Shakspeare and His Times

[Footnote 21: Petrarch, "Trionfo della Morte," cap. i., lines 160-172]

The following translation is from the pen of Captain Macgregor:

[Footnote 22: Macgregor's "Odes of Petrarch," p. 220.]

Juliet also is dead. Romeo contemplates her as she lies in her tomb, and he also expatiates upon her beauty:

I need not insist upon the comparison; who does not feel how much more simple and beautiful the form of expression is in Petrarch? It is the brilliant and flowing poetry of the South, beside the strong, rough, and vigorous imagination of the North.

The love of Romeo for Rosaline is an invention of Luigi da Porto, retained in the poem of Arthur Brooke. This invention imparts so little interest to the first acts of the drama, that Shakspeare probably adopted it merely with a view to giving greater effect to that character of suddenness which distinguishes the passions of a Southern clime. The part of Mercutio was suggested to him by these lines of the English poem:

"A courtier that eche where was highly had in price,
For he was courteous of his speeche, and pleasant of devise.
Even as a lyon would emong the lambs be bolde,
Such was emong the bashful maydes Mercutio to beholde."

Such was, doubtless, the bel air in Shakspeare's time, and it is as the type of the amiable and amusing companion that he has described Mercutio. However, though he was not bold enough to attack, like Molière, the ridiculous absurdities of the court, he very frequently makes it evident that its tone was a burden to him; and the part of Mercutio seems to have been a great tax upon his taste and uprightness of mind. Dryden relates as a tradition of his time, that Shakspeare used to say, "that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him." Mercutio has, nevertheless, had many zealous partisans in England; among others, Johnson, who, on this occasion, soundly rates Dryden for his irreverent words regarding the witty Mercutio, "some of whose sallies," he says, "are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden." Shakspeare's aversion for the kind of wit of which he has been so lavish in "Romeo and Juliet," is sufficiently proved by Friar Laurence's injunction to Romeo when he begins to explain his position in the sonnet style:

"Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift."

Friar Laurence is the wise man of the play, and his speeches are, in general, as simple as it was allowable for those of a philosopher to be in his time.

The part of Juliet's nurse also contains but few of these subtleties, which Shakspeare seems to have reserved, in this work, to persons of the higher classes, and sometimes to the valets who ape their manners. The character of the nurse is indicated in Arthur Brooke's poem; in which, however, it is far from possessing the same homely truthfulness as in Shakspeare's drama.

Wherever they are not disfigured by conceits, the lines in "Romeo and Juliet" are perhaps the most graceful and brilliant that ever flowed from Shakspeare's pen. They are, for the most part, written in rhyme, another homage paid to Italian habits.

Hamlet.

(1596.)

"Hamlet" is not the finest of Shakspeare's dramas; "Macbeth," and, I think, "Othello" also, are, on the whole, superior to it: but it perhaps contains the most remarkable examples of its author's most sublime beauties, as well as of his most glaring defects. Never has he unvailed with more originality, depth, and dramatic effect the inmost state of a mighty soul; never, also, has he yielded with greater unrestraint to the terrible or burlesque fancies of his imagination, and to the abundant intemperance that is characteristic of a mind which hastens to diffuse its ideas without any selection, and which delights to render them striking by a strong, ingenious, and unexpected expression, without caring to give them a pure and natural form.

According to his custom, Shakspeare took no trouble in "Hamlet," either to invent or to arrange his subject. He took the facts as he found them recorded in the fabulous stories of the ancient history of Denmark, by Saxo Grammaticus, which wore transformed into tragical histories by Belleforest, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and were immediately translated and became popular in England, not only among the reading public, but also on the stage, for it appears certain that six or seven years before Shakspeare, in 1589, an English poet named Thomas Kyd had already written a tragedy on the subject of Hamlet. This is the text of the historical romance out of which, as a sculptor chisels a statue from a block of marble, Shakspeare modeled his drama.

