such demeanor? No-to degrade and min- | to the King-for there is no allusion in it to imize the murderer. TALBOYS. My dear sir, I cordially agree with every word you utter. Go on-my dear sir-to instruct-to illumine SEWARD. To bring out "sublime flashes of magnanimity, courage, tenderness," in Macbeth BULLER. "Of every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind"the mind of Macbeth in his struggle with the allurements of ambition! NORTH. Observe, how this reticence-on the part of Macbeth-contrasted with his wife's eagerness and exultation, makes her, for the moment, seem the wickeder of the twothe fiercer and the more cruel. For the moment only; for we soon ask ourselves what means this unhusbandly reserve in him who had sent her that letter-and then a messenger to tell her the king was coming--and who had sworn to himself as savagely as she now does, not to let slip this opportunity of cutting his king's throat. He is well-pleased to see that his wife is as bloody-minded as himself that she will not only give all necessary assistance-as an associate-but concert the when, and the where, and the how -and if need be, with her own hand deal the blow. SEWARD. She did not then know that Macbeth had made up his mind to murder Duncan that very night. But we know it. She has instantly made up hers-we know how; but being as yet unassured of her husband, she welcomes him home with a Declaration that must have more than answered his fondest hopes; and, therefore, he is almost mute--the few words he does utter seem to indicate no settled purpose-Duncan may fulfill his intention of going in the morning, or he may not; but we know that the silence of the murderer now is because the murderess is manifestly all he could wishand that, had she shown any reluctance, he would have resumed his eloquence, and, to convert her to his way of thinking, argued as powerfully as he did when converting himself. BULLER. You carry on at such a pace, sir, there's no keeping up with you. Pull up, that I may ask you a very simple question. On his arrival at his castle, Macbeth finds his wife reading a letter from her amiable spouse, about the Weird Sisters. Pray, when was that letter written? NORTH. At what hour precisely? That I It must, however, have been written before Macbeth had been presented can't say. the King's intention to visit their Castle. I believe it to have been written about an hour or so after the prophecy of the Weirdseither in some place of refreshment by the road-side-or in such a Tent as this-kept ready for the General in the King's Camp at Forres. He dispatched it by a Gilly-a fast one like your Cornwall Clipper-and then tumbled in. BULLER. When did she receive it? BULLER. How could that be, since she is reading it, as her husband, steps in, well on, as I take it, in the afternoon? NORTH. Buller, you are a blockhead. There had she, for many hours, been sitting, and walking about with it, now rumpled up in her fist-now crunkled up between her breasts-now locked up in a safe-now spread out like a sampler on that tasty little oak table and sometimes she might have been heard by the servants-had they had the unusual curiosity to listen at the doormurmuring like a stock-dove-anon hooting like an owl-by-and-by barking like an eagle-then bellowing liker a hart than a hind almost howling like a wolf-and why not? -now singing a snatch of an old Gaelic air, with a clear, wild, sweet voice, like that of a "human!" "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised." "Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, And chastise with the valor of my tongue, All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which Fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crown'd withal.” BULLER. Grand indeed. NORTH. It is grand indeed. But, my dear Buller, was that all she had said to herself, think you? No-no-no. But it was all Shakspeare had time for on the Stage. Oh, sirs! The Time of the Stage is but a simulacrum of true Time. That must be done at one stroke, on the Stage, which in a Life takes ten. The Stage persuades that in one conversation, or soliloquy, which Life may do in twenty-you have not leisure or goodwill for the ambages and iterations of the Real. SEWARD. See an artist with a pen in his hand, challenged; and with a few lines he will exhibit a pathetic story. From how many millions has he given you-One? The units which he abstracts, represent suffi ciently and satisfactorily the millions of lines and surfaces which he neglects. NORTH. So in Poetry. You take little for much. You need not wonder, then, that on an attendant entering and saying, The King comes here to-night," she cries, "Thou art mad to say it!" Had you happened to tell her so half-an-hour ago, who knows but that she might have received it with a stately smile, that hardly moved a muscle on her high-featured front, and gave a merciful look to her green eyes even when she was communing with Murder! NORTH. What hurry and haste had been on all