in-
terpretation of the great dramatist's works, we must ever
remember his fidelity to nature. It is borne out, more-
over, by the subsequent events of the piece. The mad-
ness of Lady Macbeth is unaccountable, if we are to view
her as the undaunted, imperious woman pourtrayed by
Mrs. iddons ; and the subsequent crime into which Mac-
beth so recklessly plunged, from no instigation of hers,
and even without her knowledge, is equally unaccounta-
ble, if we are to regard him as the originally amiable man,
whose first step in guilt was taken to gratify the ambition
of the proud woman whom he loved. Miss Faucit's
reading is natural throughout. The madness of Lady
Macbeth is caused by the weight of remorse pressing upon
her own mind, when she sees that all her self sacrificing
efforts to sustain his spirits are made in vain ; and that,
having given up, to gratify his self-ambition, her own soul
—having aided to embark him in guilt—he is bent upon
rushing through an ocean of blood.
It is, of course, a somewhat difficult matter from a
mere reading to arrive at the same just conclusion as to
the interpretation of the text of any play, as when we see
it acted, so much is always left by the dramatist to be
filled up by the action and expression of the player. So
far, however, as we could gather, Mrs. Butler entertains
similar views to those which are above given as those of
Miss Helen Faucit. Her Lady Macbeth was a womanly
being, with a determination to achieve the subject which

her more irresolute husband would " wrongly win,"
whilst be paused at the effort to win, yet full of the fine
sensibilities of her sex, when not strung up to the
contemplation of the deed which had to be done. One
of the finest points, illustrative at once of the natural
gentleness of her sex, and of the feeling which drove
her to outrage it by the murder of Duncan, was her ren-
dering of the passage beginning, " I have given suck, and
know how tender ties," &c., which elicited hearty an-

plause. The scene with Maclieth before the banquet was
also in accordance with this view of the character. Her
rendering of the part of Macbeth was equally fine; and
generally true to nature.

The sleep-walking scene of Lady Macbeth was a beau-
tiful delineation, worthy of the admiration which it re-

a c:iticai autilenc,

and the celebrated aid-

Amin 25, 1848.

logue between Ross and Macduff—in which the latter is
informed of the slaughter of his wife and family—was given
inimitably. The concluding exclamation of Macduff,—
" What ! all my pretty ones ! all—all--
" The chickens and the dam at one fell swoop ?" .
was perfectly electrifying.

The time -and space -at our disposal forbids anything
like a perfect criticism of this performance. We must
say, however, that it satisfied us—that the laurels
which Mrs. Butler has won in these readings
have been well earned—and that the public have rich
treats in store in the readings which have to follow. We
could point to many detached passages and scenes, which
we have never before heard so beautifully given, and
which could only have been so given by one possessed,
like this gifted lady, not only with the highest gifts of the
actress, but also with a mind thoroughly and intrinsically
Shakspearian. Amongst the audience present we noticed
his worship the Mayor, Elias Arnaud, Esq., and many of
the leading merchants of the town, by whom and by the
whole of her hearers Mrs. Butler was most cordially
received, and very frequently cheered throughout her
arduous task.