Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Humane Statute and the Gentle Weal: Historical Reading and Historical Allegory
- Macbeth’s Knowledge
- ‘The Grace of Grace’ and Double-Talk in Macbeth
- Remind Me: How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?
- Taking Macbeth out of Himself: Davenant, Garrick, Schiller and Verdi
- ‘Two truths are told’: Afterlives and Histories of Macbeths
- Doing All That Becomes a Man: The Reception and Afterlife of the Macbeth Actor, 1744–1889
- Macbeth and Kierkegaard
- Monsieur Macbeth: from Jarry to Ionesco
- The Politics of Sleepwalking: American Lady Macbeths
- Macbird! and Macbeth: Topicality and Imitation in Barbara Garson’s Satirical Pastiche
- Mick Jagger Macbeth
- ‘The Zulu Macbeth’: The Value of an ‘African Shakespeare’
- ‘A Drum, a Drum – Macbeth doth come’: When Birnam Wood moved to China
- The Banquet of Scotland (PA)
- Scoff power in Love’s Labour’s Lost and the Inns of Court: Language in Context
- Mercury, Boy Yet and the ‘Harsh’ Words of Love’s Labour’s Lost
- Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More and Asylum Seekers
- Hal as Self-Styled Redeemer: The Harrowing of Hell and Henry IV Part 1
- Mr Hamlet of Broadway
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2003
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles January–December 2002
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare in Performance
- 3 Editions and Textual Studies
- Books Received
- Index
Doing All That Becomes a Man: The Reception and Afterlife of the Macbeth Actor, 1744–1889
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
- Frontmatter
- Humane Statute and the Gentle Weal: Historical Reading and Historical Allegory
- Macbeth’s Knowledge
- ‘The Grace of Grace’ and Double-Talk in Macbeth
- Remind Me: How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?
- Taking Macbeth out of Himself: Davenant, Garrick, Schiller and Verdi
- ‘Two truths are told’: Afterlives and Histories of Macbeths
- Doing All That Becomes a Man: The Reception and Afterlife of the Macbeth Actor, 1744–1889
- Macbeth and Kierkegaard
- Monsieur Macbeth: from Jarry to Ionesco
- The Politics of Sleepwalking: American Lady Macbeths
- Macbird! and Macbeth: Topicality and Imitation in Barbara Garson’s Satirical Pastiche
- Mick Jagger Macbeth
- ‘The Zulu Macbeth’: The Value of an ‘African Shakespeare’
- ‘A Drum, a Drum – Macbeth doth come’: When Birnam Wood moved to China
- The Banquet of Scotland (PA)
- Scoff power in Love’s Labour’s Lost and the Inns of Court: Language in Context
- Mercury, Boy Yet and the ‘Harsh’ Words of Love’s Labour’s Lost
- Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More and Asylum Seekers
- Hal as Self-Styled Redeemer: The Harrowing of Hell and Henry IV Part 1
- Mr Hamlet of Broadway
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2003
- Professional Shakespeare Productions in the British Isles January–December 2002
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare in Performance
- 3 Editions and Textual Studies
- Books Received
- Index
Summary
MACBETH AND THE GHOST OF SUCCESS
The reputations of performers and performances have a marked tendency to ossify in the afterlife. The starting point for this discussion of the memory of six Macbeth actors is an assertion made by A. R. Braunmuller in the introduction to his Cambridge edition of the play. Braunmuller writes: ‘David Garrick’s performances as Macbeth were supported by those of Hannah Pritchard as Lady Macbeth – he effectively abandoned the rôle after her retirement – and he remains perhaps the only English actor to have conquered the part.’ There is some virtue in that ‘perhaps’, but the fundamental sentiment invites controversy. As if to substantiate his claim, Braunmuller continues:
Almost two centuries later [after Garrick], a distinguished critic succinctly praised and faulted Laurence Olivier by comparing him to Garrick: ‘Since it would seem that with the exception of Garrick a great Macbeth has never been in the calendar, it is reasonable to expect that the new one should be lacking in adequacy.’
That distinguished critic was James Agate responding to Olivier’s performance in 1937 and Braunmuller’s citation affords a good example of how habits of thought are reinforced through intertextual reiteration. The authority of Agate’s verdict and its value as evidence are not questioned, despite the fact that what Agate (like Braunmuller) knows of Garrick’s Macbeth is only, can only be, via the body of texts the performance generated.
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- Information
- Shakespeare SurveyAn Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production, pp. 81 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004