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Earl of Northumberland, was murdered by his cousin-german Macbeth in the castle of Inverness about the year 1040 or 1045. Macbeth was himself slain by Macduff, according to Boethius in 1061, according to Buchanan in 1057, at which time Edward the Confessor reigned in England.

In the reign of Duncan, Banquo having been plundered by the people of Lochaber of some of the king's revenues, which he had collected, and being dangerously wounded in the affray, the persons concerned in this outrage were summoned to appear at a certain day. But they slew the serjeant-at-arms who summoned them, and chose one Macdonwald as their captain. Macdonwald speedily collected a considerable body of forces from Ireland and the Western Isles, and in one action gained a victory over the king's army. In this battle Malcolm, a Scottish nobleman (who was lieutenant to Duncan in Lochaber) was slain. Afterwards Macbeth and Banquo were appointed to the command of the army; and Macdonwald, being obliged to take refuge in a castle in Lochaber, first slew his wife and children, and then himself. Macbeth, on entering the castle, finding his dead body, ordered his head to be cut off and carried to the king, at the castle of Bertha, and his body to be hung on a high tree.

At a subsequent period, in the last year of Duncan's reign, Sueno, king of Norway, landed a powerful army in Fife, for the purpose of invading Scotland. Duncan immediately assembled an army to oppose him, and gave the command of two divisions of it to Macbeth and Banquo, putting himself at the head of a third. Sueno was successful in one battle, but in a second was routed; and, after a great slaughter of his troops, he escaped with ten persons only, and fled back to Norway. Though there was an interval of time between the rebellion of Macdonwald and the invasion of Sueno, Shakespeare has woven these two actions together, and immediately after Sueno's defeat the present play commences.

It is remarkable that Buchanan has pointed out Macbeth's history as a subject for the stage. "Multa hic fabulose quidam nostrorum affingunt; sed quia theatris aut Milesiis fabulis sunt aptiora quam historiæ, ea omitto."-Rerum Scot. Hist. Lib. vii.

Milton also enumerates the subject among those he considered well suited for tragedy, but it appears that he would have attempted to preserve the unity of time by placing the relation of the murder of Duncan in the mouth of his ghost.

Macbeth is one of the latest, and unquestionably one of the noblest efforts of Shakespeare's genius. Equally impressive in the closet and on the stage, where to witness its representation! has been justly pronounced "the first of all dramatic enjoyments." Malone places the date of its composition in 1606, and it has been supposed to convey a dexterous and delicate compliment to James the First, who derived his lineage from Banquo,

and first united the threefold sceptre of England, Scotland, and Ireland. At the same time the monarch's prejudices on the subject of demonology were flattered by the choice of the story.

It was once thought that Shakespeare derived some hints for his scenes of incantation from The Witch, a tragi-comedy, by John Middleton, which, after lying long in manuscript, was published about thirty years since by Isaac Reed; but Malone* has with considerable ingenuity shown that Middleton's drama was most probably written subsequently to Macbeth.

Malone has an elaborate argument to prove that Macbeth was written in 1606, which he supports by the allusions to the cheapness of corn, and to the doctrine of equivocation promulgated by Garnet, who was executed in 1606, occurring in the speech of the Porter in the third Scene of the second Act. What we know for certain is, that the play was performed on the 20th of April, 1610, at the Globe Theatre, when Dr. Forman, the astrologer, witnessed its representation, and gives an abstract of the plot in his Diary. We know not, however, whether it was then new to the stage; and the allusion to the union of the three kingdoms by the accession of King James, in the first Scene of Act iv.—

"Some I see

That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry," seems to point to an earlier period. It appears from a passage in Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder, printed in 1600, that a ballad existed upon the subject, but the allusion is somewhat obscure. The play was first printed in the folio of 1623.

* See the chronological order of the plays in the late Variorum Edition, by Mr. Boswell, vol. ii. p. 420.

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FLEANCE, Son to Banquo.

SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, General of the

English Forces.

YOUNG SIWARD, his Son.

SEYTON, an Officer attending on Macbeth.
Son to Macduff.

An English Doctor. A Scotch Doctor.

A Soldier.

A Porter. An old Man.

LADY MACBETH*.

LADY MACDUFF.

Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth.
Hecate, and three Witches t.

Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers,
Attendants, and Messengers.

The Ghost of Banquo, and several other Apparitions.

SCENE, in the end of the Fourth Act, lies in England; through the rest of the play, in Scotland; and, chiefly, at Macbeth's Castle.

* Lady Macbeth's name was Gruach filia Bodhe, according to Lord Hailes. Andrew of Wintown in his Cronykil informs us, that she was the widow of Duncan; a circumstance with which Shakespeare was of course unacquainted.

As the play now stands, in Act iv. Sc. 1, three other witches make their appearance.

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SCENE I. An open Place.

Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.

1 Witch.

HEN shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2 Witch. When the hurlyburly's done', When the battle's lost and won.

3 Witch. That will be ere the set of sun.

When the hurlyburly's done. In Adagia Scotica, or a Collection of Scotch Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases; collected by R. B. very useful and delightful. Lond. 12o. 1668:

66

Little kens the wife that sits by the fire

66

How the wind blows cold in hurle burle swyre." Peacham, in his Garden of Eloquence, 1577, shows what was the ancient acceptation of the word among us: Onomatopeia, when we invent, devise, fayne, and make a name imitating the sound of that it signifyeth, as hurlyburly, for an uprore and tumultuous stirre." So in Baret's Alvearie, 1573:-" But harke yonder: what hurlyburly or noyse is yonde: what sturre ruffling or bruite is that?"-The witches could not mean when the storm was done, but when the tumult of the battle was over; for they are to meet again in lightning, thunder, and rain: their element was a storm. Thus in Arthur Wilson's History of James I. p. 141: -"Being in a citie not very defensible, among a wavering people, and a conquering enemy, in the field, took time by the foretop, and in this hurlieburlie the next morning left Prague."

1 Witch. Where the place?

2 Witch.

Upon the heath:

3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth.

1 Witch. I come, Graymalkin!

2 Witch. Paddock calls2:

3 Witch. Anon.

All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air3.

[Witches vanish.

SCENE II. A Camp near Fores.

Alarum within. Enter King DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Soldier1.

Dun. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

The newest state.

2 Upton observes that, to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad. A paddock most generally signified a toad, though it sometimes means a frog. What we now call a toadstool was anciently called a paddock-stool.

3 I follow Mr. Hunter's regulation of this passage though unauthorised by the old arrangement, because, with him, I think it clearly indicated by the subsequent three times three of the witches:

"Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again to make up nine." Coleridge observes that "The Weird Sisters are as true a creation of Shakespeare's as his Ariel and Caliban,-fates, fairies, and materializing witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected from the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature,-elemental avengers without sex or kin.” The first folio reads captain.

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