"Fengon, having secretly assembled certain men, and perceiving himself strong enough to execute his enterprise, Horvendile, his brother, being at a banquet with his friends, suddenly set upon him, where he slew him as traitorously as cunningly he purged himself of so detestable a murder to his subjects; for that before he had any violent or bloody hands, or once committed parricide upon his brother, he had incestuously abused his wife, whose honor he ought to have sought and procured, as traitorously he pursued and effected his destruction. * * *

"Boldened and encouraged by his impunity, Fengon ventured to couple himself in marriage with her whom he used as his concubine during good Horvendile's life, * * * and the unfortunate and wicked woman, that had received the honor to be the wife of one of the valiantest and wisest princes of the North, imbased herself in such vile sort as to falsify her faith unto him, and, which is worse, to marry him that had been the tyrannous murderer of her lawful husband. * * *

"Geruth having so much forgotten herself, the prince Hamblet perceiving himself to be in danger of his life, as being abandoned of his own mother, to beguile the tyrant in his subtleties, counterfeited the madman with such craft and subtle practices that he made show as if he had utterly lost his wits; and under that vail he covered his pretense, and defended his life from the treasons and practices of the tyrant his uncle. For every day being in the queen's palace (who as then was more careful to please her whoremaster, than ready to revenge the cruel death of her husband, or to restore her son to his inheritance), he rent and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying in the dirt and mire, running through the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one word, but such as seemed to proceed of madness and mere frenzy; all his actions and gestures being no other than the right countenances of a man wholly deprived of all reason and understanding, in such sort, that as then he seemed fit for nothing but to make sport to the pages and ruffling courtiers that attended in the court of his uncle and father-in-law. But many times he did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers, that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might proceed. * * *

"Hamblet likewise had intelligence in what danger he was like to fall, if by any means he seemed to obey, or once like the wanton toys and vicious provocations of the gentlewoman sent to him by his uncle; which much abashed the prince, as then wholly being in affection to the lady; but by her he was likewise informed of the treason, as being one that from her infancy loved and favored him, and would have been exceeding sorrowful for his misfortune. * * *

"Among the friends of Fengon, there was one that, above all the rest, doubted of Hamblet's practices in counterfeiting the madman. His device to entrap Hamblet in his subtleties was thus—that King Fengon should make as though he were to go some long voyage concerning affairs of great importance, and that in the mean time Hamblet should be shut up alone in a chamber with his mother, wherein some other should secretly be hidden behind the hangings, there to stand and hear their speeches, and the complots by them to be taken concerning the accomplishment of the dissembling fool's pretense; * * * and withal offered himself to be the man that should stand to hearken and bear witness of Hamblet's speeches with his mother. This invention pleased the king exceeding well. * * *

"Meantime, the counselor entered secretly into the queen's chamber, and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the queen and Hamblet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to come like a cock, beating with his arms (in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings) upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat! a rat!" and presently drawing his sword, thrust it into the hangings, which done, he pulled the counselor, half dead, out by the heels, and made an end of killing him. * * * By which means having discovered the ambush, and given the inventor thereof his just reward, he came again to his mother, who in the mean time wept and tormented herself; and having once again searched every corner of the chamber, perceiving himself to be alone with her, he began in sober and discreet manner to speak unto her, saying,

"'What treason is this, most infamous woman of all that ever prostrated themselves to the will of an abominable whoremonger, who, under the vail of a dissembling creature, covereth the most wicked and detestable crime that man could ever imagine or was committed? Now may I be assured to trust you, that like a vile wanton adulteress, altogether impudent and given over to her pleasure, runs spreading forth her arms to embrace the traitorous villainous tyrant that murdered my father, and most incestuously receivest the villain into the lawful bed of your loyal spouse? * * * O, Queen Geruth! it is licentiousness only that has made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king, your husband and my father. * * * Be not offended, I pray you, madam, if, transported with dolor and grief, I speak so boldly unto you, and that I respect you less than duty requireth; for you, having forgotten me, and wholly rejected the memory of the deceased king my father, must not be ashamed if I also surpass the bounds and limits of due consideration. * * *'

"Although the Queen perceived herself nearly touched, and that Hamblet moved her to the quick, where she felt herself interested, nevertheless she forgot all disdain and wrath, which thereby she might as then have had, hearing herself so sharply chidden and reproved, to behold the gallant spirit of her son, and to think what she might hope, and the easier expect of his so great policy and wisdom. But on the one side, she durst not lift up her eyes to behold him, remembering her offense, and on the other side, she would gladly have embraced her son, in regard of the wise admonitions by him given unto her, which as then quenched the flames of unbridled desire that before had moved her. * * *

