Punch (96.1889)

January 19, 1889.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

33

PULL FLOQUET! PULL BOULANGER!

LAMBS AT THE LYCEUM.

Ix is worth while recording what views Charles and Mary Lamb
took of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in their delightful Tales from
Shakspeare:—

“ Macbeth had a wife, to whom he communicated the strange prediction of
the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad, ambitious
woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared
not much by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purpose of Macbeth,
who felt compunction at the thought of blood, and did not cease to represent
the murder of the king as a step absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of the
flattering prophecy.”

Then of Lady Macbeth's reception of Duncan, which as a part of
Miss Ellen Terry’s performance I selected for especial praise last
week, the innocent Lambs say:—

“ The King entered, well pleased with the place, and not less so with the
attentions of his honoured hostess, Lady Macbeth, who had the art of covering
treacherous purposes with smiles : and would look the innocent flower, while
she was indeed the serpent under it.”

Is not this Miss Ellen Terry’s rendering to the very life of this
particular scene ?

The Lambs’ Tales were written for our innocent lambkins, and it
is from this charming collection that so many of us, when children,
have learnt the plots of Shakspeare’s plays, and the character of
the persons who figure in them. Without making further quotation,
I recommend the re-perusal of their story of Macbeth.

If Miss Terry has considered the Lambs’ work as mere child’s
play, I should advise her to read it over carefully, for there is so
much in their view of Lady Macbeth's character which so entirely

accords with a part of her own view of it, and so much which her
genius will at once adopt as representing the stern and repulsive
side of the character. Miss Ellen Terry has conceded too much to
her own sweet, natural self. She has made one “ blend” of Beatrice,
Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth, in which the awful characteristics of
the last have been toned down. Lady Macbeth, say the Lambs,
“ reproached him with his want of firmness,” and, as 1 observed last
week, after witnessing the first performance, this infirmity of purpose
is the keynote to Macbeth's character and to that of his wife. I am
delighted to find myself corroborated in every particular by the
gentle but judicial Lambs. Jack in the Box.

On a Statesman’s Voice.

{By an Anti-Gladstonian.)

The remnant of a Voice ! Naples indeed
May make that once fine organ whole and hearty ;
If not, the remnant of a Voice may lead
The remnant of a Party.

How the Poor Live.

“From hand to mouth,” says someone. Alas! that is, in many
cases, just how they do not live. For the multitude of hands deprived
of work have little indeed to carry to the mouths so often empty of
food. When they can really live from hand to mouth they live in
comparative comfort._

The Teetotaller’s Friend.—Phylloxera.