Drink the free air.

and crept in

Dr. Johnson has missed the sense Shakespeare is alluding to the hyperbol

at any editor has gone so far as to kespeare's text.

e observed that Shakespeare paid

what are called nominatives and which in reality knows nothing of the time, one of the common-placer nouns-substantive are the same through the person addressed it is t addressed it is that is called the nominative or the breathe the free air. “You are the sentence. So it was with respect to was a complimentary expression adminative and I was accusative also ; on a remarkable occasion.

me was accusative also. He and she nd accusative, and in some parts of also was used as the nominative. to be both nominative and accu

imes that we have lost this freedom. ches nearer to what nature dictates. ed, "Who is there?" a child will is a better answer than "I" would nced with the very tip of the tongue, 'sound which the reply to such a ourse of nature possess.

IV. 3. TIMON.

>resently prepare thy grave:
ight foam of the sea may beat
e daily.

ory of Timon. Stubbs, the Puritan, <off for writing against the Queen's e of Anjou, died some time after in on the sea-shore. There have been of persons having left similar direcisposing of their remains; as a Mr. 1 a Mr. Baldwin, who married a Lord Onslow. Both the cases are

L 2

MACBETH.

We are now arrived at another of the plays which are esteemed the master-pieces of this great poet, and we shall find that the editors and commentators have left more to be done by those who venture thus late into the Shakespearian field than in respect of the tragedies which have hitherto come before us, both in the regulation of the text and in ascertaining the true sense of obscure passages. There appear to be also allusions to events of the Poet's own time which have escaped the observation of preceding commen

tators.

In reference to the state of the text of this play, it must be kept in mind that we have two authorities for it, and no more the folio of 1623 and the folio of 1632. Further, that the numerous corrections (decidedly and unquestionably so) made by the editors of the second folio, and the numerous other deviations from the text of the first folio, shew that the original editors performed their duty in a very imperfect manner, and that therefore there is just room for a bolder conjectural criticism on this play than perhaps on any other; neither can the variations of the second from the first edition be always accepted as improvements or authoritative determinations of the true text.

Having no quarto, nor any certainty of the existence of this play before 1610 when Forman was present at the representation of it, we have not the usual means of arriving at the exact time of its composition. That it belongs to the reign of James the First might be inferred from its very subject, a wild and romantic tale found in the fabulous chronicles of the Scottish nation. The reverence also here

offered to the antiquity of the House of Stuart who were fond of deriving themselves from Banquo and Fleance, which, if it could be supported by evidence, would place them, as an ancient race, far in advance of any of the nobility whom King James would find forming his new court at London, was plainly an offering intended especially for the gratification of the King. But the question appears to be put out of doubt, as the commentators have observed, by the vision of the successors to the throne of Scotland ending with,

Some I see,

That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry.

In respect of the actual year in which the play was written, there is such an accumulation of probable circumstances guiding to 1606, to which year Malone and Chalmers agree in assigning it, that any attempt to remove it from that year would probably be ineffectual. To their probabilities I add another, which arises out of a new, but I believe a just, view of the import of a passage in the third scene of the first act

The Thane of Cawdor lives;

Why do you dress me in borrowed robes ?

or, as it is in the second folio,

Why do you dress me in his borrowed robes ?

This passage has hitherto been taken as merely metaphorical; but it seems to me that the Poet really intended that the robes pertaining to the dignity of Thane of Cawdor, to which Macbeth was just elevated, should be produced on the stage by Rosse and Angus; that in fact the ceremony of investiture should take place upon the stage. This could not but be agreeable to the spectators. It is at least more in accordance with the turn of the expression, than to suppose that Macbeth spoke thus in mere metaphor.

Now it happened that this ancient ceremony of investiture had lately been gone through by Sir David Murray on his being created Lord Scone. We are told that he "was with the greatest solemnity invested in that honour the 7th of April, 1605, by a special commission, directed to the Earl Dumfermling, the Lord Chancellor, to that effect. The ceremony was in presence of the earls Angus, Sutherland, Marischal, Linlithgow; the lords Fleming, Drummond, and Thirlestane." This particular investiture in a Scottish dignity probably suggested to Shakespeare the idea of introducing the investiture of Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor. The Earl of Angus we see appears both in the play and in the actual performance of the ceremony; and Sir David Murray, it may also be observed, received the dignity under circumstances not very unlike those in which Macbeth acquired the Thanedom of Cawdor. He had a large share in saving the life of the King at the time of the Gowrie conspiracy, and the King gave him for his reward, first, the barony of Ruthven, which had belonged to the Earl of Gowrie, and next the lands of Scone, of which the Earl of Gowrie had been commendator, and had lost them by his treason.

What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won."

The proximate cause of the selection of the story of Macbeth as a subject for his muse, was in all probability, as has been suggested by the commentators, the use made of it at Oxford in the August of 1605 in the compliments and entertainments provided for the King on his visit to the university.

* See for the facts respecting Murray, The Peerage of England, 8vo. 1779, vol. v. p. 486. For the ceremony of investiture on the creation of nobles, Milles' Catalogue of Honour, p. 32. The practice of investiture, and some other ceremonies formerly used at creations, was first laid aside in 1615, at the creation of Lord Hay, the lawyers being of opinion that the delivery of the patent was all that was requisite. (Camden's Annals of the Reign of James the First, p. 12.)