when Garrick first played Macbeth there were good reasons why the reform to be introduced by Macklin at a later date could not be attempted.  Mr. Jackson, the actor from Edinburgh, who wrote a history of the Scottish stage, records that, being engaged at Drury Lane, he had resolved to make his first appearance in the part of Young Norval, in the tragedy of “Douglas.”  He writes:  “I had provided for the purpose, before I left Edinburgh, a Highland dress, accoutred cap-a-pie with a broadsword, shield, and dirk, found upon the field of Culloden.  But here, as usual, fresh impediment arose Lord Bute’s administration, from causes unnecessary here to enter upon, was become so unpleasing to the multitude, that anything confessedly Scotch awakened the embers of discussion, and fed the flame of party.  Mr. Garrick therefore put a direct negative at once upon my appearance in ‘Douglas;’ ‘Oroonoko’ was substituted in its place; for even to have performed the play of ‘Douglas’ would have been hazardous, and to have exhibited the Highland dress upon the stage, imprudence in the extreme.  Could I have supposed, at that period,” asks Mr. Jackson—­his book bears date 1793—­“that I should live to see the tartan plaid universally worn in the politest circles, and its colours the predominating fashion among all ranks of the people in the metropolis?” What with the predisposition of the audience in favour of the conventional court suit, and afterwards their prejudice against the Scotch, on account of the ’45 and Lord Bute, Garrick could hardly have assumed tartan in “Macbeth.”  A picture by Dawes represents him in the battle-scenes of the play as wearing a sort of Spanish dress—­slashed trunks, a breastplate, and a high-crowned hat!

Macbeth, indeed, was never “dressed” agreeably to the taste of antiquarian critics, until the ornate revivals of the tragedy by Mr. Phelps, at Sadler’s Wells, in 1847, and by Mr. Charles Kean, at the Princess’s Theatre, some five years later.  The costumes were of the eleventh century on each of these occasions, Mr. Phelps’s version of the play being so strictly textual, that the musical embellishments, usually attributed to Locke, but in truth supplied by Leveridge, were discarded for the first time for very many years.  Lady Macduff was restored to the list of dramatis personae, from which she had so long been banished, and the old stage direction in the last scene—­“enter Macduff with Macbeth’s head upon a pole,” was implicitly followed.  But these revivals were a consequence of earlier reproductions of Shakespeare, with rigid regard to accuracy of costume, and general completeness of decoration.  John Kemble had taken certain important steps in this direction, and his example had been bettered by his brother Charles, under whose management of Covent Garden, “King John” was produced, the costumes being supervised by Mr. Planche, and every detail of the representation receiving most attentive study.  Great success