PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD.
We have followed Shakespeare's course of dramatic production down to the time when he began to embody in the work by which he earned his bread and made his fortune the results of an intuitive knowledge of human nature and a profound reflection upon it never surpassed, if ever equalled, and which, even if possessed, have never been united in any other man with a power of expression so grand, so direct, so strong, and so subtle. "Twelfth Night," "Henry V.," and "As You Like It" mark the close of his second period, which ended with the sixteenth century. His third period opens with "Hamlet," which was written about the year 1600. But here I will say that the division of his work into periods, and the assignment of his plays to certain years, is only inferential and approximative. We are able to determine with an approach to certainty about what time most of his plays were written; but we cannot fix their date exactly. Nor is it of very great importance that we should do so. There are some people who can fret themselves and others as to whether a play was written in 1600 or in 1601, as there are others who deem the question whether its author was born on the 23d of April in one year, and died on the same day of the same month in another, one of great importance. I cannot so regard it. A few days in the date of a man's birth or death, a few months in the production of a play—these are matters surely of very little moment. What is important to the student and lover of Shakespeare is the order of the production of his works; and this, fortunately, is determinable with a sufficient approach to accuracy to enable us to know about at what age he was engaged upon them, and what changes in his style and in his views of life they indicate.
In the first ten years of the seventeenth century, between his thirty-seventh and forty-seventh year, he produced "Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," his part of "Pericles," "All's Well that Ends Well," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Julius Cæsar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Troilus and Cressida," "Cymbeline," "Coriolanus," and "Othello." These, with other works, were the fruit of his mind in its full maturity and vigor. Think of it a moment! what a period it was! As my eye lights upon the back of the eleventh volume of my own edition and the eighth of the Cambridge edition, and I read "Hamlet, King Lear, Othello," I am moved with a sense of admiration and wonder which, if I allow it to continue, becomes almost oppressive; and I also take pleasure in the result of a convenience of arrangement that brought into one volume these three marvellous works—the three greatest productions of man's imagination, each wholly unlike the others in spirit and in motive.
Although they were not written one after the other, but with an interval of about five years between them, it would be well to read them consecutively and in the order above named, which is that in which they happen to be printed in the first collected edition (1623) of Shakespeare's plays. They were written—"Hamlet" in 1600-2, "King Lear" in 1605, and "Othello" about 1610, its date being much more uncertain than that of either of the others. The thoughtful reader who, having followed the course previously marked out, now comes to the study of these tragedies, is prepared to apprehend them justly, not only in their own greatness, but in their relative position as the product of their author's mind in its perfected and disciplined maturity—as the splendid triple crown of Shakespeare's genius. No other dramatist, no other poet, has given the world anything that can for a moment be taken into consideration as equal to these tragedies; and Shakespeare himself left us nothing equal to any one of them, taken as a whole and in detail; although there are some parts of other late plays—"Macbeth," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Troilus and Cressida," and "The Tempest"—which, in their grandeur of imagination and splendor of language, bear the stamp of this great period.
And yet such was the merely stage-providing nature of Shakespeare's work, that even "Hamlet," produced at the very height of his reputation, is, like the Second and Third Parts of "King Henry VI.," which came from his 'prentice hand, connected in some way, we do not know exactly what, with a drama by an elder contemporary upon the same subject. There are traces in contemporary satirical literature of a "Hamlet" which had been performed as early as 1589, or possibly two years earlier. It is remarkable that in the first edition of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (1603) Polonius is called Corambis, and Reynaldo, Montano; in which latter names we may safely assume that we have relics of the old play; and, although I am sure that in this edition of 1603 we have merely a mutilated and patched-up version, surreptitiously obtained, and printed in headlong haste, of the perfected play (in which opinion I differ from some English scholars, whose learning and judgment I respect, but to whom I would hold myself ready to prove, under forfeit, to their satisfaction the correctness of my view); there are also in this mutilated 1603 edition passages which not only are manifestly not what Shakespeare wrote, but not even a mutilated form of what he wrote. They are probably taken from the older play to supply the place of passages of the new play which could not be obtained in time for the hasty publication of this pirated edition of Shakespeare's tragedy. Remark, here, in this hasty and surreptitious edition, evidence of the great impression suddenly made by Shakespeare's "Hamlet." On its production it became at once so popular that a piratical publisher was at the trouble and expense of getting as much of the original as he could by unfair means, and vamping this up with inferior and older matter to meet the popular demand for reading copies. There is evidence of a like success of "King Lear." Since the time when these plays were produced there has been, we are called upon to believe, a great elevation of general intelligence, and there surely has been a great diffusion of knowledge; and yet it may be safely remarked that "Saratoga" and "Pique" and "The Golden Age," which ran their hundred nights and more, are not quite equal to "Hamlet" or to "King Lear," which, even with all their success, did not run anything like a hundred nights; and we may as safely believe that if "Hamlet" or "King Lear" were produced for the first time this winter in New York or in London, there would not be such a great and sudden demand for copies that extraordinary means would be taken by publishers to supply it. This superiority of the general public taste in dramatic literature during the Elizabethan era is one of the remarkable phenomena in literary history; and it is one that remains unaccounted for, and is, I think, altogether inexplicable, except upon the assumption that theatres nowadays rely for their support upon a public of low intellectual grade, and a taste for gross luxury and material splendor.
