would have produced a George Barnwell instead of a Macbeth.

It is upon the different reception of the supernatural influence, proceeding out of the different constitution of their minds, by which we must appreciate the striking differences in the characters of Macbeth, Banquo, and Lady Macbeth. These are the three who are the sole recipients of the prophecy of the Witches; and this consideration, as it appears to us, must determine all that has been said upon the question whether Macbeth was or was not a brave man. There can be no doubt of his bravery when he was acting under the force of his own will. In the contest with "the merciless Macdonwald" he was "valour's minion." In that with "Norway himself" he was "Bellona's bridegroom." But when he encountered the Witches, and his will was laid prostrate under a belief in destiny, there was a new principle introduced into his mind. His self-possession and his self-re

liance were gone :—

If he had opposed the chance, he would have been safe; but his will was prostrate before the chance, and he perished. perfectly clear that the faint battle had been fought between his principle and his "black and deep desires" when he saw something to "o'er-leap" even beyond the life of Duncan,-"the prince of Cumberland." In

the conflict of his mind it is evident that he communicates to his wife the promises of those who "have more in them than mortal

there. It is clear that Lady Macbeth had no reliance upon the prophecy working out itself. She had no belief that chance would make him king without his stir :

"Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised."

It was not thou mayst be, or thou wilt be, but thou shalt be. The only fear she had was of his nature. She would "catch the nearest way." She instantly saw that way. The prophecy was to her nothing but as it regarded the effect to be produced upon him who would not play false, and yet would wrongly win. All that is coming is clear before her, through the force of her will:

"The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements."

Upon the arrival of Macbeth, the breathless rapidity with which she subjects him to her resolve is one of the most appalling things in the whole drama. Her tremendous will is the real destiny which subjugates his indecision. Not a word of question or expla

nation! She salutes him as Glamis and Cawdor, and

"Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter."

This is the sole allusion to the weird sisters. "We will speak further," seals his fate.

Here then, up to this point, we have the supernatural influence determining the progress of the action with a precipitation which in itself appears almost supernatural ; and yet it is in itself strictly consonant to nature. It works in and through human passions and feelings. It works through unbelief as well as through belief. It pervades the entire action, whether in its repose or in its tumult. When "the heavens' breath smells wooingly" in Macbeth's castle, we feel that it is as treacherous to the "gentle senses" of Duncan as the blandishments of his hostess; and that this calm is but the prelude to that "unruly" night which is to follow, with its "lamentings" and its strange screams of death." But this is a part of the poetry of the action, which keeps the horror within the bounds prescribed by a high art. The beautiful adaptation of the characters to the action constitutes a higher essential of the poetry. The last scene of the first act, where Macbeth' marshals before him the secondary consequences of the meditated crime, and the secondary arguments against its commission, -all the while forgetting that the real question is that of the one step from innocence into guilt,—and where all these prudential considerations are at once overwhelmed by a guilty energy which despises as well as renounces them,-that scene is indeed more terrible to us than the assassination scene; for it shows us how men fall through their own weakness and the bad strength of others. But in all this we see the deep philosophy of the poet,—his profound knowledge of the springs of human action, derived perhaps from his experience of every-day crime and folly, but lifted into the highest poetry by his marvellous imagination. We know that after this the scene of the murder must come. All the preparatory incidents are poetical. The moon is down; Banquo and Fieance walk by torch

light; the servants are moving to rest; Macbeth is alone. He sees "the air-drawn dagger" which leads him to Duncan; he is still under the influence of some power stronger than his will; he is beset with false creations; his imagination is excited; he moves to bloodshed amidst a crowd of poetical images, with which his mind dallies, as it were, in its agony. Half frantic he has done the deed. His passion must now have vent. It rushes like a torrent over the calmness which his wife opposes to it. His terrors embody themselves in gushing descriptions of those fearful voices that rang in the murderer's ears. Reproaches and taunts have now no power over him :

"I'll go no more:

I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on 't again, I dare not."

It is impossible, we apprehend, for the poet
to have more clearly indicated the mode in
which he meant to contrast the characters
of Macbeth and his wife than in the scene
before us.
It is a mistake to characterise
the intellect of Lady Macbeth as of a higher
order than that of her husband. Her force
of character was stronger, because her in-
tellect was less. She wanted that higher
power which he possessed-the power of
imagination. She hears no noises in that
terrible hour but the scream of the owl and
the cry of the crickets. To her,

"The sleeping, and the dead, Are but as pictures."

