amidst the hurried steps in the fatal_chamber,—and she saw the bloody hands of the assassin,-and, personifying the murderess, she rushed to dip her own hands in the gore of Duncan. It is perfectly evident that this intensity of conception has carried the horrors far beyond the limits of pleasurable emotion, and has produced all the terrors of a real murder. No reader of the play, and no spectator, can regard this play as Mrs. Siddons regarded it. On that night she, probably for the first time, had a strong though imperfect vision of the character of Lady Macbeth, such as she afterwards delineated it; and in that case, what to all of us must, under any circumstances, be a work of art, however glorious, was to her almost a reality. It was the isolation of the scene, demanded by her own attempt to conceive the character of Lady Macbeth, which made it so terrible to Mrs. Siddons. The reader has to regard it as a part of a great whole, which combines and harmonises with all around it; for which he is adequately prepared by what has gone before; and which,-even if we look at it as a picture which represents only that one portion of the action, has still its own repose, its own harmony of colouring, its own chiaroscuro,—is to be seen under a natural light. There was a preternatural light upon it when Mrs. Siddons saw it as she has described.

The leading characteristic of this glorious tragedy is, without doubt, that which constitutes the essential difference between a work of the highest genius and a work of mediocrity. Without power-by which we here especially mean the ability to produce strong excitement by the display of scenes of horror -no poet of the highest order was ever made; but this alone does not make such a poet. If he is called upon to present such scenes, they must, even in their most striking forms, be associated with the beautiful. The pre-eminence of his art in this particular can alone prevent them affecting the imagination beyond the limits of pleasurable emotion. To keep within these limits, and yet to preserve all the energy which results from the power of dealing with the terrible apart from the beautiful, belongs to few that the world has seen: to Shakspere it belongs surpassingly.

That Shakspere found sufficient materials for this great drama in Holinshed's 'History of Scotland' is a fact that renders it quite unnecessary for us to enter into any discussion as to the truth of this portion of the history, or to point out the authorities upon which the narrative of Holinshed was founded. Better authorities than Holinshed had access to have shown that the contest for the crown of Scotland between Duncan and Macbeth was a contest of factions, and that Macbeth was

:

raised to the throne by his Norwegian allies after a battle in which Duncan fell in the same way, after a long rule, was he vanquished and killed by the son of Duncan, supported by his English allies.* But with the differences between the real and apocryphal history it is manifest that we can here have no concern. There is another story told also in the same narrative, which Shakspere with consummate skill has blended with the story of Macbeth. It is that of the murder of King Duff by Donwald and his wife in Donwald's castle of Forres:

"The king got him into his privy chamber, only with two of his chamberlains, who, having brought him to bed, came forth again, and then fell to banqueting with Donwald and his wife, who had prepared divers delicate dishes and sundry sorts of drinks for their rear-supper or collation, whereat they sat up so long, till they had charged their stomachs with such full gorges, that their heads were no sooner got to the pillow but asleep they were so fast that a man might have removed the chamber over them sooner than to have awakened them out of their drunken sleep.

"Then Donwald, though he abhorred the act greatly in heart, yet through instigation of his wife he called four of his servants unto him (whom he had made privy to his wicked intent before, and framed to his purpose with large gifts), and now declaring unto them after what sort they should work the feat, they gladly obeyed his instructions, and speedily going about the murder, they enter the chamber (in which the king lay) a little before cock's crow, where they secretly cut his throat as he lay sleeping, without any bustling at all; and immediately by a postern gate they carried forth the dead body into the fields. * * * * * Donwald, about the time that the murder was in doing, got him amongst them that kept the watch, and so continued in company with them all the residue of the night. But in the morning, when the noise was raised in the king's chamber how the king was slain, his body conveyed away, and the bed all beraid with blood, he with the watch ran thither, as though he had known nothing of the matter, and breaking into the chamber, and finding cakes of blood in the bed and on the floor about the sides of it, he forthwith slew the chamberlains as guilty of that heinous murder. * * * * For the space of six months together, after this heinous murder thus committed, there appeared no sun by day, nor moon by night, in any part of the realm, but still was the sky covered with continual clouds, and sometimes such outrageous winds arose, with lightnings

* *

* See Skene's' Highlanders of Scotland,' vol. i. P. 116.

and tempests, that the people were in great fear of present destruction."

THE ROMAN PLAYS.

CORIOLANUS.

"THE lives of the noble Grecians and Romans, compared together by Plutarch, done into English by Thomas North,' is a book on many accounts to be venerated. It is still the best translation of Plutarch we have,-full of fine robust English, -a book worthy of Shakspere to read and sometimes to imitate. Here he found the story of Coriolanus told in the most graphic manner; and he followed it pretty literally. Niebuhr places this story amongst the fabulous legends of Rome. Plutarch, and especially Shakspere, have made it almost impossible to believe that such Romans did not really live, and think, and talk, and act, as we see them in these wonderful pictures of humanity.

