In 1601, when Shakspere was thirty-seven years of age, his father died. The following year Hamlet was entered in the Stationers' Register, and the author purchased one hundred and seven acres of land in Old Stratford for £320. About 1604 he wrote King Lear, and in that year he brought an action against a debtor for the recovery of LI 15s. 1od., the price of some malt he had sold. I like to connect these miracles of genius and these transactions of business. In this man there was an excellent sanity and a beautiful completeness. As George Dawson once said of him He wrote Macbeth, and knew the multiplication table; he wrote King Lear, and would have bothered a surveyor at his own craft; he wrote Hamlet, and knew the exact value of the land he bought; he wrote Othello, and made a will; he wrote Romeo and Juliet, and bequeathed his second best bed to his wife. The east wind went all : round him, and found no crack. He had the most con summate genius and the profoundest common sense.' In 1605 Shakspere made a greater venture than ever; he purchased the lease of some unexpired tithes for £440; and I do not doubt it was an excellent bargain. Two family events took place in 1607; his daughter Susanna married a Stratford physician named John Hall, and his brother Edmund, an actor in London, died at the early age of twenty-seven. The following year his mother died, and shortly before her death Shakspere was a grandfather at forty-four years of age, his daughter Susanna having given birth to a child named Elizabeth,--the only grandchild he lived to see. Some time between 1610 and 1612 he left London for ever, to realise the dream of his life, and settle down in his native village after the toils of so many years. But his well-deserved rest was not to be of long duration. Our last date in this history is 1616. Early in that year his daughter Judith married a son of the Mr. Quiney who borrowed the £30. On February 25th Shakspere made his will, and his death took place April 23rd. The tragedy and triumph of Shakspere's life always seem to me to be summed up in that sublime sonnet, his pæan of victory over mutability and death. Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Starved by these rebel powers that thee array, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ? Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? Within be fed, without be rich no more: And Death once dead, there's no more dying then. Studies of Some of Shakspere's Plays. I. MACBETH. 'They that are in sin are also in the punishment of sin.' SWEDENBORG. [This play was probably written about the year 1606, when Shakspere was forty-two years of age, and belongs to his Third Period. The lines describing Macbeth's vision, Some I see That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry, are supposed to have reference to the accession of James I., King of England and Scotland. The 'twofold balls' refer to the king's two coronations, and the 'treble sceptres' to the three kingdoms over which he ruled. James ascended the throne of England in 1603; we know that Macbeth was acted in the Globe Theatre in 1610; so that the production of the play must have been between these dates, and internal evidence seems to lead to the opinion that Shakspere wrote it about 1606.] 1. THE SEEDS OF SIN. N Macbeth we have a terrible story of sin and its conse into moral disruption and ruin. And yet who could have anticipated such an issue for these two lives? Macbeth was a dauntless soldier, a loyal subject and a chivalrous gentleman. Before he appears on the stage we have brilliant accounts of his exploits on the field of battle. King Duncan receives reports of the overthrow of a rebel army; first a Captain and then Ross bring glowing tidings of Macbeth's unexampled courage. They call him 'brave Macbeth,' 'valour's minion,' and describe him as that Bellona's bridegroom, lapped in proof.' When Duncan meets him he is perplexed to find honours worthy enough to be bestowed on so great a man, and cries: O worthiest cousin! The sin of my ingratitude even now Was heavy on me: Thou art so far before To overtake thee. Would thou had less deserv'd; Lady Macbeth was a sweet, courteous, gracious lady, absorbed in loving pride of her husband, thinking no honour too great for him to wear, no deed too difficult for his valour to achieve. This man and wife seemed destined for a career most brilliant and honourable. Her strength of will embodied in his valorous action, there seemed no summit of ambition to which they might not win their way. No summit of ambition to which they might not win their way, that was the thought which so worked upon their minds as at last to plunge them into ruin. In her passionate love Lady Macbeth resolved that she would use her life, and strain every fibre of her being to crown her husband with the highest honour earth could give. Why should he not some day be King of Scotland? That was the shape into which ambition crystallised, until she was dominated by that one conception: it fascinated her imagination, it polarised her will, and convulsed her moral nature into helpless paralysis. The golden crown to which she aspired so dazzled her eyes that sanctions of moral conduct gradually faded from her vision. What a splendid monarch would her brave husband make! How much better would the crown become his brow, than that of the saintly Duncan, more fit to be a hermit in a quiet cell than a king upon the throne of a warlike land! And, at first, it seemed as though there was nothing extravagant or disloyal in this far-reaching hope. Duncan. was an old man, and Macbeth was his near kinsman. The two sons of the king were but young, the country had of late been harassed by foreign foes and internal treasons; and what was more probable than that, when the old king died, the valiant and victorious general should be elected to the vacant throne? These were the hopes they indulged; over and over again had they discussed the contingencies of the future; until the woman's whole nature became concentrated in one over-mastering determination; religion, morality, loyalty gradually sank away before that one purpose which absorbed her will. Lady Macbeth was destined to be a great woman, greatly good or greatly bad. With that enormous strength of will, that devoted love and desperate ambition, she must either rise to some height of noble self-sacrifice, or sink into some depth of miserable ruin. 2. THE WITCHES. BEFORE the play commences, Macbeth has gone from home to fight against the enemies of his king. He has fought with a valour which has swept the rebel army from the field like chaff from a threshing-floor. He is returning |