In her view

"A little water clears us of this deed." We believe that, if it had not been for the necessities of a theatrical representation, Shakspere would never have allowed it to have been supposed that a visible ghost was presented in the banquet-scene. It is to him who saw the dagger, and heard the voices cry "sleep no more," and who exclaimed "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?"—

it is to him alone that the spectral appearances of that "solemn supper" are visible. Are they not then the forms only of his

"Had he not resembled

My father as he slept I had done 't,"who had before disclaimed even the tenderest feelings of a mother if they had stood between her and her purpose,—she sees no spectre, because her obdurate will cannot co-exist with the imagination which produces

the terror and remorse of her husband. It is scarcely the “towering bravery of her mind, " in the right sense of the word: it is something lower than courage; it is the absence of impressibility: the tenacious adherence to one dominant passion constitutes her force of character.

As Macbeth recedes from his original nature under the influence of his fears and his superstitions, he becomes, of necessity, a lower creature. It is the natural course of guilt. The "brave Macbeth" changes to a counterfeiter of passions, a hypocrite,—

guests have departed, and the guilty man mutters "it will have blood," then is her intellectual energy utterly helpless before his higher passion. Mrs. Jameson says of this remarkable scene, "A few words of submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose, are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond expression." Is it submission? Is it tenderness? Is it not rather the lower energy in subjection to the higher? Her intellect has lost its anchorage; but his imagination is about to receive a new stimulant:

"I will to-morrow

(And betimes I will) unto the weird sisters: More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,

By the worst means, the worst." "He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is therefore himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and superhuman agencies.” Coleridge thus notices the point of action of which we are speaking. But it must not be forgotten that Macbeth was inclined to superstition before the guilt, and that his faith in superhuman agencies went far to produce the guilt. From this moment, however, his guilt is bolder, and his will more obdurate; his supernatural knowledge stands in the place of reflection and

summons,

The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, Hath rung night's yawning peal,

There shall be done a deed of dreadful note." It is this condition of Macbeth's mind which, we must again repeat, limits and mitigates the horror of the tragedy. After the tumult of the banquet-scene the imagination of Macbeth again overbears (as it did after the murder) the force of the will in Lady Macbeth. It appears to us that her taunts and reproaches are only ventured upon by her when his excitement is beginning. After

• Mrs. Jameson.

something beyond the belief. He is told to "beware Macduff;" but he is also told that

66

none of woman born shall harm Macbeth." How does he reconcile this contrary belief?— "Then live, Macduff: What need I fear of thee? But yet I'll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live; That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, And sleep in spite of thunder."

And then comes the other prophecy of safety:

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him."

6

Chalmers has assigned the 'Winter's Tale' to 1601. The play contains this passage:"If I could find example

Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish'd after, I'd not do 't: but since
Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears
not one,

Let villainy itself forswear 't." "These lines," says Chalmers, 66 were called forth by the occasion of the conspiracy of Essex." "No," says Malone, "these lines could never have been intended for the ear of her who had deprived the Queen of Scots of her life. To the son of Mary they could not but have been agreeable." Upon this ground he assigned the comedy to 1604. There is a third critic, of much higher acuteness than the greater number of those who have given us speculations on the chronology of Shakspere's plays, we mean Horace Walpole, whose conjecture is so ingenious and amusing that we copy it without abridgment:

"The Winter's Tale' may be ranked among the historic plays of Shakspere, though not one of his numerous critics and commentators have discovered the drift of it. It was certainly intended (in compliment to Queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother, Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears nowhere to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have ventured

compliment. The unreasonable jealousy of
Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence,
form a true portrait of Henry VIII., who gene-
rally made the law the engine of his boisterous
passions. Not only the general plan of the
story is most applicable, but several passages
are so marked that they touch the real history
nearer than the fable. Hermione on her trial,
says,
'For honour,

"T is a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.'

This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as Queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the tragedy but as it pictured Elizabeth, is where Paulina, describing the new-born princess, and her likeness to her father, says, 'She has the very trick of his frown. There is one sentence, indeed, so applicable both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child, tells the king