air of Birnam wood, and stood on the breezy forehead of Dunsinnan hill. The supernatural machinery interwoven with the tragedy of "Macbeth" is founded on a superstitious belief which was entertained during Shakespeare's lifetime by all classes both in England and Scotland. In a sermon which Bishop Jewel preached before Elizabeth, he beseeched Her Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers had marvellously increased within the realm, and that through their malevolence Her Grace's subjects often pined away even unto death; their colour fading, their flesh rotting, their speech denied, and their senses obscured. If any adversity, grief, sickness, loss of children, of corn, cattle, or other possessions, happened to any one, witches were blamed for it. The Queen herself, "being under excessive anguish by pains of her teeth, in so much that she took no rest for divers nights," a Mrs. Dier was accused of having brought on the affliction by conjuration and witchcraft. If there was a thunderstorm or a gale of wind one or two witches were seized and burned as a preventative for the future. This popular frenzy was much encouraged by the publication, at Edinburgh, in 1597, of a work entitled Daemonologie, by no less an author than King James himself. This treatise owed its origin, it was said, to a discovery which the King had made, that when he went to Denmark, in 1590, there was a conspiracy of two hundred witches to drown him on his return. A London edition of the Daemonologie was issued in 1603, the preface to which speaks of "the fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters." The legislature lent its sanction to the belief: in a statute against witches, which was passed soon after the accession of James, and was not repealed till 1736, it was enacted that any one who should practise any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit, or consult, covenant with, entertain or employ, feed or reward any such evil or wicked spirit; or who should take up any dead man, woman, or child out of the grave, or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in body; such offenders, on being duly convicted, shall suffer death. The persons suspected of witchcraft were for the most part old, lame, blear-eyed, and wrinkled women, who led sullen and solitary lives. They were credited with the power of inducing on whom they chose, apoplexies, epilepsies, convulsions, fevers, and all the other ills "that flesh is heir to." They could also raise spirits, dry up springs, turn the course of running waters, go in and out without the aid of doors, and sail in shells and cock-boats through and under tempestuous seas. James informs us in his book that they likewise made images in wax or clay, which they wasted before a slow fire, giving them the names of particular persons, who forthwith melted or dried away without knowing the cause of Spenser, in his great poem, describes their sickness. the abode of a witch: "There in a gloomy hollow glen she found Far from all neighbours, that her devilish deeds And hurt far off, unknown, whomever she envied." Shakespeare, with higher power, invests the witches in "Macbeth" with a sort of mysterious grandeur, whilst he at the same time strictly conforms to the current superstitions regarding them:— "What are these, So wither'd, and so wild in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants of earth, And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips :-you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret The caldron scene in the fourth act is of the wildest and most imaginative description, and though frequently adulterated on the modern stage by the introduction of sheer buffoonery, must have thrilled with awe the unsceptical spectators to whom it was originally presented. Macbeth himself, like his suc cessor King James, believed in the "unknown power:" "I conjure you, by that which you profess, Howe'er you come to know it,- -answer me: Though bladed corn be lodg'd and trees blown down; Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure Even till destruction sicken,- -answer me Shakespeare found another, a gentler and more loveable superstition,-in the fairy mythology, which he turned to such delightful account, especially in his "Midsummer Night's Dream.” The popular creed concerning fairies seems to have been of Scandinavian origin, and was more pagan in character than those other beliefs in the supernatural, for which some warrant was found in Scripture. Shakespeare added a new grace to fairy lore; he almost remodelled and re-invented it. The places to which fairies were supposed to be most attached,—the green knoll, the opening in the wood, the crystal fountain; the ornaments and costume they most affected, the playful pranks in which they revelled, their dancing on the sands "with printless foot," their making of "midnight mushrooms," their gathering of dewdrops, and hanging "a pearl in every cowslip's ear," their creeping into acorn cups, their killing of "cankers in the musk rosebuds," their keeping back the "clamorous owl" that nightly wondered at them, their singing their Queen Titania asleep, their stealing the honey-bags from the humble bees, and plucking the wings from painted butterflies, their bringing "jewels from the deep" for the bewildered Bottom, and feeding him with dewberries, their putting a girdle "round about the earth in forty minutes,"-all these, and many other traits of fairy life and customs, we learn from him, and are indebted for the knowledge to the captivating enthusiasm with which he entered into this ideal world, and sported with those favourite children of his fancy. The very names he gave his fairies carry a charm with them,-Oberon, Titania, Puck or Robin Goodfellow, Peasblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed, Cricket, Queen Mab; to which let us add Ariel, who slept in a cowslip's bell, and lived so merrily "under the blossom that hangs on the bough." He, like Prospero, was known to you all, and was your familiar friend— "Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune!" A graver superstition, if so it must be called, which takes the form of a belief in ghosts and apparitions, and the reappearance of the spirits of the departed, was and is too deeply enwoven with human nature to have been overlooked by Shakespeare. He dealt with it sparingly, but with won |