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nation! She salutes him as Glamis and light; the servants are moving to rest; Cawdor, and

"Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter."

This is the sole allusion to the weird sisters. "We will speak further," seals his fate.

Here then, up to this point, we have the supernatural influence determining the progress of the action with a precipitation which in itself appears almost supernatural; and yet it is in itself strictly consonant to nature. It works in and through human passions and feelings. It works through unbelief as well as through belief. It pervades the entire action, whether in its repose or in its tumult. When "the heavens' breath smells wooingly" in Macbeth's castle, we feel that it is as treacherous to the "gentle senses" of Duncan as the blandishments of his hostess; and that this calm is but the prelude to that "unruly" night which is to follow, with its "lamentings" and its "strange screams of death." But this is a part of the poetry of the action, which keeps the horror within the bounds prescribed by a high art. The beautiful adaptation of the characters to the action constitutes a higher essential of the poetry. The last scene of the first act, where Macbeth marshals before him the secondary consequences of the meditated crime, and the secondary arguments against its commission, -all the while forgetting that the real question is that of the one step from innocence into guilt,—and where all these prudential considerations are at once overwhelmed by a guilty energy which despises as well as renounces them,-that scene is indeed more terrible to us than the assassination scene; for it shows us how men fall through their own weakness and the bad strength of others. But in all this we see the deep philosophy of the poet, his profound knowledge of the springs of human action, derived perhaps from his experience of every-day crime and folly, but lifted into the highest poetry by his marvellous imagination. We know that after this the scene of the murder must come. All the preparatory incidents are poetical. The moon is down; Banquo and Fleance walk by torch

Macbeth is alone. He sees "the air-drawn

dagger" which leads him to Duncan; he is still under the influence of some power stronger than his will; he is beset with false creations; his imagination is excited; he moves to bloodshed amidst a crowd of poetical images, with which his mind dallies, as it were, in its agony. Half frantic he has done the deed. His passion must now have vent. It rushes like a torrent over the calmness which his wife opposes to it. His terrors embody themselves in gushing descriptions of those fearful voices that rang in the murderer's ears. Reproaches and taunts have now no power over him :

"I'll go no more:

1 am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on 't again, I dare not."

It is impossible, we apprehend, for the poet to have more clearly indicated the mode in which he meant to contrast the characters of Macbeth and his wife than in the scene before us. It is a mistake to characterise the intellect of Lady Macbeth as of a higher order than that of her husband. Her force of character was stronger, because her intellect was less. She wanted that higher power which he possessed-the power of imagination. She hears no noises in that terrible hour but the scream of the owl and the cry of the crickets. To her,

"The sleeping, and the dead, Are but as pictures."

In her view

"A little water clears us of this deed." We believe that, if it had not been for the necessities of a theatrical representation, Shakspere would never have allowed it to have been supposed that a visible ghost was presented in the banquet-scene. It is to him who saw the dagger, and heard the voices cry "sleep no more," and who exclaimed "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?"

it is to him alone that the spectral appearances of that "solemn supper" are visible. Are they not then the forms only of his

imagination? The partner of his guilt, who looked upon the great crime only as a business of necessity,-who would have committed it herself but for one touch of feeling, confessed only to herself,—

"Had he not resembled

My father as he slept I had done 't,"who had before disclaimed even the tenderest feelings of a mother if they had stood between her and her purpose,-she sees no spectre, because her obdurate will cannot co-exist with the imagination which produces

the terror and remorse of her husband. It is scarcely the "towering bravery of her mind,"* in the right sense of the word: it is something lower than courage; it is the absence of impressibility: the tenacious adherence to one dominant passion constitutes her force of character.

As Macbeth recedes from his original nature under the influence of his fears and his superstitions, he becomes, of necessity, a lower creature. It is the natural course of guilt. The "brave Macbeth" changes to a counterfeiter of passions, a hypocrite,—

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it has run its terrific course, and the frighted guests have departed, and the guilty man mutters "it will have blood," then is her intellectual energy utterly helpless before his higher passion. Mrs. Jameson says of this remarkable scene, "A few words of submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose, are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond expression." Is it submission? Is it tenderness? Is it not rather the lower energy in subjection to the higher? Her intellect has lost its anchorage; but his imagination is about to receive a new stimulant:

"I will to-morrow

(And betimes I will) unto the weird sisters: More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,

By the worst means, the worst." “He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is therefore himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and superhuman agencies." Coleridge thus notices the point of action of which we are speaking. But it must not be forgotten that Macbeth was inclined to superstition before the guilt, and that his faith in superhuman agencies went far to produce the guilt. From this moment, however, his guilt is bolder, and his will more obdurate; his supernatural knowledge stands in the place of reflection and

His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's caution. He believes in it, and yet he will do

summons,

The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, Hath rung night's yawning peal,

There shall be done a deed of dreadful note."

