1V1ACBETH — MR. KEAN — RECOLLECTIONS OF KEMBLE.

Mn. KEAN'S Macbeth is a failure, partially redeemed by some beautiful passages and one well-acted scene. On comparing the ideas derived from a study of the poet with the image conjured up by the recollection of the actor, the first are found in no respect adequately embodied by the other: and the result is scarcely more .satisfactory, when the state of the feelings, after a perusal of the drama, is contrasted with that in which they are left by the fall of the curtain.

There is not a play of SHAKSPEARE'S that presents so long a career and so close a continuity of action as Macbeth. Each step in guilt, and each successive change of passion, are clearly and deeply eneTaven, from the moment in which bad ambition first conceives the treason to the bloody doom by which it is finally avenged. There are dangerous aspirations, criminal broodings, wicked incitements—of dwmons that sport with human guilt, and of a worse dwmon in the shape of one beloved, visions, por- tents—phantoms of a mind meditating murder, midnight assas- sination, horror, compunction, dismay, suspicions, racking dis- quietude, murder on murder—vain efforts of a mind made des- perate by guilty fears, to achieve security through blood, high courage undermined by consciousness of guilt, and leaning for sup- port on an infernal agency, doubts, misgivings, the worthlessness confessed of all for which the unhappy man has bartered his " eternal jewel," sad anticipations, virtuous reminiscences, vain remorse, sickness of heart, weariness of existence, and no comfort but in the idea of a charmed life, which yet is clung to rather from instinct than preference, and of which it would be a mercy to be deprived. After travelling through a drama thus replete with an incessant throng of consecutive emotions, the reader, when he looks back on the career of his imagination, seems in the com- pass of an hour to have lived a whole eventful life ; and partly realizes BYRON'S idea of a moment prolonged by a crowd of fast- springing recollections into years :— "For in that moment o'er his soul

Winters of memory seem to roll, And gather in a drop of time A youth of hope—an age of crime."

At once the most moral and the most terrible of dramas, could it be represented with a force at all corresponding to that with which it is written, Macbeth would make the stoutest hearts quail, the hardest feel, and send the most careless sadder and wiser home.

Mr. KEAN, in his most vigorous days, never produced a tithe of the effect which an adequate representation of the part is cal- culated to produce. He can start at an air-drawn dagger, look piteously and ruefully on his blood-stained hands, defy a ghastly apparition in the desperation of phrensy, subside into melancholy, lapse into tenderness, represent many things forcibly by look, say many things with touching and beautiful effect, and act many parts severally with great ability ; but he wants elevation of mind and strength of imagination to identify himself with the character generally ; and, Macbeth in only a few of the most- palpable and prominent passages, he is everywhere else, i. e. in nine points out of ten, simply Mr. KEAN. Somebody once in JOHNSON'S hearing observed that the reason why GaniiicK acted Richard the Third so much to the life was, that during the performance he actually conceived himself to be Richard; to which the sage is said to have responded—" Then DAVY deserves to be hanged every night he acts Richard." Not- withstanding this summary sentence of one who was not too severe a moralist to talk often from spleen or for effect, it may be ob- served, that unless an actor can " force his soul to his conceit," and unless his conceit amounts to almost self-imposition, though he may do many things well, and please often by look and accent—action and recitation, he will never produce the complete illusion which is the triumph of the dramatic art, and which, where the subject is ardu- ous and profound, is one of the greatest efforts of human genius. And as for the morality of brooding on images of guilt, and con- ceiving the force of criminal passions and guilty terrors, we may say, in the words of a greater and better man than JouNsoat- " Evil into the mind of God,

Or man, may come or go, so unapproved It leave no stain behind."

