uch case, and that Macbeth
and his associates must be clad in stripes, or plain colours. Even the
bonnet with the eagle's feather, which Sir Walter Scott induced Kemble
to substitute for his "shuttlecock" headdress of ostrich plumes, was
held to be inadmissible: the Macbeth of the antiquaries wore a conical
iron helmet, and was otherwise arrayed in barbaric armour. But 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 bein