"After this, Fengon came to the court again, and determined that Hamblet should be sent into England. Now to bear him company were assigned two of Fengon's faithful ministers, bearing letters engraved in wood, that contained Hamblet's death, in such sort as he had advertised the King of England. But the subtle Danish prince, while his companions slept, having read the letters, and known his uncle's great treason, with the wicked and villainous minds of the two courtiers that led him to the slaughter erased out the letters that concerned his death, and instead thereof graved others, with commission to the King of England to hang his two companions. * * *

"Hamblet, while his father lived, had been instructed in that devilish art, whereby the wicked spirit abuseth mankind, and advertiseth him of things past. It toucheth not the matter herein to discover whether this prince, by reason of his over great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared. * * *" [Footnote 23]

[Footnote 23: See "The Hystorie of Hamblet," in Payne Collier's "Shakspeare's Library," vol, i. London, 1843.]

It was evidently Hamlet who, in this narrative, struck and allured the imagination of Shakspeare. This young prince, mad from calculation, and perhaps slightly mad by nature; cunning and melancholy; burning to avenge the death of his father, and skillful in defending his own life; adored by the young girl sent to work his ruin; an object of dread, and yet of tenderness, to his guilty mother; and, until the moment of throwing off the mask, hidden and incomprehensible to both: this personage, full of passion, danger, and mystery, well versed in the occult sciences, and whom, perhaps, "by reason of his over great melancholy, the wicked spirit enabled to divine that which never any but himself had before declared;" what an admirable character was this for Shakspeare, that curious and deep-searching observer of the secret agitations of the human soul and destiny! Had he done nothing more than depict, with the bold outline and brilliant coloring of his pencil, this character and situation as delineated in the chronicle, he would assuredly have produced a masterpiece.

But Shakspeare did much more than this: under his treatment, Hamlet's madness becomes something altogether different from the obstinate premeditation or melancholy enthusiasm of a young prince of the Middle Ages, placed in a dangerous position, and engaged in a dark design; it is a grave moral condition, a great malady of soul which, at certain epochs and in certain states of society and of manners, diffuses itself among mankind, frequently attacks the most highly gifted and the noblest of our species, and afflicts them with a disturbance of mind which sometimes borders very closely upon madness. The world is full of evil, and of all kinds of evil. What sufferings, crimes, and fatal, although innocent errors! What general and private iniquities, both strikingly apparent and utterly unknown! What merits, either stifled or neglected, become lost to the public, and a burden to their possessors! What falsehood, and coldness, and levity, and ingratitude, and forgetfulness, abound in the relations and feelings of men! Life is so short, and yet so agitated—sometimes so burdensome, and sometimes so empty! The future is so obscure! so much darkness at the end of so many trials! In reference to those who only see this phase of the world and of human destiny, it is easy to understand why their mind becomes disturbed, why their heart fails them, and why a misanthropic melancholy becomes an habitual feeling which plunges them by turns into irritation or doubt—into ironical contempt or utter prostration.

This was assuredly not the disease of the times in which the chronicle represents Hamlet to have lived, nor indeed of the age in which Shakspeare himself flourished. The Middle Ages and the sixteenth century were epochs too active and too rude to give ready admittance to these bitter contemplations and unhealthy developments of human sensibility. They belong much rather to times of luxurious life, and of moral excitement at once keen and leisurely, when souls are roused from their repose, and deprived of every strong and obligatory occupation. It is then that arise these meditative discontents, these partial and irritated impressions, this entire forgetfulness of all that is good, this passionate susceptibility to all that is evil in the condition of man, and all this pedantic wrath of man against the laws and order of the universe.

That painful uneasiness and profound disturbance which are introduced into the soul by so gloomy and false an appreciation of things in general, and of man himself—which he never met with in his own time, or in those times with the history of which he was acquainted—Shakspeare devined, and constructed from them the figure and character of Hamlet. Read once again the four great monologues in which the Prince of Denmark abandons himself to the reflective expression of his inmost feelings; gather together from the whole play the passages in which he casually gives them utterance; seek out and sum up that which is manifest, and that which is hidden in all that he thinks and says, and you will every where recognize the presence of the moral malady which I have just described. Therein truly resides, much more than in his personal griefs and perils, the source of Hamlet's melancholy; in this consists his fixed idea and his madness.

And with the admirable good sense of genius, in order to render the exhibition of so sombre a disease not only endurable, but attractive, Shakspeare has endowed the sufferer himself with the gentlest and most alluring qualities. He has made Hamlet handsome, popular, generous, affectionate, and even tender. He was desirous that the instinctive character of his hero should in some sort redeem human nature from the distrust and anathemas with which it was laden by his philosophic melancholy.

