Chapter 8

"Come what come may,Time and the hour run through the roughest day;"

when he recollects that Banquo, Rosse, and Angus are standing near. Richard himself is not more wily—guily—smily—and oily; to the Lords his condescension is already quite kingly—

"Kind gentlemen, your painsAre registered where every day I turnThe leaf to read them"—

TALBOYS.

And soon after, to the King how obsequious!

"The service and the loyalty I owe,In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness' partIs to receive our duties; and our dutiesAre to your throne and state, children, and servants;Which do but what they should by doing everythingSafe toward you love and honour."

What would Payne Knight have said to all that? This to his King, whom he has resolved, first good opportunity, to murder!

NORTH.

Duncan is now too happy for this wicked world.

"My plenteous joys,Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselvesIn drops of sorrow."

Invaders—traitors—now there are none. Peace is restored to the Land—the Throne rock-fast—the line secure—

"We will establish our estate uponOur eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter,The Prince of Cumberland: which honour mustNot, unaccompanied, invest him only,But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shineOn all deservers."

Now was the time for "the manly but ineffectual struggle of every exalted quality that can dignify and exalt the human mind"—for a few sublime flashes at least of generosity and tenderness, et cetera—now when the Gracious Duncan is loading him with honours, and, better than all honours,lavishing on him the boundless effusions of a grateful and royal heart. The Prince of Cumberland! Ha, ha!

"The Prince of Cumberland!—That is a stepOn which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,For in my way it lies."

But the remorseless miscreant becomes poetical—

"Stars, hide your fires!Let not light see my black and deep desires:The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be,Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see!"

The milk of human kindness has coagulated into the curd of inhuman ferocity—and all this—slanderers say—is the sole work of the Weird Sisters! No. His wicked heart—because it is wicked—believes in their Prophecy—the end is assured to him—and the means are at once suggested to his own slaughterous nature. No supernatural soliciting here, which a better man would not successfully have resisted. I again repudiate—should it be preferred against me—the charge of atendressetowards the Bearded Beauties of the Blasted Heath; but rather would I marry them all Three—one after the other—nay all three at once, and as many more as there may be in our Celtic Mythology—than see your Sophia, Seward, or, Buller, your—

BULLER.

We have but Marmy.

NORTH.

Wedded to a Macbeth.

SEWARD.

We know your affection, my dear sir, for your goddaughter. She is insured.

NORTH.

Well, this Milk of Human Kindness is off at a hand-gallop to Inverness. The King has announced a Royal Visit to Macbeth's own Castle. But Cawdor had before this despatched a letter to his lady, from which Shakspeare has given us an extract. And then, as I understand it, a special messenger besides, to say "the King comes here to-night." Which of the two is the more impatient to be at work 'tis hard to say; but the idea of the murder originated with the male Prisoner. We have his wife's word for it—she told him so to his face—and he did not deny it. We have his own word for it—he told himself so to his own face—and he never denies it at any time during the play.

TALBOYS.

You said, a little while ago, sir, that you believed Macbeth and his wife were a happy couple.

NORTH.

Not I. I said she was attached to him—and I say now that the wise men are not of the Seven, who point to her reception of her husband, on his arrival athome, as a proof of her want of affection. They seem to think she ought to have rushed into his arms—slobbered upon his shoulder—and so forth. For had he not been at the Wars? Pshaw! The most tender-hearted Thanesses of those days—even those that kept albums—would have been ashamed of weeping on sending their Thanes off to battle—much more on receiving them back in a sound skin—with new honours nodding on their plumes. Lady Macbeth was not one of the turtle-doves—fit mate she for the King of the Vultures. I am too good an ornithologist to call them Eagles. She received her mate fittingly—with murder in her soul; but more cruel—more selfish than he, she could not be—nor, perhaps, was she less; but she was more resolute—and resolution even in evil—in such circumstances as hers—seems to argue a superior nature to his, who, while he keeps vacillating, as if it were between good and evil, betrays all the time the bias that is surely inclining him to evil, into which he makes a sudden and sure wheel at last.

BULLER.

The Weirds—the Weirds!—the Weirds have done it all!

NORTH.

Macbeth—Macbeth!—Macbeth has done it all!

BULLER.

Furies and Fates!

NORTH.

Who make the wicked their victims!

SEWARD.

Is she sublime in her wickedness?

NORTH.

