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which opening, they went in and there saw a fairie queen." But James also especially says, that the spirits whom the Gentiles called Diana and her wandering court were known by the name of pharie. It would scarcely be necessary for Shakspere to go farther for his Hecate. "We find the elves occa

sionally arrayed in the costume of Greece and Rome, and the Fairy Queen and her attendants transformed into Diana and her nymphs, and invested with their attributes and appropriate insignia.-(Delrius, pp. 168, 807.) According to the same author, the Fairy Queen was also called Habundia. Like Diana, who, in one capacity, was denominated Hecate, the goddess of enchantment, the Fairy Queen is identified, in popular tradition, with the Gyre-Carline, Gay Carline, or mother-witch of the Scottish peasantry."* But nothing, as it appears to us, so distinctly associates the popular superstition in witchcraft and in fairies, so distinctly makes the Queen of the Fairies to be also the Queen of the Witches, as the extraordinary matters revealed in the Aberdeen trials. Accustomed to the stage representations of Shakspere's witches, we shape our notion of his Hecate somewhat according to this statement of Jonson: "Amongst our vulgar witches, the honour of Dame is given with a kind of pre-eminence to some special one at their meetings." Upon the stage, Hecate is a personage with a somewhat longer broom, and a somewhat gayer dress, than the inferior witches; but still one of skinny lip and beard. But shut out these attributes of the tiring-room, and regard alone what Shakspere has set down for his Hecate, and we behold quite another being. She denounces the witches as beldams; she proclaims herself the mistress of their charms; she admits their participation with her in all harms—(" the glory of our art")—but she lays her commands upon them with an authority before which they tremble. She is surrounded with no vulgar accessaries, of a green cock, a goat, or a horse of wood, such as even the Dame Ate of Jonson rode upon; but she communes with spirits who wait for her in clouds. When she again appears she gives praise and promises reward; and amidst the gloomy solemnities of the witchincantation she brings music and dancing:

"And now about the caldron sing

Like elves and fairies in a ring."

She was unquestionably meant to be an evil spirit, a mischievous one, something essentially different from the gentle and benevolent Titania, but nevertheless brilliant and beautiful. The Queen of Elphen of poor Andro Man had "the likeness and shape of a woman;" she and her troop rode upon white hackneys; she delighted in " playing and dancing;" she was "very pleasant, and will be old and young when she pleases." And yet, according to the wild imagination of the same poor wizard, she held her unhallowed rites in company with the devil, who was called Christsonday, and they claimed allegiance together from their common subjects. Shakspere certainly could not have found more exact materials for drawing a Fairy Queen essentially different from the "lovely lady" who sat in the "spiced Indian air" gossiping with * Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' vol. ii., p. 279.

a votaress of her order, or slept upon banks of flowers "lull'd with dances and delight."

We might pursue this subject in tracing minutely some minor points of the imagery of Macbeth which might have been derived from the Scottish superstitions. It may be sufficient just to mention one or two of the more striking. The spells of the incantation scene are derived by Shakspere for the most part from the great storehouse of his own imagination. But the last ingredient of the caldron

"Grease that 's sweaten

From the murderer's gibbet, throw
Into the flame,"-

has distinct regard to a special superstition. Johnnet Wischert is thus accused : -"Thou and thy daughter, Violet Leys, desired thy woman to gang with thy said daughter at twelve hours at even to the gallows, and cut down the dead man hanging thereon, and take a part of all his members from him, and burn the dead corpse." This comes nearer to the Shaksperian spell than anything which we find in English superstitions. Even the glorious description of Duncan's horses might have received some colouring from Aberdeen delusions. In describing the prodigies which followed the death of King Duff, Holinshed says, "Horses in Lothian, being of singular beauty and swiftness, did eat their own flesh, and would in no wise taste any other meat." Shakspere has used this:

""T is said, they eat each other."

But he did not find in Holinshed that they

"Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,

Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would

Make war with mankind."