But, at the same time, guided by that instinct of harmony which never deserts the true poet, Shakspeare has diffused over the whole drama the same gloomy color which opens the scene; the spectre of the assassinated monarch gives its impress to the movement of the drama from its very outset, and leads it onward to its termination, and when that term arrives, death reigns once more; all die, the innocent as well as the guilty, the young girl as well as the prince, and she more mad than he is; all depart to join the spectre who had left the tomb only that he might drag them all with him on his return. The whole circumstance is as mournful as Hamlet's thoughts. None are left upon the stage but the Norwegian strangers, who then appear for the first time, and who have previously taken no part in the action.

After this great moral painting comes the second of Shakspeare's superior beauties, dramatic effect. This is nowhere more complete and more striking than in "Hamlet," for the two conditions of great dramatic effect are found in it, unity in variety—one sole, constant, and dominant impression; and this impression varied according to the character, the turn of mind, and the condition of the different personages in whom it is developed. Death hovers over the whole drama; the spectre of the murdered king represents and personifies it; he is always there, sometimes present himself, sometimes present to the thoughts, and in the language of the other personages. Whether great or small, innocent or guilty, interested or indifferent to his history, they are all constantly concerned about him; some with remorse, others with affection and grief, others again merely with curiosity, and some ever without curiosity, and simply by chance: for example, that rude grave-digger, who says that he entered on his trade on the day on which the late king had gained a great victory over his neighbor, the King of Norway, and who, while digging the grave of the beautiful Ophelia, the mad mistress of the madman Hamlet, turns up the skull of poor Yorick, the jester of the deceased monarch—the skull of the jester of that spectre, who issues at every moment from his tomb to alarm the living and enforce the punishment of his assassin. All these personages, in the midst of all these circumstances, are brought forward, withdrawn, and introduced again by turns, each with his own peculiar physiognomy, language, and impression; and all ceaselessly concur to maintain, diffuse, and strengthen the sole, general impression of death—of death, just or unjust, natural or violent, forgotten or lamented, but always present—which is the supreme law, and should be the permanent thought of all men.

On the stage, before a large and mingled crowd of spectators, the effect of this drama, at once so gloomy and so animated, is irresistible; the soul is stirred to its lowest depths, at the same time that the imagination and senses are occupied and carried away by a continuous and rapid external movement. Herein is displayed the two-fold genius of Shakspeare, equally inexhaustible as a philosopher and as a poet; by turns a moralist and a machinist; as skillful in filling the stage with uproarious movement, as in penetrating and bringing to light the inmost secrets of the human heart. Subjected to the immediate action of such a power, men en masse require nothing beyond that which it gives them; it holds them under its dominion, and carries by assault their sympathy and their admiration. Fastidious and delicate minds, which judge almost at the same moment that they feel, and carry the necessity for perfection even into their liveliest pleasures, have an immense taste and admiration for Shakspeare also; but they are disagreeably disturbed in their admiration and enjoyment, sometimes by the accumulation and confusion of useless personages and interests, sometimes by long and subtle developments of a reflection or an idea which it would be proper for the personage to indicate en passant, but in which the poet takes pleasure, and so pauses for his own gratification; but more frequently still by that fantastic mixture of coarseness and refinement of language which sometimes imparts factitious and pedantic forms even to the truest feelings, and a barbarous physiognomy to the noblest inspirations of philosophy or poetry. These defects abound in "Hamlet." I will neither give myself the painful satisfaction of proving this assertion, nor will I omit to state it. In point of genius, Shakspeare has perhaps no rivals; but in the high and pure regions of art, he can not be taken as a model.

King Lear.

(1605.)