It would, I fear, be wrong to say so. But I was speaking of Macbeth's character—not of hers—and, in comparison with him, she may seem a great creature. They are now utterly alone—and of the two he has been the more familiar with murder. Between them, Duncan already is a dead man. But how pitiful—at such a time and at such a greeting—Macbeth's cautions—

"My dearest Love,Duncan comes here to-night!Lady.—And when goes hence?Macbeth.—To-morrow, as he purposes.Lady.—Oh, neverShall sun that morrow see!"

"My dearest Love,Duncan comes here to-night!

Lady.—And when goes hence?

Macbeth.—To-morrow, as he purposes.

Lady.—Oh, neverShall sun that morrow see!"

Why, Talboys, does not the poor devil—

TALBOYS.

Poor devil! Macbeth a poor devil?

NORTH.

Why, Buller, does not the poor devil?

BULLER.

Poor devil! Macbeth a poor devil?

NORTH.

Why, Seward, does not the poor devil—

SEWARD.

Speak up—speak out? Is he afraid of the spiders? You know him, sir—you see through him.

NORTH.

Ay, Seward—reserved and close as he is—he wants nerve—pluck—he is close upon the coward—and that would be well, were there the slightest tendency towards change of purpose in the Pale Face; but there is none—he is as cruel as ever—the more close the more cruel—the more irresolute the more murderous—for to murder he is sure to come. Seward, you said well—why does not the poor devil speak up—speak out? Is he afraid of the spiders?

TALBOYS.

Murderous-looking villain—no need of words.

NORTH.

I did not say, sir, there was any need of words. Why, will you always be contradicting one?

TALBOYS.

Me? I? I hope I shall never live to see the day on which I contradict Christopher North in his own Tent. At least—rudely.

NORTH.

Do it rudely—not as you did now—and often do—as if you were agreeing with me—but you are incurable. I say, my dear Talboys, that Macbeth so bold in a "twa-haun'd crack" with himself in a Soliloquy—so figurative—and so fond of swearing by the Stars and old Mother Night, who were not aware of his existence—should not have been thus tongue-tied to his own wife in their own secretest chamber—should have unlocked and flung open the door of his heart to her—like a Man. I blush for him—I do. So did his wife.

BULLER.

I don't find that in the record.

NORTH.

Don't you? "Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men may readstrange matters." She sees in his face self-alarm at his own murderous intentions. And so she counsels him about his face—like a self-collected, trustworthy woman. "To beguile the time, look like the time;" with further good stern advice. But—"We shall speak farther," is all she can get from him in answer to conjugal assurances that should have given him a palpitation at the heart, and set his eyes on fire—

"He that's comingMust be provided for; and you shall putThis night's great business into my despatch;Which shall, to all our nights and days to come,Give solely sovereign sway and Masterdom."

There spoke one worthy to be a Queen!

SEWARD.

Worthy!

NORTH.

Ay—in that age—in that country. 'Twas not then the custom "to speak daggers but use none." Did Shakspeare mean to dignify, to magnify Macbeth by such demeanour? No—to degrade and minimise 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 two—the fiercer and the more cruel. For the moment only; for we soon ask ourselves what means this un-husbandly reserve in him who had sent herthat 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 fulfil 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 wish—and 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 can't say. It must, however, have been written before Macbeth had been presented to the King—for there is no allusion in it to 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 Weirds—either in someplace of refreshment by the roadside—or in such a Tent as this—kept ready for the General in the King's Camp at Forres. He despatched it by a Gilly—a fast one like your Cornwall Clipper—and then tumbled in.

BULLER.

When did she receive it?

NORTH.

Early next morning.

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 walkingaboutwith 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 door—murmuring 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 beWhat thou art promised.""Hie thee hither,That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,And chastise with the valour of my tongue,All that impedes thee from the golden round,Which Fate and metaphysical aid doth seemTo have thee crown'd withal."

BULLER.

Grand indeed.

NORTH.

Itisgrand 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 persuadesthatin one conversation, or soliloquy, which Life may do in twenty—you have not leisure or good-will 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 sufficiently 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'rt 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 purposeTo be his purveyor: but he rides well:And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp himTo his home before us—Fair and noble Hostess,We are your guest to-night."

Ay, where is the Thane of Cawdor? I, for one, not knowing, can't say. The gracious Duncan desires much to see him as well as his gracious Hostess.

