itself unexpectedly. She urges him to snatch as prey what may be the gift of destiny. . . . Knowing her consort well, she arrogates to herself the manly part for which she endeavors to screw up her nature that she may herself perpetrate the murder. Macbeth, she says, is only to look up clear, and leave all the rest to her; she makes the plans, and talks of herself and him, both of whom are to have a share in the work; she drugs the servants and lays their daggers ready. . . . She would even give the blow with her own hands; but at the moment itself her overwrought nature gives way. Those 'compunctious visitings of nature' which she had banished from herself shake her when she traces in the sleeping King a resemblance to her father; and the woman must leave that business to a man, which needs more than man to execute it." 666 Hazlitt ("Characters of Shakespeare's Plays," New York, 1845), in a critical notice of this play, remarks: 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 death. The action is desperate and the reaction is 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. This circumstance will account for the abruptness and violent antitheses of the style, the throes and labor which run through the expression, and from defects will turn them into beauties,-'So fair and foul a day,' etc.; 'Such welcome and unwelcome news together;' 'Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.' The scene before the castle gate follows the appearance of the witches on the heath, and is followed by a midnight murder. In Lady Macbeth's speech, 'Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't,' there is murder and filial piety together; and in urging him [her husband] to fulfill his vengeance against the defenseless King, her thoughts spare the blood of neither infants nor old age. The description of the witches is full of the same contradictory principle, they are neither of the earth nor the air, but both; 'they should be women, but their beards forbid it;' they take all the pains possible to lead Macbeth on to the height of his ambition, only to betray him 'in deepest consequence,' and, after showing him all the pomp of their art, discover their malignant delight in his disappointed hopes by that bitter taunt, 'Why stands Macbeth thus amazedly ?'” Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches. First Witch. When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain ? Second Witch. When the hurlyburly's 1 done, When the battle's lost and won. 1 Tumult. 13 Third Witch. That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch. Where the place? Alarum within. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENNOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant. Duncan. What bloody man is that? As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt The newest state. Malcolm. He can report, This is the sergeant As two spent swimmers, that do cling together And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald- The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him-from the Western Isles Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied; 1 Cat. 2 Toad. 3 Cats and toads were supposed to be familiar spirits of witches. 3 The Hebrides. 4 "Of kerns," etc., i.e., with kerns and gallowglasses, who are thus described in Hunter's note, quoted by Furness (Variorum Shakespeare, vol. ii.): And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Like valor's minion 1 carv'd out his passage And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Duncan. O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman! Compell'd these skipping kerns to trust their heels, "Their foot [speaking of the Milesian race, the ancient inhabitants of Ireland] were of two sorts, the heavy and light armed; the first were called Galloglachs, armed with a helmet and coat of mail bound with iron rings, and wore a long sword. . . . The light-armed infantry, called Keherns, fought with bearded javelins and short daggers." 3 "As whence," etc. The allusion is to the vernal equinox, when the sun, beginning its reflex course towards us, occasions, by its increasing warmth, the disastrous equinoctial storms. 4 " Surveying vantage," i.e., perceiving an opportunity. 5 Truth. |