It is this condition of Macbeth's mind which, we must again repeat, limits and mitigates the horror of the tragedy. After the tumult of the banquet-scene the imagination of Macbeth again overbears (as it did after the murder) the force of the will in Lady Macbeth. It appears to us that her taunts and reproaches are only ventured upon by her when his excitement is beginning. After

Mrs. Jameson.

something beyond the belief. He is told to "beware Macduff;" but he is also told that

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none of woman born shall harm Macbeth." How does he reconcile this contrary belief?— "Then live, Macduff: What need I fear of thee? But yet I'll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live; That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, And sleep in spite of thunder."

And then comes the other prophecy of safety:

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him."

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No, indeed, my lord. Macb. Infected be the air whereon they ride;

And damn'd all those that trust them!-I did hear

The galloping of horse: Who was 't came by? Len. "T is two or three, my lord, that bring you word,

Macduff is fled to England.

Macb.

And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honour,
breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and
dare not."

This

passage, and the subsequent one of "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty space from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death,"

tell us of something higher and better in his Fled to England? character than the assassin and the usurper.

Len. Ay, my good lord.
Macb. Time, thou anticipat'st my dread
exploits:

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
Unless the deed go with it: From this mo-
ment,

The very firstlings of my heart shall be

The firstlings of my hand. And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:

The castle of Macduff I will surprise;

Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the
sword

His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line."

He was the victim of "the equivocation of the fiend;" and he has paid a fearful penalty for his belief. The final avenging is a compassionate one, for he dies a warrior's death:

"I will not yield,

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's
feet,

And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou oppos'd, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last: Before my body
I throw my warlike shield."

The principle which we have thus so imperfectly attempted to exhibit, as the leading characteristic of this glorious tragedy, is, without doubt, that which constitutes the essential difference between a work of the

The retribution which falls upon Lady Macbeth is precisely that which is fitted to her guilt. The powerful will is subjected to the domination of her own imperfect senses. We cannot dwell upon her terrible punish-highest genius and a work of mediocrity. ment. There can be nothing beyond the agony of

"Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."

The vengeance falls more gently on Macbeth;
for he is in activity; he is still confident in
prophetic securities. The contemplative
melancholy which, however, occasionally
comes over him in the last struggle is still
true to the poetry of his character:-

"Seyton!-I am sick at heart.
When I behold-Seyton, I say!-This push
Will cheer me ever, or dis-seat me now.
I have liv'd long enough: my way of life

Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:

Without power-by which we here especially mean the ability to produce strong excitement by the display of scenes of horror-no poet of the highest order was ever made; but this alone does not make such a poet. If he is called upon to present such scenes, they must, even in their most striking forms, be associated with the beautiful. The preeminence of his art in this particular can alone prevent them affecting the imagination beyond the limits of pleasurable emotion. To keep within these limits, and yet to preserve all the energy which results from the power of dealing with the terrible apart from the beautiful, belongs to few that the world has seen to Shakspere it belongs surpassingly.

BOOK VIII.

CHAPTER I.

A WINTER'S TALE. We have no edition of the Winter's Tale' prior to that of the folio of 1623; nor was it entered upon the registers of the Stationers' Company previous to the entry by the proprietors of the folio. The original text, which is divided into acts and scenes, is remarkably correct.

Chalmers has assigned the 'Winter's Tale'
to 1601. The play contains this passage:-
"If I could find example

Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish'd after, I'd not do 't: but since
Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears
not one,

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were called

Let villainy itself forswear 't." "These lines," says Chalmers, forth by the occasion of the conspiracy of Essex." "No," says Malone, "these lines could never have been intended for the ear of her who had deprived the Queen of Scots of her life. To the son of Mary they could not but have been agreeable." Upon this ground he assigned the comedy to 1604. There is a third critic, of much higher acuteness than the greater number of those who have given us speculations on the chronology of Shakspere's plays, we mean Horace Walpole, whose conjecture is so ingenious and amusing that we copy it without abridgment:

"The Winter's Tale' may be ranked among the historic plays of Shakspere, though not one of his numerous critics and commentators have discovered the drift of it. It was certainly intended (in compliment to Queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother, Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears nowhere to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have ventured

so home an allusion on any other ground than
The unreasonable jealousy of
compliment.
Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence,
form a true portrait of Henry VIII., who gene-
rally made the law the engine of his boisterous
passions. Not only the general plan of the
story is most applicable, but several passages
are so marked that they touch the real history
nearer than the fable. Hermione on her trial,
'For honour,

says,

"T is a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.'

