certain. It is said that some parts of this play were written by Middleton (1574-1627) – -a contemporary of Shakespeare's; and that the second scene of the first act, as well as the last forty lines of the play, are due to him. If this view is correct, it would account for the inconsistency between the two accounts of the death of Lady Macbeth.

"3. The amount of historical fact at the basis of the play, it is very difficult- and perhaps hardly necessary - to determine. At some time in the eleventh century, Macbeth seems to have been maormor, or ruler, over the whole of Ross and Moray, and to have been nearly related to the throne. His wife, Gruoch-an unpleasant name which the poet silently drops, calling her only Lady Macbeth throughout the play was also related to the royal family; and both had been deeply injured by the faction which had placed Duncan on the throne. Macbeth did not kill Duncan in his own house; this would have been a violation of the laws of hospitality, which have always been held sacred by the Celts. He killed him in battle at a spot near Elgin, called Bothgowanan

the Smith's Dwelling, the smith, or armorer, being in those days a man of high importance. The following is Lord Hailes's summary of the history of Macbeth: :

"In 1034 Duncan succeeded his grandfather Malcolm. In 1039 he was assassinated by Macbeth. By his wife, the sister of Siward, Earl of Northumberland, he left two sons, Malcolm, surnamed Canmore [great head], and Donald, surnamed Bane [white or fair]. Macbeth expelled the sons

of Duncan, and usurped the Scottish throne. Malcolm sought refuge in Cumberland, Donald in the Hebrides. When Edward the Confessor succeeded to the crown of England (1043), Earl Siward placed Malcolm under his protection. Malcolm remained long at court, an honorable and neglected exile. The partisans of Malcolm often attempted to procure his restoration, but their efforts, feeble and illconcerted, only served to establish the dominion of the usurper. At length Macduff, Thane of Fife, excited a formidable revolt in Scotland, while Siward, with the approbation of his sovereign, led the Northumbrians to the aid of his nephew Malcolm. He lived not to see the event of his generous enterprise. Macbeth retreated to the fastnesses of the north, and protracted the war. His people forsook his standard. Malcolm attacked him at Lumphanan, in Aberdeenshire; abandoned by his few remaining followers, Macbeth fell, 5th December, 1056.'

"4. Shakespeare, who took what he wanted wherever he found it, uses every hint that Holinshed gives him. Holinshed says that Lady Macbeth was a woman 'very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to bear the name of a queen;' and tells us how the same night after, at supper, Banquho jested with him and said: "Now, Makbeth, thou hast obteined those things which the two former sisters prophesied; there remaineth onelie for thee to purchase that which the third said should come to passe. These and other suggestions of the chronicler Shakespeare freely avails himself of. A second story in Holinshed has, however, also been incorporated in the play by Shakespeare. This is the story of

999

the murder of King Duff by Donwald, captain of the castle of Forres. The arrival of the king at the castle with the pleasant seat,' the distribution of presents among the officers, the purposed intoxication of the chamberlains, the killing of them by Donwald in a pretended frenzy of loyalty, but really that he might effectively stop their mouths as witnesses- - all these incidents are related by Holinshed of the murder of King Duff, but all transferred by Shakespeare to the story of Macbeth." MEIKLEJOHN.

ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY

In contrast to Romeo and Juliet, Lear, and Othello, in Macbeth "it is the will with its aims and objects, the manly deed with the often deeply hidden springs of its origin, and the deliberate purposeness of its accomplishment, that form the chief motives of the tragic development. This is the ground upon which the poet here takes his position, in order therefrom to arrange his tragico-poetical picture; it represents the lofty greatness of a manly, heroic energy of will and action, the tragic fall and ruin of which forms its substance.

...

- as

"After having by the appearance of the witches well as by the character of the half-fabulous times in the far north and its corresponding grand, wild scenery indicated the point of view from which the drama is conceived, the poet then introduces the herald of Macbeth's glory and greatness. The mighty, victorious hero is pre

sented to us in all his magnificence, even before we have Macbeth's is a lofty, glorious,

ourselves seen him.

and highly gifted nature. and greatest, from an internal sympathy for all that which is great. But in endeavoring to acquire it he, at the same time, has the wish to satisfy his own self, to possess what is highest, not only because it is high, but in order thereby to raise himself.

He strives for what is highest

...

"The fearful determination with which (undeterred by any consequences) she [Lady Macbeth] appears on the scene, and the equally fearful, equally reckless energy with which Macbeth pursues to the end the given path after he has once entered upon it-possess something of that primitive grandeur, that titanic power, arrogance, and wildness, by which Shakespeare has not only increased the impression of the tragic pathos, but by which he has also contrived to give a peculiar stamp to the character of the whole drama. This power, while obeying the law, was great and mighty on the road to what was good, but in evil, in all foul deeds, although retaining its outward force, its inner strength, its true support is broken.

"The evil into which Macbeth and his wife have fallen, in the end destroys itself; in the one case by the terrible mental disease which attacks the lonely, inactive woman, who is left with the horrible fancies of her sensitive imagination, and is distracted by her awakening conscience; in the other, by Macbeth's blind confidence in the deceptive oracular speeches of the demoniacal creatures.

"As the latter were the first to drive the hero into crime, so they also prove the instruments of his punishment, the motives of his downfall. For their activity is nowhere only externally opposed to man, nowhere only a foreign power exercising force over the will. As their flattering promises are rather the concealed wishes of Macbeth's own soul, so their cheering words of consolation represent the cunning self-deception which wrestles in the soul of the criminal, and keeps up his courage by false hopes and delusive sophistries, until finally the deception becomes direct annihilation. . . .

...

"It is the living organic development with which the action proceeds from an inner necessity, and is gradually evolved out of the foundation of the whole, out of the characters and given circumstances, that here, as in all Shakespeare's other dramas, constitutes the beauty of the composition and reaches its climax in the closing scene of the whole. The catastrophe, the end, is, in fact, only the last point towards which the development incessantly and irresistibly presses forward. . .

"As in King Lear the whole system of human order and morality collapses with the destruction of the foundation of family life, the same result is produced here by the destruction of the foundation of state life. Evil has gained the supremacy, and the first step towards restoration can, therefore, be made only by the self-destruction of evil. And yet the self-destruction would merely remove the débris and ruins, merely clear the ground for a new structure, the edifice itself would not as yet be