Chapter III (6)

Whilst this council of war is held, Jean and the old Turk are in confabulation, and a bargain is at last concluded, by which the commander's soul is redeemed, and Jean is to have five years of earthly prosperity, at the end of which time, if he has failed to find a substitute, his spiritual part becomes the demon's property. Two years later we find Jean upon the road to Montpellier, well mounted and equipped, and his purse well lined. Although but in his eighteenth year, he is already a gay gallant, with some knowledge of the world, and eager for adventures. These he meets with in abundance. A mark, imprinted upon his arm by his attendant demon, causes him to be recognised as the son of the Chevalier de Cerdagne. Thus ennobled, he feels that he may aspire to all things, and soon we find him pushing his fortune in Italy, attached to the person of the French Marshal de Marchin, discovering the Baron d'Isola's conspiracy against the life of Philip V. of Spain, and gaining laurels in the campaigns of the War of Succession. There is much variety and interest in some of his adventures, and the supernatural agency is sufficiently lost sight of not to be wearisome. Time glides away, and the fatal term of five years is within a few days of its completion. But _Jean le Trouvé_, now _le Trouveur_, is in no want of substitutes. Two volunteers present themselves; one his supposed sister, Mademoiselle de Cerdagne, whom he has warmly befriended in certain love difficulties; the other a convent gardener, whom he has made his private secretary, and whose name is Giulio Alberoni. The demon, who still affects the form of an old Turkish sailor, receives Alberoni in lieu of Jean, to whom, however,--foreseeing that the young man's good fortune may be the means of bringing him many other victims--he offers a new contract on very advantageous terms. But Jean de Cerdagne, who is now Spanish ambassador at Venice, with the title of prince, and in the enjoyment of immense wealth, refuses the offer, anxious to save his soul. He soon discovers that his good fortune is at an end. The real son of the Chevalier de Cerdagne turns up, Jean is disgraced, stripped of his honours and dignities, and his vast property is confiscated by the Inquisition. The ex-ambassador exchanges for a squalid disguise his rich costume of satin and velvet, and we next find him a member of a secret society in the thieves' quarter of Venice. The worshipful fraternity of Chiodo--so called from their sign of recognition, which is a rusty nail--live by the exercise of various small trades and occupations, which, although not strictly beggary or theft, are but a degree removed from these culpable resources. Jean, whose conscience has become squeamish, will accept none but honest employment. But the malice of the demon pursues him, and he succeeds in nothing. He stations himself at a ferry to catch gondolas with a boat-hook, and bring them gently alongside the quay; he stands at a bridge stairs, to afford support to passengers over the stones, slippery with the slime of the lagoons; he takes post in front of the Doge's palace, with a vessel of fresh water and a well-polished goblet, to supply passers-by. Many accept his stout arm, and drink his cool beverage, but none think of rewarding him. Not all his efforts and attention are sufficient to coax a sou from the pockets of his careless customers. At last, upon the third day, he receives a piece of copper, and trusts that the charm is broken. The coin proves a bad one. His seizure by the authorities, and transportation to Zara, relieve him of care for his subsistence. At last, pushed by misery, and in imminent danger of punishment for having struck a Venetian officer, Jean succumbs to temptation, and renews his infernal compact. A Venetian senator adopts him, and he discovers, but too late, that had he delayed for a few minutes his recourse to diabolical aid, he would have stood in no need of it. He proceeds to Spain, where he has many adventures and quarrels with his former secretary, Alberoni, now a powerful minister. His contract again at an end, he would gladly abstain from renewing it, but is hunted by the Inquisition into the arms of the fiend. After a lapse of years, he is again shown to us in Paris, and, finally, in Brittany, where he meets his death, but, at the eleventh hour, disappoints the expectant demon, (who in a manner outwits himself,) and re-enters the bosom of the church, his bad bargain being taken off his hands by an ambitious village priest. The book, which has an agreeable vivacity, closes with an attempt to explain a portion of its supernatural incidents by a reference to popular tradition and peasant credulity. Near the ramparts of the Breton town of Guérande, an antiquary shows M. de Musset a moss-grown stone, with a Latin epitaph, which antiquary and novelist explain each after his own fashion.

