"MACBETH AND HIS WIFE."

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 5134, 28 November 1903, Page 15

"MACBETH AND HIS WIFE."

Address delivered by Hr Finlay as President of tiro Shnkospoarc Society:— "Macbeth” is above all thing® a tragedy of ambition and conscience. A bravo and generous ivituro, not without Titanic grandeur, becomes envenomed and brutalised by listening to the evil counsels of ambition and wiirrenderiug to tho que.npliloss passion of a wife for a sovereign place and power. A Kublirno picture of what a woman’s matchless courage and fixity of purpose can achieve as agencies of ovil. For Duncan’s murder was in truth her work. Sho did not deal tho blow but it was her invincible spirit alone that flogged her husband to tho act. 'This was not a oa.se of that meanest of male makeshifts, ‘Tho woman tempted me.” To him sirs was nono of "the innocent flower with the- serpent under it.” No soft insidious feminine agacerio beguiled him to tho murder, but tho wltip of scorn, tho taunt of cowardice and tho imperious force of her undaunted mettle. To appreciate her part in tho assassination ouo must remember the nature of tac instrument upon which sho played. Of what fibre was Macboth composed? An intelligent woman's own private and confidential estimate of her husband's character —especially when time has blenched it of tjrc rainbow hues -of the wooer—is perhaps as near his real character as it is possible to get. Unfortunately, these estimates are rarely communicated to their subject, and Lady Macbeth’s measure of her spouse is given only in a soliloquy. . His nature, she says, was this:— ‘To full o’ the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou would’si bo great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it. What thou would’st highly That wonid’st thou holily—would’st not play false And yet would’st wrongly win— Hi thee hithor. That I may pour my spirits in thino oar And chastise with the valour of my tongue Al 3 that impedes thee from tho golden wound AVhioh fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crowned withal.” No wheedling for her. None of those recognised feminine methods by which men are so often led egregiouslly by the nose, whilst flattering themselves they aro having their own royal way. I do not say that she could not play the charming Chatelaine, the dedicate soft spoken woman who picturesquely fainted on even hearing of Duncan’s murder. She was a consummate actress. His face, she tells Mm, is too frank. “A book where men may read strange matters.” to-iie, on the other hand, could to beguile the time—look like the time, boar welcome in her eye—her hand, her tongue—“ Look like the innocent flower but bo the serpent under it.” But art or duplicity of that kind could never have induced Macbeth to murder Duncan. She knew her man and knew that was noli, the treatment he wanted. To screw him up to the right pitch and enable him to bend up each corporal agent to the terrible feat, she must pour her spirits in his ear and chastise bom from Ms mind with valour of her tongue, all the compunctious visitings of nature which shook his purpose. She was not a virago of Amazonian build and boldness, for the fiery scorn and biting taunts, with which she answers his announcement that he will proceed no further with the murderous plot, are deliberately employed as a necessary means to the end in, view. She was still acting her part, and bore in mind the nature upon which she was playing. Macbeth was a valiant soldier, a bravo man, who took delight in battle face to face with worthy foeman. There was none of logo’s -relentless malignity in him, for he could truly say that “ though in the trade of war X have slain men, yet do X hold it very stuff o’ the conscience to do no contrived murder.” His wife charges him with being a coward, but he was a coward from conscience, not from fear. He was reflective and imaginative. He tastes tho terrors of remorse while yet the deed is afar off, and dreads “ the bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.” Before Ms mind’s eye rises a spectre of the coming murder in all its horror, ingratitude and cruelty, and his gathering purpose dissolves in reflection. Possessed of such a nature as Ms, he finds ho has “no spur to prick the sides of Ms intent but only vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself and falls on the other.” So, like Hamlet aryl many others, he discovers that “Thus Conscience doth make cowards of us all And thus the native hue of resolution Is sickbed p’er with the pale cast of thought And enterprise of great pith and moment . . . lose the name of action. Hamlet had the Ghost to prick the&ides of his intent; but a ghost has nothing like the same chance of getting his own igaty as a headstrong wife with a good command of language. Lady Macbeth finds her husband—if resolved at all—resolved to abandon the assassination, and she applies the wanting spur with a vigour which simply goads him into action. Tho air-drawn dagger scene depicts the tension to which he has been screwed, under which the heat-oppress-od, half-demented brain produces halbicinntipns of the knife d-nd blood of the impending inurder. Macbeth, whose trade Was that of a soldier killing men in fair fight, found this foul purpose driving hun to madness. He awaits his

