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nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered; is the business of a modern dramatist. For this, probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of many passions; and, as it has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew that any other passion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity.

"Characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated and preserved; yet, perhaps, no poet ever kept his personages more distinct from each other. I will not say with Pope, that every speech may be assigned to the proper speaker, because many speeches there are which have nothing characteristical; but, perhaps, though some may be equally adapted to every person, it would be difficult to find any that can be properly transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is reason for choice.

"Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakspeare has no heroes ; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak, as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion; even where the agency is supernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions, and most frequent incidents, so that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world; Shakspeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but, if it were possible, its effects would, probably, be such as he has assigned; and it may be said, that he has not only shown human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials to which it cannot be exposed.

"This, therefore, is the praise of Shakspeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may be cured of his delirious ecstasies by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions."

Macbeth.

B

Persons represented.

DUNCAN, King of Scotland.
MALCOLM, Son to Duncan.
DON ALBAIN, son to Duncan.
MACBETH, general of the King's army.
BANQUO, general of the King's army.
MACDUFF, a nobleman of Scotland.
LENOX, a nobleman of Scotland.
ROSSE, a nobleman of Scotland.
MENTETH, a nobleman of Scotland.
ANGUS, a nobleman of Scotland.

CATHNESS, a nobleman of Scotland.

FLEANCE, son to Banquo.

SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, general of the English

forces.

Young SIWARD, son to the Earl of Northumberland.

SEYTON, an officer attending on Macbeth.

Son to Macduff.

An English Doctor.

A Scotch Doctor.

A Soldier.

A Porter.

An old Man.

LADY MACBETH.

LADY MACDUFF.

Gentlewoman, attending on Lady Macbeth.

HECATE.

Three Witches.

Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Attendants, and Messengers. The Ghost of Banquo, and other Apparitions.

SCENE. In the end of Act IV. in England; through the rest of the Play in Scotland; and chiefly at Macbeth's Castle.

INTRODUCTION.

HE events represented in this tragedy took place about the middle of the eleventh century, that is to say, just previous to, and during a part of, the reign of Edward the Confessor, king of England. ;

Malcolm II., of Scotland, had been assassinated in 1034, and was succeeded by his grandson Duncan I. The early portion of his reign was peaceable; but its tranquillity was soon interrupted by the birth of domestic broils and troubles, which arose from the following causes. He had at his court a nobleman named Banquo, who, for his integrity, was appointed royal steward and treasurer; and who, for his exactness in the performance of his duties, was a great favourite with his master. That, however, which made him to be loved by the king, rendered him hateful to his fellow-subjects, who being offended with the rigid sternness with which he collected the royal revenues, waylaid him, and, after robbing him, left him half dead. As soon as he recovered from this illtreatment, Banquo carried his complaint to the throne of his master, where he was sure of redress; and, accordingly, the ruffians who had attacked and robbed him were summoned to appear forthwith before Duncan, to answer for their offence. But, instead of obeying, they slew the messenger, and broke out into an open rebellion, and murdered many more of the king's subjects.

This brings under our notice the famous MACBETH, who was the greatest of the royal generals, and, as some say, a cousin of Duncan himself. He represented to the sovereign the enormity of this conduct of the rebels, and urging most earnestly that they should be punished, was himself sent against them, and completely routed them; whereupon the rebel chieftain, to whom Shakspeare gives the name of Macdonwald, fell by his own sword, and his head was sent by the victor to the king, as an earnest of his conquest. But Macbeth's labours were not to stop here. The Danes, taking advantage of these internal troubles of Scotland, landed in Fife with a large army under the command of Sweyn, king of Norway, and began to ravage the country, and, with their usual cruelty, to

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