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 lookingglass; 261 If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then she lives. Kent. Is this the promised end? Edg. Or image of that horror? Alb. Fall, and cease! 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 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. The weight of this sad time we must Edo obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are МАСВЕТН. (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 tragic 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. Boy, son to Macduff. LADY MACBETH. LADY MACDUFF. Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth. HECATE. Three Witches. Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Attendants, and Messengers. SCENE: Scotland: England. But in a sieve I'll thither sail, And, like a rat without a tail, Sec. Witch. I'll give thee a wind. First Witch. I myself have all the other, I will drain him dry as hay: 10 20 Sec. Witch. Show me, show me. First Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wreck'd as homeward he did come. [Drum within. Third Witch. A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come. All. The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine and thrice to mine And thrice again, to make up nine. Enter MACBETH and BANQUO. 30 That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not. If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will Macb. Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted As breath into the wind. Would they had Or have we eaten on the insane root Macb. Your children shall be kings. Ban. To the selfsame tune and words. Enter Ross and ANGUS. Ross. The king hath happily received, Macbeth, The news of thy success; and when he reads that, In viewing o'er the rest o' the selfsame day, He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks, Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make, Strange images of death. As thick as hail Came post with post; and every one did bear Thy praises in his kingdom's great defence, And pour'd them down before him. Ang. We are sent 100 To give thee from our royal master thanks; |