footsteps. Need I add how free they are from any thing
little or mean, any thing vulgar or gross ? The very inten-
sity of their wicked passion seems to have assoiled their
minds of all such earthy and ignoble incumbrances. And
so manifest, withal, is their innate fitness to reign, that their
ambition almost passes as the instinct of faculty for its pro-
per sphere.

General Remarks.

Dr Johnson observes, with singular infelicity, that this play
" has no nice discriminations of character." How far this
dictum is from being just, I trust has been made clear
enough already. In this respect, the hero and heroine are
equalled only by the Poet's other masterpieces, — by Shy-
lock, Hamlet, Lear, and lago ; while the Weird Sisters, so
seemingly akin (though whether as mothers or sisters or
daughters, we cannot tell) to the thunder-storms that come
and go with them, occupy the summit of his preternatural
creations. Nevertheless it must be owned that the grandeur
of the dramatic combination somewhat overshadows the
individual characters ; insomuch that something of special
effort is required to keep the delicate limning of the agents
fi-om being lost sight of in the magnitude, the manifold unity,
and thought-like rapidity of the action.



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42 MACBETH.

The style of this mighty drama is pitched in the same
high tragic key as the action. Throughout, we have an ex-
plosion, as of purpose into act, so also of thought into
speech, both literally kindling with their own swiftness.
No sooner thought than said, no sooner said than done, is
the law of the piece. Therewithal thoughts and images
come crowding and jostling each other in such quick suc-
cession as to prevent a full utterance ; a second leaping upon
the tongue before the first is fairly off. I should say the
Poet here specially endeavoured how much of meaning
could be conveyed in how little of expression ; with the
least touching of the ear to send vibrations through all the
chambers of the mind. Hence the large, manifold suggest-
iveness which lurks in the words : they seem instinct with
something which the speakers cannot stay to unfold. And
between these invitations to Unger and the continual draw-
ings onward the reader's mind is kindled to an almost pre-
ternatural activity. All which might at length grow weari-
some, but that the play is, moreover, throughout, a conflict
of antagonist elements and opposite extremes, which are so
managed as to brace up the interest on every side : so that
the effect of the whole is to refresh, not exhaust the powers ;
the mind being sustained in its long and lofty flight by the
wings that grow forth as of their own accord from its su-
peradded life. The lyrical element, instead of being inter-
spersed here and there in the form of musical lulls and
pauses, is thoroughly interfused with the dramatic; while
the ethical sense underlies them both, and is forced up
through them by their own pressure. The whole drama
indeed may be described as a tempest set to music.

My mind has long been made up, that in the banquet-



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INTRODUCTION. 43

scene the actual reappearance of the murdered Banquo
ought by all means to be discontinued on the stage. It can
hardly fail to excite feelings just the reverse of suitable to the
occasion : in a word, the thing is simply ludicrous, and can-
not be made to seem otherwise in our time. It is indeed
certain, from Forman's Notes, that such reappearance was
used in the Poet's time ; but there were good reasons for it
then which do not now exist. In the right conception of
the matter, the ghost is manifestly a thing existing only in
the diseased imagination of Macbeth ; what we call a sub-
jective ghost, a Banquo of the mind ; and having no more
objective being than the air-drawn dagger of a previous
scene ; the difference being that Macbeth is there so well in
his senses as to be aware of the unreality, while he is here
quite out of his senses, and completely hallucinated. All
this is evident in that the apparition is seen by none of the
other persons present. In Shakespeare's time, the gener-
ality of people could not possibly take the conception of a
subjective ghost ; but it is not so now. To be sure, it was
part of the old superstition in this behalf, that a ghost could
make itself visible, if it chose, only to such as it had some
special concern with ; but this is just what we mean by a
subjective ghost. The same arguments and the same con-
clusion hold also respecting the Ghost in the closet-scene
of Hamlet, where the hero has the interview with his
mother. v

It has often struck me as a highly-significant fact, that the
sleep-walking scene, which is more intensely tragic than any
other scene in Shakespeare, is all, except the closing speech,
written in prose. Why is this? The question is at least
not a little curious. The diction is of the very plainest and
simplest texture; yet what an impression of sublimity it



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44 MACBETH.