The horses of King Duncan have a humble parallel in the oxen of William Smith, in Tarserhill, whom Merjorie Mutche is thus accused of injuring:"Thou having discord for some alleged wrongs he did you, for revenge of the which thou camest to his plough, he being gangand [going] and tilling the land as use is, and then thou cast thy witchcraft and sorcery on his oxen, through which they instantly run all wod [mad], brak the plough, two thereof ran over the hills to Deir, and other two thereof up Ithan Side, which could never be taken nor apprehended again, which thou did nor canst not deny." Even sheep, according to these accusations, "ran wod and furious, that no man durst look on them, for fear and danger of their lives." Here was material for the poet's imagination to work upon. Or had he heard of the wonderful incident at the storm of Jedburgh, in the reign of Henry VIII., when fifteen hundred horses were "so mad that they ran like wild deer into the field," throwing themselves over rocks, and rushing into the flames of the burning town? Lord Surrey, who writes of these wonders to the King, says,-" Universally all their company say plainly the devil was that night among them six times.” *

* See Scott's' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' vol. i., p. 243.

rest of their associates." There can be no doubt of the identity of the Lawrence Fletcher, the servant of James VI. of Scotland, and the Lawrence Fletcher, the servant of James I. of England. Can we doubt that the King's servants who played comedies and stage plays in Aberdeen, in 1601, were, taken as a company, the King's servants who were licensed to exercise the art and faculty of playing, throughout all the realm, in 1603? If these points are evident, what reason have we to doubt that William Shakspere, the second named in the licence of 1603, was amongst the King's servants at Aberdeen in 1601? Every circumstance concurs in the likelihood that he was of that number recommended by the King's special letter; and his position in the licence, even before Burbage, was, we may well believe, a compliment to him who in 1601 had taught "our James" something of the power and riches of the English drama.

The circumstances which we have thus detailed give us, we think, warranty to conclude that the story of Macbeth might have been suggested to Shakspere upon Scottish ground; that the accuracy displayed in the local descriptions and allusions might have been derived from a rapid personal observation; that some of the peculiarities of his witchcraft imagery might have been found in Scottish superstitions, and more especially in those which we have shown must have been rife at Aberdeen at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Is there anything whatever to contradict the inferences which are justly to be deduced from the records which we have just described and commented upon ? It cannot be denied, we apprehend, that Shakspere's company was at Aberdeen in the autumn of 1601. There is nothing that we have found which can be opposed to the fair and natural inferences that belong to the registers of the Town Council. The records of the Presbytery of Aberdeen are wholly silent upon the subject of this visit of a company of players to their city. These records, on the 25th of September, 1601, contain an entry regarding Lord Glamis—an entry respecting one of the many deeds of violence for which Scotland was remarkable, when the strong hand so constantly attempted to defy the law: Mr. Patrick Johnson, it seems, had been killed by Lord Glamis, and the fact is here brought under the cognizance of the Presbytery. An entry of the 9th of October deals with Alexander Ceath [Keith], on a charge of adultery. Another of the 23rd of October relates to John Innis. Beyond the 5th of November, when there is another record, it would be unnecessary to seek for any minute regarding the players who were rewarded and honoured by the Town Council. There is no entry whatever on the subject.* If Shakspere's company were at Aberdeen —and to disprove it, it must be shown that Lawrence Fletcher, who was the King of Scotland's comedian in 1601, was not the Lawrence Fletcher who was associated with Shakspere in the patent granted by James upon his accession

* We consulted these documents, which are preserved in the fine library of the Advocates at Edinburgh. We were assisted by very kind friends-William Spalding, Esq., Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh (who very early distinguished himself as a critic on Shakspere), and John Hill Burton, Esq. (who possesses the most complete knowledge of the treasures of that valuable library)—in searching for documents that could illustrate this question.

in 1603-what possible reason can there be for supposing that Shakspere was absent from his company upon so interesting an occasion as a visit to the Scottish King and Court? The extraordinary merits of the dramas of Shakspere might have been familiar to the King through books. Previous to 1601, there had been nine undoubted plays of Shakspere's published, which might readily have reached Scotland.* Essex and Southampton were in the habit of correpondence with James; and at the very hour when James officially knew of his accession to the crown of England, he dispatched an order from Holyrood House to the Council of State for the release of Southampton from the Tower. It is not likely that the Lord Chamberlain's servants would have taken the long journey to Scotland upon the mere chance of being acceptable to the Court. If they were desired to come, it is not probable that Shakspere would have been absent. It was probably his usual season of repose from his professional pursuits in London. The last duties to his father's memory might have been performed on the 8th of September, leaving abundant time to reach the Court, whether at Holyrood, or Stirling, or Linlithgow, or Falkland; to be enrolled amongst the servants who performed before the King; and subsequently to have been amongst those his fellows who received rewards on the 9th of October for their comedies and stage-plays at Aberdeen.