wife’s signal for the deed —the ringing or tiro be!!—-in gha&tly reflectims. and goes upon the summons will) the wueLul word® "I go. and it is done —tho bell in.Hear ir nor, Duncan, ior :t is a knell Time smnmaiiij tlieo to heaven or to hell.” The murder over, the tension reiaxed. mni ilaebeth grows bewilcerqf! ' V!i -l* t; 1 * enur-mity of lus crime; lost purely in bis tiioiigbts, hidden by his wr.o, as il he wore a child, and hue a. few moments after the (uomblo act—-repenting »ts tommis-ico. Then, as if impelled by a fury lu foilov.s a career of bioojL in whicii lus earlier generosity and nobility of cliaraoter steadily disappear, leaving bim a friendless, cruel miserable mv.ii, with nothing but the courage of a brute—"Nemo reponte fit turpissiauis” —and bis demoralisation can be traced from the murder onwards until bo himself declares—“l am in blood Stepped in so far that should I wade no more lie-turning wore as tedious as gofc’cr.” Finally wo find him tho almost pathetic moral ruin or a groat nature, due partly to hr® own weak craving for .Royal honours, but mainly to tho pernicious power of a passionately ambitious resolute wife. And what manner of woman was she? Her character has all the complexity which accompanies a strong, dauntless imud and a rudimentary imagination. She was not without affection. She loved her husband, her chiVl and her father, but such iove was but as water to the strong wuro of her passion to bo' Queen. She was essentially a. woman of action. She was not "afcared to be tho same in her own act and valour as she was in her desire,” be it what it may. To her tho luxury of life was the triumph of purpose; deeds, not words. Bub ho who knew human nature almost aa well as Shakespeare told. us that the man who acts is always wanting in conscience, for conscience springs from pausing to reflect. 'Hu® maxim of Gothe's is iu its proper application prnlotiudly true. Tlie man whoso nature and life are vigorously active preduors some callosity on the conscience as well as ou the cuticle, and it is for this reason, I suppose, women are commonly more conscientious than men. Reflection. however, is a phase of imagination; tnii'T ouo who is destitute of all imagination is, like tiro lower animals, destitute of moral souse. To Lady Macbeth’s mind, tho murder seomod to call up nono of the horrors her husband felt. To liar “the slocp&iig and the dead were but as pictures.” No terrors of fancy prevented her from going to the murdered Duncan and am oaring tho grooms’ daggers with bis gore. Tho bloat! upon her hands war; blood and it was nothing more—colour which a little water would remove and so clear her from tho deed. Tho first suggestion of killing the King was to Macbeth such a horrid imago as " to unfix his hair, and make his seated heart knock at Iris ribs against tlua uso of Nature.” To him it was a horrible imagining, but to her it provoked no qualm, mo. ghostly picture of the bleeding Duncan,—no vision of a da.ggor “ with blade and dudgeon smeared wit h gouts of blood ” ; no p-lay of imagination to awake her conscience, but a prompt .determination to act—- “ Come, thick night, And pall thee in tho dmmest smoke of hell, That my keen knife soo not tho wound

ib makes. Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry, iiold I hold 1” Omco resolved, sho never ■warm's. Through the business of the murder and its sequel she gags as self-possessed and calmly as a Catherine dp Medici. Was sho of the nature of that historical murderess? Surely not., or we would scarcely have had the sleep-walking scene in the fifth act or the thick coming fancies which kept hor from her rest. Lady Macbeth had some conscience, paralysed in her designs upon the Crown by her impetuous energy, Iter imperious determination and • her restless passion of ambition. Time brought the dreadful Nemesis. Sho and her husband oould well say—later on:— “Better to bo with the dead, Whom wo to gain onr peace have sent to peace, Than on the torture of the mind to He In restless ecstaoy.” In the bitter school of experience sho learnt that tho glory for which she steeped her hands in blood was but a wraith and that justice had for her “no sweet oblivions antidote to cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff wliicb weighed upon her heart” and killed her. Is there anything in all literature at once so sublimely awfu-i end eo pitiful as that scene in which she asleep reveals to us the mental tortures that brought hor to her death? One’s pity almost extinguishes the fire of his resentment against her, and leaves him with confused emotions before the mystery of human nature.

“Did you have any mal-de-mer. when you were crossing to come home?” “No; .1 was too sick to have anything.” She —“Papa is going to settle a million on ns.” Tito Boron—“ That’s well. Now I can give you a suitable allowance.” - Copper money in Franco is to be gradually replaced this year by aluminium bronze pennies of a pale yeljow colour. The true secret of preserving the voice, says Madame Patti, is not to force it and not to sing when one ought not to. When Miss Ada Crossley was holding a concert in Cleveland, Ohio, during her recent tour of the United Statea,_ she found a little girl of seven engaged in an excited argument with the man in tho box office just before the opening of the show. “What is it, little girl," asked tho vocalist. "I want to see Miss Crossley, ’* replied the child, “but this feller won't sell me a ticket for lesser'r. half a dollar, so I guess I'll have to quit hearing her sing.” The Australian's eyes watered at the pathos of the poor little girl denied the musical treat to which she had been looking forward, and taking her by the hand she led her into the theatre and gave her a front seat. “Then you have been saving up oil your money to come and hear me sing,” she said, when sho had explained her identity to the child. “No, Miss, not exactly that; but yon see mum’s a W.C.T.U., and I got to save up all the cents I get for tho Chinese mission. But as yon came along just, when I'd got about 45 cents, I thought it was up to me to have a good time* and let the Chinks wait for salvation. They’ done a long while without, and it won’t hurt ’em to wait a little longer," Some idea of the groat advancement in random electrical effects nrd stage lighting will bo witnessed in tho "Dam" scone in "A Alidu=mmer Night’s Dream,” wherein the breaking of day is mast faithfully and realistically depicted. Miss Lillian Digges has Isffc Australia for England. She will appeal- in xiapfA; mime at Christmas.