In reading "Hamlet" there is little opportunity of comparing it instructively with any of its predecessors. Its principal personage is entirely unlike any other created by Shakespeare. The play is all Hamlet: the other personages are mere occasions for his presence and means of his development. But Polonius is something the same kind of man as old Capulet in "Romeo and Juliet;" and although there were opportunities enough for the noble Veronese father to utter sententiously the knowledge of the world which he had gained by living in it, see how comparatively meagre and superficial his "wise saws" are compared with the counsel that Polonius gives to his son and to his daughter, and to the King and Queen; although Polonius, with all his sagacity, is garrulous and a bore; in Hamlet's words, a tedious old fool. As to Hamlet's character, Shakespeare did not mean it to be altogether admirable or otherwise, but simply to be Hamlet—a perfectly natural and not very uncommon man, although he expresses natural and not uncommon feelings with the marvellous utterance of the great master of dramatic poetry. And Hamlet's character is not altogether admirable; but it is therefore none the less, but probably the more, deeply interesting. How closely packed the play is with profound truths of life philosophy is shown by the fact that it has contributed not only very much more—four or five times more—than any other poem of similar length to the storehouse of adage and familiar phrase, but at least twice as much as any other of Shakespeare's plays. I know two boys who, going to see the play for the first time, some years before the appearance of a like story in the newspapers, came home and did actually, in the innocence of their hearts, qualify the great admiration they expressed for it by adding, "but how full it is of quotations." In fact, about one eighth of this long play has become so familiar to the world that it is in common use, and is recognized as the best expression known of the thoughts that it embodies. This, however, is not an absolute test of excellence, for it is remarkable that "King Lear" is very much behind it, and also behind "Othello," in this respect; and indeed there are several plays, including "Macbeth," "Julius Cæsar," "Henry IV.," "As You Like It," and "The Merchant of Venice," which are richer than "King Lear" in passages familiarly quoted; and yet as to the superiority of "King Lear" to the other plays I think there can be no doubt. It is the greatest tragedy, the greatest dramatic poem, the greatest book, ever written; so great is it, in fact, so vast in its style, so lofty in its ideal, that to those who have reflected upon it and justly apprehended it, it has become unplayable. As well attempt to score the music of the spheres, or to paint "the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." In "King Lear" there is a personage who may be very instructively compared with others of the same kind by the student of Shakespeare's mental development. This is the Fool. Shakespeare's fools or clowns (such as those in "Love's Labor's Lost" and in "Hamlet") are among the most remarkable evidences of his ability to make anything serve as the occasion and the mouthpiece of his wit and his wisdom. He did not make the character; he found it on the stage, and a favorite with a considerable part of the play-goers. It was, however, as he found it, a very coarse character, rude as well as gross in speech, and given to practical joking. He relieved it of all the rudeness, if not of all the grossness, and reformed the joking altogether; but he also filled the Fool's jesting with sententious satire, and while preserving the low-comedy style of the character, brought it into keeping with a lofty and even a tragic view of life. In "King Lear" the Fool rises into heroic proportions, and becomes a sort of conscience, or second thought, to Lear. Compared even with Touchstone he is very much more elevated, and shows not less than Hamlet, or than Lear himself, the grand development of Shakespeare's mind at this period of its maturity. In the representation of Shakespeare's plays there has been no greater affront to common sense than the usual presentation of this Fool upon the stage as a boy, except the putting a pretty woman into the part, dressed in such a way as to captivate the eye and divert the attention by the beauty of her figure. It is disturbing enough to see Ariel, sexless, but, like the angels, rather masculine