"Let us see if you understand that, _M. le Parisien_," said the antiquary. "Up to the two last words we shall agree; but what think you of the _Ars. Inf._?"

"It appears to me," I replied, "that the popular chronicle perfectly explains the whole epitaph--_Ars. Inf._ means _ars inferna_; that is to say,--'Here reposes Jean Capello, citizen of Venice, whose body was sent to the grave, and his soul to heaven, by infernal artifices.'"

"A translation worthy of a romance writer," said the antiquary. "You believe then in the devil, in compact with evil spirits, in absurd legends invented by ignorance and superstition amidst the evening gossip of our peasants? You believe that, in 1718, a parish priest of Guérande flew away into the air, after having redeemed the soul of this Jean Capello. You are very credulous, M. le Parisien. This Venetian, who came here but to die, was simply poisoned by the priest, who took to flight; the town doctor, having opened the body, found traces of the poison. That is why they engraved upon the tomb these syllables: _Ars. Inf._, which signify _arsenici infusio_, an infusion of arsenic. I will offer you another interpretation--Jean Capello was perhaps a salt-maker, killed by some accident in our salt-works, and as in 1718 labourers of that class were very miserable, they engraved upon this stone, to express the humility of his station, _Ars. Inf._, that is to say, inferior craft."

"Upon my word!" I exclaimed, "that explanation is perfectly absurd. I keep to the popular version: Jean le Trouveur was sent to heaven by the stratagems of the demon himself. Let sceptics laugh at my superstition, I shall not quarrel with them for their incredulity."

We see little else worthy of extract or comment in the mass of books before us. M. Méry, whose extraordinary notions of English men and things we exhibited in a former article, has given forth a rhapsodical history, entitled _Le Transporté_, beginning with the Infernal Machine, and ending with Surcouf the Pirate, full of conspiracies, dungeons, desperate sea-fights, and tropical scenery, where English line-of-battle ships are braved by French corvettes, and where the transitions are so numerous, and the variety so great, that we may almost say everything is to be found in its pages, except probability. Mr Dumas the younger, who follows at respectful distance in his father's footsteps, and publishes a volume or two per month, has not yet, so far as we have been able to discover, produced anything that attains mediocrity. M. Sue has dished up, since last we have adverted to him, two or three more capital sins, his illustrations of which are chiefly remarkable for an appearance of great effort, suggestive of the pitiable plight of an author who, having pledged himself to public and publishers for the production of a series of novels on given subjects, is compelled to work out his task, however unwilling his mood. This is certainly the most fatal species of book-making--a selling by the cubic foot of a man's soul and imagination. Evil as it is, the system is largely acted upon in France at the present day. Home politics having lost much of the absorbing interest they possessed twelve months ago, the Paris newspapers are resorting to their old stratagems to maintain and increase their circulation. Prominent amongst these is the holding out of great attractions in the way of literary feuilletons. Accordingly, they contract with popular writers for a name and a date, which are forthwith printed in large capitals at the head of their leading columns. Thus, one journal promises its readers six volumes by M. Dumas, to be published in its feuilleton, to commence on a day named, and to be entitled _Les Femmes_. The odds are heavy, that Alexander himself has not the least idea what the said six volumes are to be about; but he relies on his fertility, and then so vague and comprehensive a title gives large latitude. Moreover, he has time before him, although he has promised in the interval to supply the same newspaper with a single volume, to be called _Un Homme Fort_, and to conclude the long procession of _Fantômes_, a thousand and one in number, which now for some time past has been gliding before the astonished eyes of the readers of the _Constitutionnel_. Other journals follow the same plan with other authors, and in France no writer now thinks of publishing a work of fiction elsewhere than at the foot of a newspaper. To this feuilleton system, pushed to an extreme, and entailing the necessity of introducing into each day's fragment an amount of incident mystery or pungent matter, sufficient to carry the reader over twenty-four hours, and make him anxious for the morrow's return, is chiefly to be attributed the very great change for the worse that of late has been observable in the class of French literature at present under consideration. Its actual condition is certainly anything but vigorous and flourishing, and until a manifest improvement takes place, we are hardly likely again to pass it in review.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] A large gold coin, then worth nearly a hundred French livres.

