Mrs. Siddons is said to have made the statement that, after playing the part of Lady Macbeth for thirty years, she never read it over without discovering in it something new. In her Remarks, however, on the character, left amongst her memoranda, we do not find any particular depth or originality in her conception, and we doubt if she ever improved much on her first ideal. As to her notion that Lady Macbeth was a small, fair, blue-eyed woman, delicate and fragile, it could have been but a “caprice” of later days, originating in her endeavour to find new readings and impressions.
A short analysis of some of her opinions on the character may be interesting.
“In this astonishing creature,” she says, “one sees a woman in whose bosom the passion of ambition has almost obliterated all the characteristics of human nature; in whose composition are associated all the subjugating powers of intellect, and all the charms and graces of personal beauty. You will probably not agree with me as to the character of that beauty; yet, perhaps, this difference of opinion will be entirely attributable to the difficulty of your imagination disengaging itself from that idea of the person of her representative which you have been so long accustomed to contemplate. According to my notion, it is of that character which, I believe, is generally allowed to be most captivating to the other sex—fair, feminine, nay, perhaps, even fragile—
Fair as the forms that, wove in Fancy’s loom,
Float in light visions round the poet’s head.
“Such a combination only—respectable in energy and strength of mind, and captivating in feminine loveliness—could have composed a charm of such potency as to fascinate the mind of a hero so dauntless, a character so amiable, so honourable as Macbeth, to seduce him to brave all the dangers of the present and all the terrors of a future world; and we are constrained, even whilst we abhor his crimes, to pity the infatuated victim of such a thraldom.
“His letters, which have informed her of the predictions of those preternatural beings who accosted him on the heath, have lighted up into daring and desperate determinations all those pernicious slumbering fires which the enemy of man is ever watchful to awaken in the bosoms of his unwary victims. To his direful suggestions she is so far from offering the least opposition, as not only to yield up her soul to them, but, moreover, to invoke the sightless ministers of remorseful cruelty to extinguish in her breast all those compunctious visitings of nature which otherwise might have been mercifully interposed to counteract, and, perhaps, eventually to overcome, their unholy instigations. But, having impiously delivered herself up to the excitement of hell, the pitifulness of heaven itself is withdrawn from her, and she is abandoned to the guidance of the demons whom she invoked. Lady Macbeth, thus adorned with every fascination of mind and person, enters for the first time, reading a part of those portentous letters from her husband.
“‘They met me in the day of success; and I have learnt by the perfectest report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burnt with desire to question them further, they made themselves into thin air, into which they vanished. Whilst I stood wrapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the King, who all-hailed me “Thane of Cawdor,” by which title before these sisters had saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time with “Hail, King that shall be!” This I have thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.’
“Now vaulting ambition and intrepid daring, rekindle in a moment all the splendours of her dark blue eyes. She fatally resolves that Glamis and Cawdor shall be also that which the mysterious agents of the Evil One have promised.”
Lady Macbeth then gives the wonderful analysis of her husband’s character, “Yet I do fear thy nature is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way”; proving him to be of a temper so irresolute as to require “all the efforts, all the excitement, which her uncontrollable spirit and her unbounded influence over him can perform.”