The Macbeths: Charles Kean and his wife, 1858.

Photographic procedures of the period give the Keans' poses a stiffness not offset by the elaborate attempts at plausibly historical costumes. No doubt on the live stage both were more dynamic, as the following review of their performances a decade earlier suggests:

“Nothing could be more beautiful than [Charles Kean’s] rendering of the effect of the demon remorse on the mind of the guilty chief, evinced in the exquisite delineations of painful reverie and unconscious abstraction, and the equally beautiful perception that marked his rendering of the shallow disguises and vague apologies Macbeth puts forward to hide his mental misery and mask his guilty remorse. Kean’s rendering of the ghost scene was as superior as it was different from any previous conception that we had ever seen by any actor of this thrilling passage. . . . Mrs. Kean’s Lady Macbeth was a noble impersonation of Shakespeare’s truest meaning. . . the stern resolve and ultra masculine hardiness of moral courage and daring blood-guiltiness . . . . We may recall . . . her magnificent rendering of the chamber scene, where the troubled and guilty spirit wakes while the body sleeps, and the remorseless and ambitious woman walks forth in troubled slumber and talks of deeds of blood. Few will forget the thrilling effect of her startled and frightened exit ‘To bed to bed – there’s knocking at the gate.’ The audience was spell-bound and forgot to applaud.” Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), May 3 1849: 19th C. British Library Newspapers.