Amid all this confusion of incidents and coarseness of manners, interest and pathos have never, perhaps, been carried further than in this tragedy. The time in which Shakspeare laid his action seems to have emancipated him from all conventional forms; and just as he felt no difficulty in placing a King of France, a Duke of Albany, and a Duke of Cornwall, eight hundred years before the Christian era, so he felt no necessity for connecting the language and the characters of his drama with any determinate period. The only trace of intention which can be remarked in the general color of the style of the drama is the vagueness and uncertainty of the grammatical constructions, which seem to belong to a language still quite in its infancy; at the same time, a considerable number of expressions which bear a close resemblance to the French language, indicate an epoch, if not correspondent with that in which King Lear is supposed to have lived, at least far anterior to that at which Shakspeare wrote.
Macbeth.
(1606.)
In the year 1034, Duncan succeeded his grandfather, Malcolm, on the throne of Scotland. He held his right of his mother, Beatrice, the eldest daughter of Malcolm; the younger daughter, Doada, was the mother of Macbeth, who was thus cousin-german to Duncan. The father of Macbeth was Finleg, thane of Glamis, mentioned under the name of Sinel in the tragedy, and in the chronicle of Holinshed, on the authority of Hector Boëtius, from whom the narrative of the events concerning Duncan and Macbeth is borrowed. As Shakspeare has followed Holinshed's chronicle with the utmost exactness, it becomes necessary to give the facts as therein related; and they are, moreover, in themselves replete with interest.
Macbeth had rendered himself celebrated by his bravery, and "if he had not been somewhat cruel of nature," says the chronicle, "he might have been thought most worthy of the government of a realm." Duncan, on the other hand, was an unwarlike prince, and carried his gentleness and kindness to excess; so that if it had been possible to fuse the characters of the two cousins together, and to temper the one by the other, the people would have had, says the chronicle, "an excellent captain, and a worthy king."
After some years of peaceful dominion, the weakness of Duncan having encouraged malefactors, Banquo, the thane of Lochaber, "as he gathered the finances due to the king," found himself compelled to punish "somewhat sharply" several notorious offenders, which occasioned a revolt. Banquo was robbed of all the money he had collected, and "had much ado to get away with life, after he had received sundry grievous wounds." As soon as he had recovered of his hurts, he proceeded to court to lay his complaints before Duncan, and at last persuaded the king to summon the rebels to appear before him; but they slew the sergeant-at-arms, who had been sent with the royal mandate, and prepared for defense, at the instigation of Macdowald, one of their most important chieftains, who, collecting his clansmen and friends around him, represented Duncan to them as a "faint-hearted milksop, more meet to govern a set of idle monks in some cloister, than to have the rule of such valiant and hardy men of war as the Scots were." The revolt spread particularly throughout the Western Isles, from whence a host of warriors came to join Macdowald at Lochaber; and the hope of plunder attracted from Ireland a large number of Kernes and Galloglasses, [Footnote 25] ready to follow Macdowald whithersoever it should please him to lead them. By means of these re-enforcements, Macdowald defeated the troops which the king had sent to oppose him, took prisoner their leader, Malcolm, and beheaded him after the battle.
[Footnote 25: The Kernes were a species of light infantry, and the Galloglasses heavy-armed foot-soldiers.]