To me Irving’s intellectual position with regard to the character was from the first irrefragable. He added scholarship as the time went on; but every addition was a help to understanding. Between the time when I had first heard him talk over the play and the character in 1876 and when I saw him play it, twelve years elapsed. In all that time it was a favourite subject to talk between us, and I think it was one evening in February 1887 on which after he and I, having supped alone in the Beefsteak Room, talked over the play till the windows began to show their edges brightening in the coming day, that he made up his mind to the reproduction. We were then deep in the run of _Faust_, which had passed its three hundredth representation at the Lyceum; but in the running of a London theatre it is necessary to look a long way ahead; a year at least. In this case there was need of a longer preview, for our plans had already been made for a considerable time. We were to run _Faust_ through the season except some weeks at the end to prepare other plays which together with _Faust_ we were to take to America in the tour already arranged for 1887–8. As we should not be back till the spring of the later year the production of a new play, together with the music and selection of the company, had all to be thought of in time. Irving had— and justifiably—great hopes of the play, and spared on it neither pains nor expense. With regard to the scenery he thought that he would get Keeley Halswelle, A.R S.A., to make the designs. He was very fond of his work and considered that it would be exactly suitable for his purpose. The painter consented and made some lovely sketches. He expressed a wish to paint the scenes himself, and when the sketches and then the models in turn had to be approved of, we engaged the great paint-rooms of the Covent Garden Opera House then available, for his use. The canvas-cloths, framed pieces, borders and wings were got ready by our own carpenters and “primed” for the painting. After a while we began to get anxious about the scenery. We kept asking and asking and asking as to time of completion; but without result. Finally I paid a visit of inspection to Covent Garden and to my surprise and horror found the acres of white untouched even to the extent of a charcoal outline. The superb painter of pictures, untutored in stage art and perspective, had found himself powerless before those vast solitudes. He had been unable even to begin his task! The work was then undertaken by Hawes Craven, J. Harker, T. W. Hall, W. Hann, and Perkins and Caney, with magnificent result. _Macbeth_ is a play that really requires the aid of artistic completeness. Its diction is so lordly, so poetical, so searching in its introspective power that it lifts the mind to an altitude which requires and expects some corresponding elevation of the senses.