"What do you mean?" I asked rather astonished.
"For instance," he replied, "when in the first act the witches say to me:
'All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!
All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!
All hail, Macbeth! thou shalt be king hereafter!'
the stage manager this evening made some noise with a gong and destroyed that moment of great impression, into which Banquo is to murmur:
'Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair?'
Indeed, I had seemed to start, not because of the prophecy, but because of the gong. And Klein who, God knows, is a fine actor, was obliged to speak his words aloud instead of murmuring them. The scene was spoiled. And so it went through the whole evening. The entire tragedy is a tissue of terror, of trembling, of anxious forebodings, of dreadful silence, and it was torn into rags this evening. But the worst of all was the Lady Macbeth."
Poor me! How difficult it seemed to satisfy Mr. Bischoff. I had thought the performance extraordinary. I had been so much impressed by the mysterious way in which the whole thing had been played. At one moment I had not been able to distinguish whether Macbeth had sighed or whether the night wind had howled in the chimney. Everything had seemed to me to be but one soul. When Macbeth after the murder had come and looked at his bloody hands and had muttered:
'This is a sorry sight.'
I had felt as though I had done the deed myself with him. And Lady Macbeth! How dreadful she had been, especially in the dream scene.