THE TRUE MACBETH.

BY EDWARD R. RUSSELL.

Ir is said, ladies and gentlemen, that the drama, especially the acted drama, and pre-eminently the Shakspearian drama, is recovering its position in the estimation of cultured persons. I am not careful to consider whether this is so or not. If it is, so much the better for cultured persons; if it is not, so much the worse for them. In either case the drama, at least so far as its published repertory is concerned, is independent of their patronage. It will never owe much to the condescension of the supercilious, and we may hope there will always be a histrionic remnant to preserve its traditions, and to make new ones. As a student both of plays and the stage, I am glad that "Macbeth" is prominent in the public mind of 1875, as "Hamlet" was in 1874; but under any circumstances an enquiry into the true reading of the play would have been an undertaking worthy of this Society.

By the true Macbeth I do not mean the historical Macbeth. Of his reign, George Buchanan says, "Some of our writers do here record many fables which are like Milesian tales, and fitter for the stage than for history, and therefore I omit them." Before many years had elapsed, these mythical stories, so far as they met the taste and suited the purpose of the dramatist, had passed into the atmosphere for which Buchanan thought them most suitable. And from that time forward the only Macbeth was Shak

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speare's. Of his prototype we know from the chronicler Holinshed that he was a most valiant gentleman, and one that, if he had not been somewhat cruel of nature, might have been thought most worthy the government of a realm. Like other sanguinary despots-besides exhorting young men to exercise themselves in virtuous manners, and men of the church to attend to divine service according to their vocations-he made himself thought by the commonalty a just king. He appears to have beheaded only the tall poppies, and was even described as the sure buckler and defence of innocent people. But as respects his conduct towards the thanes, the history bears as black a record as the play. At length, the chronicler tells us, he found such sweetness by putting his nobles to death, that his earnest thirst after blood in this behalf might in no wise be satisfied. Here we perceive a sort of pleasure in blood-guiltiness which the play has not in the slightest degree imitated. In the chronicle, moreover, there is only a mere mention of Lady Macbeth's ambition and instigation, the simplicity of which allusion is most remarkable. As at once fixing the two principal original contributions of Shakspeare to the subject, it deeply impresses me with the view of the play's main meaning, which I shall presently endeavour to state. Instead of his wife, Macbeth, in Holinshed, has for his coadjutor in regicide Banquo, whom Shakspeare, on the contrary, has made an altogether honourable and estimable man in the midst of villanies which he entirely understood and might have been privy and party to. Banquo is murdered, in the history, however, all the same, "for the pricke of conscience (as it chanceth ever in tyrants, and such as atteine to anie estate by unrighteous means) caused Macbeth ever to feare, least he should be served of the same cup as he had ministered to his predecessor." In the inception of his ambition, the Macbeth of the chronicle is inspired and

befooled by the witches-" resembling creatures of elder world"-and, after recording their first meeting, almost precisely as in Shakspeare, Holinshed goes on to say that the incident was reputed at the first to be a vain fantastical illusion, got up by the two generals; but afterwards the common opinion was that these women were either the weird sisters, that is to say, the goddesses of destiny or fates, or else some nymphs or fairies endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical science, because everything came to pass that they had spoken. As to this, we are of course entitled to suppose, as we list, either that such doubts did prevail in Macbeth's time, or that in Holinshed's time they were believed so to have existed. As in other Macbeth questions, the interest of the witch element has come to centre entirely in Shakspeare's use of it, which, it is part of my purpose to show, has been considerably misconstrued. The murder of Duncan in his sleep, and the confused condition of the grooms when they awake, may have been suggested by a passage in the chronicle relating to another incident, namely, the massacre of King Sueno's Danes in their camp by Macbeth, under the orders of Duncan, after the Scots had treacherously drugged their ale and bread. In closer correspondence with the play we have the fact that Macbeth, as king, had in every thane's house "a sly fellow in fee." There is also and so nearly identical that Shakspeare may be said to have merely turned it into verse-the curious conversation between Malcolm and Macduff, when the latter seeks the former in exile: an episode which lies apart from the necessary action of the play, and which was evidently adopted by the poet, because he was struck, as he well might be, by its originality. Lastly, we have the juggling charm of Birnam Wood and Dunsinane, the assurance by a certain witch in whom he had great trust, that Macbeth should not succumb to one of woman born, and the catastrophe, turning

as strictly as in the play, on the non-fulfilment of these "words of promise."

So much for the true Macbeth of the chronicler. For us it is only important to notice that almost every purely dramatic point was supplied or suggested to Shakspeare, and that his most substantial additions were subjective. He was too thorough a playwright not to improve to the utmost on the incidents and situations with which he was provided; but, intellectually, the most important of his contributions were in the domain of character and ethics. Even the magnificent conception of the sleep-walking scene, though it has given to the stage one of its finest and most celebrated episodes, is psychological, so far as it is not simply awing and pathetic.

If we avoid discussing the true individuality, and the reality of the Macbeth of historical tradition, not less shall we keep clear of the question, Whether the play, as we have it, is the true Macbeth of Shakspeare? Those who wish to see this called in question under the newest lights may read the terse and interesting preface to the play in the Clarendon series, by Messrs. Clark and Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge. Without decrying such studies, or underrating the qualifications of these gentlemen for pursuing them, I must say that the results rarely impress me as true or acceptable. It is with them as with much modern criticism on internal indications of authorship and authenticity in the gospels, and especially the fourth. A number of vastly wise and very positive conclusions have been arrived at, which any sciolist might fix for ever in his sterile mind by a couple of days' study. When obviously true they are conspicuously worthless; when not palpably certain they may be safely rejected. They are small and technical, dull and dry, unfruitful in great inferences, devoid of spiritual insight.