according to his Majesty, excused upon the suddenness of his coming—is very remarkable: "His Majesty being set down to his dinner, the said Earl stood very pensive, and with a dejected countenance, at the end of his Majesty's table, oft rounding [whispering] over his shoulder, one while to one of his servants, and another while to another; and oft-times went out and in to the chamber." Very similar to this is the situation expressed by the original stage direction in Macbeth: "Enter a Sewer, and divers servants with dishes and service over the stage. Then enter Macbeth." We can imagine Gowrie, on one of the occasions when he went out and in to the chamber, thinking the very thoughts which Macbeth thinks aloud when he has left the King :

"If it were done, when 't is done, then 't were well

It were done quickly."

We can fancy the Master of Ruthven seeking his brother, (the favourite of the people of Perth,) as Lady Macbeth sought her husband:

"Lady M. He has almost supp'd: Why have you left the chamber?
Macb. Hath he ask'd for me?

Macb. We will proceed no further in this business :
He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people."

King James is led by Master Alexander "up a turnpike, and through two or three chambers, the said Master Alexander ever locking behind him every door as he passed." Then comes the attempt at assassination. The circumstances in Macbeth are of course essentially different; but the ambition which prompted the murder of Duncan, and the attempt upon James, are identical. The King is held to have said while he was in the death grip of the Master of Ruthven, "Albeit ye bereave me of my life, ye will nought be King of Scotland, for I have both sons and daughters." So

"We will establish our estate upon

Our eldest Malcolm."

It is a singular characteristic of the Gowrie tragedy that the chief conspirators, the Earl of Gowrie and the Master of Ruthven, were put to death in so sudden a way that the real circumstances of the case must always be involved in some doubt. The evidence is not wholly satisfactory. The Duke of Lennox, who was the chief witness of credit, says of himself, the Earl of Mar, and their company, that "Notwithstanding long forcing with hammers, they got nought entry at the said chamber until after the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were both slain. And at their first entry they saw the Earl of Gowrie lying dead in the chamber, Master Alexander Ruthven being slain and taken down the stair before their entry." The official account says that Sir John Ramsey, finding the turnpike-door open (not the regular entrance, but one that led direct from the street), entered the chamber where the King and the Master were struggling. He struck the traitor with his dagger, "who was no sooner shot out at the door but he was met by Sir Thomas Erskine and Sir Hugh

Herries, who there upon the stair ended him." The Earl of Gowrie followed these servants of the King; and then the Earl was stricken dead with a stroke through the heart which the said Sir John Ramsey gave him." Sir Thomas Erskine and Sir John Ramsey confirm this account. The people of Perth believed that the Earl of Gowrie, their Provost, was unjustly slain; and their cry was, "Bloody butchers, traitors, murderers, ye shall all die! give us forth our Provost! Woe worth ye greencoats, woe worth this day for ever! Traitors and thieves that have slain the Earl of Gowrie!" The slaying of the two brothers gave rise to the belief that "the King was a doer, and not a sufferer."* It was this belief that moved the people of Perth to utter "most irreverent and undutiful speeches against his Majesty," even though the Earl was denounced as "a studier of magic, and a conjurer of devils." Macbeth has furnished the excuse for such a sudden slaying of the brothers :

:

The people of Perth, however, became reconciled to James. On the 15th of April, 1601, "The King's Majesty came to Perth, and was made burgess at the

* Galloway's Discourse before the King.

out.

Market Cross. There was eight puncheons of wine set there, and all drunken He received the banquet at the town, and subscribed the guild-book with his own hand, Jacobus Rex, parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.'"

In a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, by John Anderson, Esq., On the Site of Macbeth's Castle at Inverness, the author says, "The extreme accuracy with which Shakspere has followed the minutiae of Macbeth's career has given rise to the opinion that he himself visited those scenes which are immortalized by his pen." It is our duty to examine this opinion somewhat particularly, whatever be the conclusions to which the examination may conduct us.

The story of Macbeth was presented to Shakspere in a sufficiently complete. form by the chronicler from whom he derived so many other materials, Holinshed. In testing, therefore, "the extreme accuracy with which Shakspere has followed the minutiae of Macbeth's career"-by which we understand the writer to mean the accuracy of the poet in details of locality—we must inquire how far he agrees with, or differs from, and how far he expands, or curtails, the local statements or allusions of his chief authority. In the tragedy, Macbeth and Banquo, returning from their victory, are proceeding to Forres: "How far is 't called to Forres?" In the chronicler we find, It fortuned as Macbeth and Banquo journeyed towards Forres, where the king then lay." So far there is agreement as to the scene. The historian thus proceeds: "They went sporting by the way together without other company, passing thorough the woods and fields, when suddenly, in the middest of a laund, there met them three women in strange and wild apparel." This description presents to us the idea of a pleasant and fertile place. The very spot where the supernatural soliciting occurs is a laund, or meadow amongst trees. The poet chose his scene with greater art. The witches meet "upon the heath;" they stop the way of Macbeth and Banquo upon the "blasted heath." But the poet was also more accurate than the historian in his traditionary topography. The country around Forres is wild moorland. Boswell, passing from Elgin to Forres in company with Johnson, says, In the afternoon we drove over the very heath where Macbeth met the witches, according to tradition. Dr. Johnson again solemnly repeated, How far is 't called to Forres?' &c." But, opposed to this, the more general tradition holds that the blasted heath" was on the east of Forres, between that town and Nairn. "A more dreary piece of moorland is not to be

