MR. MACREADY'S MACBETH.

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The Examiner.] [June 25, 1820. MR. MACREADY's Macbeth, which he had for his benefit, and which he has played once or twice since, is a judicious and spirited performance. But we are not in the number of those who think it his finest character. Sensibility, not imagination, is his forte. Natural expression, human feeling, seems to woo him like a bride; but the ideal and preternatural beckon him only at a distance and mock his embraces. He sees no dim, portentous visions in his mind's eye; his acting has no shadowy landscape back-ground to surround it; he is not waited on by spirits of the deep or of the air; neither fate nor metaphysical aid are in league with him; he is prompter to himself, and treads within the circle of the human heart. The machinery in Macbeth is so far lost upon him there is no secret correspondence between him and the Weird Sisters. The poet has put a fruitless sceptre in his hand, -a curtain is between him and the air-drawn dagger with its gouts of blood'; he does not cower under the traditions of the age, or startle at thick-coming fancies.' He is more like a man debating the reality, or questioning the power of the grotesque and unimaginable forms that hover round him, than one hurried away by his credulous hopes, or shrinking from intolerable fears. There is not a weight of superstitious terror loading the atmosphere and hanging over the stage when Mr. Macready plays the part. He has cast the cumbrous slough of Gothic tragedy, and comes out a mere modern, agitated by common means and intelligible motives. The preternatural agency is no more than an accompaniment, the pretended occasion, not the indispensable and all-powerful cause. It appears to us then, that this excellent and able actor, struck short of the higher and imaginative part of the character, and consequently was deficient in the human passion, which is the mighty appendage to it. We thought Mr. Macready in a manner conscious of this want of entire possession of the character. He was looking out for new readings, transposing attitudes and stage effects, trying substitutes and experiments, studying passages instead of reciting them, rehearsing Macbeth, not being it. His performance of it was critical and fastidious: you would say that he was considering how he should act the part, so as to avoid certain errors or produce certain effects-not that he ever flung himself into the subject, and swam to shore, safe from carping objection, and above the reach of all praise. Mr. Macready does not often imitate other actors, but he endeavours not to imitate them, and that's almost as bad. He should think of nothing but his part, and rely on nothing

but his own powers. Singularity is not excellence. If to follow in the track of others shews a servile genius and pitiful ambition, neither is it right to go out of the strait road merely because others travel in it- but still to follow nature is the rule '-John Kemble was the

best Macbeth (upon the whole) that we have seen. There was a stiff, horror-stricken stateliness in his person and manner, like a man bearing up against supernal influences; and a bewildered distraction, a perplexity and at the same time a rigidity of purpose, like one who had been stunned by a blow from fate. Mr. Kean is great only in one scene, that after the murder of Duncan; his acting also consists only in the direct embodying of human passion, and is entirely docked and curtailed' of the sweeping train of poetical imagination. On the evening we saw Mr. Macready's Macbeth Mrs. Faucit played Lady Macbeth, and acted up to that arduous part with great spirit and selfpossession; and Mr. Terry was the representative of Macduff. The only fault of this gentleman's acting is its slowness. The words fall from his lips, like pendent drops from icicles. A speech, as he gives it, is equal to twa lang Scotch miles.' This not only causes a stagnation and heaviness in the sentiments, but often cuts the sense in two. Thus in the exclamation which Macduff utters on hearing of the slaughter of his children, 'Oh Hell-Kite, all?' Mr. Terry paused at the hyphen, as if to take time to think, and by this means made it like an apostrophe to Hell,' adding the other syllable of the word, which determined the meaning and direction of his thoughts, afterwards. Mr. Egerton as usual played Banquo, and makes as solid a Ghost as we would wish to encounter of a winter's eve.

David Rizzio we have not been able to get a peep at: but a friend whispered us that it was poor, and we see it is praised in the New Times!

On Friday Miss Stephens had a bumper for her benefit. The entertainments were the Lord of the Manor, a Concert, and the Libertine. In the first, Mr. Duruset from indisposition, and after making one feeble effort, omitted the songs, by the indulgence of the audience; after that, we do not see why he should be required to go through the rest of the part, for he has not a speaking face.' Jones's Mr. Contrast is a striking, fulsome fop. But he makes foppery not only an object of laughter, but of disgust; and perhaps this is going beyond the mark intended. We would recommend to our readers to go and see Mr. Liston's Moll Flagon by all means. It is irresistible. We may say of it with the poet

'Let those laugh now who never laugh'd before,

And those who still have laugh'd now laugh the more.'

Mrs. Salmon's singing in the Concert was 'd'une pathetique à faire fendre les rochers,'-and Miss Stephens's Echo song seemed sung by a Spirit or an enchantress. We were glad to hear it, for we have an attachment to Miss Stephens on account of 'auld lang syne' (we like old friendships better than new), and do not wish that little murmuring syren Miss Tree to wean us from our old and artless favourite. Those were happy days when first Miss Stephens began to sing! When she came out in Mandane, in Polly, and in Rosetta in Love in a Village! She came upon us by surprise, but it was to delight and charm us. There was a new sound in the air, like the voice of Spring; it was as if Music had become young again, and was resolved to try the power of her softest, simplest, sweetest notes. Love and Hope listened, as her clear, liquid throat poured its delicious warblings on the ear, and at the close of every strain, still called on Echo to prolong the sound. They were the sweetest notes we ever heard, and almost the last we ever heard with pleasure! For since then, other events not to be named lightly here, but thoughts of which can never from the heart'-' with other notes than to the Orphean lyre,' have stopped our ears to the voice of the charmer. But since the voice of Liberty has risen once more in Spain, its grave and its birth place, and like a babbling hound has wakened the echos in Galicia, in the Asturias, in Castile and Leon, and Estremadura, why, we feel as if we had three ears again' and the heart to use them, and as if we could once more write with the same feelings (the tightness removed from the breast, and the pains smoothed from the brow) as we did when we gave the account of Miss Stephens's first appearance in the Beggar's Opera. Life might then indeed 'know the return of spring,'-and end, as it began, with faith in human kind!—

GUY FAUX

The Examiner.]