In the year of the world 3105, say the chronicles, "at what time Joas ruled in Judah, Leir the son of Baldud was admitted ruler over the Britons." He was a wise and powerful prince, who maintained his country and subjects in a state of great prosperity, and founded the town of Caerleir, now called Leicester. He had three daughters, Gonerilla, Regan, and Cordelia, "which daughters he greatly loved, but specially Cordelia, the youngest, far above the two elder." Having attained a great age, and becoming enfeebled both in body and mind, "he thought to understand the affections of his daughters toward him, and prefer her whom he best loved to the succession over the kingdom. Whereupon he first asked Gonerilla, the eldest, how well she loved him; who, calling her gods to record, protested that she loved him more than her own life, which by right and reason should be most dear to her. With which answer the father, being well pleased, turned to the second, and demanded of her how well she loved him, who answered (confirming her sayings with great oaths) that she loved him more than tongue could express, and far above all other creatures of the world." When he put the same question to Cordelia, she answered, "Knowing the great love and fatherly zeal that you have always borne toward me (for the which I may not answer you otherwise than I think, and as my conscience leadeth me), I protest unto you that I have loved you ever, and will continually (while I live) love you as my natural father. And if you would more understand of the love that I bear you, ascertain yourself, that so much as you have, so much you are worth, and so much I love you, and no more." Her father, displeased with this answer, married his two eldest daughters, one to Henninus, duke of Cornwall, and the other to Maglanus, duke of Albany, "betwixt whom he willed and ordained that his land should be divided after his death, and the one half thereof immediately should be assigned to them in hand; but for the third daughter, Cordelia, he reserved nothing."

It happened, however, that Aganippus, one of the twelve kings who then governed Gaul, heard of the beauty and merit of this princess, and desired to have her in marriage. He was told that she had no dowry, as every thing had been bestowed on her two sisters; but Aganippus persisted in his request, obtained Cordelia's hand, and carried her in triumph to his kingdom.

Meanwhile, Leir's two sons-in-law, beginning to think he was reigning too long, seized violently upon the land which he had reserved for himself, and assigned him only a sufficient income to live and maintain his rank. Even this allowance was gradually diminished; but what caused Leir most pain was the extreme unkindness of his daughters, who "seemed to think that all was too much which their father had, the same being never so little; insomuch that, going from one to the other, he was brought to that misery that scarcely they would allow him one servant to wait upon him." The old king, in despair,' fled from the country, and took refuge in Gaul, where Cordelia and her husband received him with great honors, and raised an army and equipped a fleet to restore him to his possessions the succession of which he promised to bequeath to Cordelia, who accompanied her father and husband on this expedition. The two dukes having been slain, and their armies defeated, in a battle fought with Aganippus, Leir reascended his throne, and died two years afterward, forty years after his first accession. Cordelia succeeded him, and reigned five years; but in the mean while, her husband having died, her nephews, Margan and Cunedag, rebelled against her, conquered her, and cast her into prison, where, "being a woman of a manly courage, and despairing to recover liberty," she committed suicide. [Footnote 24]

[Footnote 24: Holinshed's Chronicle, History of England, book ii., chaps. 5, 6.]

This story is borrowed by Holinshed from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who probably constructed the history of Leir from an anecdote of Ina, king of the Saxons, and the answer of the "youngest and wisest of the daughters" of that king, who, under circumstances similar to those in which Cordelia was placed, gave a similar answer to her father, that, although she loved, honored, and revered him in the highest degree that nature and filial duty could require, yet she thought it might one day happen that she would more ardently love her husband, with whom, by the command of God, she was to constitute one flesh, and for whom she might leave father and mother. It does not appear that Ina disapproved of the "wise speech" of his daughter; and the sequel of Cordelia's history is probably a development added by the imagination of the chroniclers to this primary fact. However this may be, the anger and misfortunes of King Lear had, before Shakspeare's time, found a place in several poems, as well as formed the subject of one drama and several ballads. In one of these ballads, mentioned by Johnson, under the title of "A lamentable Song of the Death of King Leir and his three Daughters," Lear, as in the tragedy, goes mad, and Cordelia, having been killed in the battle gained by the troops of the King of France, her father dies of grief upon her body, and her sisters are condemned to death by the judgment of the "lords and nobles of the kingdom." Whether the ballad preceded Shakspeare's tragedy or not, it is very probable that the author of the ballad and the dramatic poet derived their facts from the same source, and that it was not without some authority that Shakspeare, in his denouement, departed from the chronicles, which give the victory to Cordelia. This dénouement was changed by Tate, and Cordelia restored to her rights. The play remained on the stage in this second form, to the great satisfaction of Johnson, and, says Mr. Steevens, of "the upper gallery." Addison, however, pronounced against this change.

