After breakfast, went to rehearsal; came home and stitched at my _Françoise de Foix_ head-dress. My father is extremely unwell; I scarce think he will be able to get through his part to-night. After dinner, practised, and read a canto in Dante. It pleases me, when I refer to Biagioli's notes, to find that the very lines Alfieri has noted are those under which I have drawn my emphatic pencil marks. At half-past five, went to the theatre. The play was Macbeth, for my benefit: the house was very full, and I played very ill. My father was dreadfully exhausted by his work. I had an interesting discussion with Mr. ---- about the costume and acting of the witches in this awful play. I should like to see them acted and dressed a little more like what they should be, than they generally are. It has been always customary,--Heaven only knows why,--to make low comedians act the witches, and to dress them like old fish-women. Instead of the wild unearthly appearance which Banquo describes, and which belongs to their most terrible and grotesquely poetical existence and surroundings, we have three jolly-faced fellows,--whom we are accustomed to laugh at, night after night, in every farce on the stage,--with as due a proportion of petticoats as any woman, letting alone witch, might desire, jocose red faces, peaked hats, and broomsticks, which last addition alone makes their costume different from that of Moll Flagon. If I had the casting of Macbeth, I would give the witches to the first melo-dramatic actors on the stage,--such men as T. P. Cooke, and O. Smith, who understand all that belongs to picturesque devilry to perfection,--and give them such dresses as, without ceasing to be grotesque, should be a little more fanciful, and less ridiculous than the established livery; something that would accord a little better with the blasted heath, the dark fungus-grown wood, the desolate misty hill-side, and the flickering light of the caldron cave.[90] * * * * * * * * * * _Wednesday, 20th._