If SHAKSPEARE'S Macbeth was ever seen embodied, it was so seen in the person of JOHN KEMBLE; and this miracle of the stage was the achievement of a great mind assisted by a laborious study —philosophical as well as professional—of the character; a course of preparation for which, we surmise, Mr. KEAN never had either industry or aptitude. KEMBLE did not contemplate the part like a mere player considering what passages might be made to tell; and, content with an occasional triumph and the production of isolated impressions, walk through the rest with little or no en- deavour to express the less obvious traits which give individuality to character. He studied the part minutely and profeundly, in all its bearings, and under all its aspects. He strove to 'conceive the full force of the passions which successively agitate it, and the modes in which they discover themselves in the outward man. He was laboriously careful to accommodate every look, tone, and ges- ture to the instant feeling of the moment; and by his management of them to discriminate the minutest variations of sentiment and passion. The result of this combination of genius with reflection and discipline was, that, whether from long brooding on the cha- racter he entered feelingly into the part, and fell naturally into the very tone and demeanour proper to it under all circumstances—or, from long practice was able, by look and accent, artificially to paint every successive feature with unerring certainty,—or whether, as is most like, both sympathy and art co-operated in working the wonder,—it is certain that, in its effect on the house, his repre- sentation of Macbeth fell little short of absolute identification. If he did not impose upon himself, he mightily imposed on the audi- ence; who, through all his tremendous career of blood-guiltiness and horror, followed Macbeth with almost the same intensity of eye and ear, the same absorption of the senses, and the same wrought- up feelings, with which they might have contemplated some actual assassin, could they, in like manner, have seen him conceiving the crime—hesitating--perpetrating the deed—dismayed by avenging terrors—stung with remorse—sighing from his soul, "0 that I. had!"— living within the shade of the retributory scaffold, and finally succumbing to the fate he was too desperate and too wretched to seek to avoid.

That we may not seem to write from recollections on which the fancy has been playing off its tricks, or, from over fondness for the departed great, to exaggerate the merits of a work of genius that lives only in the memory of a generation who themselves will soon live only in memory too, we shall adduce the authority of an ad- mirable dramatic critic in the Quarterly Review; whom we con- ceive—and surely there can be no mistaking that "fine Roman hand"--to be Sir WALTER SCOTT. The passage, after cleverly discriminating between the style of GARRICK and that of KEMBLE, proceeds to draw the latter as he appeared at a memorable moment of the performance we have been considering, with a force and a truth akin to that with which the actor himself drew Macbeth.

"The bold and effective manner of Garrick, touching on the broad

points of the character, with a hand however vigorous, could not at all compare with Kemble's exquisitely and minutely elaborate delineation of guilty ambition, drawn on from crime to crime, while the avenging furies at once scourge him for former guilt and urge him to further enormities. We can never forget the rueful horror of his look, which by strong exer- tion he endeavours to conceal, when on the morning of the murder he receives Lenox and Ill aerie' in the antechamber of Duncan. His first ef- forts to appear composed, his endeavours to assume the attitude and ap- pearance of one list:ming to Lenox's account of the external terrors of the night, while in fact he is expecting the alarm to rise within the royal apartment, formed a most astonishing piece of playing. Kemble's coun- tenance seemed altered by the sense of internal horror, and had a cast of that of Count Ugolino in the dungeon, as painted by Reynolds. When Macbeth felt himself obliged to turn towards Lenox, and reply to what he had been saying, you saw him, like a man waking from a fit of absence, endeavour to recollect at least the general tenour of what had been said ; and it was some time ere he could bring out the general reply, "Twas rough night.'" Of all SHAKSPEARE.S bloody bad characters, that of Macbeth is the most mixed and the most profound : it is, therefore, the one that especially demands the sort of close metaphysical investiga- tion with which KEMBLE studied it. Macbeth is bloody, but not remorseless. He can do deeds of darkness, but he cannot murder and banter in a breath. He is no Richard, whose conscience, stu- pilled by habit and seared by a life of crime, awakens only in dreams. By night and by day compunction and horror assail him ; and when he is not haunted by the spectres of his victims, he is persecuted by the more hideous spectres of his conscience". A Richard, pursuing his course without &filer remorseful retrospec- lions or fearful forebodings,—a truculent, hardened villain, dealing in jest and sarcasm and irony and simulation,—who sweeps men from life as you remove obstacles in your path,—is much more easily conceived and expressed than a person wavering betwixt temptation and honour—guilt and remorse—misgivings and confi- dence—relentings and desperation. The advantages which Klan- /3LE derived from a superior mind, a liberal education, fine taste, love of his author, and a passion for his art, wholly undebased by the mercenary feelings so fatal to excellence in every pursuit that requires elevation of mind,—enabled him. to surpass all competi-

tion in parts which lay beyond the reach of mere professional skill and superficial observation. •

