CHAPTER X.

ON "MACBETH."

WERE it not that I have the high authority of the Cambridge editors to countenance me in my main theory of this play, I should almost fear to produce it: the popular idea that this is not only one of the most powerful, but also one of the most perfect works of Shakespeare, must necessarily raise so strong a prejudice in the minds of my readers against so bold a hypothesis as I shall have to lay before them, that it will be in most cases difficult even to obtain a hearing, much more a candid consideration of it. And if difficult, as I know by several years' experience it is, to get a hearing for their hypothesis as they present it, it will be far more so when pushed to the greater extent that appears to me inevitable. The general statement is this: Macbeth in its present state is an altered copy of the original drama, and the alterations were made by Middleton. I commence by a condensed statement of the arguments of Messrs Clark and Wright.

I. The stage directions in III. v. 33, Sing within, Come away, Come away, &c.; and IV. i. 43, Musicke and a Song, Black Spirits, &c., refer to two songs given in full in Middleton's Witch.

2. The Witch and Macbeth have points of resemblance. (a) As Hecate says of Sebastian, "I know he loves me not," so Hecate says of Macbeth, "He loves for his own ends, not for you." (b) In the Witch, "For the maid-servants and the girls o' th' house, I spiced them lately with a drowsy posset:" in Macbeth, "I have drugged

their possets." (c) In the Witch, Hec., "Come, my sweet sisters, let the air strike our tune :" in Macbeth, "I'll charm the air to give a sound." (d) In the Witch, "The innocence of sleep :" in Macbeth, "The innocent sleep." (e) In the Witch, "There's no such thing" in Macbeth the same words. (f) In the Witch, "I'll rip thee down from neck to navel:" in Macbeth, "He unseamed him from the nave to the chaps." And, they add, there are other passages.

3. The witches in the two plays are strongly alike, though Hecate in one is a spirit,' and in the other an old woman.

4. There are parts of Macbeth not in Shakespeare's manner : namely―

(a) I. ii. Slovenly in metre, bombastic; 1. 52, 53, not consistent with I. iii. 72, 73, 112, &c. Shakespeare would not send a severely wounded soldier with news of victory.

I. iii. 1—37. Not in Shakespeare's style.

II. i. 61. "Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives." Too feeble for Shakespeare.

II. iii. Porter's part. "Low, written for the mob by another hand."-Coleridge.'

III. v. Not in Shakespeare's manner.

IV. i. 1-38. Masterly, but doubtful: falls off in l. 39-47.

III. v. 13.

"Loves for his own ends." But Macbeth hates

them calls them "secret, black, and midnight hags."

III. v. 125-152. Cannot be Shakespeare's.

IV. iii. 140–159.

sentation.

V. ii. Doubtful.

Interpolation: probably before a Court-repre

V. v. 47-50. Weak tag: unskilful imitation.

V. viii. 32. "Before my body I throw my war-like shield." Interpolation.

? I do not agree with this.

Two hands clearly.

"Fiend-like queen

V. viii. last 40 lines.

tion.

Double-stage direc

dispels the pity excited for Lady Macbeth: "by self and violent hands" raises the veil dropped over her

I

fate with Shakespeare's fine tact.

III. ii. 54, 55. Interpolation.

Play probably interpolated after Shakespeare's withdrawal from theatre [not earlier than 1613].

Their opinion as to I. i. is doubtful. They also decline giving opinion as to date of the Witch.

The above is, I hope, a fair abstract of their views: what I shall try to do is to carry them out still farther, and to support them with new arguments.

[Here followed in the first issue of this chapter a discussion on the Porter's speech in Act ii. Sc. 3. As this rough and incorrect draft was never intended for publication, I have withdrawn it. There was in it one blunder which even now I wish to set right.

The singular words "everlasting bonfire" have been misunderstood by the commentators. A bonfire at that date is invariably given in the Latin Dictionaries as equivalent to pyra or rogus; it was the fire for consuming the human body after death: and the hell-fire differed from the earth-fire only in being everlasting. This use of a word so remarkably descriptive in a double meaning (for it also meant feu de joie: see Cotgrave) is intensely Shakespearian. I do not however say that this speech is unaltered Shakespeare: I only leave out all discussion of it as not bearing on my main argument, and coming into unnecessary collision with opinions worthy of great respect even if one differs from them.]3

Taking, then, for granted that one of the two plays, the Witch and Macbeth, was copied from the other in certain parts, it is important to consider if there is any evidence which was the earlier. Some external evidence that we have favours the view that the Witch Middleton says in his dedication, "Witches are ipso facto by the law condemned: and that only, I think, hath made her lie so

was.