Dies Boreales.

No. V.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

_Camp at Cladich._

SCENE--_The Pavilion._ TIME--_After breakfast._

NORTH--TALBOYS--SEWARD--BULLER.

NORTH.

I begin to be doubtful of this day. On your visits to us, Talboys, you have been most unfortunate in weather. This is more like August than June.

TALBOYS.

The very word, my dear sir. It is indeed most august weather.

NORTH.

Five weeks to-day since we pitched our Camp--and we have had the Beautiful of the Year in all its varieties; but the spiteful Season seems to owe you some old grudge, Talboys--and to make it a point still to assail your arrival with "thunder, lightning, and with rain."

TALBOYS.

"I tax not you, ye Elements! with unkindness." I feel assured they mean nothing personal to me--and though this sort of work may not be very favourable to Angling, 'tis quite a day for tidying our Tackle--and making up our Books. But don't you think, sir, that the Tent would look nothing the worse with some artificial light in this obscuration of the natural?

NORTH.

Put on the gas. Pretty invention, the Gutta Percha tube, isn't it? The Electric Telegraph is nothing to it. Tent illuminated in a moment, at a pig's whisper.

TALBOYS.

Were I to wish, sir, for anything to happen now to the weather at all, it would be just ever so little toning down of that one constituent of the orchestral harmony of the Storm which men call--howling. The Thunder is perfect--but that one Wind Instrument is slightly out of tune--he is most anxious to do his best--his motive is unimpeachable; but he has no idea how much more impressive--how much more popular--would be a somewhat subdued style. There again--that's positive discord--does he mean to disconcert the Concert--or does he forget that he is not a Solo?

BULLER.

That must be a deluge of--hail.

TALBOYS.

So much the better. Hitherto we have had but rain. "Mysterious horrors! HAIL!"

"'Twas a rough night.
My young remembrance cannot parallel
A fellow to it."

NORTH.

Suppose we resume yesterday's conversation?

TALBOYS.

By all manner of means. Let's sit close--and speak loud--else all will be dumb show. The whole world's one waterfall.

NORTH.

Take up Knight on Taste. Look at the dog-ear.

TALBOYS.

"The most perfect instance of this kind is the Tragedy of Macbeth, in which the character of an ungrateful traitor, murderer, usurper, and tyrant, is made in the highest degree interesting by the sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, courage, and tenderness, which continually burst forth in the manly but ineffective struggle of every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind, first against the allurements of ambition, and afterwards against the pangs of remorse and horrors of despair. Though his wife has been the cause of all his crimes and sufferings, neither the agony of his distress, nor the fury of his rage, ever draw from him an angry word, or upbraiding expression towards her; but even when, at her instigation, he is about to add the murder of his friend and late colleague to that of his sovereign, kinsman, and benefactor, he is chiefly anxious that she should not share the guilt of his blood:--'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck! till thou applaud the deed.' How much more real grandeur and exaltation of character is displayed in one such simple expression from the heart, than in all the laboured pomp of rhetorical amplification."

NORTH.

What think you of that, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

Why, like much of the cant of criticism, it sounds at once queer and commonplace. I seem to have heard it before many thousand times, and yet never to have heard it at all till this moment.

NORTH.

Seward?

SEWARD.

Full of audacious assertions, that can be forgiven but in the belief that Payne Knight had never read the tragedy, even with the most ordinary attention.

NORTH.

Buller?

BULLER.

Cursed nonsense. Beg pardon, sir--sink cursed--mere nonsense--out and out nonsense--nonsense by itself nonsense.

NORTH.

How so?

BULLER.

A foolish libel on Shakspeare. Was he the man to make the character of an ungrateful traitor, murderer, usurper, and tyrant, interesting by sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, courage, and tenderness, and--do I repeat the words correctly?--of every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind.

