Clown. Truly I have him; but I would not be the party that should desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal: those that do die of it, do seldom or never recover. Cleo. Remember'st thou any that have died on't? Clo. Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no longer than yesterday; a very honest woman, but something given to lie, — as a woman should not do, but in the way of honesty;—how she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt. Truly, she makes a very good report o' the worm. Cleo. Farewell, kind Charmian;- Iras, long farewell. [Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies. .... Come, thou mortal wretch, Cleo. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle, — O, Antony!- Nay, I will take thee too. What should I stay [Another asp. [Falls and dies. Guard. This is an aspick's trail; and these fig-leaves Have slime upon them, such as the aspick leaves Upon the caves of Nile. That so she died; for her physician tells me, She hath pursued conclusions infinite Of easy ways to die." Act V. Sc. 2. And there is no doubt, that she was somehow thoroughly instructed in natural history, and well acquainted with "the death that is most without pain," or as gentle "as a lover's pinch," and those "vapours" that "quench the spirits by degrees, like to the death of an extreme old man"; nor that the great Magician himself had "pursued conclusions infinite of easy ways to die." Though the Natural History was chiefly composed during the last five years of his life, yet we know that he had been collecting materials for it for many years before; and it is very probable that he was making notes on the poisonous qualities of plants and animals, and on easy ways to die, about the same time that he was engaged in writing this play, and so the asp, that Cleopatra used, is noted with the hemlock, and finds its way into the same section of this work, in connection with the same subject, "the death that is most without pain." This inference is still further confirmed by the actual out-cropping, in rather a singular manner, of this same word vapour, a little above, in the same scene of the play, thus: "Cleo. - in their thick breaths, Bacon, as we know, towards the close of his career, collected and digested the results of his observations and studies, through many years, into a scientific history of Life and Death; and in such a man we may find a comprehensible source of the natural science of these plays, without resorting to the childish and ridiculous notion that a born genius can see through nature at one glance. The tragedy of Macbeth was certainly written between 1605 and 1610. The first notice that we have of it is, that it was performed at the Globe in April 1610; and there are some reasons to conjecture that it was written about the year 1607, when Bacon was made Solicitor-General. It may have followed the "Antony and Cleopatra": at any rate, we find in it an allusion to this same soothsayer, together with some further illustration of the same conceit of a predominant or mastering spirit of one man over another, thus: Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'T is much he dares; And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety. There is none but he, Whose being I do fear; and under him My genius is rebuk'd, as, it is said, Mark Antony's was by Cæsar.". Act III. Sc. 1. And in the lines immediately following these, the same conceit leads to a like use of this same word predominant, thus: The same form of expression occurs again in what Bacon writes concerning Henry VII. and his Queen: “But his aversion towards the house of York was so predominant in him, as it found place not only in his wars and counsels, but in his chamber and bed"; and again, in this same History, he uses the expression, "and were predominant in the King's nature and mind." The incantation and vaticination of the witches, and the prophetic visions also, in this play, bear unmistakable marks of Bacon's inquiries into the natural history of charms and witches, the poisonous plants and animals connected with them in the popular superstitions, and the manner in which the imagination is operated upon by immateriate virtues. Speaking of his third kind of imagination, that which is "of things not present as if they were present," and of the power of it upon the spirits of men, he says: "There be three means to fortify belief: the first is experience; the second is reason; and the third is authority; . . . for authority, it is of two kinds, belief in an art, and belief in a man. Therefore, if a man believes in astrology, . . . or believe in natural magic, and that a ring with such a stone, or such a piece of living creature carried, will do good, it may help his imagination. . . . And such are, for the most part, all witches and superstitious persons, whose beliefs, tied to their teachers and traditions, are no whit controlled either by reason or experience. Therefore if there be any operation upon bodies in absence by nature, it is like to be conveyed from man to man as fame is; as if a witch, by imagination, should hurt any afar off, it cannot be naturally; but by working upon the spirit of some that cometh to the witch."- Nat. Hist. c. x. Accordingly, at the close of the first witch scene, Macbeth comes to the witches, thus: : "3 Witch. A drum! a drum! And at the close of the great incantation of the fourth act, And in the apparition scene immediately following, Bacon's ideas of the nature of prophecy are repeated almost in his own language. The Intellectual Globe must have been written not far from the time when the "Macbeth" first appeared, though not published until afterwards; and it is manifest that Shakespeare could have derived nothing from this work. In the first chapter, he defines his notions of the three several streams of history, poesy, and philosophy, and after giving his meaning of poesy as nothing else but "feigned history," he proceeds to distinguish history from prophecy in the following passage which may be compared with the play: "Wherefore we assert that history itself either consists of sacred history, or divine precepts and doctrines, which are, so to speak, an every day philosophy. And that part which seems to fall without this division, prophecy, is itself a species of history, with the prerogative of deity stamped upon it of making all times one duration, so that the narrative may anticipate the fact; thus also the mode of promulgating vaticination by vision, or the heavenly doctrines by parables, partakes of the nature of poetry":— "War. There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceas'd; The which observed, a man may prophesy, Such things become the hatch and brood of time, King Richard might create a perfect guess." 2 Hen. IV., Act III. Sc. 1. And again, in the Advancement, he says: "Prophecy is but divine history; which hath that prerogative over human, as the narration may be before the fact as well as after.” We may note also that this word anticipate re-appears in the "Precursors or Anticipations of the Second Philosophy." And in the play, this doctrine of prophecy is introduced in these lines : — When first they put the name of King upon me, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding."- Act III. Sc. 1. The fourth act opens with the witches' incantation, which is immediately followed by the Vision of future history, with the prerogative of Deity stamped upon it of making all times one duration, thus:— "Act IV. Sc. 1.- A Dark Cave. [Thunder. An Apparition of an armed Head rises.] 1 Witch. He knows thy thought: Hear his speech, but say thou naught." The apparitions then rise in succession and deliver their prophetic speeches, when the play proceeds: |