sides to get into the House of Murder! "Where's the Thane of Cawdor? We coursed him, at the heels, and had a purpose him To his home before us-Fair and noble Hostess, Ay, where is the Thane of Cawdor? I, for "Give me your hand: Conduct me to mine host; we love him highly, Ay-where's the Thane of Cawdor? Why TALBOYS. Did he sup with the King? BULLER. I believe he sat down-but got up again—and left the Chamber. NORTH. He then goes on to descant to himself about the relation in which he stands to Duncan, and apparently discovers for the first time, that "he's here in double trust;" and that as his host, his kinsman, and his subject, he should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife myself." SEWARD. A man of genius. NORTH. Besides, Duncan is not only a "So clear in his great office, that his virtues That is much better morality-keep there, ner of man he is we hear in the unbearable "And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Cant and fustian. Shakspeare knew that cant and fustian would come at that moment from the mouth of Macbeth. Accordingly, he offers but a poor resistance to the rhetoric that comes rushing from his wife's hearteven that sentiment which is thought so fine-and 'tis well enough in its way "I dare do all that may become a man ; Who dares do more is none" TALBOYS. His wife seeks him out. "He has almost supped. Why have you left the Chamber?" Has he asked for me?" is set aside at once by"Know ye not he has?" NORTH. On Macbeth's Soliloquy, which his wife's entrance here interrupts, how much inconsiderate comment have not moralists made! Here they have said—is the struggle of a good man with temptation. Hearken, say they-to the voice of Conscience! What does the good man, in this hour of trial, say to himself? He says to himself— "I have made up my mind to assassinate my benefactor in my own house-the only doubt I have, is about the consequences to myself in the world to come." Well, then-"We'd jump the world to come. But if I murder him-may not others murder me? Retribution even in this world." Call you that the voice of Conscience? SEWARD. Hardly. "What beast was it, then, That made you break this enterprise to me?" We hear no more of "Pity like a naked newborn babe"-but at her horrid scheme of the murder "Bring forth men children only! For thy undaunted metal should compose Nothing but males !” Shakspeare does not paint here a grand and desperate struggle between good and evil thoughts in Macbeth's mind-but a mock fight; had there been any deep sincerity in the feeling expressed in the bombast-had there been any true feeling at all--it would have revived and deepened-not faded and died almost-at the picture drawn by Lady | more than his Lordship's. Against whom, Macbeth of their victim "When Duncan is asleep, Whereto the rather shall this day's hard journey the words that had just left his own lips-- "His virtues then, do we conclude? Her? I think notbut the Poet. He is the badly-contriving assassin. He does not intend lowering your esteem for her Ladyship's talents. Am I, sir, to think that William himself, after the same game, would have hunted no better? I believe he would; but he thinks that this will carry the Plot through for the Stage well enough. The House, seeing and hear Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against ing, will not stay to criticise. The Horror The deep damnation of his taking-off," would have re-rung in his ears; and a strange medley-words and music-would they have made with his wife's "When in swinish sleep Their drenched natures lie, as in a death, persuades Belief. He knew the whole mystery of murder. NORTH. My dear Buller, wheel nearer me. I would not lose a word you say. BULLER. Did Macbeth commit an error in killing the two Grooms? And does his Lady think so? TALBOYS. A gross error, and his Lady thinks so. BULLER. Why was it a gross error-and That is my idea of the Soliloquy. Think why did his lady think so? on it. TALBOYS. The best critics tell us that Shakspeare's Lady Macbeth has a commanding Intellect. Certes she has a commanding Will. I do not see what a commanding Intellect has to do in a Tragedy of this kindor what opportunity she has of showing it. you, sir? Do NORTH. I do not. TALBOYS. Her Intellect seems pretty much on a par with Macbeth's in the planning of the murder. NORTH. I defy any human Intellect to devise well an atrocious Murder. Pray, how would you have murdered Duncan ? TALBOYS. Ask me rather how I wouldthis night-murder Christopher North. NORTH. No more of that-no dallying in that direction. You make me shudder. Shakspeare knew that a circumspect murder is an impossibillity-that a murder of a King in the murderer's own house, with expectation of non-discovery, is the irrationality of infatuation. The poor Idiot chuckles at the poor Fury's device as at once original and plausible and, next hour, what single soul in the Castle does not know who did the deed? SEWARD. High Intellect indeed! TALBOYS. The original murder