carries ! In fact, I suspect the matter is too sublime, too
austerely grand, to admit of any thing so artificial as the
measured language of verse, even though the verse were
Shakespeare's ; and that the Poet, as from an instinct of
genius, saw or felt that any attempt to heighten the effect
by any such arts or charms of delivery would unbrace and
impair it. And I think that the very diction of the closing
speech, poetical as it is, must be felt by every competent
reader as a letting-down to a lower intellectual plane. Is
prose, then, after all, a higher form of speech than verse?*

Divers critics have spoken strongly against the Porter -
scene : Coleridge denounces it as unquestionably none of
Shakespeare's work. Which makes me almost afraid to
trust my own judgment concerning it ; yet I always feel it
to be in the true spirit of the Poet's method. This strain
of droll broad humour, oozing out amid such a congregation
of terrors, to my mind deepens their effect, the strange but
momentary diversion causing them to return with the greater
force. Of the murder-scene, the banquet-scene, the sleep-
walking-scene, with their dagger of the mind, and Banquo
of the mind, and blood-spots of the mind, it were vain to
speak. Yet over these subUmely-terrific passages there every-
where hovers a magic light of poetry, at once disclosing the

* It has just struck my feelings that, the Phcrecydean origin of projiC be-
ing granted, prose must have struck men with greater admiration than poe-
try. In the latter it was the language of passion and emotion : it is what
they themselves spoke and heard in moments of exaltation, indignation, &c.
But to hear an evolving roll or a succession of leaves talk continually the
language of deliberate reason in the form of a continued preconception, —
this must have appeared godlike. I feel myself in the same state when, in
the perusal of a sober, yet elevated and harmonious, succession of sentences
and periods, I abstract my mind from the particular passage, and sympathize
with the wonder of the common people, who say of an eloquent man, " He
talks like a book ! "— COLERIDGE.



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INTRODUCTION. 45

horrors of the scene and annealing them into matter of de-
light. — Hallam sets the work down as being, in the lan-
guage of Drake, " the greatest effort of our author's genius,
the most sublime and impressive drama which the world has
ever beheld " ; a judgment from which most readers will
perhaps be less inclined to dissent, the older they grow.

It seems hardly right to close this Introduction without
quoting two brief but very apposite passages of criticism ;
one from the well-known work of Gervinus, the other from
Heraud's Inner Life of Shakespeare,

^^ Macbeth ^^ says Gervinus, "stands forth uniquely pre-
eminent in the splendours of poetic and picturesque diction
and in the living representation of persons, times, and places.
Here Schlegel has perceived the vigorous heroic age of the
North depicted with powerful touches, the generations of an
iron time, whose virtue was bravery. How grandly do the
mighty forms arise, how grandly do they move in a heroic
style ! Justly has Reynolds admired that description of the
martlet's resort at Macbeth 's dwelling as a charming image
of repose, following by way of contrast the lively picture of
the fight. More justly has praise been ever lavished on the
powerful representation of the terrible in the sleep-walking
of Lady Macbeth, in the banquet-scene, in the dismal crea-
tion of the Weird Sisters. Still far above all this is the
speaking truth of the scene at the murder of Duncan, which
has a powerful effect even in the most imperfect representa-
tion. The fearful whispered conference, in the horrible
dimness of which the pair arrange and complete their atro-
cious project; the heart-rending portraiture of Macbeth's
state of mind at the deed itself; — all this is so perfectly
natural, and wrought to such powerful effect with so little art,



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46 MACBETH.

that it would be difficult to find its equal in the poetry of
any age."

" All this tragedy," says Heraud, "is symbolic, — the dic-
tion, the action, the dialogue. That is, each is but a repre-
sentative portion of a larger whole. Lady Macbeth's letter
is only suggestive, not the entire document ; and the con-
versation in the seventh scene of the first Act refers to a
long-previous one. Of Sinel and Cawdor, to whose titles
Macbeth succeeds, nothing is told but the names : the
Witches themselves are introduced without any explanation,
and we have to refer them to a system of mythology which
we can only guess at. Lady Macbeth in the last Act comes
suddenly before us as a somnambulist ; and what she says
then in her soliloquy — and she says it in the briefest way —
is to indicate to us a psychological process very obscurely
foreshadowed in the third Act, scene second, and which, on
account of that obscurity, has been misunderstood. By this
method of composition Shakespeare has gained a rapidity
in the conduct of thiis drama which brings it into contrast
with almost all the others. Thus, in illustrating a subject
which reveals itself in types and symbols only on the stage
of history and real life, Shakespeare, with a fine inner in-
stinct, gives the same form to his religious tragedy. The
symbolical style of this drama almost imparts to it a Biblical
character. The type condenses a world of examples in a
single one. A lesson which is a man ; a myth with a human
face so plastic that it looks at you, and that its look is a mir-
ror ; a parable which warns you ; a symbol which cries out
' Beware ! * an idea which is nerve, muscle, and flesh, and
which has a heart to love, eyes to weep, and teeth to devour
or laugh ; a psychical conception with the relief of actual
fact, — that is the type."



