30 MAR33 With Notes, Glossary of Difficult Words, and all previous Oxford and Cambridge Questions on the Play. OTHERS IN PREPARATION. LONDON: ALLMAN AND SON, 67, NEW OXFORD STREET. THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH. THE PLOT. Macbeth is usually reckoned one of Shakespeare's five great tragedies, and refers to the legends of Scottish history. It no doubt belongs to the poet's latter period, the exact date at which it was written being uncertain. The only ascertained fact respecting the performance of 'Macbeth' in the lifetime of the author, is that it was represented at the Globe Theatre, April 20, 1610, but it appears not to have had the witch-parts in i. 1, i. 3, 1—37, nor the scene with the bleeding soldier, i. 2. Some commentators believe these parts to be spurious, as well as all Hecate's. Malone conjectures that Macbeth' was first acted about the year 1606, supporting his opinion by two allusions in the speech of the porter, ii. 3, to the cheapness of corn, and to the doctrine of equivocation, which had been supported by Robert Garnet, who was executed May 3, 1603; also by his flattering allusion to the issue of Banquo, from whom the Stuarts were descended, as the crowns were united by James I. in 1603. 'Macbeth' was inserted by the play-editors in the folio of 1623. It has been handed down in an unusually complete state, for not only are the divisions of the acts pointed out, but the subdivisions of the scenes carefully, and, for the most part, accurately noted. In that folio it is placed between Julius Cæsar' and 'Hamlet.' There appears to have been a much older drama on the story of Macbeth. In the Registers of the Stationers' Company, August 27, 1596, we find an entry of a ballad called 'Macdobeth,' which was probably a play written for a public theatre. |