than feminine, represented by a woman dressed below the waist in an inverted gauze saucer, and above the waist in a perverted gauze nothing; but to see Lear's Fool thus unbedecked is more amazing than Bottom's brutal translation was to his fellow actors. This Fool is a man of middle age, one who has watched the world and grown sad over it. His jesting has a touch of heart-break in it which is prevented from becoming pathetic only by the cynicism which pertains partly to his personal character and partly to his office. He and Kent are about of an age—Kent, who when asked his age, as he comes back disguised to his old master, says, "Not so young as to love a woman for her singing, nor so old as to dote on her for anything; I have years on my back forty-eight"—a speech which contains one of the finest of Shakespeare's minor touches of worldly-wise character drawing. The German artist Retsch in his fine outline illustrations of this play has conceived this Fool with fine appreciation of Shakespeare's meaning. He makes him a mature man, with a wan face and a sad, eager eye. The misrepresentation of the character has its origin in Lear's calling the Fool "boy"—a term partly of endearment and partly of patronage, which has been so used in all countries and in all times. A similar misunderstanding of a similar word fool, which Lear touchingly applies to Cordelia in the last scene—"and my poor fool is hanged"—caused the misapprehension until of late years[G] that Lear's court Fool was hanged—although why Edmund's creatures should have been at the trouble in the stress of their disaster to hang a Fool it would puzzle any one to tell.
"Othello" bears throughout the marks of the same maturity of intellect, and the same mastery of dramatic effect, that appear in "Hamlet" and in "King Lear"; but from the nature of its subject it is not so profoundly thoughtful as the others. It is a drama of action, which "Hamlet" is not in a high degree; and although a grand example of the imaginative dramatic style, it has the distinction of being the most actable of all Shakespeare's tragedies. It is difficult to conceive any age or any country in which "Othello" would not be an impressive and a welcome play to any intelligent audience. Highly poetical in its treatment, it is intensely real in its interest; and it must continue so until there is a radical change in human nature.
In the first of these articles I proposed to analyze and compare the jealousy of Othello, Claudio, and Leontes; but I have abandoned the design, partly because I find that it would require another article in itself, and partly because it would necessarily lead me into a psychological and physiological discussion which would hardly be in keeping with the purpose with which I am now writing, which is merely to offer such guidance and such help as I can give to intelligent and somewhat inexperienced readers of Shakespeare. But I will remark that Othello's jealousy is man's jealousy (so called) raised to the most intense power by the race and the social position of the person who is its subject. The feeling in man and that in woman, called jealousy, are quite different in origin and in nature, although they have the same name. In woman the feeling arises from a supposed slight of her person, the spretæ injuria formæ of Virgil, to which he attributes Juno's enmity to Troy; and however it may be sentimentally developed, it has this for its spring and its foundation. But a man, unless he is the weakest of all coxcombs, and unworthy to wear his beard, does not trouble himself because a woman admires another man's person more than his own. His feeling has its origin in the motherhood of woman, a recognition of which is latent in all social arrangements touching the sex, and in all man's feeling toward her. Man's jealousy is a mingled feeling of resentment of personal disloyalty, and of grief at unchastity on the part of the woman that he loves. Man is jealous much in the same sense in which it is said, "The Lord thy God is a jealous God"; which saying, indeed, is a consequence of the anthropomorphic conception of the Deity, notwithstanding the exclusion from it of the idea of sex. But it is impossible to conceive of such a feeling as feminine jealousy being referred to in the passage in the second commandment. The "jealousy" of Othello and Leontes, and of Claudio, will be found on examination to be at bottom the same. In Claudio it is correct, gentlemanly, princely, and