University of Toronto Schools - Twig Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

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T H E Macready brought forth the kingly, upright man, wasting away from the fear of the evil enveloping him. Carrick and Kean pre- sented the man as full of fiery vigour, but awed by the suggestion of the supernatural, -combining the fear of the weird sisters with the physical fury inspired by terror. Phelps showed the man in terror of fate and the future. Booth managed to express all the fears, but, it seems, from a purely poetic standpoint. lrving excelled, as we have said, in the expression of intellectual struggle, and must therefore have been most of the supernatural, the internal evil, and the future. effective in the scenes depicting fear Superstition, or fear of those things which are beyond human understanding, has been of his- Third incor- This belief, of course, made it impossible for a powerful agent in the construction tory. Until the time of George the witches were thought to exist, and to porate the tempting evils of the world. people to understand that evil is a part of every human being,-an internal, not an external force. For this reason they could not gather from the play the ultimate func- tion of the weird sisters as an enemy within the fortress. Edmund Kean, in l8l4, was the first to realize this. I'll have the witches played properly, he said. Previously they had been accustomed to sweep on and off the stage in the voluminous skirts of the day, with lace caps, mittens, and muffs. Kean changed their appearance, their style of act- ing, and their atmosphere, thus restoring them to their proper place as the embodi- ment of the subconscious mind. This is the first of Macbeth's apprehensions. The second is fear of the evil in himself. The renowned Fanny Kemble has said: From the first scene of the play till the last the wounded soul of Macbeth writhes and groans over its own deterioration. lrving's performance illustrated this remarkably well. Obviously one must either despise or fear that which he hates. Macbeth hates the evils in himself which prompted these crimes: but he cannot despise them for the T 49 WIC reason that they are able to overcome him. He can and does fear them. Before the fear of the future could over- take Macbeth he must have become a com- plete villain. Whether the change from a good man to a knave is possible or not, we must discover. The English commentator Dowden doubts whether such a radical transformation could take place in any man, but such changes occur. Liquor, for one, may effect that change: and Macbeth was partaking of a much more intoxicating drink. He drained to its glittering depths the poisoned chalice of Ambition. According to the play the Thane was a fine man at the beginning of the action. l-le is referred to as brave Macbeth and Bellona's bride- groom. l-le was not, as lrving wrote in his published pamphlet ftotally at variance with his performancej, a poet with his brain and a villain with his heart .... l-lypocrite, traitor and regicide, he threw over his crimes the glamour of his own poetic, self-torturing thought. This theory is, of course, utterly wrong. If we do not accept at the start the presence of good in Macbeth, there can be no struggle between good and evil in the man, and the whole structure of the play topples. What, then, turns Macbeth from a hero into an utter knave? It is the same power of evil which drew the Irish Cuchulain forth to his death, wooed by half-truths and indefinite prophecies. It is the fear-inspiring recognition of one's own sin. Present also, however, is the fear the Thane bears for material things which show him up as a rogue and which will not let him escape the realities of his crime. The Ger- man authority Gervinus suggests that Mac- beth Was far behind his times: that he re- sented the advancement and culture of the English: that he was a warrior, pure and simple, and would have lived splendidly three or four hundred years earlier. Here we have a man whose sympathies are with a Wilder, less intellectual age ffrequent mention of the good old days is found in his speechesl, possessed of a hypersensitive imagination, and morally weak, opposed by