found in all Scotland. There is something startling to a stranger in seeing the solitary figure of the peat-digger or rush-gatherer moving amidst the waste in the sunshine of a calm autumn day; but the desolation of the scene in stormy weather, or when the twilight fogs are trailing over the pathless heath, or settling down upon the pools, must be indescribable." We thus see that, whether Macbeth met the weird sisters to the east or west of Forres, there was in each place that desolation which was best fitted for such an event, and not

* 'Transactions,' vol. iii., 28th January, 1828.

A laund is described by Camden as "a plain amongst trees."

Local Illustrations of Macbeth, Act I.

the woods and fields and launds of the chronicler. From Forres, where Macbeth proffers his service and his loyalty to his king, was a day's ride to his own castle : "From hence to Inverness." Boece makes Inverness the scene of Duncan's murder. Holinshed merely says, "He slew the king at Enverns, or (as some say) at Botgosvane." The chroniclers would have furnished Shakspere no notion of the particular character of the castle at Inverness. Without some local knowledge the poet might have placed it upon a frowning rock, lonely, inaccessible, surrounded with a gloom and grandeur fitted for deeds of murder and usurpation. He has chosen altogether a different scene :

Such a description, contrasting as it does with the deeds of terror that are to be acted in that pleasant seat, is unquestionably an effort of the highest art. But here again the art appears founded upon a reality. Mr. Anderson, in the paper which we have already quoted, has shown from various records that there was an old castle at Inverness. It was not the castle whose ruins Johnson visited and of which Boswell says, "It perfectly corresponds with Shakspeare's description;" but a castle on an adjacent eminence called the Crown-so called from having been a royal seat. Traditionary lore, Mr. Anderson says, embodies this opinion, connecting the place with the history of Macbeth. "Immediately opposite to the Crown, on a similar eminence, and separated from it by a small valley, is a farm belonging to a gentleman of the name of Welsh. That part of the ascent to this farm next Viewfield, from the Great Highland Road, is called Banquo's Brae.' The whole of the vicinity is rich in wild imagery. From the mouth of the valley of Diriebught to King's Mills, thence by the road to Viewfield, and down the gorge of Aultmuniack to the mail-road along the seashore, we compass a district celebrated in the annals of diablerie." The writer then goes on to mention other circumstances corroborating his opinion as to the site of Macbeth's castle: "Traces of what has been an approach to a place of consequence are still discernible. This approach enters the lands of Diriebught from the present mail-road from Fort George; and, running through the valley, gradually ascends the bank of the Crown Hill; and, the level attained, strikes again towards the eastern point, where it terminates. Here the 'pleasant seat' is rumoured to have stood, facing the sea; and singularly correct with respect to the relative points of the compass will be found the poet's disposal of the portal at the south entry.""

The investiture of Macbeth at Scone, and the burial of Duncan at Colmeskill, are facts derived by the poet from the chronicler. Hence also Shakspere derived

the legend, of which he made so glorious a use, that "a certain witch whom he had in great trust had told Macbeth that he should never be slain with man born of any woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Birnane came to the castle of Dunsinane." From Holinshed, also, he acquired a general notion of the situation of this castle : "He builded a strong castle on the top of an high hill called Dunsinane, situate in Gowrie, ten miles from Perth, on such a proud height that standing there aloft a man might behold well near all the countries of Angus, Fife, Stirmond, and Erndale, as it were lying underneath him." The propinquity of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane is indicated only in the chronicler by the circumstance that Malcolm rested there the night before the battle, and on the morrow marched to Dunsinane, every man "bearing a bough of some tree or other of that wood in his hand." The commanding position of Dunsinane, as described by the chronicler, is strictly adhered to by the poet :

"As I did stand my watch upon the hill

I looked toward Birnam, and anon, methought
The wood began to move."

But the poet has a particularity which the historian has not :

"Within this three mile may you see it coming;

I say, a moving grove."

This minuteness sounds like individual local knowledge. The Dunsinane Hills form a long range extending in a north-easterly direction from Perth to Glamis. The castle of the "thane of Glamis" has been made a traditionary scene of the murder of Duncan. Birnam Hill is to the north-west of Perth; and between the two elevations there is a distance of some twelve miles, formed by the valley