As to the episode of the Earl of Gloster, Shakspeare has imitated it from the adventure of a king of Paphlagonia, related in Sidney's "Arcadia;" only, in the original narrative, the bastard himself deprives his father of sight, and reduces him to a condition similar to that of Lear. Leonatus, the legitimate son, who, having been condemned to death, had been obliged to seek service in a foreign army, on learning the misfortunes of his father, leaves all at the moment when his merits were about to gain him a high rank, in order to hasten, at the risk of his life, to share and succor the misery of the old king. The latter, restored to his throne by the aid of his friends, dies of joy on crowning his son Leonatus; and the bastard Plexirtus, by a feigned repentance, succeeds in disarming the anger of his brother.

It is evident that the situation of King Lear and of the King of Paphlagonia, both persecuted by the children whom they preferred, and succored by the one whom they rejected, struck Shakspeare as fitted to enter into the same subject, because they belonged to the same idea. Those who have blamed him for having thus injured the simplicity of his action have given their opinion according to their own system, without taking the trouble to examine that of the author whom they criticised. Starting even from the rules which they are desirous to impose, we might answer that the love of the two women for Edmund, which serves to effect their punishment, and the intervention of Edgar at this part of the dénouement, are sufficient to acquit the play of the charge of duplicity of action; for, provided that all the threads at last unite in one knot which it is easy to seize, the simplicity of the progress of an action depends much less upon the number of the interests and personages concerned in it than upon the natural and clearly visible play of the springs which set it in motion. But further, we must never forget that unity, in Shakspeare's view, consists in one dominant idea, which, reproducing itself under various forms, incessantly produces, continues, and redoubles the same impression. Thus as, in "Macbeth," the poet displays man in conflict with the passions of crime, so in "King Lear" he depicts him in conflict with misfortune, the action of which is modified according to the different characters of the individuals who experience it. The first spectacle which he brings under our notice is the misfortune of virtue, or of persecuted innocence, as exemplified in Cordelia, Kent, and Edgar. Then comes the misfortune of those who, by their passion or blindness, have rendered themselves the tools of injustice, namely, Lear and Gloster; and upon these the effort of compassion is directed. As for the wicked personages, we do not witness their sufferings; the sight of their misfortune would be disturbed by the remembrance of their criminality; they can have no punishment but death?

Of the five personages subjected to the action of misfortune, Cordelia, a heavenly figure, hovers almost invisible and half-vailed over the composition, which she fills with her presence, although she is almost always absent from it. She suffers, but never complains, never defends herself: she acts, but her action is manifested only by its results; serene regarding her own fate, reserved and restrained even in her most legitimate feelings, she passes and disappears like a denizen of a better world, who has traversed this world of ours without experiencing any mere earthly emotion.

Kent and Edgar each have a very decided physiognomy; the first of them is, like Cordelia, a victim to his duty; the second interests us at first only by his innocence. Having entered upon misfortune at the same time, so to speak, that he entered into life, and equally new to both conditions, Edgar gradually develops his faculties, learns their character at once, and discovers within himself, as need requires, the qualities with which he is gifted; in proportion as he advances, his duties, and his difficulties, and his importance increase; he grows up and becomes a man, but, at the same time, he learns how costly is this growth; and he finally discovers, when bearing it with nobleness and courage, the whole weight of that burden which he had hitherto borne almost with gayety. Kent, on the contrary, a wise and firm old man, has known all and foreseen all from the very outset; as soon as he enters upon action, his march is determined and his object defined. He is not, like Edgar, urged by necessity or met by chance; his will determines his conduct; nothing can change or disturb it; and the aspect of the misfortune to which he devotes himself, scarcely wrings from him an exclamation of grief or pain.

Lear and Gloster, in an analogous situation, receive from it an impression which corresponds to their different characters. Lear, impetuous and irritable, spoiled by power and by the habit and need of admiration, rebels both against his position and against his own conviction; he can not believe in what he knows; his reason offers no resistance; and he becomes mad. Gloster, naturally weak, yields to his misery, and is equally incapable of resistance to his joy; he dies on recognizing Edgar. If Cordelia were alive, Lear would still find strength to live; but he breaks down by the effort of his grief.

Amid all this confusion of incidents and coarseness of manners, interest and pathos have never, perhaps, been carried further than in this tragedy. The time in which Shakspeare laid his action seems to have emancipated him from all conventional forms; and just as he felt no difficulty in placing a King of France, a Duke of Albany, and a Duke of Cornwall, eight hundred years before the Christian era, so he felt no necessity for connecting the language and the characters of his drama with any determinate period. The only trace of intention which can be remarked in the general color of the style of the drama is the vagueness and uncertainty of the grammatical constructions, which seem to belong to a language still quite in its infancy; at the same time, a considerable number of expressions which bear a close resemblance to the French language, indicate an epoch, if not correspondent with that in which King Lear is supposed to have lived, at least far anterior to that at which Shakspeare wrote.

