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MACBETH.

"THE Tragedie of Macbeth" appears to have been first printed in the folio of 1623. The date of its composition is not determinable. Malone, from internal probabilities, satisfied himself that it must have been written not later than 1606: his chief grounds for this conviction being two passages in the Porter's soliloquy, Act II. Sc. 3:-"Here's a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty:" and, "Here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven." In the former passage he detects an allusion to the extreme cheapness of corn in 1606, as shown by the audit book of Eton College; the latter he maintains, with great ingenuity, to be a pointed reference to the doctrine of equivocation avowed by Henry Garnet, superior of the order of Jesuits, on his trial for the Gunpowder Treason, in the same year. But there is, perhaps, still stronger evidence for conjecturing this tragedy was produced very early in the reign of James I., in the apparent allusion to the union of the three kingdoms under that monarch in 1604, in the words,

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The reference here can hardly be gainsaid, and it is certainly one not likely to have been introduced at a period at all remote from the event which it adumbrates. Still this is only surmise. The earliest tangible information regarding the chronology of "Macbeth" is that it was acted at the Globe Theatre, on the 20th of April, 1610: a fact derived from the interesting MS. Diary of Dr. Forman (Mus. Ashmol. Oxon.), which contains the following minute analysis of the plot :

"In Macbeth, at the Globe, 1610, the 20th of April, Saturday, there was to be observed, first, how Macbeth and Banquo, two noblemen of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood before them three women, Fairies, or Nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him, Hail, Macbeth, King of Codor, for thou shalt be a King, but shalt beget no Kings, &c. Then, said Banquo, What! all to Macbeth and nothing to me? Yes, said the Nymphs, Hail to thee, Banquo; thou shalt beget Kings, yet be no King. And so they departed, and came to the court of Scotland, to Duncan King of Scots, and it was in the days of Edward the Confessor. And Duncan bade them both kindly welcome, and made Macbeth forthwith Prince of Northumberland; and sent him home to his own Castle, and appointed Macbeth to provide for him, for he would sup with him the next day at night, and did so.

"And Macbeth contrived* to kill Duncan, and through the persuasion of his wife did that night murder the King in his own Castle, being his guest. And there were many prodigies seen that night and the day before. And when Macbeth had murdered the King, the blood on his hands could not be washed off by any means, nor from his wife's hands, which handled the bloody daggers in hiding them, by which means they became both much amazed and affronted.

* Plotted.

"The murder being known, Duncan's two sons fled, the one to England, [the other to] Wales, to save themselves they, being fled, were supposed guilty of the murder of their father, which was nothing so.

"Then was Macbeth crowned King, and then he, for fear of Banquo, his old companion, that he should beget kings but be no king himself, he contrived the death of Banquo, and caused him to be murdered on the way that he rode. The night, being at supper with his noblemen, whom he had bid to a feast (to the which also Banquo should have come), he began to speak of noble Banquo, and to wish that he were there. And as he thus did, standing up to drink a carouse to him, the ghost of Banquo came and sat down in his chair behind him. And he, turning about to sit down again, saw the ghost of Banquo, which fronted him, so that he fell in a great passion of fear and fury, uttering many words about his murder, by which, when they heard that Banquo was murdered, they suspected Macbeth.

"Then Macduff fled to England, to the King's son, and so they raised an army and came to Scotland, and at Dunston Anyse overthrew Macbeth. In the mean time, while Macduff was in England, Macbeth slew Macduff's wife and children, and after, in the battle, Macduff slew Macbeth.

"Observe, also, how Macbeth's queen did rise in the night in her sleep and walk, and talked and confessed all, and the doctor noted her words."

The historical incidents of this great tragedy are contained in the Scotorum Historia of Boethius, first printed at Paris, in 1526, and afterwards translated by Bellenden into the Scottish dialect, and published in 1541. From the latter it was copied by Holinshed, and on that Chronicler's relation of the story Shakespeare based his play. The opinion once prevalent, that some portion of the poet's preternatural machinery was borrowed from Middleton's "Witch," has no longer supporters. "The Witch" is now generally thought to have been written about 1613.

(See the Illustrative Comments at the end of the Play.)

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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.

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Doubtful it stood;

CAP. As two spent swimmers, that do cling together And choke their art. The merciless Macdonald (Worthy to be a rebel,-for, to that, The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him) from the western isles Of kernes and gallowglasses is supplied; And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak: For brave Macbeth, (well he deserves that name) Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Which smok'd with bloody execution, Like valour's minion,

Carv'd out his passage till he fac'd the slave; Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

There to meet with Macbeth.] Pope, to remedy the defective verse, reads, "There I go to meet Macbeth;" Capell, "There to meet with great Macbeth;" and Steevens,

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b ALL. Paddock calls: &c.] The folio prints these lines as if spoken in chorus by the three witches; but the distribution commonly adopted by modern editors,

"2 Witch. Paddock call-anon

All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair,

Hover through the fog and filthy air,"

is certainly preferable. The dialogue throughout, with the exception of the two lines, "I come, Graymalkin!" and "Paddock calls-anon!" was probably intended to be sung or chaunted. c This is the sergeant,-] Sergeants were not formerly the noncommissioned officers now so called, but a guard specially appointed to attend the person of the king; and, as Minsheu says, to arrest Traytors or great men, that doe, or are like to contemne messengers of ordinarie condition, and to attend the Lord High Steward of England, sitting in judgement upon any Traytor, and such like."

d And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, &c.] The old text has, "damned Quarry," &c.; but the fact that quarrel, a

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Ross. God save the king!

KING. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane?
Ross.
From Fife, great king;

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,
And fan our people cold.

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,'
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

(*) Old text, Enter Rosse and Angus.

most appropriate word, occurs in the corresponding passage of Holinshed, is almost certain proof that the latter term is the genuine reading:-"Out of the westerne Iles there came unto him [Makdowald] a great multitude of people, offering themselves to assist him in that rebellious quarell."-History of Scotland.

e Which ne'er shook hands, &c.] "Which" has been altered, and perhaps rightly, to And.

fdireful thunders break; &c.] The word break is wanting in the folio 1623, and was supplied by Pope out of the subsequent folios, which read, "breaking."

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks; &c.] Johnson interprets this, "cannon charged with double thunders;" and observes truly that cracks was a word of such emphasis and dignity, that in this play the writer terms the general dissolution of nature the crack of doom.

h that seems to speak things strange.] Johnson proposed, "that teems to speak things strange ;" and Mr. Collier's annotator, with characteristic vapidity, that comes to speak," &c; but compare, Scene 5,

"Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown'd withal."

i with terrible numbers,-] Pope's transposition, "numbers terrible," is, prosodically, an improvement.

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