THE LYCEUM MACBETH
forming a sort of fantastic fretwork against the
fiery sky. A more suggestive glimpse of semi-
barbaric warfare has never been presented on the
stage.
But we do not fully realise what a feast for the eye the revival holds in store until Lady Macbeth is revealed in the person of Miss Ellen Terry. With her two gold-braided ropes of tawny hair descending to her knees, her coif of golden tissue, her green robe covered with a network of metallic beetles'-wing's, her wine- coloured mantle embroidered with large golden lions,and her pale face lit up by deep and enigmatic eyes, she might well have passed for
'The Lady of the Mere, Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.'
From the instant when she began to read her husband's let- ter, holding it in the glow of the warm firelight, we were assured that she would prove the most picturesque of Lady Macbeths, if not the most tragic. Never was assur- ance more amply justified. Miss Terry presented, from first to last, a series of incom- parable pictures. There was scarcely a moment in her performance which an artist would eagerly desire to seize and perpetuate.
The exterior of Macbeth's castle at Inverness is perhaps the happiest scenic effect in the whole pro- duction. The stage represents a sort of platform before the vaulted gateway of the fortress. From its gloomy jaws Lady Macbeth issues, heralded by torchbearers, to greet her royal guest, who enters, not from the 'wing,' but up an inclined plane, which brings him and his suite at once into the centre of the scene. This indication that the for- tress is perched on a rocky summit, approached by a winding path, produces a novel and strikingly natural effect. We feel at once with Duncan, that
'This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses.'
More elaborate, but in my judgment less happily inspired, is the courtyard scene of the second act. It is a grey and sombre quadrangle, from which vaulted corridors open in every direc- tion. In front, on the left, a turret staircase leads to Duncan's chamber, while on the right (as in the cortile of the Florentine Bargello), a straight flight of steps debouches in a cloistered gallery. The whole courtyard is closed in with a flat roof of dark timber a convenient arrangement in some respects, but one which tends to ren- der the scene airless and stifling. Moreover, the artist has not thought out for hiimself, or at any rate has not made comprehensible to us, any consistent scheme of lights. The only visible source of illumination is a small hanging lamp; but miraculous shafts of moonlight break in on every hand, and flashes of light- ning make themselves visible (so far as one can understand) through walls of solid whinstone. Miss Ellen Terry's atti- tudes in this scene are very striking—notably where she clings with out-stretched arms to the turret wall as, dagger in hand, she whispers her determination to 'gild the faces of the grooms.' The confusion after the murder of Duncan is most vividly presented, and here again Miss Terry's commanding figure, 'clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,' stands out in strong relief amid the shaggy and many-coloured rabble of retainers. The banqueting-room of the third act is the only important scene in which Mr. Hawes Craven has had no hand. It is by Mr. T. Hall, who deserves special commendation for the lovely glimpse of sunlit landscape and blue horizon vouchsafed us, at the