Macbeth.

(1606.)

In the year 1034, Duncan succeeded his grandfather, Malcolm, on the throne of Scotland. He held his right of his mother, Beatrice, the eldest daughter of Malcolm; the younger daughter, Doada, was the mother of Macbeth, who was thus cousin-german to Duncan. The father of Macbeth was Finleg, thane of Glamis, mentioned under the name of Sinel in the tragedy, and in the chronicle of Holinshed, on the authority of Hector Boëtius, from whom the narrative of the events concerning Duncan and Macbeth is borrowed. As Shakspeare has followed Holinshed's chronicle with the utmost exactness, it becomes necessary to give the facts as therein related; and they are, moreover, in themselves replete with interest.

Macbeth had rendered himself celebrated by his bravery, and "if he had not been somewhat cruel of nature," says the chronicle, "he might have been thought most worthy of the government of a realm." Duncan, on the other hand, was an unwarlike prince, and carried his gentleness and kindness to excess; so that if it had been possible to fuse the characters of the two cousins together, and to temper the one by the other, the people would have had, says the chronicle, "an excellent captain, and a worthy king."

After some years of peaceful dominion, the weakness of Duncan having encouraged malefactors, Banquo, the thane of Lochaber, "as he gathered the finances due to the king," found himself compelled to punish "somewhat sharply" several notorious offenders, which occasioned a revolt. Banquo was robbed of all the money he had collected, and "had much ado to get away with life, after he had received sundry grievous wounds." As soon as he had recovered of his hurts, he proceeded to court to lay his complaints before Duncan, and at last persuaded the king to summon the rebels to appear before him; but they slew the sergeant-at-arms, who had been sent with the royal mandate, and prepared for defense, at the instigation of Macdowald, one of their most important chieftains, who, collecting his clansmen and friends around him, represented Duncan to them as a "faint-hearted milksop, more meet to govern a set of idle monks in some cloister, than to have the rule of such valiant and hardy men of war as the Scots were." The revolt spread particularly throughout the Western Isles, from whence a host of warriors came to join Macdowald at Lochaber; and the hope of plunder attracted from Ireland a large number of Kernes and Galloglasses, [Footnote 25] ready to follow Macdowald whithersoever it should please him to lead them. By means of these re-enforcements, Macdowald defeated the troops which the king had sent to oppose him, took prisoner their leader, Malcolm, and beheaded him after the battle.

[Footnote 25: The Kernes were a species of light infantry, and the Galloglasses heavy-armed foot-soldiers.]

Duncan, in consternation at this news, assembled his council, at which Macbeth, after having blamed the king severely for his lenity and slackness in punishing the offenders, which had given them time to collect an army, offered to undertake the conduct of the war in concert with Banquo. His offer was gladly accepted, and the mere report of his approach with fresh troops struck such terror into the rebels, that a great number of them secretly deserted; and Macdowald, having tried to make head against Macbeth with the remainder, was utterly routed, and forced to fly to a castle in which he had placed his wife and children; but, despairing of being able to hold out, and fearing the cruelties of his opponents, he killed himself, after having first put his wife and children to death. Macbeth entered without obstacle into the castle, the gates of which had been left open. He found only the body of Macdowald in the midst of his murdered family; and the barbarism of that rude age was revolted by the fact that, unmoved by this tragic spectacle, Macbeth cut off Macdowald's head, and sent it to the king, and hanged the body upon a gallows. He made the inhabitants of the isles purchase the pardon of their revolt at a very high price, which did not, however, prevent him from putting to execution all those whom he could find in Lochaber. The inhabitants exclaimed loudly against this violation of his pledge, and the reproaches which they heaped upon him irritated Macbeth to such a degree that he was on the point of crossing over to the isles with an army to take vengeance upon them; but he was dissuaded from this project by the counsels of his friends, and more particularly by the presents with which the islanders a second time purchased their pardon.