[November 11, 1821.

GUY FAUX is made into the figure of a scare-crow, a fifth of November bug-bear, in our history. Now that Mr. Hogg's Jacobite Relics have dissipated the remains of an undue horror at Popery, it may seem the time to undertake the defence of so illustrious a character, who has hitherto been the victim of party-prejudice and national spite. Guy Faux was a Popish Priest in the reign of James I., and for his unsuccessful attempt to set fire to the House of Lords, and blow up the English Monarchy, the Protestant Religion, and himself, at one stroke, has had the honour to be annually paraded through the streets, and burnt in effigy in every

town and village in England from that time to this—that is, for the space of two hundred years and upwards. It is sometimes doubtful, indeed, from the coincidence of dates and other circumstances, whether this annual ceremony, accompanied as it is with the ringing of bells, the firing of guns, and the preaching of sermons, is intended more to revive the formidable memory of poor Guy,' or in celebration of the glorious landing of William II., who came to deliver us from Popery and Slavery a hundred years afterwards-two things which Mr. Hogg treats as mere bagatelles in his Jacobite Relics, though they do not appear so in the History of England; and to which the same writer assures us, as an agreeable piece of court-news that the present Family are by no means averse in their hearts!

Guy Faux was a fanatic, but he was no hypocrite. He ranks among good haters. He was cruel, bloody-minded, reckless of all considerations but those of an infuriated and bigotted faith; but he was a true son of the Catholic Church, a martyr and a confessor, for all that. He who can prevail upon himself to devote his life for a cause, however we may condemn his opinions or abhor his actions, vouches at least for the honesty of his principles and the disinterestedness of his motives. He may be guilty of the worst practices, but he is capable of the greatest. He is no longer a slave, but free. The contempt of death is the beginning of virtue. The hero of the Gun-Powder Plot was, if you will, a fool, a madman, an assassin; call him what names you please: still he was neither knave nor coward. He did not propose to blow up the Parliament and come off, scot-free, himself: he shewed that he valued his own life no more than theirs in such a cause-where the integrity of the Catholic faith and the salvation of perhaps millions of souls was at stake. He did not call it a murder, but a sacrifice which he was about to achieve : he was armed with the Holy Spirit and with fire: he was the Church's chosen servant and her blessed martyr. He comforted himself as the best of cut-throats.' How many wretches are there that would have undertaken to do what he intended for a sum of money, if they could have got off with impunity! How few are there who would have put themselves in Guy Faux's situation to save the universe! Yet in the latter case we affect to be thrown into greater consternation than at the most unredeemed acts of villany, as if the absolute disinterestedness of the motive doubled the horror of the deed! The cowardice and selfishness of mankind are in fact shocked at the consequences to themselves (if such examples are held up for imitation,) and they make a fearful outcry against the violation of every principle of morality,

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lest they too should be called on for any such tremendous sacrifices -lest they in their turn should have to go on the forlorn hope of extra-official duty. Charity begins at home, is a maxim that prevails as well in the courts of conscience as in those of prudence. We would be thought to shudder at the consequences of crime to others, while we tremble for them to ourselves. We talk of the dark and cowardly assassin; and this is well, when an individual shrinks from the face of an enemy, and purchases his own safety by striking a blow in the dark but how the charge of cowardly can be applied to the public assassin, who, in the very act of destroying another, lays down his life as a pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and boldness, I am at a loss to devise. There may be barbarous prejudice, rooted hatred, unprincipled treachery, in such an act; but he who resolves to take all the danger and odium upon himself, can no more be branded with cowardice, than Regulus devoting himself for his country, or Codrus leaping into the fiery gulf. A wily Father Inquisitor, coolly and with plenary authority condemning hundreds of helpless and unoffending victims to the flames or to the horrors of a living tomb, while he himself would not suffer a hair of his head to be hurt, is to me a character without any qualifying trait in it. Again; the Spanish conqueror and hero, the favourite of his monarch, who enticed thirty thousand poor Mexicans into a large open building, under promise of strict faith and cordial good-will, and then set fire to it, making sport of the cries and agonies of these deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting the most hardened cruelty with the most heartless selfishness. His plea was keeping no faith with heretics: this was Guy Faux's too; but I am sure at least that the latter kept faith with himself: he was in earnest in his professions. His was not gay, wanton, unfeeling depravity; he did not murder in sport; it was serious work that he had taken in hand. To see this arch-bigot, this heart-whole traitor, this pale miner in the infernal regions, skulking in his retreat with his cloak and dark lanthorn, moving cautiously about among his barrels of gunpowder, loaded with death, but not yet ripe for destruction, regardless of the lives of others, and more than indifferent to his own, presents a picture of the strange infatuation of the human understanding, but not of the depravity of the human will, without an equal. There were thousands of pious Papists privy to and ready to applaud the deed when done :-there was no one but our old fifth-of-November friend, who still flutters in rags and straw on the occasion, that had the courage to attempt it. In him stern duty and unshaken faith prevailed over natural frailty. A man to undertake and contemplate with gloomy delight this desperate task,