Kemble is said to have done this "as boldly and suddenly as if he had been shot." When people complimented him upon his unsuspected agility, he would answer: "Nay, gentlemen, Mr. Boaden has exceeded all compliment upon this feat of mine, for he counselled me from Macbeth to 'jump the life to come.'" "It was melancholy," comments Mr. Boaden, recording the success of the play, "to see the abuse of such talents;" and then he adds the remarkable opinion: "It is only in a barn that the Cato of a company should be allowed to risk his neck!"
Against "The Castle Spectre" the critics, of course, raised their voices. Its popularity was viewed with much bitterness and jealousy. "The great run the piece had," writes the reverend author of "The History of the Stage," "is a striking proof that success is a very uncertain criterion of merit. The plot is rendered contemptible by the introduction of the ghost." "I hope it will not be hereafter believed," cried Cooke the actor, "that 'The Castle Spectre' could attract crowded houses when the most sublime productions of the immortal Shakespeare could be played to empty benches." A dispute arising in the green-room of the theatre between Lewis and Sheridan, Lewis offered to bet all the money which the play had brought that he was in the right. "No," said Sheridan, "I can't afford to bet so much as that; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll bet you all it's worth." Still, there was no cavilling down the play. The stage ghost was triumphant. He had attained his apogee. "The Castle Spectre" remained a stock piece for years, and has even appeared upon the stage in quite recent times.
Formerly the public had been satisfied with a very prosaic ghost. A substantial figure, with a whitened face, and a streak of red paint on his brow, was thrust through a trap-door, and it was held that all had been done that was necessary in the way of stage illusion. The ghost of Hamlet's father was frequently attired in a suit of real armour borrowed from the Tower. There is a story of a ghost thus heavily accoutred, who, overcome by the weight of his harness, fell down on the stage and rolled towards the foot-lights, the pit raising an alarm lest the poor apparition should indeed be burnt by the fires of the lamps. Barton Booth, the great actor in the time of Queen Anne and George I., is said to have been the first representative of the ghost in "Hamlet" who wore list shoes to deaden the noise of
his footsteps as he moved across the stage. In the poem of "The Actor," by Robert Lloyd, the friend of Churchill, published in 1757, we have an explicit description of the treatment of ghosts then in vogue upon the stage, with special reference to the ghost of "our dear friend" Banquo:
But in stage customs what offends me most
Is the slip-door, and slowly rising ghost.
Tell me—nor count the question too severe—
Why need the dismal powdered forms appear?
When chilling horrors shake the affrighted king,
And guilt torments him with her scorpion sting,
When keenest feelings at his bosom pull,
And fancy tells him that the seat is full;
Why need the ghost usurp the monarch's place,
To frighten children with his mealy face?
The king alone should form the phantom there,
And talk and tremble at the vacant chair.
Farther on the poet discourses of the ghosts in "Venice Preserved," of which mention has already been made:
If Belvidera her loved lost deplore,
Why for twin spectres burst the yawning floor?
When, with disordered starts and horrid cries,
She paints the murdered forms before her eyes,
And still pursues them with a frantic stare,
'Tis pregnant madness brings the visions there.
More instant horror would enforce the scene
If all her shudderings were at shapes unseen.
It may have been due to Lloyd's poem, and to the opinions it expressed and obtained favour for, that when Drury Lane Theatre opened in 1794 with a performance of "Macbeth," the experiment was tried of omitting the appearance of Banquo's ghost, and leaving its presence to be imagined by the spectators. The alteration, however, was not found to be agreeable to the audience. While granting that Mr. Kemble's fine acting was almost enough to make them believe they really did see the ghost, they preferred that there should be no mistake about the matter, and that Banquo's shade should come on bodily—be distinctly visible. Further, they were able to point to Shakespeare's stage direction: "Enter the ghost of Banquo, and sits in Macbeth's place." Surely there could be no mistake, they argued, as to what the dramatist himself intended. In subsequent performances the old system was restored, and in all modern representations of the tragedy the phantom has not
failed to be visible to the spectators. Nevertheless Banquo's ghost remains the crux of stage managers. How to get him on? How to get him off? How to make him look anything like a ghost—respectable, if not awful? How to avoid that distressing titter generally audible among those of the spectators who cannot suppress their sense of the ludicrous even in one of Shakespeare's grandest scenes? Upon a darkened stage a ghost, skilfully attired in vaporous draperies, may be made sufficiently impressive, as in "Hamlet," for instance. The shade of the departed king, if tolerably treated, seldom provokes a smile, even from the most hardened and jocose of spectators. But in "Macbeth" the scene must be well lighted, for the nobles, courtiers, and guests are at high banquet; and the ghost must appear towards the front of the stage, otherwise Macbeth will be compelled to turn his back upon the public, and his simulated horror will be absolutely thrown away; if the actor's face cannot be seen, his acting, of necessity, goes for little or nothing. Even in our own days of triumphant stage illusion, it must be owned that the presentment of Banquo's ghost still remains incomplete and unsatisfactory; but where such adroit managers as Mr. Macready, Mr. Charles Kean, and Mr. Phelps (to name no more) have failed, it seems vain to hope for success. Pictorially, Banquo's ghost has fared better, as all who are acquainted with Mr. Maclise's "Macbeth" will readily acknowledge.
A curious fact in connection with the Banquo of Betterton's time may here be noted. Banquo was represented by an actor named Smith; the ghost, however, was personated by another actor—Sandford. Why this division of the part between two performers? Smith was possessed of a handsome face and form, whereas Sandford was of "a low and crooked figure." He was the stage villain of his time, and was famed for his uncomely and malignant aspect; "the Spagnolet of the stage," Cibber calls him; but it is certainly strange that he should therefore have enjoyed a prescriptive right to impersonate ghosts.