PREFACE By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A. THE FIRST EDITION Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio, where it occupies pp. 131 to 151, and is placed between Julius Cæsar and Hamlet. It is mentioned among the plays registered in the books of the Stationers' Company by the publishers of the Folio as "not formerly entered to other men." The text is perhaps one of the worst printed of all the plays, and textual criticism has been busy emending and explaining away the many difficulties of the play. Even the editors of the Second Folio were struck by the many hopeless corruptions, and attempted to provide a better text. The first printers certainly had before them a very faulty transcript, and critics have attempted to explain the discrepancies by assuming that Shakespeare's original version had been tampered with by another hand. "MACBETH" AND MIDDLETON'S "WITCH" Some striking resemblances in the incantation scenes of Macbeth and Middleton's Witch have led to a somewhat generally accepted belief that Thomas Middleton was answerable for the alleged un-Shakespearean portions of Macbeth. This view has received confirmation from the fact that the stage-directions of Macbeth contain allusions to two songs which are found in Middleton's Witch (viz. "Come away, come away," III, v; "Black Spirits and white," IV, i). Moreover, these very songs are found in D'Avenant's re-cast of Macbeth (1674).1 It is, however, 1 The first of these songs is found in the edition of 1673, which contains also two other songs not found in the Folio version. possible that Middleton took Shakespeare's songs and expanded them, and that D'Avenant had before him a copy containing additions transferred from Middleton's cognate scenes. This view is held by the most competent of Middleton's editors, Mr. A. H. Bullen, who puts forward strong reasons for assigning the Witch to a later date than Macbeth, and rightly resents the proposals on the part of able scholars to hand over to Middleton some of the finest passages of the play. Charles Lamb had already noted the essential differences between Shakespeare's and Middleton's Witches. "Their names and some of the properties, which Middleton has given to his hags, excites smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creatures. Their power, too, is in some measure over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o'er life" (Specimens of English Dramatic Poets). THE PORTER'S SPEECH Among the passages in Macbeth, that have been doubted are the soliloquy of the Porter, and the short dialogue that follows between the Porter and Macduff. Even Coleridge objected to "the low soliloquy of the Porter"; he believed them to have been written for the mob by some other hand, perhaps with Shakespeare's consent, though he was willing to make an exception in the case of the Shake 1 The following are among the chief passages supposed to resemble Middleton's style, and rejected as Shakespeare's by the Clarendon Press editors:-Act I. Sc. ii. iii. 1-37; Act II. Sc. i. 61, iii. (Porter's part); Act III. Sc. v.; Act IV. Sc. i. 39–47, 125–132; iii. 140– 159; Act V. (?) ii., v. 47-50; viii. 32-33, 35–75. The second scene of the First Act is certainly somewhat disappointing, and it is also inconsistent (cp. 11. 52, 53, with Sc. fii., IL. 72, 73, and 112, etc.), but probably the scene represents the compression of a much longer account. The introduction of the superfluous Hecate is perhaps the strongest argument for rejecting certain witch-scenes, viz.: Act III. Sc. v.; Act IV. Sc. i. 39–47, 125–132. spearean words, "I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to let in some of all professions, that go the primose way to the everlasting bonfire." But the Porter's Speech is as essential a part of the design of the play as is the Knocking at the Gate, the effect of which was so subtly analyzed by De Quincey in his well-known essay on the subject. "The effect was that it reflected back upon the murderer a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds; the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human has made its reflex upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the reëstablishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them." The introduction of the Porter, a character derived from the Porter of Hell in the old Mysteries, is as dramatically relevant, as are the grotesque words he utters; and both the character and the speech are thoroughly Shakespearean in conception (cp. The Porter in Macbeth, New Shak. Soc., 1874, by Prof. Hales). DATE OF COMPOSITION The undoubted allusion to the union of England and Scotland under James I (Act IV, sc. i, 120), gives us one limit for the date of Macbeth, viz., March, 1603, while a notice in the MS. diary of Dr. Simon Forman, a notorious quack and astrologer, gives 1610 as the other limit; for in that year he saw the play performed at the Globe.1 Between these two dates, in the year 1607, "The Puritan, 1 The Diary is among the Ashmolean MSS. (208) in the Bodleian Library; its title is a Book of Plaies and Notes thereof for common Pollicie. Halliwell-Phillipps privately reprinted the valuable and interesting booklet. The account of the play as given by Forman is not very accurate. or, the Widow of Watling Street," was published, containing a distinct reference to Banquo's Ghost-"Instead of a jester we'll have a ghost in a white sheet sit at the upper end of the table.' It is remarkable that when James visited Oxford in 1605 he was "addressed on entering the city by three students of St. John's College, who alternately accosted his Majesty, reciting some Latin verses, founded on the prediction of the weird sisters relative to Banquo and Macbeth." The popularity of the subject is further attested by the insertion of the Historie of Macbeth in the 1606 edition of Albion's England. The former incident may have suggested the subject to Shakespeare; the latter fact may have been due to the popularity of Shakespeare's play. At all events authorities are almost unanimous in assigning Macbeth to 1605-1606; and this view is borne out by minor points of internal evidence.2 As far as metrical characteristics are concerned the comparatively large number of light-endings, twenty-one in all (contrasted with eight in Hamlet, and ten in Julius Cæsar) places Macbeth near the plays of the Fourth Period. With an early play of this period, viz. Antony and Cleopatra, it has strong ethical affinities. 1 Similarly, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, produced in 1611: "When thou art at the table with thy friends, 2 E. g. II. iii. 5, "expectation of plenty" probably refers to the abundance of corn in the autumn of 1606; the reference to the "Equivocator" seems to allude to Garnet and other Jesuits who were tried in the spring of 1606. 3 Macbeth numbers but two weak-endings, while Hamlet and Julius Casar have none. Antony and Cleopatra has not less than seventyone light-endings and twenty-eight weak-endings. It would seem that Shakespeare, in this latter play, broke away from his earlier style as with a mighty bound. |