"Give me your hand:Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly,And shall continue our graces towards him.By your leave, Hostess."

Ay—where's the Thane of Cawdor? Why did not Shakspeare show him to us, sitting at supper with the King?

TALBOYS.

Did he sup with the King?

BULLER.

I believe he sat down—but got up again—and left the Chamber.

TALBOYS.

His wife seeks him out. "He has almost supped. Why have you left the Chamber?" "Has he asked for me?" "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.

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 King, but a good King—

"So clear in his great office, that his virtuesWill plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, againstThe deep damnation of his taking-off."

That is much better morality—keep there, Macbeth—or thereabouts—and Duncan's life is tolerably safe—at least for one night. But Shakspeare knew his man—and what manner of man he is we hear in the unbearable context, that never yet has been quoted by any one who had ears to distinguish between the true and the false.

"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'dUpon the sightless couriers of the air,Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,That tears shall drown the wind."

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 heart—even 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"—

is set aside at once by—

"What beast was it, then,That made you break this enterprise to me?"

We hear no more of "Pity like a naked new-born babe"—but at her horrid scheme of the murder—

"Bring forth men-children only!For thy undaunted mettle should composeNothing 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 Macbeth of their victim—

"When Duncan is asleep,Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journeySoundly invite him,"

the words that had just left his own lips—

"His virtuesWill plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, againstThe 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 sleepTheir drenched natures lie, as in a death,What cannot you and I perform uponThe unguarded Duncan?"

That is my idea of the Soliloquy. Think 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 kind—or what opportunity she has of showing it. Do you, sir?

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 would—this 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 impossibility—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 colour was there in colouring 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 more than his Lordship's. Against whom, then, do we conclude? Her? I think not—but the Poet.Heis 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 hearing, will not stay tocriticise. The Horror 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 why did his lady think so?

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 pretended?

SEWARD.

Real.

TALBOYS.

Pretended.

BULLER.

Sir?

NORTH.

I reserve my opinion.

TALBOYS.

Not a faint—but afeint. 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 deadAre but as pictures—'tis the eye of childhoodThat 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.

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 weaknessin my favourite; but I will go so far as to add that I can let it pass for a not unpardonable weakness—the occasion given. But I must deal otherwise 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 clamours 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—andthat she faints on purpose.

NORTH.

Decided in favour of Feint.

BULLER.

You might have had the good manners to ask formyopinion.

NORTH.

I beg a thousand pardons, Buller.

BULLER.

A hundred will do, North. In Davies'Anecdotes of the Stage, I remember reading that Garrick would not trust Mrs 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 not 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 havelaughed—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 fainting—perhaps this was the first time she had ever fainted since she was a girl.NowI believe she did. She would have stood by her husband 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 sick—qualms of conscience, however terrible, can be borne by sinners standing upright at the mouth of hell—but the flesh of man is weak, in its utmost strength, when moulded to 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.

SEWARD.

Well said—Chairman of the Quarter-sessions.

BULLER.

Nor, with all submission, my dear Sir, can I think you treat your favourite murderess, on this trying occasion, with your usual fairness and candour. 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 shows 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 revelling 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—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?

NORTH.

Yes.

SEWARD.

Of Moral Obedience?

NORTH.

No.

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 lose 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—andpaid for it. Hemustkeep it—else he has bartered soul and body—for nothing! To make his first crimegood—he strides gigantically along the road of which it opened the gate.

TALBOYS.

An almost morbid impressibility of imagination is energetically stamped, and universally recognised in the Thane, and I think, sir, that it warrants, to a certain extent, asincerityof 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 Nature—not artifice—and a nature deeply, terribly, tempestuously commoved by the near contact of a murder imminent—doing—done. It is more like a murderer a-making than a murderer made.

SEWARD.

See, sir, how precisely this characteristic is proposed.

BULLER.

By whom?

SEWARD.

By Shakspeare, in that first Soliloquy. The poetry colouring, throughout, his discourse, is its natural efflorescence.

NORTH.

Talboys, Seward, you have spoken well.

BULLER.

And I have spoken ill?

NORTH.

I have not said so.

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-so—now and heretofore—in this Tent—hang the wind—there's no hearing twelve words in ten a body says. Honoured 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—hisirresolution. And if Shakspeare meansirresolution, I do not know why thegroundsthereof which Shakspeare assigns to Macbeth should not be accepted as the true grounds. The Dramatist would seem to me to demand too much of me, if,underthe grounds which he expresses, he requires me to discard these, and to discover and express others.

