“No. 11.—This is known as the ‘Murder Scene.’ I hope it is vast enough....”
It is not the vastness of the scene, nor the huge door leading to the little room where Duncan lies murdered, which can show the terror in Macbeth’s soul at the thought of what he has done, and this terror is the central idea of the scene.
“No. 16.—... As it is there is great need for scenery, and therefore the better the scenery the better for the play....”
These words might be interpreted thus: “The more of Gordon Craig’s scenery the better, because Shakespeare and his actors are very little good without it.” But this is not at all what a producer should say.
“... Her progress is a curve; she seems to come from the past into the present and go away into the future....”
Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth come from her bedroom to speak a soliloquy about past events, and then sends her back to her bedroom. But Mr. Craig seeks to impose another idea upon the attention of the audience, which is not Shakespeare’s idea at all.
“No. 17.—... As the sleeping woman descends the stairway with her lamp, she feels her way with her right hand, touching each figure, lighting them as she passes ... and when she has gone from the scene all life has gone from the figures—once more they have become cold history....”
A pretty idea, but absolutely at variance with the text. Shakespeare restates in this scene what led to the undoing of this unhappy but fascinating woman. Before the murder it was the material side of things only that appealed to Lady Macbeth. She thought it was as impossible for a murdered man to come out of his grave to torment his murderers as it was for a man who died a natural death. The dim consciousness that somehow she was mistaken begins to prove too great a strain for her energetic little brain. It was also her misfortune, because not her fault, that she was without imagination. She was a devoted wife, and possessed sweet and gracious manners; and Shakespeare, in this last scene, in which she appears before the spectators, asks them to pity her because of all that she is now suffering. But what has this throbbing emotion, aroused by the author, to do with these “dead kings and queens” in the cold statuary which has been superimposed by the artist?
Mr. Gordon Craig seems to think that Shakespearian representation at the present moment is unsatisfactory, because of our miserable theatres, with their low proscenium and unimaginative scenery, which cannot suggest immensity! Shakespeare would tell us that the fault lies in our big scenic stages and our voiceless, dreary acting; and two men with such different ideas about the theatre are not likely to prove successful in collaboration.
The Memorial Scheme.[19]