built. True help and restoration can proceed only from the positive power of good, from that truly moral activity which is supported by divine justice and the guiding hand of Providence.

"This appears to be here represented in the person of the pious and divinely gifted king of England, whose miraculous power, which spreads its blessing all around, is also called upon to save the neighboring kingdom from ruin. But as his hand (at whose touch diseases and all ills vanish) is devoted solely to works of peace, it cannot of itself be the scourge of war or wield the sword of vengeance; the positive power of good is, therefore, represented by the noble, pious, heroic Siward and his son, the latter of whom falls a victim to the deliverance of Scotland. By their assistance, Malcolm and Donalbain, together with the other Scottish noblemen, succeed in hurling the tyrant from his bloody throne, and in restoring order and law. . . .

"All, the whole country as well as the nobility, are guilty of having, with mean, selfish readiness, submitted to the usurped authority of Macbeth, forgetful of the claim of the rightful heir. And he who weakly complies with evil is justly involved and destroyed by it. An internal necessity, therefore, acting in accordance with ethical motives, runs through the secondary parts also, and the finer the threads of its power are woven round the whole, the more we are irresistibly seized and fettered by them. The misfortunes which Macbeth's crime brings upon all the other persons connected with

...

the action, become a means by which they atone for their own errors, by which their strength of will and energy is aroused and their minds purified, so that in the end they rise up great and powerful, and cast off the unworthy yoke, to which they had at first succumbed..

"The hurrying rapidity with which the main action proceeds and which does not allow of more detailed motives for the separate moves, corresponds not only with the fundamental plan of the whole-according to which the energy of an heroic power of will and action, amounting to blind thirst for action, forms the fundamental motive of the dramatic development - but this very irresistible hurry and force with which the terrible consequences of the first criminal step fall, blow upon blow, without leaving time for any thought, carrying the criminal along from deed to deed like an overflowing torrent - contains a feature of grand beauty, of terrible, demoniacal beauty, which gives the tragedy its peculiar character, and conceals a profound thought within its depths. It seems as if the dark, evil-brooding powers which pervade the whole had done away with the usual course of time. And, in fact, it is only the irresistible consistency with which crime follows upon crime that drives men to such blind haste; it is only the rank weeds of evil that can shoot up with such fearful rapidity.” ULRICI, Shakspeare's Dramatic Art.

CRITICAL OPINIONS

"Macbeth and Lear, Othello and Hamlet, are usually reckoned Shakespeare's four principal tragedies. Lear stands first for the profound intensity of the passion; Macbeth for the wildness of the imagination and the rapidity of the action; Othello for the progressive interest and powerful alternations of feeling; Hamlet for the refined development of thought and sentiment.

"If the force of genius shown in each of these works is astonishing, their variety is not less so. They are like different creations of the same mind, not one of which has the slightest reference to the rest. This distinctness and

originality is indeed, the necessary consequence of truth and nature. Shakespeare's genius alone appeared to possess the resources of nature. He is your only tragedy-maker.' His plays have the force of things upon the mind. What he represents is brought home to the bosom as a part of our experience, implanted in the memory as if we had known the places, persons, and things of which the treats.

"Macbeth is like a record of a preternatural and tragical event. It has the rugged severity of an old chronicle with all that the imagination of the poet can engraft upon traditional belief. The castle of Macbeth, round which the air smells wooingly,' and where the templehaunting martlet builds,' has a real subsistence in the mind; the Weird Sisters meet us in person on the

'blasted heath'; the air-drawn dagger' moves slowly before our eyes; the 'gracious Duncan,' the 'blood-boltered Banquo,' stand before us: all that passed through the mind of Macbeth passes, without the loss of a tittle, through ours. All that could actually take place, and all that is only possible to be conceived, what was said and what was done, the workings of passion, the spells of magic, are brought before us with the same absolute truth and vividness.

"Shakespeare excelled in the openings of his play; that of Macbeth is the most striking of any. The wildness of the scenery, the sudden shifting of the situations and characters, the bustle, the expectations excited, are equally extraordinary. From the first entrance of the Witches and the description of them when they meet Macbeth,

"What are these

So wither'd, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth
And yet are on't?'

the mind is prepared for all that follows.

"This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagination it displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action; and the one is made the moving principle of the other. The overwhelming pressure of preternatural agency urges on the tide of human passion with

"Macbeth (generally speaking) is done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any

other of Shakespeare's plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and The action is desperate and the reaction is

death. dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; the transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of terror to the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every passion brings in its fellow contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle against each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet. Shakespeare's genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds of nature and passion." — HAZLITT, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.

"There is a line in the play of Macbeth, uttered as the evening shadows begin to gather on the day of Banquo's murder, which we may repeat to ourselves as a motto of the entire tragedy, 'Good things of the day begin to droop and drowse.' It is the tragedy of the twilight and the setting-in of thick darkness upon a human soul. We assist at the spectacle of a terrible sunset in folded clouds of blood. To the last, however, one thin hand's-breadth of melancholy light remains, the sadness of the day without its strength.

"Macbeth is the prey of a profound world-weariness. And while a huge ennui pursues crime, the criminal is