SEWARD.

I do not know, sir, if that horrible Invocation ofhersto the Spirits of Murder to unsex her, be held by many to imply that she has no need of their help?

NORTH.

It is held by many to prove that she was not a woman but a fiend. It proves the reverse. I infer from it that she does need their help—and, what is more,that she gets it. Nothing so dreadful, in the whole range of Man's Tragic Drama, as that Murder. But I see Seward is growing pale—we know his infirmity—and for the present shun it.

SEWARD.

Thank you, sir.

NORTH.

I may, however, ask a question about Banquo's Ghost.

SEWARD.

Well—well—do so.

TALBOYS.

You put the question to me, sir? I am inclined to think, sir, that no real Ghost sits on the Stool—but that Shakspeare meant it as with the Daggers. On the Stage he appears—that is an abuse.

NORTH.

Not so sure of that, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

Had Macbeth himself continued to believe that the first-seen Ghost was a real Ghost, he would not, could not have ventured so soon after its disappearance to say again, "And to our dear friend Banquo." He does say it—and then again diseased imagination assails him at the rash words. Lady Macbeth reasons with him again, and he finally is persuaded that the Ghost, both times, had been but brain-sick creations.

"My strange and self-abuseIs the initiate fear, that wants hard use:—I am but young in deed."

BULLER.

That certainly looks as if he did then know he had been deceived. But perhaps he only censures himself for being too much agitated by a real ghost.

TALBOYS.

That won't do.

NORTH.

But go back, my dear Talboys, to the first enacting of the Play. What could the audience have understood to be happening, without other direction of their thoughts than the terrified Macbeth's bewildered words? He never mentions Banquo's name—and recollect that nobody sitting there then knew that Banquo had been murdered. The dagger is not in point. Then the spectators heard him say, "Is this a dagger that I see before me?" And if no dagger was there, they could at once see that 'twas phantasy.

TALBOYS.

Something in that.

BULLER.

A settler.

NORTH.

I entirely separate the two questions—first, how did the Manager of the Globe Theatre have the King's Seat at the Feast filled; and second, what does the highest poetical Canon deliver. I speak now, but to the first. Now, here the rule is—"the audiencemust understand, and at once, what that which they see and hear means"—that Rule must govern the art of the drama in the Manager's practice. You allow that, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

I do.

BULLER.

Rash—Talboys—rash: he's getting you into a net.

NORTH.

That is not my way, Buller. Well, then, suppose Macbeth acted for the first time to an audience, who are to establish it for a stock-play or todamn it. Would the Manager commit the whole power of a scene which is perhaps the most—singly—effective of the whole Play—

BULLER.

No—no—not the most effective of the whole Play—

NORTH.

The rival, then, of the Murder Scene—the Sleep-Walking stands aloof and aloft—to the chance of a true divination by the whole Globe audience? I think not. The argument is of a vulgar tone, I confess, and extremely literal, but it is after the measure of my poor faculties.

SEWARD.

In confirmation of what you say, sir, it has been lately asserted that one of the two appearings at least is not Banquo's—but Duncan's. How is that to be settled but by a real Ghost—or Ghosts?

NORTH.

And I ask, what has Shakspeare himself undeniably done elsewhere? In Henry VIII., Queen Katherine sleeps anddreams. Her Dream enters, and performs various acts—somewhat expressive—minutely contrived and prescribed. It is a mute Dream, which she with shut eyes sees—which you in pit, boxes, and gallery see—which her attendants, watching about her upon the stage, donotsee.

SEWARD.

And in Richard III—He dreams, and so does Richmond. Eight Ghosts rise in succession andspeakto Richard first, and to the Earl next—each hears, I suppose, what concerns himself—they seem to be present in the two Tents at once.

NORTH.

In Cymbeline, Posthumus dreams. His Dream enters—Ghosts and evenJupiter! They act and speak; and this Dream has a reality—for Jupiter hands or tosses a parchment-roll to one of the Ghosts, who lays it, as bidden, on the breast of the Dreamer, where he, on awaking, perceives it! I call all this physically strong, sir, for the representation of the metaphysically thought.

BULLER.