NORTH.

Buller--keep up that face--you are positively beautiful--

BULLER.

No quizzing--I am ugly--but I have a good figure--look at that leg, sir!

NORTH.

I prefer the other.

TALBOYS.

There have been Poets among us who fain would--if they could--have so violated nature; but their fabrications have been felt to be falsehoods--and no quackery may resuscitate drowned lies.

NORTH.

Shakspeare nowhere insists on the virtues of Macbeth--he leaves their measure indeterminate. That the villain may have had some good points we are all willing to believe--few people are without them;--nor have I any quarrel with those who believe he had high qualities, and is corrupted by ambition. But what high qualities had he shown before Shakspeare sets him personally before us to judge for ourselves? Valour--courage--intrepidity--call it what you will--Martial Virtue--

"For brave Macbeth, (well he deserves that name,)
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution
Like valour's minion,
Carved out his passage till he faced the slave;
And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fixed his head upon our battlements."

The "bleeding Serjeant" pursues his panegyric till he grows faint--and is led off speechless; others take it up--and we are thus--and in other ways--prepared to look on Macbeth as a paragon of bravery, loyalty, and patriotism.

TALBOYS.

So had seemed Cawdor.

NORTH.

Good. Shakspeare sets Macbeth before us under the most imposing circumstances of a warlike age; but of his inner character as yet he has told us nothing--we are to find that out for ourselves during the Drama. If there be sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, and every exalted virtue, we have eyes to see, unless indeed blinded by the lightning--and if the sublime flashes be frequent, and the struggle of every exalted quality that can adorn the human mind, though ineffectual, yet strong--why, then, we must not only pity and forgive, but admire and love the "traitor, murderer, usurper, and tyrant," with all the poetical and philosophical fervour of that amiable enthusiast, Mr Payne Knight.

BULLER.

Somehow or other I cannot help having an affection for Macbeth.

NORTH.

You had better leave the Tent, sir.

BULLER.

No. I won't.

NORTH

Give us then, my dear Buller, your Theory of the Thane's character.

BULLER.

"Theory, God bless you, I have none to give, sir." Warlike valour, as you said, is marked first and last--at the opening, and at the end. Surely a good and great quality, at least for poetical purposes. High general reputation won and held. The opinion of the wounded soldier was that of the whole army; and when he himself says, "I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people, which would be worn now in their newest gloss, not thrown aside so soon," I accept that he then truly describes his position in men's minds.

NORTH.

All true. But we soon gain, too, this insight into his constitution, that the pillar upon which he has built up life is Reputation, and not Respect of Law--not Self-Respect; that the point which Shakspeare above all others intends in him, is that his is a spirit not self-stayed--leaning upon outward stays--and therefore--

BULLER.

Liable to all--

NORTH.

Don't take the words out of my mouth, sir; or rather, don't put them into my mouth, sir.

BULLER.

Touchy to-day.

NORTH.

The strongest expression of this character is his throwing himself upon the illicit divinings of futurity, upon counsellors known for infernal; and you see what subjugating sway the Three Spirits take at once over him. On the contrary, the Thaness is self-stayed; and this difference grounds the poetical opposition of the two personages. In Macbeth, I suppose a certain splendour of character--magnificence of action high--a certain impure generosity--mixed up of some kindliness and sympathy, and of the pleasure from self-elation and self-expansion in a victorious career, and of that ambition which feeds on public esteem.

BULLER.

Ay--just so, sir.

NORTH.

Now mark, Buller--this is a character which, if the path of duty and the path of personal ambition were laid out by the Sisters to be one and the same path, might walk through life in sunlight and honour, and invest the tomb with proud and revered trophies. To show such a spirit wrecked and hurled into infamy--the ill-woven sails rent into shreds by the whirlwind--is a lesson worthy the Play and the Poet--and such a lesson as I think Shakspeare likely to have designed--or, without preaching about lessons, such an ethical revelation as I think likely to have caught hold upon Shakspeare's intelligence. It would seem to me a dramatically-poetical subject. The mightiest of temptations occurs to a mind, full of powers, endowed with available moral elements, but without set virtue--without principles--"and down goes all before it." If the essential delineation of Macbeth be this conflict of Moral elements--of good and evil--of light and darkness--I see a very poetical conception; if merely a hardened and bloody hypocrite from the beginning, I see none. But I need not say to you, gentlemen, that all this is as far as may be from the exaggerated panegyric on his character by Payne Knight.