is bad to the uttermost. I mean badly contrived. What color was there in coloring the two Grooms? No two men kill their master, and then go to bed again in his room with bloody faces and poignards. BULLER. If this was really a very bad plot altogether, it is her Ladyship's as much-far TALBOYS. Because-why-I really can't tell. BULLER. Nor I. The question leads to formidable difficulties - either way. But answer me this. Is her swooning at the close of her husband's most graphic picture of the position of the corpses-real or pre tended? SEWARD. Real. TALBOYS. Pretended. NORTH. I reserve my opinion. TALBOYS. Not a faint--but a feint. She cannot undo that which is done; nor hinder that which he will do next. She must mind her own business. Now distinctly her own business-is to faint. A high-bred, sensitive, innocent Lady, startled from her sleep to find her guest and King murdered, and the room full of aghast nobles, cannot possibly do anything else but faint. Lady Macbeth, who "all particulars of duty knows," faints accordingly. NORTH. Seward, we are ready to hear you. SEWARD. She has been about a business that must have somewhat shook her nerves— granting them to be of iron. She would herself have murdered Duncan had he not resembled her Father as he slept; and on sudden discernment of that dreadful resemblance, her soul must have shuddered, if her body served her to stagger away from parricide. On the deed being done, she is terrified after a different manner from the doer of the deed; but her terror is as great ; and though she says "The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures-'tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted Devil-" believe me that her face was like ashes, as she returned to the chamber to gild the faces of the grooms with the dead man's blood. That knocking, too, alarmed the Lady-believe me as much as her husband; and to keep cool and collected before him, so as to be able to support him at that moment with her advice, must have tried the utmost strength of her nature. Call her Fiend-she was Woman. Down stairs she comes-and stands among them all, at first like one alarmed only astounded by what she hears--and striving to simulate the ignorance of the innocent--"What, in our house?" "Too cruel anywhere!" What she must have suffered then, Shakspeare lets us conceive for ourselves; and what on her husband's elaborate description of his inconsiderate additional murders. "The whole is too much for her" -she "is perplexed in the extreme”—and the sinner swoons. not Pritchard with the Swoon-and that Macklin thought Mrs. Porter alone could have been endured by the audience. Therefore, by the Great Manager, Lady Macbeth was allowed in the Scene to appear at all. His belief was, that with her Ladyship it was a feint--and that the Gods, aware of that, unless restrained by profound respect for the actress, would have laughed as at something rather comic. If the Gods, in Shakspeare's days, were as the Gods in Garrick's, William, methinks, would not, on any account, have exposed the Lady to derision at such a time. But I suspect the Gods of the Globe would not have laughed, whatever they might have thought of her sincerity, and that she did appear before them in a Scene from which nothing could account for her absence. She was not, I verily believe, given to faintingperhaps this was the first time she had ever fainted since she was a girl. Now I believe she did. She would have stood by her hus band at all hazards, had she been able, both on his account and her own; she would not have so deserted him at such a critical juncture; her character was of boldness rather than duplicity; her business now-her duty -was to brazen it out; but she grew sickqualms of conscience, however terrible, can be borne by sinners standing upright at the mouth of hell-but the flesh of man is weak, woman's form-other qualms assail suddenly the earthly tenement-the breath is choked the "distracted globe" grows dizzy-they that look out of the windows know not what they see-the body reels, lapses, sinks, and at full length smites the floor. NORTH. Seward suggests a bold, strong, deep, tragical turn of the scene--that she faints actually. Well--so be it. I shall say, first, that I think it a weakness in my favorite; but I will go so far as to add that I can let it pass for a not unpardonable weaknessthe occasion given. But I must deal other-in its utmost strength, when moulded to wise with her biographer. Him I shall hold to a strict rendering of account. I will know of him what he is about, and what she is about. If she faints really, and against her will, having forcible reasons for holding her will clear, she must be shown fighting to the last effort of will, against the assault of womanly nature, and drop, vanquished, as one dead, without a sound. But the Thaness calls out lustily--she remembers, "as we shall make our griefs and clamors roar upon his death." She makes noise enough-takes good care to attract everybody's