And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds:
It shall be said his judgment ruled our hands;
Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,
But all be buried in his gravity.”
I am not going to reprint the beauties of Shakspeare. Instances like the above—a case—an event—a feature of human nature—are so common that they need not be pointed out. Thousands of years hence, as the numberless crowd of unexpected events come on, it will be found that this poet has already described them.
These thoughts occurred to me the other evening after taking up casually a volume of Macbeth—perhaps one of the most tremendous portraitures of human nature that ever came from the pen of man. The play opened by chance to the scene where the remorse-haunted queen walks in her sleep. Surely no human writer ever set down, in the same number of words, a more terrific picture. It has upon me almost the effect ascribed to Medusa’s head. It nearly turns me to stone. We know that but few of the great Greek tragedies have descended to the modern reader, but neither in them, nor in any of the ancient or modern writers, is there a scene more highly conceived, more perfectly executed, or acting with more power upon the heart and the imagination. I have not read any comments or commentators, German or English, respecting it, and therefore very probably may omit some of its peculiarities. I think it the scene of Macbeth, the climax and moral of the tragedy, and perhaps the finest and most extraordinary piece of writing in the whole of the author’s works. No where in the range of literature is there to be seen such a frightful fragment of human nature. I can never read it without feeling the blood grow cold in my veins, and receiving a most painful heart-sick impression of the evils which hang over the mortal state, when not protected by moral and religious principle; and I can perfectly understand an anecdote related of Mrs. Siddons, who, on attempting to study the part alone in her room at night, became so frightened that she called her maid as a companion. Perhaps the Shaksperian theorist, who has discovered that the purpose of our poet’s works was to make an illustration of the truth of Christianity, by putting within every man’s, every boy’s reach the whole compass of experience to be derived from a hundred eventful lives, had an eye upon this scene among others. It certainly has to me a profound metaphysical and religious meaning, and is best explained by supposing it, like Othello, a gigantic enigma, of which Christianity is the solution. To represent human nature thus, without offering any remedial or softening consideration, was not characteristic of the sweet, gentle and sunshiny imagination of the poet. His whole works, taken together, do not leave any such shadow on the imagination. He is no misanthrope—no infidel. He points with his wand to human nature as she is, unguided, unsustained, unprotected by the Supreme Power. He draws the blood-stained yet heart-crushed queen, not to appal us with a danger to which we are subject, but to point out one which we can avoid.
The scene is very short, and I will give it, that the reader may the more readily understand me.
Act V. Scene I.
Enter a Doctor of Physic, and a Waiting Gentlewoman.
Doct. I have two nights watch’d with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walk’d?