I I do not agree with this.

2 Compare also All's Well that Ends Well, iv. 5, "They'll be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire."

3 This passage between brackets was inserted in September 1874.

long in an imprisoned obscurity." It seems from this at first sight as if the play had been written long before the dedication, and the dedication had been written soon after-(in King James the First's first year, 1603)-the laws against witches had been confirmed. But the words will bear another interpretation, and we cannot build on this. Malone gave up this opinion in favour of the other, that Macbeth was the earlier: nor do I see how the coincidences of expression pointed out by Clark and Wright are to be explained otherwise, as several of these occur in parts undoubtedly Shakespeare's: and he would not imitate Middleton. In this view the Cambridge editors coincide. This point being, then, probably determined, the question arises, Could Middleton have altered this play after 1613, and yet have written the Witch after that? Certainly; for he continued writing till 1624; and there is good reason to believe that all his plays written for the King's company date between 1615 and 1624.

I next pass to the consideration of the nature of these witches. In Holinshed we find that "Macbeth and Banquo were met by iij women in straunge and ferly apparell resembling creatures of an elder world:" that they vanished: that at first by Macbeth and Banquo "they were reputed but some vayne fantasticall illusion,” but afterwards the common opinion was that they were "eyther the weird sisters that is ye Goddesses of destinie, or else some Nimphes or Feiries endewed with knowledge of prophesie by their Nicromanticall science." (Act ii. Sc. 2.) But in the part corresponding to IV. i. Macbeth is warned by "certain wysardes" to take heed of Macduff: but he does not kill him, because "a certain witch whom he had in great trust" had given him the two other equivocal predictions. Now it is to me incredible that Shakespeare, who in the parts of the play not rejected by the Cambridge editors never uses the word, or alludes to witches in any way, should have degraded "ye Goddesses of destinie" to three old women, who are called by Paddock and Grimalkin (their incubi or familiars), sail in sieves, kill swine, serve Hecate, and deal in all the common charms, illusions, and incantations of vulgar witches. The three who "look not like the inhabitants o' th' Earth and yet are on't ;" they who "can look into the seeds of Time and say which grain will grow;" they who "seem corporal," but "melt into the air" like "bubbles of the Earth: "

the "weyward sisters" who "make themselves air" and have "more than mortal knowledge” are not beings of this stamp. Were it for this reason only, Act I. Sc. i, Sc. iii 1. 1—37, and III. v. (in which the servants of Hecate are identified with the three beings who meet Macbeth in I. ii.) must be rejected. Shakespeare may have raised the wizard and witches of the latter parts of Holinshed into the weird sisters of the former parts; but the converse process is impossible. I shall recur to this, but want first to dispose of Hecate. The Hecate of III. v. and IV. i. occurs nowhere else in Shakespeare. Even in this play the "pale Hecate" whose " offerings witchcraft celebrates," the "black Hecate who summons the beetle to ring night's yawning peal," is the classical Hecate, the mistress of the lower world, arbiter of departed souls, patroness of magic, the threefold dreadful Goddess: so she is in Midsummer Night's Dream, in Lear, in Hamlet. "Triple Hecate's team,” "The mysteries of Hecate and the night," "with Hecate's ban thrice blasted," are the phrases we meet with there: in this play she is a common witch, as in Middleton's play (not a spirit, as the Cambridge editors say); the chief witch: who sails in the air indeed; all witches do that: but a witch; rightly described in the stage direction: Enter Hecate and the other three witches.

I must here in parenthesis ask how the usual theory can be made consistent with this stage direction? The three witches are already on the stage; the other three must mean the weird sisters who appear in I. iii. to Macbeth in the Shakespeare part of the play, and are identified with the Middleton witches in I. iii. 32. They are quite distinct from the Shakespeare witches of IV. i. The attempts made to evade the evidence of this stage direction as being a blunder should be supported by instances of similar blunders : instances where characters already on the stage are described as entering: omissions of such directions are easy to understand: their insertion without cause is unexplained, and I think inexplicable. Then this un-Shakespearian Hecate does not use Shakespearian language: there is not a line in her part that is not in Middleton's worst style her metre is a jumble of tens and eights (iambic, not trochaic like Shakespeare's short lines) like some of the Gower choruses in Pericles, a sure sign of inferior work; and what is of most importance, she is not of the least use in the play in any way: the only

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