the moral order of the world, which, however, cannot be turned aside but, sweeping on to its inevitable goal, crushes all who have attempted to impede its course. It has been pointed out that, in this series of dramas, Shakspeare has exhibited this course of events as taking place in different sections of human life: in Romeo and Juliet the happiness ruined is that of betrothed lovers, and the canker is precipitancy; in Othello the ruined happiness is that of a married couple, and it is destroyed by jealousy; in King Lear the relationship is that of father and children, and the canker at the root is overfondness; in Macbeth we enter the wider society of the state, which is overthrown by ambition; and in Hamlet the problem is the most complex of all, as the play deals with nearly all the social relationships.

As I have already hinted, Macbeth is the purest and most rapid of all these Tragedies, and in it, accordingly, we see the elements of tragedy in their simplest form.

At the outset, the hero is seen returning from successful war, which he has been waging in the service of King Duncan, who is well aware of his merits and forward to reward them. In the company of Banquo he is crossing an open heath, when they come upon the Witches, engaged in their incantations, who announce to Macbeth that he is to become Thane of Glamis and Thane of Cawdor and King of Scots,

and to Banquo, that he is to be the ancestor of a line of kings. On Banquo this announcement makes no impression, as he "neither begs nor fears their favour nor their hate," but it takes instant effect on Macbeth, a clear sign that it has appealed to something in his breast, where the seed of treachery to his king must have been already sown. When, immediately afterwards, he finds himself actually created Thane of Cawdor and Thane of Glamis, he is worked up to the highest excitement by the certainty thus afforded that the rest of the prediction will likewise be fulfilled.

this mood he returns home; but meantime he has apprised Lady Macbeth by letter of the Witches' prophecy and its partial fulfilment; and she is far more completely carried away with the dream of ambition than he, and thus is prepared to screw his courage to the sticking place. For she is afraid that his ambition is not equal to the task of climbing the ladder of crime, which she sees to be the path to the throne.

she apostrophizes him in his absence:

Glamis thou art and Cawdor, and shalt be

Thus

What thou art promised; yet do I fear thy nature :

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way.

Thou would'st be great,

Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it. What thou would'st

highly

That would'st thou holily;

and then she goes on, as conscious of a more resolute purpose in her own breast;

Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.

Thereupon a messenger announces to her the unexpected tidings that King Duncan is on his way to spend a night under her roof, when, in an instant, the crime to be perpetrated flashes on her, and she thus soliloquizes :

The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, topfull Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, 'Hold, hold!'

Such is the temptress to whom Macbeth returns home; and in the awful crime of the ensuing night she is the moving spirit. He would have shrunk back, realising the horrible breach of hospitality and remembering the kindness he had received from King Duncan

:

We will proceed no further in this business;

He hath honoured me of late, and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

Which should be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon;

but she spurs on his laggard purpose, urging him to seize the opportunity placed by fortune in their way. She lays the dagger ready for doing the murderous deed, and says:

Had he not resembled

My father, as he slept, I had done it.

Her husband, after perpetrating the deed, forgets to leave matters in the chamber of horrors in such a posture as to incriminate the guards and is afraid to go back again; but she cries, "Give me the daggers," and goes to lay them in the hands of the sleeping

sentinels, while she smears their faces with the murdered King's blood.

Thus have he and she seized the glittering fruit; but no sooner is it snatched than their pleasure turns to ashes in their mouths; for the conscience within them awakes in all its majesty; they eat their meals in fear, and night by night are shaken with terrible dreams. One of the most impressive scenes in the play is that in which Lady Macbeth appears walking in her sleep and repeating to herself the circumstances of the murder. She cannot get the blood washed off: "Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand".

Macbeth finds that one crime makes another necessary. What would be the profit of sitting on the throne, if the inheritance of it were to pass to another? And the Witches, who had promised him the crown, had promised to Banquo that his descendants should occupy the throne. Therefore Banquo must perish. But, though he added to his great crime this other deed of blood, he failed to secure the murder of Fleance, the son of Banquo, who escaped. In like manner the sons of King Duncan escaped to England, where they were joined by the best of the Scots nobles, and an army was collected to punish the guilty usurper, who meantime plunged deeper and deeper into crime, burning down the castle and massacring the family of Macduff, who had fled to the South.