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THE TWIG have seen nothing better for vigour and vivid effect. Phelps concentrated on con- tinuous activity, we are told, and an ex- treme comparison between imagination and reality. The great American actor, Edwin Booth, gave faccording to William Winter? na clear and smooth performance, presenting a dis- tinct study of fiend-inspired, compulsory criminality. lnherent majesty and military dash appear to have been the basis of his interpretation, and fto quote Winter again, he gave a study of fine imaginative and poetic sensibility. Sir Henry lrving, whose career closed one chapter of the history of the theatre only to open a new and better one, presented what has been judged the finest performance of Macbeth seen within the last century, ranking equally perhaps with Garrick's. He was an astute business man, and published beforehand a pamphlet cleverly contrived to stimulate argument. ln his performance, however, lrving made no attempt to follow out his theory, which will be discussed later on. He was accounted supreme as an actor when interpreting intellectual struggle or the conflict of the will with an uncontrollable force, as such, his interpretation of Macbeth must have been superlative. Many actors since lrving have assumed the role, notably Richard Mansfield, Robert Mantell, Sir Herbert Tree, Edward H. Sothern, and more latterly Lyn Harding and Charles Laughtong but few have added new ideals or business to the part. We have come to the end of our history, and it now remains to gather together the essences of the various presentations and discuss the identity of the man Macbeth. We find that the keynote of all the inter- pretations is fear. Ambition may indeed be the prompter of the first few incidents, but the play is undoubtedly a study in fear, as it affects Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, Malcolm and Macduff. If Macbeth is purely ambitious, why does he say: lf chance will have me king, why chance may crown me Without my stir? An ambitious man would have entertained no such thoughts. If ambition is the central passion, why does the author introduce the witches? Why did he not make Macbeth the slave of ambition as he does Richard the Third? Macbeth throughout the play is a slave of fear. At the beginning it is the fear fostered by superstitution: i'Banquo: Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair? When the superstition develops it becomes a fear of those forces which are gradually devouring his being: i'Macbeth: l am afraid to think what l have done: Look on't again l dare not. When he avowedly assumes the cloak of a villain, it is a fear of the future, a fear of the fate which he knows he cannot cheat: i'lVlacbeth: fhaving been told that none of woman born shall harm him? Then live, Macduffg what need l fear of thee? But yet I'll make assurance doubly sure And take a bond of fate. Thou shalt not liveg That l may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, And sleep in spite of thunder. And when at the last he realizes that the forces of evil have duped him completely, a wild, inane bravado superimposes itself on his moral cowardice, as in Antony and Cleopatrau: U ........ To be furious ls to be frightened out of fear, and in that mood The dove will peck the estridgef' Each of the actors mentioned excelled in the expression of one at least of these fears. Betterton, Kemble and, to a certain extent,

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THE T WIC the internal fear of evil and the vivid, reali- ties of a time to which he does not belong. The victor is apparent. It is because we see that Macbeth is fighting a losing battle that we can find some sympathy fand we doll for a man who is a hypocrite, traitor and regicidef' colcl to all suffering but his own. This earthly terror, as distinct from the supernatural, was accentuated in the per- formance of Samuel Phelps in 1847, who even went so far as to accept literally the stage direction at the end of the play, and introduce the gory, dripping head of Mac- beth stuck on the end of a pike. The fear which drives Macbeth to final desperation and insane fury is the last and most overwhelming. The Thane was a powerful man physically, or he could not, when fighting Macdonwald, have . . . . unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, And f1x'd his head upon our battlementsf' Although his frame was somewhat worn down by events, at the end of the play he is still powerful enough to overcome several assailants before he tackles Macduff. This strong physique combined with a mind nearly mad with fear produces an individual who little thinks what he does, but struggles blindly and frantically in a last effort to de- feat the fate which has so cunningly de- ceived him. This frantic, drowning, desper- ately pathetic wreck of a man is the last pic- ture we behold of Macbeth. It was so beautifully illustrated in the performances of particularly Carrick, Kean and Booth, that the audiences are said to have wept at the death of Hmad Macbeth. He was broad and sincere, superstitious and imaginative, strong yet weak: suscept- ible to flattery, because he was poetic: of average intelligence, leaning heavily on his wife's ability: vigorous, hopelessly romantic, -don't you recognize him? He is you or I. He is the infinite every- body. He is the most complex and yet the 50 most simple of human beings. He is mor- ally weak faren't we all?J, and circum- stances combined to make him the object of Fate's ironic whim. He is the pitiful result of internal struggle lost to the enemy. His only hope is despair. His courage is com- pact of fears. He is alone. He will be alone, The Pay-Off M. FINN NTHONY KRUGER practiced black- mail. He possessed a certain cold, pasty perfection of features that might be taken for handsomeness. This rather doubt- ful attribute, an expensive wardrobe, and a railroad ticket constituted the elegant gentleman's entire substance. Until now he had enjoyed a certain smug safety, but the inevitable slip had occurred, a determined father was after him, and five thousand dol- lars had automatically been subtracted from Kruger's income. ln the second room of his cheap hotel suite he was busily packing his apparel, his only claim to membership in the social world that had been his hunting-ground. The feverish haste of this operation betrayed the shallow bravado in the creature who cowed women but could not face a man. He was pale, his hands trembled. The small amount of poor blood in his veins would not flow freely. When danger came, he was not a stag at bay, but a hyena trapped against a wall. Kruger crammed the last shirt into a shabby portmanteau, and glanced about the place that had served as lodgings for the past two months. He switched off the lights in the bedroom, and, picking up his hat and coat, turned to leave. As his hand reached for the handle of the door, the knob was slowly moved from without. A quiet and dignified old man stepped into the room. His words were almost whispered- lVlr. Kruger?