Lady Macbeth, wife of Macbeth, a woman of great ambition and inexorable will. When her husband told her that the witches prophesied he should be king, she induced him to murder Duncan, who was at the time their guest. She would herself have done it, but he looked in sleep so like her father that she could not. However, when Macbeth had murdered the king, she felt no scruple in murdering the two grooms that slept with him, and throwing the guilt on them. After her husband was crowned, she was greatly troubled by dreams, and used to walk in her sleep, trying to rub from her hands imaginary stains of blood. She died, probably by her own hand.—Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606).
“It is related of Mrs. Betterton,” says C. Dibdin, “that though ‘Lady Macbeth’ had been frequently well performed, no actress, not even Mrs. Barry, could in the smallest degree be compared to her.” Mrs. Siddons calls Mrs. Pritchard “the greatest of all the ‘Lady Macbeths;’” but Mrs. Siddons herself was so great in this character that, in the sleep-walking scene, in her farewell performance, the whole audience stood on the benches, and demanded that the performance should end with that scene.
⁂ Dr. Lardner says that the name of Lady Macbeth was Graoch, and that she was the daughter of Kenneth IV.
MacBriar (Ephraim), an enthusiast and a preacher.—Sir W. Scott, Old Mortality (time, Charles II.).
MacBride (Miss), heroine of John G. Saxe’s Proud Miss MacBride, who was even “proud of her pride,” (1850).
Mac´cabee (Father), the name assumed by King Roderick, after his dethronement.—Southey, Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814).
MacCallum (Dougal), the auld butler of Sir Robert Redgauntlet, introduced in Wandering Willie’s story.—Sir W. Scott, Redgauntlet (time, George III.).
MacCandlish (Mrs.), landlady of the Gordon Arms inn at Kippletringan.—Sir W. Scott, Guy Mannering (time, George II.).
MacCasquil (Mr.), of Drumquag, a relation of Mrs. Margaret Bertram.—Sir W. Scott, Guy Mannering (time, George II.).
MacChoak´umchild, schoolmaster at Coketown. A man crammed with facts. “He and some 140 other schoolmasters had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs.”—C. Dickens, Hard Times (1854).