FOOTNOTES:
[G] Since 1854.
[H] For the convenience of readers to whom my edition is not accessible I quote the following passage:
"I am more inclined to this opinion from the indications which the play itself affords that it was produced upon an emergency. It exhibits throughout the hasty execution of a grand and clearly conceived design. But the haste is that of a master of his art, who, with conscious command of its resources, and in the frenzy of a grand inspiration, works out his conception to its minutest detail of essential form, leaving the work of surface finish for the occupation of cooler leisure. What the Sistine Madonna was to Raphael, it seems that 'Macbeth' was to Shakespeare—a magnificent impromptu; that kind of impromptu which results from the application of well-disciplined powers and rich stores of thought to a subject suggested by occasion. I am inclined to regard 'Macbeth' as, for the most part, a specimen of Shakespeare's unelaborated, if not unfinished, writing, in the maturity and highest vitality of his genius. It abounds in instances of extremest compression and most daring ellipsis; while it exhibits in every scene a union of supreme dramatic and poetic power, and in almost every line an imperially irresponsible control of language. Hence, I think, its lack of formal completeness of versification in certain passages, and also of the imperfection in its text, the thought in which the compositors were not always able to follow and apprehend. The only authority for the text of 'Macbeth' is the folio of 1623, the apparent corruptions of which must be restored with a more than usually cautious hand. Without being multitudinous or confusing, they are sufficiently numerous and important to test severely the patience, acumen, and judgment of any editor."—"The Works of William Shakespeare." Vol. X., P. 424.
[I] So called because they stood on the ground. The pit was then a real pit, and its floor was the bare earth. There were no benches. It was so in the French theatre until a much later period. Hence the French name parterre for the pit—par terre, upon the ground. The name parquet, which is given to that part of a theatre in America, is not French, and is no word at all, but a miserable affected nonentity of sound.
[J] The reader who cares to do so will find something upon this point in my essay on Shakespeare's genius, "Life and Genius of Shakespeare," pp. 280, 281.