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imagination? The partner of his guilt, who looked upon the great crime only as a business of necessity,—who would have committed it herself but for one touch of feeling, confessed only to herself,

"Had he not resembled

My father as he slept I had done 't,"who had before disclaimed even the tenderest feelings of a mother if they had stood between her and her purpose,—she sees no spectre, because her obdurate will cannot co-exist with the imagination which produces

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the terror and remorse of her husband. It is scarcely the "towering bravery of her mind," in the right sense of the word: it is something lower than courage; it is the absence of impressibility: the tenacious adherence to one dominant passion constitutes her force of character.

As Macbeth recedes from his original nature under the influence of his fears and his superstitions, he becomes, of necessity, a lower creature. It is the natural course of guilt. The "brave Macbeth" changes to a counterfeiter of passions, a hypocrite,—

"Oh, yet I do repent me of my fury,
That I did kill them."

He descends not only to the hire of murderers, but to the slander of his friend to stimulate their revenge. But his temperament is still that of which poets are made. In his murderous purposes he is still imaginative:

:

"Ere the bat hath flown

His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's summons,

The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, Hath rung night's yawning peal,

There shall be done a deed of dreadful note."

It is this condition of Macbeth's mind which, we must again repeat, limits and mitigates the horror of the tragedy. After the tumult of the banquet-scene the imagination of Macbeth again overbears (as it did after the murder) the force of the will in Lady Macbeth. It appears to us that her taunts and reproaches are only ventured upon by her when his excitement is beginning. After

*Mrs. Jameson.

|

it has run its terrific course, and the frighted guests have departed, and the guilty man mutters "it will have blood," then is her intellectual energy utterly helpless before his higher passion. Mrs. Jameson says of this remarkable scene, "A few words of submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose, are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond expression." Is it submission? Is it tenderness? Is it not rather the lower energy in subjection to the higher? Her intellect has lost its anchorage; but his imagination is about to receive a new stimulant :

"I will to-morrow

(And betimes I will) unto the weird sisters: More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,

By the worst means, the worst." "He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is therefore himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and superhuman agencies." Coleridge thus notices the point of action of which we are speaking. But it must not be forgotten that Macbeth was inclined to superstition before the guilt, and that his faith in superhuman agencies went far to produce the guilt. From this moment, however, his guilt is bolder, and his will more obdurate; his supernatural knowledge stands in the place of reflection and caution. He believes in it, and yet he will do something beyond the belief. He is told to "beware Macduff;" but he is also told that

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none of woman born shall harm Macbeth." How does he reconcile this contrary belief?— "Then live, Macduff: What need, I tear of thee? But yet I'll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live; That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, And sleep in spite of thunder."

And then comes the other prophecy of safety:

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him."

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No, indeed, my lord. Macb. Infected be the air whereon they ride;

And damn'd all those that trust them!-I did hear

The galloping of horse: Who was 't came by? Len. "T is two or three, my lord, that bring you word,

Macduff is fled to England.

Macb.

Len. Ay, my good lord.
Macb. Time, thou anticipat'st my dread
exploits:

And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honour,
breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and
dare not."

This

passage, and the subsequent one of "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty space from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death,"

tell us of something higher and better in his Fled to England? character than the assassin and the usurper. He was the victim of "the equivocation of the fiend;" and he has paid a fearful penalty for his belief. The final avenging is a compassionate one, for he dies a warrior's death:

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
Unless the deed go with it: From this mo-
ment,

The very firstlings of my heart shall be

The firstlings of my hand. And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:

The castle of Macduff I will surprise;

Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the
sword

His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line."

I will not yield,

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's
feet,

And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou oppos'd, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last: Before my body
I throw my warlike shield."

The principle which we have thus so imperfectly attempted to exhibit, as the leading characteristic of this glorious tragedy, is, without doubt, that which constitutes the essential difference between a work of the

The retribution which falls upon Lady Macbeth is precisely that which is fitted to her guilt. The powerful will is subjected to the domination of her own imperfect senses. We cannot dwell upon her terrible punish-highest genius and a work of mediocrity. ment. There can be nothing beyond the agony of

"Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."