TALBOYS.

Macbeth is a brave man--so is Banquo--so are we Four, brave men--they in their way and day--we in ours--they as Celts and Soldiers--we as Saxons and Civilians--and we had all need to be so--for hark! in the midst of ours, "Thunder and Lightning, and enter Three Witches."

BULLER.

I cannot say that I understand distinctly their first Confabulation.

NORTH.

That's a pity. A sensible man like you should understand everything. But what if Shakspeare himself did not distinctly understand it? There may have been original errata in the report, as extended by himself from notes taken in short-hand on the spot--light bad--noise worse--voices of Weird Sisters worst--matter obscure--manner uncouth--why really, Buller, all things considered, Shakspeare has shown himself a very pretty Penny-a-liner.

BULLER.

I cry you mercy, sir.

SEWARD.

_Where_ are the Witches on their first appearance, at the very opening of the wonderful Tragedy?

NORTH.

An open Place, with thunder and lightning.

SEWARD.

I know that--the words are written down.

NORTH.

Somewhere or other--anywhere--nowhere.

BULLER.

In Fife or Forfar? Or some one or other of your outlandish, or inlandish, Lowland or Highland Counties?

NORTH.

Not knowing, can't say. Probably.

SEWARD

"When the Hurly Burly's done,
When the Battle's lost and won."

What Hurly Burly? What Battle? That in which Macbeth is then engaged? And which is to be brought to issue ere "set of sun" of the day on which "enter Three Witches?"

NORTH.

Let it be so.

SEWARD.

"Upon the heath,
There to meet with Macbeth."

The Witches, then, are to meet with Macbeth on the heath on the Evening of the Battle?

NORTH.

It would seem so.

SEWARD.

They are "posters over sea and land"--and, like whiffs of lightning, can outsail and outride the sound of thunder. But Macbeth and Banquo must have had on their seven-league boots.

NORTH.

They must.

SEWARD.

"A drum, a drum!
Macbeth doth come."

Was he with the advanced guard of the Army?

NORTH.

Not unlikely--attended by his Staff. Generals, on such occasions, usually ride--but perhaps Macbeth and Banquo, being in kilts, preferred walking in their seven-league boots. Thomas Campbell has said, "When the drum of the Scottish Army is heard on the wild heath, and when I fancy it advancing with its bowmen in front, and its spears and banners in the distance, I am always disappointed with Macbeth's entrance at the head of a few kilted actors." The army may have been there--but they did not see the Weirds--nor, I believe, did the Weirds see them. With Macbeth and Banquo alone had they to do: we see no Army at that hour--we hear no drums--we are deaf even to the Great Highland Bagpipe, though He, you may be sure, was not dumb--all "plaided and plumed in their tartan array" the Highland Host ceased to be--like vanished shadows--at the first apparition of "those so withered and so wild in their attire"--not of the earth though on it, and alive somewhere till this day--while generations after generations of mere Fighting Men have been disbanded by dusty Death.

SEWARD.

I wish to know _where_ and _when_ had been the Fighting? The Norwegian--one Sweno, had come down very handsomely at Inchcolm with ten thousand dollars--a sum in those days equal to a million of money in Scotland----

NORTH.

Seward, speak on subjects you understand. What do you know, sir, of the value of money _in_ those days in Scotland?

SEWARD.

But _where_ had been all the Fighting? There would seem to have been two hurley-burleys.

NORTH.

