1

Shakespearean few recent critics doubt; for us, as for De Quincey, the stage resolves the hesitation of the study; and the lofty morning-hymn which Schiller provided for the German people in place of these less edifying reflexions has disappeared even from the German stage.2 The question thus reduces itself to the witch scenes. It must be allowed that there are here striking discrepancies of tone. In part, however, this means merely that in the witches, being a Shakespearean fusion of beings very unlike in legendary character, now the more poetic and now the grosser traits are dominant. But this does not hold of the strangely incongruous figure of Hecate. The leader and controller of the witches in Middleton's play had naturally no place in the legend of Macbeth. She is introduced for the first time in iii. 5. to ask the reason of her exclusion; but to the end she is a palpable intruder in the witches' cavern. With her entrance the northern scenery is suddenly brought into relation with classic myth; they are to meet her, no more on the blasted heath, but at the pit of Acheron; while the language, released from the weird horror or grossness of the other witch scenes, trips along in courtly rococo elegance, with graceful artifices of fancy suggestive of the Midsummer-Night's Dream. Her conceptions of enchantment belong to the world of Oberon; she proposes to beguile Macbeth with the distillations of a vaporous drop that hangs upon a corner of the

1 On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth. Cf. Prof. Hales' full discussion of the whole question: The Porter in Macbeth (N. Shaksp. Soc. Transactions, 1874).

2 Schiller's adaptation of Macbeth appeared at Weimar

in 1800. It is open to, and has received, severe criticism; but many of its defects spring from excessive regard for the immature taste of his public rather than from his own, and his version contributed enormously to domesticate Shakespeare in Germany.

Date of Composi. tion.

moon; and the wild, withered hags about the cauldron remind her of elves and fairies in a ring. Of her enchantments nothing more is heard. The apparitions that fatally palter with Macbeth are raised by no lunar dewdrop, but by the less ethereal ingredients of the cauldron; and Hecate's naïve applause (iv. 1. 39-43) does not disguise her complete insignificance and superfluity. To these two passages of extremely doubtful authenticity may probably be added the farewell speech of the First Witch in the same scene (iv. 1. 125-132), whose good-natured desire to 'cheer up his sprites' is so oddly out of keeping with their character as demoniac contrivers of harm, and with the 'horrible sight' they have just disclosed to 'grieve his heart.' It may be noted, too, that all three passages (i.e. iii. 5., iv. 1. 39-43, and 125-132), are composed in iambic verse, the rest of the witch scenes being all trochaic.1

Putting aside these passages (about forty lines) Macbeth can be assigned with some assurance to 1606. The unmistakable allusions to James (the 'two-fold balls and treble sceptres,' iv. 1. 119-122, and the touching for the king's evil, a treasured prerogative of his, iv. 3. 140-159) were of course written after his accession, and would lose point had his accession not been comparatively recent. The choice of subject implied, in effect, a double compliment to the king. Academic ingenuity had already brought the prophecies of the weird sisters into relation with the demonological descendant of Banquo; his entry into Oxford in 1605 having been celebrated in prophetic verses addressed to him by

1 Cf. the excellent discussion of the supposed interpolations by Mr. E. K. Chambers in his edition of the play for the

Warwick Series (Appendices E, F, G), to which I owe some suggestions.

three students in the character of Witches.1 The Porter, again, in his quality of Clown, founds allusive jests on topics of 1606: the phenomenally abundant harvest (ii. 3. 5), and the Jesuit Garnet's defence of equivocation at his trial in the spring (iv. 3. 10). On the other hand, the play was already familiar in 1607, for Middleton's The Puritan contains an evident 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 also significant that Warner in 1606 inserted a Historie of Macbeth in a new edition of his popular repertory of English history, Albion's England. An unquestionable later limit is furnished by Dr. Simon Forman's account of the performance of Macbeth which he witnessed at the Globe in 1610. The curious naïveté of his report of the plot persuaded the older editors that the play must have been new. It was doubtless new to him.

