20 
LAND 6? WATER 
October M, 1918 
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By W. J. Turner 
THIS week I have made a discovery. I have been 
to a remarkable pkiy, not at any West End 
theatre, but at the Royal Victoria Hall, Waterloo, 
known to Dickens as the "Coburg." and to most 
Londoners to-day as the "Old Vic." I had heard 
that this was the only theatre in London at present where 
you could expect to see a first-class play, but I had never 
had an opportunity of going. This week I felt I simply 
could not stand another of the dramatic farces I had been 
seeing in the West End lately, so suddenly, about seven 
o'clock last Monday evening, I determined to go to the 
"Old Vic," and run the risk of something interesting being 
done that night. I was not disappointed — far from it — 
for I saw one of the finest plays I have seen in my life. I 
arrived late, the play had already started, and I was unable 
to get a programme. The scene on the stage when I took 
my seat appeared to be the interior of some mediaeval castle, 
and there was a woman seated alone reading a letter. She 
was speaking when I came in, and I noticed that the play 
was in verse. As I sat down, a messenger entered, and said : 
The King comes here to-night, 
and she exclaimed, startled : 
Thou'rt mad to say it ! 
Just ten short words, and an atmosphere tense and expectant 
had been created ! I settled down, feeling instinctively 
that I had made a discovery at last. The messenger goes 
out, and the lady of the castle, whose husband is bringing 
the King as a guest for the night, exhorts herself to have 
no mercy but to seize this heaven-sent opportunity to kill 
the King, and thus get the crown for her husband. In spite 
of some fine lines such as : 
The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of the King 
Under my battlements. 
the effect of this passage was rather flat, through a tendency 
to rant on the part of the actress and a certain undramatic 
over-abundance of words in the expression of the author. 
The King presently arrives with her husband, the Thane 
of Glamis, to give him his recently acquired title, and after 
being made welcome, the household retires for the night. 
There is now a short scene between the Thane and his wife, 
during which the Thane momentarily shrinks from the idea 
of murdering the King, from whom he has received so many 
benefits, but has his reluctance swept away by his wife's 
confident plan : 
His two chamberlains 
Will I with wine and wassail so con\^nce 
That memory the warder of the brain 
Shall be a fume. . . . 
Then follows a beautifully written scene. It is night, we are 
in the courtyard of the castle. A man and a boy cross the 
courtyard : , ' 
How goes the night, boy ? 
Boy : The moon is down ; I have not heard the clock. 
They enter the castle, and the Thane comes out obviously 
distracted as the moment for the murder draws near. This 
scene was finely acted ; the Thane's growing horror of what 
he was about to do, due to his being a man of imagination, 
and not merely a callous brute, began to work upon the 
audience, and we sat stiff, scarcely breathing, in our seats 
as we heard him murmur : 
Thou sure and firm-set earth 
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear 
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout. . . . 
A bell strikes ; it is the pre-arranged signal. The Thane 
goes up into the King's apartments, and his wife comes out 
of the castle and waits for him in the courtyard. He 
descends again : 
She : My husband ! 
He : I have done the deed. — Didst thou not hear a noise ? 
She : I heard the owl scream and the cricket cry. 
He : When ? 
She: . Now. "!"«• '» 
He : As I descended ? 
She : Ay. 
He : Hark ! 
Then follows a marvellous passage : 
He : One cried "God bless us" and, "Amen," the other : 
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands. 
Listening their fear I could not say "Amen" 
When they did say, "God bless us!" 
She : Consider it not so deeply. 
He : But wherefore could not 1 pronounce "Amen" ? 
1 had most need of blessing, and Amen 
Stuck in my throat. 
She : These deeds must not be thought 
After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 
He : Methought I heard a voice cry : "Sleep no more ! 
Glamis hath murder' d sleep. . . ." 
The effect of this was extraordinary ; it is wonderful enough 
to read, and it is a thousand times more wonderful in the 
theatre. 
The murder is discovered ; but as the King's sons take to 
flight, suspicion falls on them, and Glamis is made King. 
In the next act we are at ji banquet in the King's palace ; 
and the King, having since committed a second murder in 
the effort to secure his throne, imagines he sees the ghost 
of the murdered man in his empty place at the table : 
the times have been 
That when the brains were out the man would die 
And then an end ; but now, they rise again. . . . 
One remarkable touch in this fine scene— a scene which gives 
a wonderful opportunity for acting and holds the audience 
like a spell, which it is literally — is the King's amazement 
when the ghost disappears at the calmness of the Queen : 
Can such things be, 
And overcome us like a summer's cloud 
Without our special wonder ? You make me strange 
When now I think you can behold such sights 
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, 
Wlien mine are blanched with fear. 
This was not well done by Mr. Ernest Milton, who took the 
part ; it demanded a change of key, which he failed to graspr 
But though lacking in subtlety, his acting was essentially 
sound. The King is a highly emotional and imaginative 
man, and casts the spell of his imagination over the whole 
'play ; it is what gives the play its extraordinary intensity, 
and this imaginative intensity was thoroughly realised and 
expressed by Mr. Ernest Milton, and the rest of the cast had 
caught the spirit so that there was not a single part that 
jarred the harmony. 
In the next act the scene is in the neighbouring kingdom, 
where one of the leading nobles has fled, fearing that he will 
be the next to be sacrificed to the King's fear and ambition. 
He tries to persuade the son of the old King, also a refugee, 
to take up arms and lead a rebellion to save .his unhappy 
country from the bloodthirsty madman that now rules it. 
In the midst of his appeal a messenger comes to tell him 
that, enraged at his escape, the King has sacked his castle 
and murdered his wife and all his children. The unhappy 
man at first breaks down completely (the part was well acted 
by Mr. Geo. Barran), then sets off with the old King's son 
to destroy the tyrant. 
The last and finest scene of all is a tour deforce of dramatic 
art which reminds one in its gradual, cumulative effect of 
the finest climaxes of Wagner. The King is sitting in his 
castle when the news comes of the approaching army, his 
retinue is alarmed, but he, a prey to grief and dgspair, 
exclaims : 
I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd. 
Give me my armour. 
They prepare for battle, when an officer rushes from the 
Queen's apartments and announces that the Queen is dead. 
Then follows a passage marvellous to read in solitude by the 
fireside, but in the theatre turning one's blood to fire and ice. 
I have no space to quote it here, but even that is not the 
chmax. There is an old prophecy that the King is safe until 
Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. A messepger rushes, 
terrified, in, and shrieks that the wood begins to move. The 
King puts on his helmet to go out to fight, exclaiming : 
There is no flying hence nor tarrying here. 
I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun. 
Shouting with excitement, I went out of the theatre, and 
the name of this play, reader, was Macbeth. 