If Buller may speak, Buller would observe, that once or twice both Ariel and Prospero come forward "invisible." And in Spenser, the Dream of which Morpheus lends the use to Archimago, is—carried.

SEWARD.

We all remember the Dream which Jupiter sends to Agamemnon, and which, while standing at his bed's-head, puts on the shape of Nestor and speaks;—the Ghost of Patroclus—the actual Ghost which stands at the bed's-head of Achilles, andishis Dream.

NORTH.

My friends, Poetry gives a body to the bodiless. The Stage of Shakspeare was rude, and gross. In my boyhood, I saw the Ghosts appear to John Kemble in Richard III. Now they may be abolished with Banquo. So may be Queen Katherine's Angels. But Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about one person's seeing what another does not—or one'snotseeing, rather, that which another does. Nor had Homer, when Achilles alone, in the Quarrel Scene, sees Minerva. Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about the bodily representation of Thoughts—the inward by the outward. Shakspeare and the Great Old Poets leave vague, shadowy, mist-shrouded, and indeterminate the boundaries between the Thought and the Existent—the Real and the Unreal. I am able to believe with you, Talboys, that Banquo's Ghost was understood by Shakspeare, the Poet, to be the Phantasm of the murderer's guilt-and-fear-shaken soul; but was required by Shakspeare, the Manager of the Globe Theatre, to rise up through a trap-door, mealy-faced and blood-boultered, and so make "the Table full."

BULLER.

Seward, do bid him speak of Lady Macbeth.

SEWARD.

Oblige me, sir—don't now—after dinner, if you will.

NORTH.

I shall merely allude now, as exceedingly poetical treatment, to the discretion throughout used in theSHOWINGof Lady Macbeth. You might almost say that she never takes a step on the stage, that does notthrill the Theatre. Not a waste word, gesture, or look. All at the studied fulness of sublime tragical power—yet all wonderfully tempered and governed. I doubt if Shakspeare could have given a good account of everything that he makes Macbeth say—but of all that She says he could.

TALBOYS.

As far as I am able to judge, she but once in the whole Play loses her perfect self-mastery—when the servant surprises her by announcing the King's coming. She answers, 'thou'rt mad to say it;' which is a manner of speakingused by those who cannot, or can hardly believe tidings that fill them with exceeding joy. It is not the manner of a Lady to her servant who unexpectedly announces the arrival of a high—of the highest visitor. She recovers herself instantly. 'Is not thy master with him, who, wer't so, would have informed for preparation?' This is a turn colouring her exclamation, and is spoken in the most self-possessed, argumentative, demonstrative tone. The preceding words had been torn from her; now she has passed, with inimitable dexterity, from the dreamed Queen, to the usual mistress of her household—to the huswife.

NORTH.

In the Fourth Act—she is not seen at all. But in the Fifth, lo! and behold! and at once we know why she had been absent—we see and are turned to living stone by the revelation of the terrible truth. I am always inclined to conceive Lady Macbeth's night-walking as the summit, or topmost peak of all tragic conception and execution—in Prose, too, the crowning of Poetry! But it must be, because these are theipsissima verba—yea, the escaping sighs and moans of the bared soul. There must be nothing, not even the thin and translucent veil of the verse, betwixt her soul showing itself, and yours beholding. Words which your "hearing latches" from the threefold abyss of Night, Sleep, and Conscience! What place for the enchantment of any music is here? Besides, she speaks in a whisper. The Siddons did—audible distinctly, throughout the stilled immense theatre. Here music is not—sound is not—only an anguished soul's faint breathings—gaspings. And observe that Lady Macbeth carries—a candle—besides washing her hands—and besides speaking prose—three departures from the severe and elect method, to bring out that supreme revelation. I have been told that the great Mrs Pritchard used to touch the palm with the tips of her fingers, for the washing, keeping candle in hand;—that the Siddons first set down her candle, that she might come forwards, and wash her hands in earnest, one over the other, as if she were at her wash-hand stand, with plenty of water in her basin—that when Sheridan got intelligence of her design so to do, he ran shrieking to her, and, with tears in his eyes, besought that she would not, at one stroke, overthrow Drury Lane—that she persisted, and turned the thousands of bosoms to marble.

TALBOYS.

Our dear, dear Master.

NORTH.

You will remember, my friends, herfour rhymed lines—uttered to herself in Act Third. They are very remarkable—

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