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Capt. Edmund is dead, my lord. Alb. That's but a trifle here. You lords and noble friends, know our intent. What comfort to this great decay may come Shall be applied for us, we will resign, During the life of this old majesty,

To him our absolute power: [To Edgar and Kent] you, to your rights :

300

With boot, and such addition as your honors Have more than merited. All friends shall taste

The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings. O, see, see!

Lear. And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!

[Dies. 311 He faints! My lord, my lord! Kent. Break, heart; I prithee, break!

Edg.

Edg.

Look up, my lord. Kent. Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass!

he hates him much

That would upon the rack of this tough
world
Stretch him out longer.
Edg.

He is gone, indeed. Kent. The wonder is, he hath endured so long:

He but usurp'd his life.

Alb. Bear them from hence. Our present business

Is general woe. [To Kent and Edgar] Friends of my soul, you twain 319

Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. Kent. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; My master calls me, I must not say no.

Alb. The weight of this sad time we must

obey;

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MACBETH.

(WRITTEN ABOUT 1606.)

INTRODUCTION.

Macbeth was seen acted by Dr. Forman-who gives a detailed sketch of the play-on April 20 1610; but the characteristics of versification forbid us to place it after Pericles and Antony and Cleopatra, or very near The Tempest. Upon the whole, the internal evidence supports the opinion of Malone, that the play was written about 1606. The materials for his play Shakespeare found in Holinshed's Chronicle, connecting the portion which treats of Duncan and Macbeth with Holinshed's account of the murder of King Duffe by Donwald. The appearance of Banquo's ghost and the sleepwalking of Lady Macbeth appear to be inventions of the dramatist. The Cambridge editors, Messrs. Clark and Wright, are of opinion that Macbeth was interpolated with passages by Middleton, but this theory is in a high degree doubtful. While in Hamlet and others of Shakespeare's plays we feel that Shakespeare refined upon or brooded over his thoughts, Macbeth seems as if struck out at a heat and imagined from first to last with unabated fervor. It is like a sketch by a great master in which every thing is executed with rapidity and power, and a subtlety of workmanship which has become instinctive. The theme of the drama is the gradual ruin through yielding to evil within and evil without, of a man, who, though from the first tainted by base and ambitious thoughts, yet possessed elements in his nature of possible honor and loyalty. The contrast between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, united by their affections, their fortunes and their crime, is made to illustrate and light up the character of each. Macbeth has physical courage, but moral weakness, and is subject to excited imaginative fears. His faint and intermittent loyalty embarrasses him-he would have the gains of crime without its pains. But when once his hands are dyed with blood, he hardly cares to withdraw them, and the same fears which had tended to hold him back from murder now urge him on to double and treble murders until slaughter, almost reckless, becomes the habit of his reign. At last the gallant soldier of the opening of the play fights for his life with a wild and brute-like force. His whole existence has become joyless and loveless, and yet he clings to existence. Lady Macbeth is of a finer and more delicate nature. Having fixed her eye upon an end-the attainment for her husband of Duncan's crown-she accepts the inevitable means; she nerves herself for the terrible night's work by artificial stimulants; yet she cannot strike the sleeping king who resembles her father. Having sustained her weaker husband, her own strength gives way; and in sleep, when her will cannot control her thoughts, she is piteously afflicted by the memory of one stain of blood upon her little hand. At last her thread of life snaps suddenly. Macbeth, whose affection for her was real, has sunk too far in the apathy of joyless crime to feel deeply her loss. Banquo, the loyal soldier, praying for restraint against evil thoughts which enter his mind as they had entered Macbeth's, but which work no evil there, is set over against Macbeth, as virtue is set over against disloyalty. The witches are the supernatural beings of terror, in harmony with Shakespeare's tragic period, as the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream are the supernatural beings of his days of fancy and frolic, and as Ariel is the supernatural genius of his latest period. There is at once a grossness, a horrible reality about the witches, and a mystery and grandeur of evil influence.

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SCENE: Scotland: England.

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So should he look

That seems to speak things strange.

Ross. God save the king! Dun. Whence camest thou, worthy thane? Ross. From Fife, great king; Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky And fan our people cold. Norway himself, 50 With terrible numbers,

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict;
Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons,
Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm,
Curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude,
The victory fell on us.

Dun. Ross.

Great happiness!

That now Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition: Nor would we deign him burial of his men 60 Till he disbursed at Saint Colme's inch Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

Dun. No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive

Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death,

And with his former title greet Macbeth.
I'll see it done.

Ross.

Dun.

What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won.

[Exeunt.

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