The vengeance falls more gently on Macbeth;
for he is in activity; he is still confident in
prophetic securities. The contemplative
melancholy which, however, occasionally
comes over him in the last struggle is still
true to the poetry of his character:-

"Seyton!-I am sick at heart.
When I behold-Seyton, I say!-This push
Will cheer me ever, or dis-seat me now.
I have liv'd long enough: my way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:

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 preeminence 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.

BOOK VIII.

CHAPTER I.

A WINTER'S TALE.

compliment.

The unreasonable jealousy of

We have no edition of the 'Winter's Tale' | so home an allusion on any other ground than prior to that of the folio of 1623; nor was it entered upon the registers of the Stationers' Company previous to the entry by the proprietors of the folio. The original text, which is divided into acts and scenes, is remarkably correct.

Chalmers has assigned the 'Winter's Tale' to 1601. The play contains this passage:"If I could find example

Of thousands that had struck anointed kings And flourish'd after, I'd not do 't: but since Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one,

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Let villainy itself forswear 't." "These lines," says Chalmers, were called forth by the occasion of the conspiracy of Essex." "No," says Malone, "these lines could never have been intended for the ear of her who had deprived the Queen of Scots of her life. To the son of Mary they could not but have been agreeable." Upon this ground he assigned the comedy to 1604. There is a third critic, of much higher acuteness than the greater number of those who have given us speculations on the chronology of Shakspere's plays,—we mean Horace Walpole, whose conjecture is so ingenious and amusing that we copy it without abridgment:—

"The Winter's Tale' may be ranked among the historic plays of Shakspere, though not one of his numerous critics and commentators have discovered the drift of it. It was certainly intended (in compliment to Queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother, Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears nowhere to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have ventured

Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence,
form a true portrait of Henry VIII., who gene-
rally made the law the engine of his boisterous
passions. Not only the general plan of the
story is most applicable, but several passages
are so marked that they touch the real history
nearer than the fable. Hermione on her trial,
says,
"For honour,

"T is a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.'

This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as Queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the tragedy but as it pictured Elizabeth, is where Paulina, describing the new-born princess, and her likeness to her father, says, 'She has the very trick of his frown.' There is one sentence, indeed, so applicable both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child, tells the king

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child was carried into Bohemia, and there laid in a forest, and brought up by a shepherd. And the King of Bohemia's son married that wench, and how they fled into Sicilia to Leontes; and the shepherd having showed the letter to the nobleman whom Leontes sent, it was that child, and by the jewels found about her she was known to be Leontes' daughter, and was then sixteen years old.

of which we have an edition as early as 1588. | lost, the king should die without issue; for the Robert Greene, the auther of 'Pandosto,' could scarcely have intended his story as "a compliment to Queen Elizabeth" and a true portrait of Henry VIII.," for he makes the jealous king of his novel terminate his career with suicide. In truth, as we have sometimes inferred, questions such as this are very pretty conundrums, and worthy to be cherished as the amusement of elderly gentlemen who have outlived their relish for early sports, and leave to others who are less careful of their dignity to

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"Remember, also, the rogue that came in all

tattered, like Coll Pipin, and how he feigned him sick and to have been robbed of all he had, and how he cozened the poor man of all his money, and after came to the sheep-shear with a pedlar's pack, and there cozened them again of

Beyond this they are for the most part all their money. And how he changed apparel worthless.

In the absence of any satisfactory internal evidence of the date of this comedy, beyond that furnished by the general character of the language and versification, it was at length pointed out by Malone that an entry in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels in 1623, mentions "an old play called 'Winter's Tale,' formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke and likewise by me." Sir George Bucke first exercised the office of Master of the Revels in 1610. The play, therefore, could not have been earlier than this year; and Mr. Collier has produced conclusive evidence that it was acted in 1611. We have again to refer to a book of plays, and notes thereof, for common policy" kept by Dr. Symon Forman, and discovered some few years ago in the Bodleian Library. Forman saw the 'Winter's Tale' acted on the 15th of May, 1611, at Shakspere's theatre, the Globe. It was most probably then a new play; for he is very minute in his description of the plot.

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"Observe there how Leontes, King of Sicilia, was overcome with jealousy of his wife with the King of Bohemia, his friend, that came to see him; and how he contrived his death, and would have had his cupbearer to have poisoned him, who gave the King of Bohemia warning thereof, and fled with him to Bohemia.