Added to this, KEMBLE was by nature as eminently fitted for the part of Macbeth as Mr. KEAN is eminently unfitted. The murderous usurper is not wholly without a something that looks like virtue; and as his crimes spring from instigations unusually strong, and are redeemed, in some measure, by the self-inflicted tortures of his conscience, he is regarded not without compassion. At the same time, his courage however cowed by guilt, and his bold bearing under extremities, his capability of loving something —even a she-wolf, and of regretting the innocence he had forfeited, procure him a portion of respect. In midst of his ruminations on an intended deed of "dreadful note "—in the very acme of a bloody conception, there is a smack of virtue ;—he would spare his xvife the °Mit of being privy, before its commission, to the murder he contemplates—

Be Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed."

On the whole, our feelings towards him have somewhat of the re- lenting which the kindliness of BURNS has breathed even in an ode to the Devil.

"Then fare you weel, auld Ah ! wad you tak a thought and mend, Ye aiblins might ; I'm wae to think upon your den E'en for your sake."

The actor, who would do justice to the part, must follow up these hints of the author, and labour against all the odds of blood- .,

eatiltiness and treachery, to establish Macbeth's feeble claim to commiseration. The god-like form of KEMBLE, his heroic features, dignified port and benevolent air, conspired powerfully, with the little latent virtue extant in the character, to work on your com- passion. So noble a creature—whose nature, till wrought on by ill daanons, and debased by the sin by which even Lucifer fell, was lofty as his form—so irretrievably lost I—the heart bled for him—it was like a second fall of man,— " And whatsoever cunning fiend it was

That wrought upon thee so preposterously, H'ath got the voice in hell for excellence.'

When he came, full of melancholy and breathing vain regret, to bewailhimself "fallen into the sear, the yellow-leaf," and to express so deep a sense of the forlornness of an age unaccompa- nied by—what he "must not look to have"—" honour, love, obedience, troops of friends," but followed in their stead, by "Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not—" in that moment stern justice turned aside her head, and pity stole unreproved into the breast. The feeling which the fall of KEMBLE'S Macbeth left predominant was one of satisfaction—sad, but not vin- dictive ;—he fills a bloody grave, as a blood-stained usurper should, but he died with "harness on his back," like a warrior as he was ; he has paid the forfeit due to crime, but he has escaped the igno- miny which he feared worse than death ; they may" hew him as a carcase lit for hounds," but he has found—what he envied in the victim of his ambition—repose ; and "after life's fitful fever, he sleeps well, . . . NOTHING CAN TOUCH HIM FURTHER:. • Such were the sensations which accompanied the fall of the erring, guilty, atrocious, bloody, but yet brave and lofty Macbeth of KEM13LE. What felt the SPECTATOR, the other night, when the curtain fell on Mr. KEAN ? He felt that the gas was very noxious, that the house was disagreeably hot, and that the glaring lamps, and noise, and pestilential fumes, would be well exchanged for moon-light, silence, and the "caller air."

* The Macbeth of Ducts is so given up to guilty terrors and remorse, that when the crown is profferedhirn, and he puts forth his hand to clutch it, he starts back as though Duncan 's ghost had interposed between the murderer and his prize. We saw it played at Havre by a Frenchman who made a very craven or the daring Scot; and whose face and action expressed as much loathing and nausea, as if he had not only shed Duncan's blood, but also quaffed it. Poor Madlle. Orcoaos, who enacted Lady 31acbeth, was so put to it to sustain her craven husband, that her pale, fat, ca- pacious visave,• as the sweat trickled down it, reminded you of the waxen busts which the wicked Capidias of old used to expose to the fire, that as they melted, SO the bullies of those they represented might pine sway.