retrospective, proceed upon deeds, not thoughts; and she is not so made, she has no such sensitive redundancy of imagination, that conscience should be in her senses, causing the howlings of the storm to syllable the awful notes of remorse. And as her conscience is without an organ to project and body forth its revenges, so she may indeed possess them in secret, but she can never repress them: subject to no fantastical terrors nor moral illusions, she therefore never loses her self-control: the unmitigable corrodings of her rooted sorrow may destroy, but cannot betray her, unless when her energy of will is bound up in sleep. And for the same cause she is free alike from the terrible apprehensions which make her husband flinch from the first crime, and from the maddening and merciless suspicions of guilty fear that lash and spur him on to other crimes. But the truth of her inward state comes out with an awful mingling of pathos and terror, in the scene where her conscience, sleepless amid the sleep of nature, nay, most restless even when all other cares are at rest, drives her forth, open-eyed, yet sightless, to sigh and groan over spots on her hands, that are visible to none but herself, nor even to herself, but when she is blind to every thing else. And what an awful mystery, too, hangs about her death! We know not, the Poet himself seems not to know, whether the gnawings of the undying worm drive her to suicidal violence, or themselves cut asunder the cords of her life: all we know is, that the death of her body springs somehow from the inextinguishable life and the immedicable wound of her soul. What a history of her woman's heart is written in her thus sinking, sinking away whither imagination shrinks from following, under the violence of an invisible yet unmistakable disease, which still sharpens its inflictions and at the same time quickens her sensibility! A This guilty couple are patterns of conjugal virtue. tender, delicate, respectful affection sweetens and dignifies their intercourse; the effect of which is rather heightened than otherwise by their ambition, because they seem to thirst for each other's honor as much as for their own. And this sentiment of mutual respect even grows by their crimes, since their inborn greatness is developed through them, not buried beneath them. And when they find that the crown, which they have waded through so much blood to grasp, does but scald their brows and stuff their pillow with thorns, this begets a still deeper and finer play of sympathies between them. Thenceforth, (and how touching its effect!) a soft subdued undertone of inward sympathetic woe and anguish mingles audibly in the wild rushing of the moral tempest that hangs round their footsteps. Need we add how free they are from any thing little or mean, vulgar or gross? the very intensity of their wicked passion seeming to have assoiled their minds of all such earthly and ignoble incumbrances. And so manifest withal is their innate fitness to reign, that their ambition almost passes as the instinct of faculty for its proper sphere. Dr. Johnson observes with rare infelicity that this play "has no nice discriminations of character." How far from just is this remark, we trust hath already been made clear enough. In this respect the hero and heroine are equaled only by the Poet's other masterpieces,-by Shylock, Hamlet, Lear, and Iago; while the Weird Sisters, so seemingly akin (though whether as mothers, or sisters, or daughters, we cannot tell) to the thunder-storms that keep them company, occupy the summit of his preternatural creations. Nevertheless it must be owned that the grandeur of the dramatic combination oversways our impression of the individual characters, and, unless we make a special effort that way, prevents a due notice of their merits; that the delicate limning of the agents is apt to be lost sight of in the magnitude, the manifold unity, and thought-like rapidity of the action. The style of this drama is pitched in the same high tragic key as the action: throughout we have an explosion, as of purpose into act, so also of thought into speech, both literally kindling with their own swiftness. No sooner thought than said, no sooner said than done, is everywhere the order of the day. And, therewithal, thoughts and images come crowding and jostling each other in so quick succession that none can gain full utterance, a second still leaping upon the tongue before the first is fairly off. Thus the Poet seems to have endeavored his utmost how much of meaning could be conveyed in how little of expression; with the least touching of the ear to send vibrations through all the chambers of the mind. Hence the large manifold suggestiveness that lurks in the words; they seem instinct with something which the speakers cannot stay to unfold. And between these invitations to linger and the continual drawings onward, the reader's mind is kindled into an almost preternatural illumination and activity. Doubtless this prolonged stretch and tension of thought would at length grow wearisome, and cause an inward flagging and faintness, but that the play, moreover, is throughout a fierce conflict of antagonist elements and opposite extremes, which are so managed as to brace up the interest on every side; so that the effect of the whole is to refresh, not exhaust the powers, the mind being sustained in its long and lofty flight by the wings that grow forth of their own accord from its superadded life. In general, the lyrical, instead of being interspersed here and there in the form of musical lulls and pauses, is thoroughly interfused with the dramatic; while the ethical sense underlies them both, and is occasionally forced up through them by their own pressure. May we not say, in short, that the entire drama is, as it were, a tempest set to music? Many writers have spoken strongly against the Porterscene; Coleridge denounces it as unquestionably none of Shakespeare's work. Which makes us almost afraid to trust our own judgment concerning it; yet we cannot but feel it to be in the true spirit of the Poet's method. This strain of droll broad humor, oozing out, so to speak, amid such a congregation of terrors, has always in our case deepened their effect, the strange but momentary diversion causing them to return with the greater force. Of the murder scene, the banquet scene, and the sleep-walking scene, with their dagger of the mind, and Banquo of the mind, and blood-spots of the mind, it were vain to speak. Yet over these sublimely-terrific passages there hovers a magic light of poetry, at once disclosing the horrors, and annealing them into matter of delight.-Hallam sets Macbeth down as being, in the language of Drake, "the greatest effort of our author's genius, the most sublime and impressive drama which the world has ever beheld";judgment from which most readers will probably be less inclined to dissent, the older they grow. a ΧΧΧΙΣ COMMENTS By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS MACBETH To the Christian moralist Macbeth's guilt is so dark that its degree cannot be estimated, as there are no shades in black. But to the mental physiologist, to whom nerve rather than conscience, the function of the brain rather than the power of the will, is an object of study, it is impossible to omit from calculation the influences of the supernatural event, which is not only the starting-point of the action, but the remote causes of the mental phenomena. -BUCKNILL, The Mad Folk of Shakespeare. Macbeth wants no disguise of his natural disposition, for it is not bad; he does not affect more piety than he has: on the contrary, a part of his distress arises from a real sense of religion: which makes him regret that he could not join the chamberlains in prayer for God's blessing, and bewail that he has "given his eternal jewel to the common enemy of man." He continually reproaches himself for his deeds; no use can harden him; confidence cannot silence, and even despair cannot stifle, the cries of his conscience. By the first murder he put "rancor in the vessel of his peace"; and of the last he owns to Macduff, "My soul is too charged with blood of thine already."WHATELY, Remarks on Some Characters of Shakespere. LADY MACBETH We may be sure that there were few "more thoroughbred or fairer fingers" in the land of Scotland than those of its queen, whose bearing in public towards Duncan, |