Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

BIOGRAPHIA DRAMATICA;

OR, A

COMPANION TO THE PLAYHOUSE:

CONTAINING

Historical and critical Memoirs, and original Anecdotes,

OF

BRITISH AND IRISH

Dramatic Writers,

FROM

THE COMMENCEMENT OF OUR THEATRICAL EXHIBITIONS;

AMONG WHOM ARE

SOME OF THE MOST CELEBRATED ACTORS:

ALSO

AN ALPHABETICAL ACCOUNT, AND CHRONOLOGICAL LISTS, OF THEIR works,
THE DATES WHEN PRINTED, AND ÚBSERVATIONS ON THEIR MERITS:

TOGETHER WITH

AN INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE rise and PROGRESS

OF THE

BRITISH STAGE.

ORIGINALLY COMPILED, TO THE YEAR 1764, BY

DAVID ERSKINE BAKER.

CONTINUED THENCE TO 1782, BY

ISAAC REED, F. A. S.

And brought down to the End of November 1811, with very considerable
Additions and Improvements throughout, by

STEPHEN JONES.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, KEES, ORME, AND BROWN,

T. PAYNE, G. AND W. NICOL, NICHOLS AND SON, SCATCHERD
AND LETTERMAN, J. BARKER, W. MILLER, R. H. EVANS,

J, HARDING, J. FAULDER, AND GALE AND CURTIS.

[blocks in formation]

BIOGRAPHIA DRAMATICA.

MAC

M.

1. THE MACARONI, Com. by Robert Hitchcock, Performed at York. Svo. 1773. It was once acted at the Haymarket.

Farce.

2. THE MACARONI. We are told that such a piece exists in MS. which was written some time between 1770 and 1780, but was, probably, never performed; though the copy which our informant had seen had several passages marked for omission, in the same manner as plays belonging to theatres usually have. Might it not be an abridgment of the foregoing article?

3. MACBETH. Trag. by W. Shakspeare. Fol. 1623. This play is extremely irregular, every one of the rules of the drama being entirely and repeatedly broken in upon yet, notwithstanding, it contains an infinity of beauties, both with respect to language, character, passion, and incident. The incantations of the witches are equal, if not superior, to the Canidia of Horace. The use this author has made of Banquo's ghost, towards heightening the already heated imagination of Macbeth, is inimitably fine. Lady Macbeth, discovering her own crimes in her

VOL. III.

MAC

sleep, is perfectly original, and admirably conducted. Macbeth's soliloquies, both before and after the murder, are masterpieces of unmatchable writing; while his readiness of being deluded at first by the witches, and his desperation on the discovery of the fatal ambiguity, and loss of all hope from supernatural predictions, produce a catastrophe truly just, and formed with the utmost judgment. In a word, notwithstanding all its irregularities, it is certainly one of the best pieces of the very best master in this kind of writing that the world ever produced. The plot is founded on the Scottish history, and may be traced in the writings of Hector Boethius, Buchanan, Holingshed, &c. in Heywood's Hierarchy of Angels, and in the first book of Heylin's Cosmography. The entire story at large, however, collected from them all, is to be seen in a work, in three volumes 12mo, entitled Shakspeare Illustrated, vol. i. The scene in the end of the fourth act lies in England. Through all the rest of the play it is in Scotland, and chiefly at Macbeth's castle at Ins verness.

« ПредишнаНапред »