No earlier handling of the story of Macbeth can The Sources be clearly made out. A ballad on 'Macdobeth of the Plot. was entered in 1596 in the Stationers' Register, and Kempe, four years later, contemptuously referred to 'the miserable story of Mac-doel, or Mac-dobeth, or Macsomewhat' (Nine Days' Wonder, 1600). Whatever may lurk under these ambiguous allusions, it is clear that Shakespeare drew his materials substantially from Holinshed's Chronicle of England and Scotland, the long-familiar source of his English Histories and of King Lear. Even as told by Holinshed, the story is very great, and Shakespeare, in the very maturity of his art, found little to change or to add. In this, as in most other points of technique, Macbeth stands at the opposite pole to King Lear.

1 James's Demonologie, an elaborate refutation of free-thinking in matters of witchcraft, and es

No

pecially of the sceptic Reginald
Scot, appeared in 1599.

parallel from modern romance (like the Gloucester story from the Arcadia) crosses and complicates the ancient legendary theme: Macbeth and his wife fill the entire field without reflexion or counterpart. It is clear, nevertheless, that Shakespeare, though he may have thought the story as historical as that of the Richards or Henries, no longer approached it as history. Macbeth's career, and to some extent his character, are modelled on those of another Scottish assassin, Donwald, whose treacherous murder of King Duff Holinshed had described in vivid detail some twenty pages before, while of Duncan's murder he recorded merely the bare fact. Donwald, an officer of the king, enjoying his absolute trust, entertained him in the castle of Fores, of which he had charge. His wife incited him to use his opportunity, 'and shewed him the means whereby he might soonest accomplish it.'1 Donwald himself' abhorred the act greatly in heart,' but yields to his wife's urgency. Duff on fetiring sends a present to his host; the grooms in the king's chamber, plied with meat and drink by his wife's care, sleep heavily, and fall victims, next morning, to Donwald's 'pious rage.' Fearful portents ensue: the sun is darkened; birds and beasts run counter to their common instincts. All these details Shakespeare has transferred to the story of Duncan, and they add greatly to its tragic force. Holinshed's Macbeth is only his victim's 'kinsman and his subject'; Shakespeare's violates a yet stronger instinct as 'his host,'

1 Stone's Holinshed, p. 26 f. It is interesting to note that Milton included both 'Macbeth' and Duff and Donwald' in his list of subjects for a tragedy. It is clear that he would have kept the two stories wholly

distinct. In a valuable and suggestive paper Prof. Hales has indicated the lines on which the poet of Paradise Lost would probably have treated the Temptation and Fall of Macbeth (Folia Litteraria, 198 f.).

'who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife himself.' Holinshed's Macbeth plans and executes the murder with matter-of-fact promptitude, without a trace of hesitation or compunction; Shakespeare's Macbeth, like Donwald, has accesses of deep reluctance, in which his wife's resolute energy turns the scale. Holinshed's Lady Macbeth urges her husband 'to attempt the thing,' but has no part in its execution. Thus the elements of the relation between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and of the hesitations and 'infirmity' which chiefly make him a tragic figure at all, are suggested by Holinshed's Donwald, not by his Macbeth. Much even of the political background of the murder belongs rather to the story of Duff. Holinshed's Macbeth acts with the complicity of 'his trusty friends,'-Banquo among the rest, and 'upon confidence of their promised aid.' Shakespeare's Macbeth, like Donwald, has no political confederates, can count upon no sympathy if his part in the 'deep damnation' of the king's 'taking off' is discovered, and precipitates discovery by overacting his feigned grief. Even Donwald has the aid of trusty servants: Shakespeare sends husband and wife unaided to their work amid the cry of owls and the prayers of startled sleepers. Finally, Shakespeare has deprived Macbeth of the shadow of political justification which his prototype in Holinshed might plead for his crime. Holinshed's Duncan is a gentle weakling, whom the rebel Macdonwald openly taunts as a 'faint-hearted milksop, more meet to govern a sect of idle monks in some cloister than to have the

And

1 Donwald, as already stated, slays the chamberlains. such, Holinshed proceeds, 'was his over-earnest diligence in the severe inquisition and trial of the offenders herein, that some

of the lords began to mislike the matter, and to smell for the shrewd tokens that he should not be altogether clear himself.' Cf. Lennox's ironical account of Macbeth's 'grief' (iii. 6.).