Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 001.djvu/453
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 Shakspeare; 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 before 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 Shakspeare'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.' Shakspeare, 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 reader's time and patience, completely exposes itself in the example of Jaehimo, 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,