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THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETR



PERSONS REPRESENTED.



Duncan, King of Scotland.
MAU;OLM. (his Sons.

DONALBAIN, J

Macbeth, | Qenerajg of his Army.
Banquo, i
Macduff,
Lennox,
Ross,

Menteth,
Angus,
Cathness, J
Fleance, Son to Banquo.
SlWARD, Earl of Northumberland,
General of the English forces.



Thanes of Scotland.



Young SiWARD, his Son.
Seyton, an Officer attending on

Macbeth.
Boy, Son to Macduff.
An English Doctor.
A Scotch Doctor.
A Soldier. A Porter.
An old Man.

Lady MACBETH.
Lady MACDUFF.
Gentlewoman attending on Lady

Macbeth.
Hecate, and Witches.



Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Attendants, Messengers,
and Apparitions.

Scene, in the end of the fourth Act, in England; through the rest of the
Play, in Scotland,



ACT I.

Scene I. — An Open Place,

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.

I Witch. When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, and in rain ?

47



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48 MACBETH. act i.

2 Witch. When the hurlyburly's^ done,
When the battle's lost and won.

3 Witch. That will be ere th' set of Sun.

1 Witch, Where the place ?

2 Witch. Upon the heath.
J Witch. There to meet with Macbeth.

1 Witch. / come, graytnalkin I

2 Witch. Paddock'^ calls : — Anon /^
All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair : ^

Hover through the fog and filthy air. \^Exeunt

A The origin and sense of this word are thus given by Peacham in his
Garden of Eloquence, 1577 : " Onomatopeia, when we invent, devise, fayne,
and make a name imitating the sound of that it signifyeth, as huriyburly, for
an uprore and tumultuous stirre." Thus also in Holinshed : *' There were
such hurlie burlies kept in every place, to the great danger of overthrowing
the whole state of all government in this land."

2 Graytnalkin is an old name for a gray cat. — Paddock is toad; and toad-
stools y/tre czWtd paddock-stools. — In the old witchcraft lore, witches are
commonly represented as having attendants called familiars, which were
certain animals, such as dogs, cats, toads, rats, mice, and some others. So
in The Witch 0/ Edmonton, by Rowley, Dekker, and Ford, ii. i : —

I have heard old beldams
Talk of familiars In the shape of mice,
Rats, ferrets, weasels, and I wot not what,
That have appear'd, and suck'd, some say, their blood.

And in that play, mother Sawyer, the Witch, is attended by a black dog, or
rather by a devil in that shape, who executes her commands. Generally,
in fact, the familiar was supposed to be a devil assuming the animal's shape,
and so waiting on the witch, and performing, within certain limits, whatever
feats of mischief she might devise ; the witch to pay his service with the
final possession of her soul and body.

8 Anon / was the usual answer to a call ; meaning presently or immedi-
ately. Here the toad, serving as familiar, is supposed to make a signal for
the Witches to leave ; and Anon / is the reply.

* This is probably meant to signify the moral confusion or inversion
which the Witches represent They love storms and elemental perturba-
tions; and "fair is foul, and foul is fair" to them in a moral sense as well
as in a phiysical.



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SCENE II. MACBETH. 49



Scene II. — A Camp near Forres.

Alarum within. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain,
Lennox, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant.

Dun, What bloody man is that ? He can report.
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.^

MaL This is the sergeant,^

Who like a good and hardy soldier fought
5 'Gainst my captivity. — Hail, brave friend !
Say to the King thy knowledge of the broil
As thou didst leave it.

Serg. Doubtful it stood ;

As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald —
lo Worthy to be a rebel, for, to that,^
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him — from the Western Isles
Of ^ kerns and gallowglasses is supplied ;

1 " The newest state " is the latest condition. •

* Sergeants, in ancient times, were not the petty officers now so called ;
but men performing one kind of feudal military service, in rank next to
esquires.

