Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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as having pale faces, and in the first notice of The Saturday
Review the act-ending is prciocd PS "one of the most exciting
and successful feats of scenic illusion ever achieved upon the
stage". To a number of observers it seemed that the degeneration
in Macbeth had begun too early:
The climax of -nhysicnl tension is surely
reached when Llacbeth staggers to the foot
of the winding ctnirco.se 1 OP cling to Duncan's
ch.iimber; and here, thanks to I/ir Irvinr's unrivalled
mastery of the terrible, his acting
could not be surpassed.
But The Saturday Review thought the sustaining of this mood
incongruous, and censured Irvinc's delivery of the apostrophe
to deep "in the broken and gasping accents of a man under
the influence of mortal affright". Archer noted that Irving
excelled Min most of the conversational passages, and in such
speeches as the dagger soliloquy, where the verse is, so to
speak, short-winded and hesitating". He was "sadly to seek"
in passages requiring "melodious smoothness or rushing
resonance". According; to The Pall Mall Ga ette, Irving 1 s
delivery of the dagger soliloquy was good until he reached the
line "There's no cuch thing". At this point the prompt copy
indicates a "long sigh":
It ic a bloody business which informs
Thus to nine eyes.
Irving looked "again and again" to nuke sure the dagger was
no longer visible.
The Saturday ^eyiew noticed tlir.t Ellen Terry delivered
"Had lie not resembled/j'y father c.s he slept..." in a tone
that conveyed almost an "irnr.tierit contempt for her ov/n ;;cr>l:-
ness", and that this, the one line of tenderness in mor.:t
performances of the prrt, h d become the cruelest in the new
reading. After the discovery of the crime, Lady Macbeth
fainted and was carried out ("Help me hence, hoj" - "Look to
the lp.dyJ w ) and the act-ending was rearranged, to co^duc^
with Mc.cbeth's proposal to meet and investigate the murder,
rather than ,,ith the nlrmc of "Donalbaln and Malcolm to flee.
Like iiuuay nineteenth contury i: curtrinrj" the effect of this
alteration is ctr.tic: the ori^iiir 1 onpharjises the movcr.ient