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In the summer of 1618 Ben Jonson undertook the extraordinary task of travelling to Edinburgh on foot. Bacon said to him, with reference to his project, "He loved not to see poesy go on other feet than poetical Dactylus and Spondæus."† Jonson seems to have been proud of his exploit, for in his News from the New World discovered in the Moon,' a masque presented at Court in 1620, he makes a printer say, "One of our greatest poets (I know not how good a one) went to Edinburgh on foot, and came back." According to Drummond he was "to write his foot pilgrimage hither, and call it a discovery." We have no traces of Jonson in this journey, except what we derive from the ⚫ Conversations with Drummond,' and the notice of honest John Taylor in his Pennilesse Pilgrimage: "I went to Leith, where I found my long-approved and assured good friend, Master Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stuart's house." Jonson remained long enough in Scotland to become familiar with its hospitable people and its noble scenery. He wrote a poem, in which he called Edinburgh

"The heart of Scotland, Britain's other eye."

"He hath intention," saith Drummond, " to write a fisher or pastoral play, and set the stage of it in the Lomond Lake." After his return to London, he earnestly solicits Drummond, by letter, to send him "some things concerning the Loch of Lomond." We find nothing in Jonson's poetry that gives us an impression that he had caught any inspiration from the country of mountains and lakes. We have no internal evidence at all that he had been in Scotland.

* There is a beautiful copy of the first edition of Love's Labour's Lost, 1598, amongst Drummond's books, preserved apart in the library of the University of Edinburgh.

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We have no token of the impress of its mountain scenery upon his mind, at all approaching to the distinctness of a famous passage in Shakspere--a solitary passage in a poet who rarely indeed describes any scenery, but one which could scarcely have been written without accurate knowledge of the realities to which "black vesper's pageants" have resemblance:

"Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;

A vapour, sometime, like a bear or lion,

A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon 't that nod unto the world

And mock our eyes with air." *

John Taylor, homely as he is, may better enable us to trace Shakspere's probable course. Taylor, also travelling on foot, was a week in reaching Lichfield passing through Coventry. He was another week, filling up some time with over-much carousing, before he got out of Manchester. Preston detained him three days with its jollity; and it was another week before, passing over the hills of Westmoreland, he reached Carlisle. Shakspere, setting out on horseback from Stratford, would reach Carlisle by easy stages in six days. Taylor stops not to describe the merry city. It was more to his purpose to enjoy the "good entertainment" of which he there "found store," than to survey its castle and its cathedral; or to look from its elevated points upon fertile meadows watered by the Eden, or the broad Frith, or the distant summits of Crossfell and Skiddaw. Would he had preserved for us some of the ballads that he must have heard in his revelries, that told of the wondrous feats of the bold outlaws who lived in the greenwood around

"Carlisle, in the north countree."

Assuredly Shakspere had heard of Adam Bell, the brave archer of Inglewood: "He that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder and called Adam.Ӡ It is pleasant to believe that some snatches of old minstrelsy might have recreated his solitary journey as he rode near the border-land.

Sir Walter Scott, in the delightful introduction to his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' says, "The accession of James to the English crown converted the extremity into the centre of his kingdom." The Scottish poet would seem to have borrowed the idea from a very humble English brother of the craft :—

"For now those crowns are both in one combin'd,
Those former borders that each one confin'd

Appears to me (as I do understand)

To be almost the centre of the land:

This was a blessed heaven-expounded riddle

To thrust great kingdoms' skirts into the middle."‡

John Taylor trudges from Carlisle into Annandale, wading through the Esk, and wondering that he saw so little difference between the two countries, seeing

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