' To that end, or for that purpose ; namely, tp make him a rebel.

* Of, here, has the force of with, the two words being often used indis-
criminately. — Touching the men here referred to, Holinshed has the fol-
lowing : " Out of Ireland in hope of the spoile came no small number of
Kernes and Galloglasses, offering gladlie to serve under him, whither it
should please him to lead them." Bamabe Rich thus describes them in
his New Irish Prognostication : " The Galloglas succeedeth the Horseman,
and he is commonly armed with a scull, a shirt of maile, and a galloglas-
axe. The Kernes of Ireland are next in request, the very drosse and scum
of the countrey, a generation of villaines not worthy to live,"



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50 MACBETH. ACT L

And Fortune, on his damned quarrel ^ smiling,
Showed like a rebePs trull : but alPs too weak ;^
For brave Macbeth, — weU he deserves that name, —
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
5 Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion.

Carved out his passage till he faced the slave ;
And ne'er shook hands,^ nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam 'd him from the nave to th' chops,®

lo And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Dun, O valiant cousin ! worthy gentleman !
Serg, As whence the Sun gives his reflection ^
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break ;
So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come

15 Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark :
No sooner justice had, with valour arm'd,
Compeird these skipping kerns to trust their heels,

• Quarrel was often used for cause. So in Bacon's essay Of Marriage
and Single Life : " Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for mid-
dle age, and old men's nurses ; so as a man may have a quarrel to marry
when he will." See, also, the quotation from Holinshed in scene 4, note 9.

8 Here, " is supplied " and " is too weak " are instances of the present
with the sense of the perfect, and mixed up rather irregularly with preterite
forms.

7 To shake hands with a thing, as the phrase was formerly used, is to take
leave of it. So Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, 1643 • " I ^^^e
shaken hands with delight in my warm blood and canicular days ; I perceive
I do anticipate the vices of age ; '* &c.

8 Naue for navel, probably. Such a sword-stroke upwards seems rather
odd, but queer things have often happened in mortal combats. So in Nash's
Dido, Queen of Carthage, 1594 : " Then from the navel to the throcU at once
he ript old Priam." Also in Shadwell's Libertine, 1676 : " I will rip you from
the navel to the chin**

• Reflection is here put, apparently, for radiance or light. So that the
place " whence the Sun gives his reflection " is the heavens or the sky. See
Critical Notes.



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SCENE n. MACBETH. 51

But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,
With furbished arms ^® and new supphes of men
Began a fresh assault.

Dun, Dismayed not this

Our captains,^ 1 Macbeth and Banquo?
Serg, Yes ;

5 As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.
If I say sooth, ^2 I must report they were
As cannons overcharged with double cracks ; ^^
So they redoubled strokes upon the foe :
Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, .
10 Or memorize ^^ another Golgotha,
I cannot tell : —
But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

Dun. So well thy words become thee as thy wounds ;
They smack of honour both. — Go get him surgeons. —

\Exit Sergeant, attended.
Who comes here ?

Enter Ross.

1 5 MaL The worthy Thane of Ross.

Len, What haste ^^ looks through his eyes ! So should
he look

10 That is, arms gleaming with unstained brightness; fresh. — Surveying
vantage is watching his opportunity.

11 Here captains was probably meant to be a trisyllable, as if it were spelt
capitains. We have the word used repeatedly so.

12 Sooth is truth. So, originally, soothsayer yf2L5 truth-speaker,

18 Overcharged with double cracks is, as we should say, loaded with double
charges; crack being put for that which makes the crack.

1* To memorize is to make famous or memorable. Except is here equiva-
lent to unless. " Unless they meant to make the spot as l^mous as Gol-
gotha, I cannot tell what they meant**

16 We should say, *' What a haste." So in Julius Casar, i. 3 : " Cassius,
what night is this I "



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52 MACBETH. ACT I.

That seems ^^ to speak things strange.

Ross, God save the King !

Dun. Whence earnest thou, worthy thane ?

Ross, From Fife, great King ;

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,
And fan our people cold.^^ Norway himself,
5 With terrible numbers,
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor.
The Thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict ;
Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,^®
Confronted him with self caparisons, ^^
10 Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm.
Curbing his lavish spirit : ^o and, to conclude.
The victory fell on us ; —

Dun. Great happiness !