A short time afterward, Sweno, king of Norway, having made a descent upon Scotland, Duncan, to resist him, placed himself at the head of the largest portion of his army, and intrusted the rest to the command of Macbeth and Banqno. Duncan was defeated and put to flight; and he took refuge in the castle of Perth, in which he was besieged by Sweno. Duncan, having secretly informed Macbeth of his intentions, feigned a desire to surrender, and protracted the negotiation, until at last, having learned that Macbeth had collected a sufficient force, he appointed a day for giving up the fortress; and, meanwhile, he offered to send the Norwegians a supply of provisions, which they accepted all the more eagerly because they had suffered greatly from famine for several days. The bread and ale with which he furnished them had been adulterated with the juice of an extremely narcotic berry, so that, having eaten and drank greedily, they fell into "a fast dead sleep, that in manner it was impossible to awake them." Then Duncan sent word to Macbeth, who arriving in all haste, and entering without opposition into the camp, massacred almost all the Norwegians, most of whom never stirred, while the others were rendered so dizzy by the effects of the narcotic that they could make no defense. A large number of sailors from the Norwegian fleet, who had come to share in the abundance which prevailed in the camp, shared also in the fate of their fellow-countrymen; and Sweno, who escaped with ten others from this butchery, could scarcely find enough mariners to man the ship in which he fled to Norway. Those vessels which he left behind were, three days afterward, so tossed by an east wind, "that, beating and rushing one against another, they sank there," at a place called Drownelow Sands, where they lie "even unto these days (1574), to the great danger of other such ships as come on that coast; for, being covered with the flood when the tide cometh, at the ebbing again of the same some parts of them appear above water."

This disaster caused such consternation in Norway, that, for many years afterward, no knights were made until they had sworn to avenge their countrymen who had thus been slaughtered in Scotland. Duncan, in celebration of his deliverance, ordered solemn processions to be made throughout the realm; but while these thanksgivings were in progress, he was informed of the disembarkation of an army of Danes, under the command of Canute, king of England, who had come to avenge the defeat of his brother Sweno. Macbeth and Banquo hastened to meet them, defeated them in a pitched battle, and forced them to re-embark, and to pay a considerable sum for permission to bury their dead at St. Colm's Inch, where, says the chronicle, "many old sepulchres are yet to be seen graven with the arms of the Danes."

Such are the exploits of Macbeth and Banquo, of which Shakspeare, following Holinshed, has made use in his tragedy. A short time afterward, Macbeth and Banquo were traveling to Forres, where the king then lay, "and went sporting by the way together, without other company save only themselves," when they were suddenly accosted by three women "in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of the elder world," who saluted Macbeth precisely as it is related in the tragedy. Upon this, Banquo said, "What manner of women are you that seem so little favorable unto me, whereas, to my fellow here, besides high offices, ye assign also the kingdom, appointing forth nothing for me at all?" "Yes," saith the first of them, "we promise greater benefits unto thee than unto him, for he shall reign, indeed, but with an unlucky end; neither shall he leave any issue behind him to succeed in his place; whereas, contrarily, thou indeed shalt not reign at all, but of thee those shall be born who shall govern the Scottish kingdoms by long order of continual descent." Herewith the women immediately disappeared. Soon afterward, the thane of Cawdor having been put to death for treason, his title was conferred upon Macbeth, who now began, as well as Banquo, to place great faith in the predictions of the witches, and to devise means for obtaining the crown.

He had a good chance of succeeding legitimately to the throne, for Duncan's sons were not yet of age to reign, and the law of Scotland ordained that, if the king died before his sons or direct descendants were old enough to undertake the management of affairs, the nearest relative of the deceased king should be elected in their stead. But Duncan having appointed his son Malcolm, while still under age, Prince of Cumberland and successor to the throne, Macbeth, who saw his hopes destroyed by this proceeding, thought himself entitled to take revenge for the injustice he had experienced. To this, moreover, he was incessantly stimulated by his wife, Guach, who, burning with desire to bear the name of queen, and being, says Boetius, "like all women, impatient of delay," continually reproached him with his want of courage. Macbeth, therefore, having assembled a large number of his friends at Inverness, or, as some say, at Botgosuane, communicated to them his design, killed Duncan, and repaired with his party to Scone, where he obtained possession of the crown without difficulty.

Holinshed's chronicle relates the murder of Duncan without any detail. The incidents which Shakspeare has interwoven into his drama are taken from another part of the same chronicle concerning the murder of King Duff, who had been assassinated more than sixty years before by a Scottish lord named Donwald. The following are the circumstances of this murder, as related in the chronicle: