And fortune led you well: you have the captives That were the opposites of this day's strife: We do require them of you, so to use them As we shall find their merits and our safety May equally determine. Edm. Sir, I thought it fit To send the old and miserable king To some retention and appointed guard; Whose age has charms in it, whose title more, To pluck the common bosom on his side, And turn our impress'd lances in our eyes 50 Which do command them. With him I sent the queen; My reason all the same; and they are ready To-morrow, or at further space, to appear Where you shall hold your session. At this time We sweat and bleed the friend hath lost his friend; And the best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed The question of Cordelia and her father Alb. Sir, by your patience, I hold you but a subject of this war, Not as a brother. 60 Reg. That's as we list to grace him. Methinks our pleasure might have been demanded, Ere you had spoke so far. He led our powers; Bore the commission of my place and person; The which immediacy may well stand up, And call itself your brother. Gon. Not so hot: In his own grace he doth exhalt himself, More than in your addition. Reg. In my rights, By me invested, he compeers the best. Gon. That were the most, if he should hus band you. Reg. Jesters do oft prove prophets. Gon. 70 Holla, holla! That eye that told you so look'd but a-squint. Reg. Lady, I am not well; else I should Reg. [To Edmund] Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine. Alb. Stay yet; hear reason. Edmund, I arrest thee On capital treason; and, in thine attaint, I bar it in the interest of my wife: Gon. An interlude ! Alb. Thou art arm'd, Gloucester: let the trumpet sound : 90 If none appear to prove upon thy head Ere I taste bread, thou art in nothing less That names me traitor, villain-like he lies: Alb. A herald, ho! All levied in my name, have in my name Reg. Enter a Herald. Capt. Sound, trumpet ! [A trumpet sounds. Her. [Reads] If any man of quality or degree within the lists of the army will maintain upon Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloucester, that he is a manifold traitor, let him appear by the third sound of the trumpet: he is bold in his defence.' Edm. Sound! Her. Again! Her. Again! [First trumpet. [Second trumpet. [Third trumpet. [Trumpet answers within. Enter EDGAR, at the third sound, armed, with a trumpet before him. Alb. Ask him his purposes, why he appears Upon this call o' the trumpet. Her. What are you? 119 Your name, your quality? and why you answer This present summons? Edg Know, my name is lost; By treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit: Yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope. Alb. Which is that adversary? The bloody proclamation to escape, That follow'd me so near,-O, our lives' sweetness! That we the pain of death would hourly die Led him, begg'd for him, saved him from despair; Never,-O fault!-reveal'd myself unto him, Alack, too weak the conflict to support! Edm. This speech of yours hath moved me, And shall perchance do good: but speak you on; 200 You look as you had something more to say. Alb. If there be more, more woeful, hold it in; For I am almost ready to dissolve, Edg. This would have seem'd a period Whilst I was big in clamor came there in a Improper for a slave. Enter a Gentleman, with a bloody knife. 220 It came even from the heart of-0, she's Even so. Cover their faces. Edm. I pant for life: some good I mean to do, Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send, Alb. Thy token of reprieve. Edm. Well thought on: take my sword, 250 Give it the captain. Alb. Haste thee, for thy life. [Exit Edgar. Edm. He hath commission from thy wife and me To hang Cordelia in the prison, and Alb. The gods defend her! Bear him hence awhile. [Edmund is borne off. Re-enter LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following. Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones: Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever! I know when one is dead, and when one lives; She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking Capt. Edmund is dead, my lord. Alb. That's but a trifle here. You lords and noble friends, know our intent. What comfort to this great decay may come Shall be applied for us, we will resign, During the life of this old majesty, To him our absolute power: [To Edgar and Kent] you, to your rights: 300 With boot, and such addition as your honors Have more than merited. All friends shall taste The wages of their virtue, and all foes Lear. And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer. Edg. He is gone, indeed. Kent. The wonder is, he hath endured so long: He but usurp'd his life. Alb. Bear them from hence. Our present business Is general woe. [To Kent and Edgar] Friends of my soul, you twain 319 Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. Kent. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; My master calls me, I must not say no. Alb. The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. [Exeunt, with a dead march. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1606.) INTRODUCTION. Macbeth was seen acted by Dr. Forman-who gives a detailed sketch of the play-on April 20 1610; but the characteristics of versification forbid us to place it after Pericles and Antony and Cleopatra, or very near The Tempest. Upon the whole, the internal evidence supports the opinion of Malone, that the play was written about 1606. The materials for his play Shakespeare found in Holinshed's Chronicle, connecting the portion which treats of Duncan and Macbeth with Holinshed's account of the murder of King Duffe by Donwald. The appearance of Banquo's ghost and the sleepwalking of Lady Macbeth appear to be inventions of the dramatist. The Cambridge editors, Messrs. Clark and Wright, are of opinion that Macbeth was interpolated with passages by Middleton, but this theory is in a high degree doubtful. While in Hamlet and others of Shakespeare's plays we feel that Shakespeare refined upon or brooded over his thoughts, Macbeth seems as if struck out at a heat and imagined from first to last with unabated fervor. It is like a sketch by a great master in which every thing is executed with rapidity and power, and a subtlety of workmanship which has become instinctive. The theme of the drama is the gradual ruin through yielding to evil within and evil without, of a man, who, though from the first tainted by base and ambitious thoughts, yet possessed elements in his nature of possible honor and loyalty. The contrast between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, united by their affections, their fortunes and their crime, is made to illustrate and light up the character of each. Macbeth has physical courage, but moral weakness, and is subject to excited imaginative fears. His faint and intermittent loyalty embarrasses him-he would have the gains of crime without its pains. But when once his hands are dyed with blood, he hardly cares to withdraw them, and the same fears which had tended to hold him back from murder now urge him on to double and treble murders until slaughter, almost reckless, becomes the habit of his reign. At last the gallant soldier of the opening of the play fights for his life with a wild and brute-like force. His whole existence has become joyless and loveless, and yet he clings to existence. Lady Macbeth is of a finer and more delicate nature. Having fixed her eye upon an end-the attainment for her husband of Duncan's crown-she accepts the inevitable means; she nerves herself for the terrible night's work by artificial stimulants; yet she cannot strike the sleeping king who resembles her father. Having sustained her weaker husband, her own strength gives way; and in sleep, when her will cannot control her thoughts, she is piteously afflicted by the memory of one stain of blood upon her little hand. At last her thread of life snaps suddenly. Macbeth, whose affection for her was real, has sunk too far in the apathy of joyless crime to feel deeply her loss. Banquo, the loyal soldier, praying for restraint against evil thoughts which enter his mind as they had entered Macbeth's, but which work no evil there, is set over against Macbeth, as virtue is set over against disloyalty. The witches are the supernatural beings of terror, in harmony with Shakespeare's tragie period, as the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream are the supernatural beings of his days of fancy and frolic, and as Ariel is the supernatural genius of his latest period. There is at once a grossness, a horrible reality about the witches, and a mystery and grandeur of evil influence. |