The leading idea of Shakspere's 'Coriolanus'-the pivot upon which all the action turns-the key to the bitterness of factious hatred which runs through the whole drama-is the contest for power between the patricians and plebeians. This is a broad principle, assuming various modifications in various states of society, but very slightly varied in its foundations and its results. He that truly works out the exhibition of this principle must paint men, let the scene be the Rome of the first Tribunes, or the Venice of the last Doges. With the very slightest changes of accessaries, the principle stands for the contests between aristocracy and democracy, in any country or in any age. The historical truth, and the philosophical principle, which Shakspere has embodied in Coriolanus' are universal. But suppose he had possessed the means of treating the subject with what some would call historical accuracy; had learnt that Plutarch, in the story of Coriolanus, was probably dealing only with a legend; that, if the story is to be received as true, it belongs to a later period; that in this later period there were very nice shades of difference between the classes composing the population of Rome; that the balance of power was a much more complex thing than he found in the narrative of Plutarch: further, suppose that, proud of this learning, he had made the universal principle of the plebeian and patrician hostility subsidiary to an exact display of it, according to the conjectures which modern industry and acuteness have brought to bear on the subject. It is evident, we

think, that he would have been betrayed into a false principle of art; and would necessarily have drawn Roman shadows instead of vital and enduring men. As it is, he has drawn men so vividly-under such permanent relations to each other-with such universal manifestations of character, that some persons of strong political feelings have been ready to complain, according to their several creeds, either that his plebeians are too brutal, or his patricians too haughty. The tribute to Shakspere's political impartiality is complete.

JULIUS CÆSAR.

YEARS, perhaps centuries, have rolled on since the era of • Coriolanus.' Rome had seen a constitution which had reconciled the differences of the patricians and the plebeians. The two orders had built a temple to Concord. Her power had increased; her territory had extended. In compounding their differences the patricians and the plebeians had appropriated to themselves all the wealth and honours of the state. There was a neglected class that the social system appeared to reject, as well as to despise. The aristocratic party was again brought into a more terrible conflict with the impoverished and the destitute. Civil war was the natural result. Sulla established a short-lived constitution. The dissolution of the Republic was at hand: the struggle was henceforth to be, not between classes, but individuals. The death of Julius Cæsar was soon followed by the final termination of the contest between the republican and the monarchical principle. Shakspere saw the grandeur of the crisis; and he seized upon it for one of his lofty expositions of political philosophy. He has treated it as no other poet would have treated it, because he saw the exact relations of the contending principle to the future great history of mankind. The death of Cæsar was not his catastrophe: it was the death of the Roman Republic at Philippi.

Of all Shakspere's characters, none require to be studied with more patient attention than those of Brutus and Cassius, that we may understand the resemblances and the differences of each. The leading distinctions between these two remarkable men, as drawn by Shakspere, appear to us to be these: Brutus acts wholly upon principle; Cassius partly upon impulse. Brutus acts only when he has reconciled the contemplation of action with his speculative opinions; Cassius allows the necessity of some action to run before and govern his opinions. Brutus is a philosopher; Cassius is a partisan. Brutus there

fore deliberates and spares; Cassius precipitates and denounces Brutus is the nobler instructor; Cassius the better politician. Shakspere, in the first great scene between them, brings out these distinctions of character upon which future events so mainly depend.

Nothing can be more interesting than to follow Shakspere with Plutarch in hand. The poet adheres to the facts of history with a remarkable fidelity. A few hard figures are painted upon a canvas; the outlines are distinct, the colours are strong; but there is no art in the composition, no grouping, no light and shadow. This is the historian's picture. We turn to the poet. We recognise the same figures, but they appear to live; they are in harmony with the entire scene in which they move; we have at once the reality of nature, and the ideal of art, which is a higher nature. Yet the art of the poet is so subtle that many have fancied that they could detect a want of art; and the character of Cæsar, as drawn by Shakspere, has been held not only to be tame, and below the historical conception of the great dictator, but as representing him in a false light. We believe that Shakspere was wholly right. At the exact period of the action of this drama, Cæsar, possessing the reality of power, was haunted by the weakness of passionately desiring the title of king. Plutarch says "The chiefest cause that made him mortally hated was the covetous desire he had to be called king." This is the pivot upon which the whole action of Shakspere's tragedy turns. There might have been another mode of treating the subject. The death of Julius Cæsar might have been the catastrophe. The republican and the monarchical principles might have been exhibited in conflict. The republican principle would have triumphed in the fall of Cæsar; and the poet would have previously held the balance between the two principles, or have claimed, indeed, our largest sympathies for the principles of Cæsar and his friends, by a true exhibition of Cæsar's greatness and Cæsar's virtues. The poet chose another course. And are we then to talk, with ready Hippancy, of ignorance and carelessness-that he wanted classical knowledge-that he gave himself no trouble?__ "The fault of the character is the fault of the plot," says Hazlitt. It would have been nearer the truth had he said-the character is determined by the plot. While Cæsar is upon the scene, it was for the poet, largely interpreting the historian, to show the inward workings of "the covetous desire he had to be called king;" and most admirably, according to our notions of characterisation, has he shown them. Altogether we profess to receive Shakspere's characterisation of Cæsar with a perfect confidence that he produced that character upon fixed princi