somewhat weak; in Leontes it is morbid, unreasonable, hard, and cruel; in Othello it is perfectly pure in its quality, and has in it quite as much of tenderness and grief as of wrath and indignation; and it rages with all the fierceness of his half-savage nature. The passion in him becomes heroic, colossal; but it is perfect in its nature and in its proportions, and from the point to which he has been brought by Iago, perfectly justifiable. Hence it is that it is so respected by women. Nothing was more remarkable at Salvini's admirable performance of Othello than the acquiescence of all his female auditors in the fate of Desdemona. They were sorry for the poor girl, to be sure; but they seemed to think that Desdemonas were made to be the victims of Othellos, and that a man who could love in that fashion and be jealous in that style of exalted fury was rather to be pitied and admired when he smothered a woman on a misunderstanding. She should not have teased him so to take back Cassio; and what could she have expected when she was so careless about the handkerchief and told such lies about it! It is somewhat unpleasant to be smothered, to be sure, but all the same she ought to be content and happy to be the object of such love and the occasion of such jealousy. They mourned far more over his fate than over hers. This representation of manly jealousy, so elemental and simple, and yet so stupendous, is one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. I mean not merely in its verbal expression, but in its characteristic conception of the masculine form of the passion. Compare it with the jealousy of any of his women—of Adriana, of Julia, of Cleopatra, of Imogen, of Regan—and see how different it is in kind; I will not say in degree; for Shakespeare has not exhibited woman as highly deformed by this passion; that he left for inferior dramatists, with whom it is a favorite subject.
In two of these tragedies we have Shakespeare's most elaborate and, so to speak, admirable representations of villany: Edmund in "King Lear" and Iago in "Othello." These vile creations cannot, however, be justly regarded as the fruit of a lower view of human nature consequent upon a longer acquaintance with it. They were merely required by the exigencies of his plots; and being required, he made them as it was in him to do. For in nothing is his superiority more greatly manifested than in the fact that monsters of baseness, or even thoroughly base men, figure so rarely among his dramatis personæ. They are common with inferior dramatists and writers of prose fiction, whose ruder hands need them as convenient motive powers and as vehicles of the expression of a lower view of human nature. Not so with him. He has weak and erring men—men who are misled by their passions, ambition, revenge, selfish lust, or what not; but Iago, Edmund, and the Duke in "Measure for Measure" are almost all his characters of their kind. In "Richard III." he merely painted a highly colored historical portrait; and Parolles, in "All's Well that Ends Well," and Iachimo, in "Cymbeline," do not rise to the dignity of even third-rate personages. Iago, it need hardly be said, is the most perfect of all his creatures in this kind, and indeed he is the most admirably detestable and infamous character in all literature. Edmund is equally base and cruel; but compared with Iago he is a coarse, low, brutal, and rabid animal. In Iago all the craft and venom of which the human soul is capable is united with an intellectual subtlety which seems to reach the limit of imagination or conception. There are some who see in the making the bastard son in "Lear" the monster of ingratitude and villany and the legitimate a model of all the manly and filial virtues an evidence of Shakespeare's judgment and discrimination. But this is one of those fond and over-subtle misapprehensions from which Shakespeare has suffered in not a few instances, even at the hands of critics of reputation. It suited Shakespeare's plot that the villain should be the bastard; that is all; and Lear's legitimate daughters Goneril and Regan are as base, as bad, and as cruelly ungrateful as Gloucester's illegitimate son. Shakespeare knew human nature too well, and handled it with too just and impartial a hand, to let the question of legitimacy influence him in one way or the other. In "King John" we have, on the contrary, the mean-souled Robert Faulconbridge and his gallant and chivalrous bastard brother Philip.