attention to her performance--for which I commend her. Calculate as nicely as you will-she distracts or diverts speculation, and makes an interesting and agreeable break in the conversation. I think that the obvious meaning is the right meaning-and that she faints on pur SEWARD. Well said Chairman of the Quarter-sessions. BULLER. Nor, with all submission, my dear Sir, can I think you treat your favorite murderess, on this trying occasion, with your usual fairness and candor. All she says is, "Help me hence, ho!" Macduff says, "Look to the Lady"-and Banquo says, "Look to the Lady"—and she is carried off. Some critic or other-I think Malone-says that Macbeth avows he knows "'tis a feint" by not going to her assistance. Perhaps he was mistaken-know it he could not. And nothing more likely to make a woman faint than that reveling and wallowing of his in that bloody description. NORTH. By the Casting Vote of the President-Feint. TALBOYS. Let's to Lunch. NORTH. GO. You will find me sitting here when you come back. SCENE II. SCENE-The Pavilion. TIME | after Lunch. NORTH-TALBOYS-BULLER -SEWARD. NORTH. Claudius, the uncle-king in Hamlet, is perhaps the most odious character in all Shakspeare. But he does no unnecessary murders. He has killed the Father, and will the Son, all in regular order. But Macbeth plunges himself, like a drunken man, into unnecessary and injurious cruelties. He throws like a reckless gamester. If I am to own the truth, I don't know why he is so cruel. I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero BULLER. What do we know of Nero? Was he mad? NORTH. I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty like Nero; but he seems to be under some infatuation that drags or drives him along. To kill is, in every difficulty, the ready resource that occurs to him as if to go on murdering were, by some law of the Universe, the penalty which you must pay for having once murdered. SEWARD. I think, Sir, that without contradicting anything we said before Lunch about his Lordship, or his Kingship, we may conceive in the natural Macbeth considerable force of Moral Intuition. NORTH. We may. SEWARD. Of Moral Intelligence? SEWARD Of Moral Obedience? SEWARD. Moral Intuition, and Moral Intelligence breaking out, from time to time, all through we understand how there is engendered in him strong self-dissatisfaction— thence perpetual goadings on-and desperate attempts to loose conscience in more and more crime. NORTH. Ay-Seward-even so. He tells you that he stakes soul and body upon the throw for a Crown. He has got the Crown -and paid for it. He must keep it else he has bartered soul and body-for nothing! To make his first crime good he strides gigantically along the road of which it opened the gate. TALBOYS. An almost morbid impressibility of imagination is energetically stamped, and universally recognized in the Thane, and I think, sir, that it warrants, to a certain extent, a sincerity of the mental movements. He really sees a fantastical dagger-he really hears fantastical voices-perhaps he really sees a fantastical Ghost. All this in him is SEWARD. By Shakspeare in that first Soliloquy. The poetry coloring, throughout his discourse, is its natural efflorescence. NORTH. Talboys, Seward, you have spoken well. BULLER. And I have spoken ill? BULLER. We have all Four of us spoken well-we have all Four of us spoken ill-and we have all Four of us spoken but so-sonow and heretofore-in this Tent--hang the wind--there's no hearing twelve words in ten a body says. Honored sir, I beg permission to say that I cannot admit the Canon laid down by your Reverence, an hour or two ago, or a minute or two ago, that Macbeth's extravagant language is designed by Shakspeare to designate hypocrisy. NORTH. Why? BULLER. You commended Talboys and Seward for noticing the imaginative-the poetical character of Macbeth's mind. There we find the reason of his extravagant language. It may, as you said, be cant and fustian--or it may not--but why attribute to hypocrisy as you did--what may have flowed from his genius? Poets may rant as loud as he, and yet be honest men. "In a fine frenzy rolling," their eyes may fasten on fustian. NORTH. Good-go on. Deduct. BULLER. Besides, sir, the Stage had such a language of its own; and I cannot help thinking that Shakspeare often, and too frankly, gave in to it. NORTH. He did. BULLER. I would, however, much rather believe that if Shakspeare meant anything by it in Macbeth's Oratory or Poetry, he intended thereby rather to impress on us that last noticed constituent of his nature--a vehement seizure of imagination. I believe, sir, that in the hortatory scene Lady Macbeth really vanquishes-as the scene ostensibly shows-his irresolution. And if Shakspeare means irresolution, I do not know why the grounds thereof which Shakspeare assigns to Macbeth should not be accepted as the true grounds. The Dramatist would seem to demand too much of me, if, under the grounds which he expresses, he requires me to dis |