This seems to be taken from the very letter of
Anne Boleyn to the king before her execution,
where she pleads for the infant princess his
daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an
unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but
it confirms the allusion, as Queen Anne, before
Elizabeth, bore a still-born son. But the most
striking passage, and which had nothing to do
in the tragedy but as it pictured Elizabeth, is
where Paulina, describing the new-born princess,
and her likeness to her father, says, 'She has the
very trick of his frown.' There is one sentence,
indeed, so applicable both to Elizabeth and her
father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it
after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child,
tells the king-

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of which we have an edition as early as 1588. | lost, the king should die without issue; for the Robert Greene, the auther of Pandosto,' child was carried into Bohemia, and there laid could scarcely have intended his story as in a forest, and brought up by a shepherd. And "a compliment to Queen Elizabeth" and a the King of Bohemia's son married that wench, "true portrait of Henry VIII.," for he makes and how they fled into Sicilia to Leontes; and the jealous king of his novel terminate his the shepherd having showed the letter to the career with suicide. In truth, as we have nobleman whom Leontes sent, it was that child, sometimes inferred, questions such as this and by the jewels found about her she was known to be Leontes' daughter, and was then are very pretty conundrums, and worthy to be cherished as the amusement of elderly sixteen years old. gentlemen who have outlived their relish for early sports, and leave to others who are less careful of their dignity to

"Play at push-pin with the boys."

Beyond this they are for the most part worthless.

In the absence of any satisfactory internal evidence of the date of this comedy, beyond that furnished by the general character of the language and versification, it was at length pointed out by Malone that an entry in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels in 1623, mentions "an old play called 'Winter's Tale,' formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke and likewise by me." Sir George Bucke first exercised the office of Master of the Revels in 1610. The play, therefore, could not have been earlier than this year; and Mr. Collier has produced conclusive evidence that it was acted in 1611. We have again to refer to "a book of plays, and notes thereof, for common policy" kept by Dr. Symon Forman, and discovered some few years ago in the Bodleian Library. Forman saw the 'Winter's Tale' acted on the 15th of May, 1611, at Shakspere's theatre, the Globe. It was most probably then a new play; for he is very minute in his description of the plot.

"Observe there how Leontes, King of Sicilia, was overcome with jealousy of his wife with the King of Bohemia, his friend, that came to see him; and how he contrived his death, and would have had his cupbearer to have poisoned him, who gave the King of Bohemia warning thereof, and fled with him to Bohemia.

"Remember, also, how he sent to the oracle of Apollo, and the answer of Apollo that she was guiltless, and that the king was jealous, &c., and how, except the child was found again that was

tattered, like Coll Pipin, and how he feigned "Remember, also, the rogue that came in all him sick and to have been robbed of all he had, and how he cozened the poor man of all his money, and after came to the sheep-shear with a pedlar's pack, and there cozened them again of all their money. And how he changed apparel with the King of Bohemia's son, and then how he turned courtier, &c.

"Beware of trusting feigned beggars or fawning fellows.”*

The novel of Robert Greene, called 'Pandosto,' and 'The History of Dorastus and Fawnia,' which Shakspere undoubtedly followed, with very few important deviations, in the construction of the plot of his 'Winter's Tale,' is a small book, occupying fifty-nine pages in the reprint, with an Introductory Notice by Mr. Colliert. It was a work of extraordinary popularity, there being fourteen editions known to exist. Of the nature of Shakspere's obligations to this work, Mr. Collier thus justly speaks:

"Robert Greene was a man who possessed all the advantages of education: he was a graduate of both Universities-he was skilled in ancient

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learning and in modern languages—he had, besides, a prolific imagination, a lively and elegant fancy, and a grace of expression rarely exceeded; yet, let any person well acquainted with the Winter's Tale' read the novel of 'Pandosto,' upon which it was founded, and he will be struck at once with the vast pre-eminence of Shakespeare, and with the admirable manner in which he has converted materials supplied by another to his own use. The bare outline of the story (with the exception of Shakespeare's miraculous conclusion) is nearly the same in both; but this is all they have in common, and Shakespeare may be said to have scarcely

*New Particulars,' p. 20.
+Shakespeare's Library, Part I.

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