Images of Macbeth

Images of the play – as it was staged, or as it was visualized by artists.

• Frontispieces

  Engraved frontispieces made for eighteenth-century editions of the play.

• Macready as Macbeth (1843)

  Portrait of William Charles Macready as Macbeth, drawn for the Illustrated London News, 24 June 1843, 435.

• ‘Turn, hellhound, turn’ (1849)

  A fight to the death between two elderly actors, William Charles Macready as Macbeth and James William Wallack as Macduff, drawn for the Illustrated London News, 13 Oct. 1849, 253.

• Illustrations for Macbeth in Tallis’s Library Edition (1850–1)

  Tallis’s Library Edition of the Works of Shakspere advertised in Tallis’s Dramatic Magazine for May 1851 (wrapper p. 4): ‘Now publishing, in Parts at 1s. and 2s., and in Volumes handsomely bound in red morocco cloth, gilt edges, at 10s. 6d. each, beautifully illustrated. … The One Shilling Parts will contain two, and the Two Shilling Parts four Illustrations, principally from Daguerreotypes taken from Life, expressly for this Work; thus not only displaying the Principal Scenes and Characters in the various Plays, but also embodying faithful Likenesses and correct costumes of our Principal Shaksperians of 1850–1. By employing engravers of the first eminence, the publishers reckon on producing a series of Pictorial Illustrations which will form a Shakspere Gallery as yet unrivalled; and they trust that they will thus be enabled to offer, with respect both to literary and artistic elegance, the best edition of Shakspere that has yet been published, either in this or any other country.’ I reproduce details from the four illustrations which have reference to Macbeth. The first three plates were certainly issued in 1850–1; I am doubtful about the fourth one.*

  * Except for the monthly issues of the Dramatic Magazine, Tallis was averse to putting dates on his publications. There are only a few facts that I am sure about. Any product of his with the imprint ‘John Tallis & Company, London & New York’ has to belong in the period 1850–3. Before that, Tallis was a partner in the firm of ‘J. & F. Tallis, London, Edinburgh & Dublin’, and the partnership was dissolved on 31 Dec. 1849 (Gazette, 19 Feb. 1850, 475). After 1 Oct. 1853 the business began to transform itself into a joint stock company (Times, 17 Mar. 1854, 6), and the imprint ‘The London Printing and Publishing Company’ was used from then onwards.

• The banquet scene (1853)

  The banquet scene as it was staged by Charles Kean at the Princess’s Theatre, drawn for the Illustrated London News, 26 Feb. 1853, 165.