Ross. — that 2^ now

"^^ It appears that to seem was sometimes used with the exact sense of to
will or to mean. So, afterwards, in scene $ : " Which fate and metaphysical
aid doth seem to have thee crown'd withal."

17 " The banners, proudly reared aloft and fluttering in the wind, seemed
to mock or insult the sky, — ' laughing banners ' ; while the sight of them
struck chills of dread and dismay into our men." Flout and fan for fiouted
2ind fanned; instances of what is called " the historic present." See note 6.

18 " Lapp'd in proof" is covered with impenetrable armour, or " armour
of proof," as it is called. — Bellona was the old Roman goddess of war; the
companion and, as some thought, the sister of Mars. Steevens laughed at
the Poet's ignorance in making her the wife of Mars ; whereas he plainly
makes her the bride of Macbeth.

19 Caparisons for afTns, offensive and defensive ; the trappings and furni-
ture of personal fighting. Here, as often, j^(/^is equivalent to w^j^»j^. So
that the meaning is, Macbeth confronted the rebel Cawdor with just such
arms as Cawdor himself had. It was Scot against Scot. See Critical Notes.

20 That is, checking or repressing his reckless ox prodigal daring,

21 That was continually used with the force of so that, or insomuch that,
— Composition for armistice or terms of peace; as in the phrase to compound
a quarrel.



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SCENE III. MACBETH. 53

Sweno, the Norways* King, craves composition ; /
Nor would we deign him burial of his men,
Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme's-Inch,22
Ten thousand dollars to our general use.
5 Dun, No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive
Our bosom interest : — go pronounce his present death.
And with his former title greet Macbeth.

Ross. I'll see it done.

Dun, What he hath lost noble Macbeth hath won.

\Exeunt

Scene III. — A Heath,
Thunder, Enter the three Witches.

lo I Witch, Where hast thou been, sister?

2 Witch, Klilling swine.

3 Witch, Sister, where thou ?

I Witch, A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap.
And munch*d, and munch'd, and munch'd. Give nuy
quoth I :
15 Aroint thee} witch ! the rump-fed ronyon^ cries.
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger :
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,^

22 Colme's is here a dissyllable. Colme's Inch, now called Inchcomb, is a
small island, lying in the Firth of Eldinburgh, with an abbey upon it dedi-
cated to St. Columb. Inch or inse, in Erse, signifies an island.

1 Aroint thee/ is an old exorcism against witches; meaning, apparently,
away! stand off! or begone! The et)rmology of the word is uncertain.

2 Ronyon is said to be from ronger, French, which signifies to gnaw or
corrode. It thus carries the sense of scurvy or mangy, — Rump-fed is, proba-
bly, fed on broken meats or the refuse of wealthy tables. Some, however,
take it to mQ^ca pampered ; fed on the best pieces.

•Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, says it was believed that
witches " could sail in an egg-shell, a cockle or muscle-shell through and



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54 MACBETH. ACT L

I'U do, I'll do, and I'U do.<
2 Witch. 1*11 give thee a wind.
I Witch. Thou art kind.^
J Witch. And I another.
5 I Witch. I myself have all the other ;

. And the very points they blow,
All the quarters that they know
I' the shipman's card.®
I will drain him dry as hay :
lo Sleep shall neither night nor day

Hang upon his penthouse lid ;^
He shall live a man forbid : ®
Weary sev*n-nights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine : ®
15 Though his bark cannot be lost,

under the tempestuous seas." And in the Life of Doctor Fian^a notable
Sorcerer: "All they together went to sea, each one in a riddle or cive, and
went in the same very substantially, with flaggons of wine making merrie,
and drinking by the way in the same riddles or cives." — It was the belief
of the times that, though a witch could assume the form of any animal she
pleased, the tail would still be wanting.

* ni do is a threat of gnawing a hole through the hull of the ship so as
to make her spring a-leak.

5 This free gift of a wind is to be taken as an act of sisterly kindness ;
witches being thought to have the power oi selling winds.

* The seaman's chart, which shows all the points of the compass, as we
call them, marked down in the radii of a circle.

7 " Penthouse lid " is eyelid protected as by a penthouse roof. So in
Drayton's David and Goliah : " His brows Uke two steep penthouses hung
down over his eyelids''

8 To live forbid is to live under a curse or cut interdict; pursued by an