About the same time, or if not in the same time, perhaps in the same year which saw the production of "King Lear," "Macbeth" was written. But its date is not certain within four or five years. It was surely written before 1610, in which year a contemporary diary records its performance on the 20th of April. The Cambridge editors, in their annotated edition of this play, in the "Clarendon Press" series, prefer the later date; but notwithstanding my great respect for their judgment, I hold to my conclusion for the earlier, for the reasons given in my own edition. The question has not in itself much pertinence to our present purpose, as there is no doubt that the tragedy was produced in this period, and its general style, both of thought and versification, is that of Shakespeare in its fullest development and vigor. But with the question of date there is involved another of great interest to the thoughtful reader—that of mixed authorship. In the introductory essay to my edition of this play (published in 1861) attention was directed to the internal evidence that it was hastily written and left unfinished.[H] Subsequent editors and critics, notably the Cambridge editors and the Rev. F. G. Fleay, in his "Shakespearian Manual," starting from this view, have gone so far as to say that "Macbeth," as we have it, is not all Shakespeare's, but in part the work of Thomas Middleton, a second or third-rate playwright contemporary with Shakespeare, who wrote a play, called "The Witch," which is plainly an imitation of the supernatural scenes in this tragedy. The Cambridge editors believe that Middleton was permitted to supply certain scenes at the time of the writing of Macbeth: Mr. Fleay, that Middleton cut down and patched up Shakespeare's perfected work, adding much inferior matter of his own, and that he did this being engaged to alter the play for stage purposes. The latter opinion I must reject, notwithstanding Mr. Fleay's minute, elaborate, and often specious argument; but the opinion of the Cambridge editors seems to me to a certain extent sound. I cannot, however, go to the length which they do in rejecting parts of this play as not being Shakespeare's work. This study of Shakespeare's style and of what is not his work at a certain period of his life being directly to our purpose, let us examine the tragedy for traces of his hand and of another.
And first let the reader turn to Scene 5 of Act III., which consists almost entirely of a long speech by Hecate, beginning:
Have I not reason, beldames as you are,
Saucy, and overbold? How did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death:
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?
This speech is surely not of Shakespeare's writing. Its being in octosyllabic rhyme is not against it, however; although he abandoned rhyme almost altogether at or before this period. The fact of the business of the scene being supernatural would account for its form. But it is mere rhyme; little more than an unmeaning jingle of verses. Any journeyman at versemaking would write such stuff. Read the speech through, and then think of the writer of "Hamlet," and "Lear," and "Othello," producing such a weak wash of words at the same time when he was writing those tragedies. And even turn back and compare it with the rhyming speeches of his other supernatural personages, of Puck and Titana and Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which he wrote at least ten or twelve years earlier, and you will see that it is not only so inferior, but so unlike his undoubted work that it must be rejected. Turn next to Scene 3 of Act II., and read the speeches of the Porter. Long ago Coleridge said of these, "This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches afterward I believe to have been written for the mob by some other hand." That they were written for the mob is nothing against them as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare wrote for the mob. He made a point of putting in something for the groundlings[I] in every play that he wrote. But with what a mighty hand he did it! so that those who have since then sat in the highest seats in the world's theatre have laughed, and pondered as they laughed. "Lear" is notably free from this element; but even in the philosophical "Hamlet" we have the much elaborated scene of the Gravediggers, which was written only to please Coleridge's "mob."[J] But let the reader now compare these Porter's speeches in "Macbeth" with those of the Gravediggers in "Hamlet," and if he is one who can hope to appreciate Shakespeare at all, he will at this stage of his study see at once that although both are low-comedy, technically speaking, the former are low-lived, mean, thoughtless, without any other significance than that of the surface meaning of the poor, gross language in which they are written; while the latter, although, far more laughable even to the most uncultivated hearer, are pregnant with thought and suggestion. There can be no question that these speeches in "Macbeth" were written by some other hand than Shakespeare's.
