ABSTRACT
The musical scores that have survived in a form sufficiently complete that they can serve as the basis of an extended study are relatively few; and even with the complete score to hand there comes the additional problem of reconstructing the specific production for which the music was composed. In theatrical terms, Henry Irving's Macbeth was, in many ways, a watershed production, one of the many climaxes in his long, celebrated career in the theatre. Russell elaborated his analysis of these character traits when he returned to the Lyceum to see Macbeth in June 1889: For the first time Lady Macbeth has been boldly thought out on the lines of a Sagaheroine. By the time Arthur Sullivan came to compose his music to Macbeth, he was both an experienced composer and no stranger to the task of composing incidental music to Shakespeare's plays.