"Remember, also, how he sent to the oracle of Apollo, and the answer of Apollo that she was guiltless, and that the king was jealous, &c., and how, except the child was found again that was

with the King of Bohemia's son, and then how he turned courtier, &c.

"Beware of trusting feigned beggars or fawning fellows."*

The novel of Robert Greene, called 'Pandosto,' and 'The History of Dorastus and Fawnia,' which Shakspere undoubtedly followed, with very few important deviations, in the construction of the plot of his 'Winter's Tale,' is a small book, occupying fifty-nine pages in the reprint, with an Introductory Notice by Mr. Colliert. It was a work of extraordinary popularity, there being fourteen editions known to exist. Of the nature of Shakspere's obligations to this work, Mr. Collier thus justly speaks:

"Robert Greene was a man who possessed all the advantages of education: he was a graduate of both Universities-he was skilled in ancient

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learning and in modern languages—he had, besides, a prolific imagination, a lively and elegant fancy, and a grace of expression rarely exceeded; yet, let any person well acquainted with the Winter's Tale' read the novel of 'Pandosto,' upon which it was founded, and he will be struck at once with the vast pre-eminence of Shakespeare, and with the admirable manner in which he has converted materials supplied by The bare outline of another to his own use.

the story (with the exception of Shakespeare's
miraculous conclusion) is nearly the same in
both; but this is all they have in common, and
Shakespeare may be said to have scarcely

*New Particulars,' p. 20.
Shakespeare's Library, Part I.

adopted a single hint for his descriptions, or a line for his dialogue; while in point of passion and sentiment Greene is cold, formal, and artificial—the very opposite of everything in Skakespeare."

Without wearying the reader with any very extensive comparisons of the novel and the drama, we shall run through the production of Greene, to which our great poet has incidentally imparted a real interest.

"In the country of Bohemia," says the novel, "there reigned a king called Pandosto." The 'Leontes' of Shakspere is the 'Pandosto' of Greene. The Polixenes of the play is Egistus in the novel :

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"It so happened that Egistus, King of Sicilia, who in his youth had been brought up with Pandosto, desirous to show that neither tract of time nor distance of place could diminish their former friendship, provided a navy of ships, and sailed into Bohemia to visit his old friend and companion."

Here, then, we have the scene of the action reversed. The jealous king is of Bohemia, -his injured friend of Sicilia. But the visitor sails into Bohemia. The wife of Pandosto is Bellaria; and they have a young son called Garinter. Pandosto becomes jealous, slowly, and by degrees; and there is at least some want of caution in the queen to justify it:

"Bellaria noting in Egistus a princely and bountiful mind, adorned with sundry and excellent qualities, and Egistus finding in her a virtuous and courteous disposition, there grew such a secret uniting of their affections, that the one could not well be without the company of the other."

The great author of 'Othello' would not deal with jealousy after this fashion. He had already produced that immortal portrait

gentleness. The instant the idea enters the mind of Leontes the passion is at its height:"I have tremor cordis on me:-my heart dances."

Very different is the jealous king of Greene:—

"These and such-like doubtful thoughts, a

long time smothering in his stomach, began at last to kindle in his mind a secret mistrust, which, increased by suspicion, grew at last to a flaming jealousy that so tormented him as he could take no rest."

Coleridge has described the jealousy of Leontes with incomparable truth of analysis:

"The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of 'Othello,' which is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well-known and well-defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Othello;-such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet, from the violence of the passion, forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to, understand what is said to them,-in short, by soliloquy in the form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary manner; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness."*

The action of the novel and that of the drama continue in a pretty equal course. Pandosto tampers with his cupbearer, Franion,

"Of one, not easily jealous, but, being wrought, to poison Egistus; and the cupbearer, terriPerplex'd in the extreme."

He had now to exhibit the distractions of a mind to which jealousy was native; to depict the terrible access of passion, uprooting in a moment all deliberation, all reason, all

fied at the fearful commission, reveals the design to the object of his master's hatred. Eventually they escape together : "Egistus, fearing that delay might breed

* 'Literary Remains,' vol. ii.

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