Having now satisfied ourselves that some part of "Macbeth" is not Shakespeare's (and I began with those so manifestly spurious passages to establish that point clearly and easily in the reader's apprehension), "we are in a proper mood of mind to consider the objections that have been made by the Cambridge editors to other parts of the tragedy. The whole second scene of Act I. is regarded as spurious because of "slovenly metre," too slovenly for him even when he is most careless; "bombastic phraseology," too bombastic for him even when he is most so; also because he had too much good sense to send a severely wounded soldier with the news of a victory. I cannot reject this scene for these reasons. The question of metre and style is one of judgment; and the one seems to me not more irregular and careless, and the other not more tumid, than Shakespeare is in passages undoubtedly of his writing; while there is a certain flavor of language in the scene and a certain roll of the words upon the tongue which are his peculiar traits and tricks of style. The point as to the wounded soldier seems to me a manifest misapprehension. He is not sent as a messenger. Nothing in the text or in the stage directions of the original edition gives even color to such an opinion. The first two scenes of this act prepare one's mind for the tragedy and lay out its action; and they do so, as far as design is concerned, with great skill. The first short scene announces the supernatural character of the agencies at work; the next tells us of the personages who are to figure in the action and the position in which they are placed. In the second scene King Duncan and his suite, marching toward the scene of conflict, and so near it that they are within ear-shot, if not arrow-shot, meet a wounded officer. He is not sent to them. He is merely retiring from the field severely wounded—so severely that he cannot remain long uncared for. The stage direction of the folio is "Alarum within," which means (as will be found by examining other plays) that the sound of drums, trumpets, and the conflict of arms is heard. Then, "Enter King, etc., etc., meeting a bleeding Captaine." The King, then, does not greet or regard him as a messenger, but exclaims, "What bloody man is that?" and adds, "He can report, as seemeth by his plight, the condition of the revolt." Plainly this is no messenger, but a mere wounded officer who leaves the field because, as he says, his "gashes cry for help."
In Act IV., Sc. 1, this speech of the First Witch after the "Show of Eight Kings," is plainly not Shakespeare's:
Ay, sir, all this is so; but why
Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?
Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites,
And show the best of our delights.
I'll charm the air to give a sound,
While you perform your antic round,
That this great king may kindly say
Our duties did his welcome pay.
This is condemned by the Cambridge editors, and I agree entirely with them. Moreover it seems to be manifestly from the same hand as Hecate's speech (Act III., Sc. 5), previously referred to. The style shows this, and the motive is the same—the introduction of fairy business, dancing and singing, which have nothing to do with the action of the tragedy, and are quite foreign to the supernatural motive of it as indicated in the witch scenes which have the mark of Shakespeare's hand.
In Act IV., Sc. 3, the passage in regard to touching for the King's Evil, from "Enter a Doctor" to "full of grace," was, we may be pretty sure, an interpolation previous to a representation at court, as the Cambridge editors suggest, and it is probably not Shakespeare's; but I would not undertake to say so positively. The same editors say they "have doubts about the second scene of Act V." I notice this not merely to express my surprise at it, but to let the reader see how difficult it is to arrive at a general consent upon such points which are merely matters of judgment. To me this scene is unmistakably Shakespeare's. Who else could have written this passage, not only for its excellence but for its peculiarity?
Caithness.—Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies:
Some say he's mad; others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury; but for certain
He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus.— Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love; now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
I am sure that I should have suspected those lines to be Shakespeare's if I had first met them without a name, in a nameless book. Still more surprising is it to me to find these editors saying that in Act V., Sc. 5, lines 47-50 are "singularly weak." Here they are:
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is no flying hence or tarrying here.
I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,
And wish the estate of the world were now undone.
The first two have no particular character, nor need they have any, as they merely introduce the last two, which contain an utterance of blank despair and desolation which seems to me more expressive than any other that I ever read.
The last passage of the play, that after line 34, when Macbeth and Macduff go off fighting, and Macbeth is killed, are probably, as the Cambridge editors suggest, by another hand than Shakespeare's. Their tameness and their constrained rhythm are not Shakespearian work, particularly at this period of his life, and in the writing of such a scene. "Nor would he," as the Cambridge editors say, "have drawn away the veil which with his fine tact he had dropped over her [Lady Macbeth's] fate by telling us that she had taken off her life 'by self, and violent hands.'"
The person who wrote these un-Shakespearian passages was probably Middleton. Shakespeare, writing the tragedy in haste for an occasion, received a little help, according to the fashion of the time, from another playwright; and the latter having imitated the supernatural poets of this play in one of his own, the players or managers afterward introduced from that play songs by him—"Music and a song, Come away, come away," Act III., Sc. 5, and "Music and a song, Black spirits," etc., Act IV., Sc. 1. This was done to please the inferior part of the audience. These songs and all this sort of operatic incantation are entirely foreign to the supernatural motive of the tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. And I will here remark that the usual performance of "Macbeth" with "a chorus" and "all Locke's music" is a revolting absurdity.
My next paper will close this series with an examination of some of Shakespeare's least known dramas.
Richard Grant White.