I see your drift, Seward. _Time and Place_, through the First Scene of the First Act, are past finding out. It has been asked--Was Shakspeare ever in Scotland? Never. There is not one word in this Tragedy leading a Scotsman to think so--many showing he never had that happiness. Let him deal with our localities according to his own sovereign will and pleasure, as a prevailing Poet. But let no man point out his dealings with our localities as proofs of his having such knowledge of them as implies personal acquaintance with them gained by a longer or shorter visit in Scotland. The Fights at the beginning seem to be in Fife. The Soldier, there wounded, delivers his relation at the King's Camp before Forres. He has crawled, in half-an-hour, or an hour--or two hours--say seventy, eighty, or a hundred miles, or more--crossing the ridge of the Grampians. Rather smart. I do not know what you think here of Time; but I think that Space is here pretty well done for. The TIME of the Action of Shakspeare's Plays has never yet, so far as I know, been, in any one Play, carefully investigated--never investigated at all; and I now announce to you Three--don't mention it--that I have made discoveries here that will astound the whole world, and demand a New Criticism of the entire Shakspearean Drama.

BULLER.

Let us have one now, I beseech you, sir.

NORTH.

Not now.

BULLER.

No sleep in the Tent till we have it, sir. I do dearly love astounding discoveries--and at this time of day, in astounding discovery in Shakspeare! May it not prove a Mare's Nest!

NORTH.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is a _prodigious_ Tragedy, because in it the Chariot of Nemesis _visibly_ rides in the lurid thunder-sky. Because in it the ill motions of a human soul, which Theologians account for by referring them all to suggestions of Beelzebub, are expounded in visible, mysterious, tangible, terrible shape and symbolisation by the Witches. It is great by the character and person, workings and sufferings, of Lady Macbeth--by the immense poetical power in doing the Witches--mingling for once in the world the Homely-Grotesque and the Sublime--extinguishing the Vulgar in the Sublime--by the bond, whatsoever it be, between Macbeth and his wife--by making us tolerate her and him----

BULLER.

Didn't I say that in my own way, sir? And didn't you reprove me for saying it, and order me out of the Tent?

NORTH.

And what of the Witches?

BULLER.

Had you not stopt me. I say now, sir, that nobody understands Shakspeare's HECATE. Who is SHE? Each of the Three Weirds is = one Witch + one of the Three Fates--therefore the union of two incompatible natures--more than in a Centaur. Oh! Sir! what a hand that was which bound the two into one--inseverably! There they are for ever as the Centaurs _are_. But the gross Witch prevails; which Shakspeare needed for securing belief, and he has it, full. Hecate, sir, comes in to balance the disproportion--she lifts into Mythology--and strengthens the mythological tincture. So does the "Pit of Acheron." That is classical. To the best of my remembrance, no mention of any such Pit in the Old or New Statistical Account of Scotland.

NORTH.

And, in the Incantation Scene, those Apparitions! Mysterious, ominous, picturesque--and self-willed. They are commanded by the Witches, but under a limitation. Their oracular power is their own. They are of unknown orders--as if for the occasion created in Hell.

North.

Talboys, are you asleep--or are you at Chess with your eyes shut?

TALBOYS.

At Chess with my eyes shut. I shall send off my move to my friend Stirling by first post. But my ears were open--and I ask--when did Macbeth first design the murder of Duncan? Does not everybody think--in the moment _after_ the Witches have first accosted and left him? Does not--it may be asked--the whole moral significancy of the Witches disappear, unless the invasion of hell into Macbeth's bosom is first made by their presence and voices?

NORTH.

No. The whole moral significancy of the Witches only then appears, when we are assured that they address themselves only to those who already have been tampering with their conscience. "Good sir! why do you start, and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?" That question put to Macbeth by Banquo turns our eyes to his face--and we see Guilt. There was no start at "Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor,"--but at the word "King" well might he start; for ---- eh?

TALBOYS.

We must look up the Scene.

NORTH.

No need for that. You have it by heart--recite it.

TALBOYS.

"_Macbeth._ So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

_Banquo._ How far is't call'd to Forres?--What are these,
So wither'd, and so wild in their attire;
That look not like the inhabitants of the earth,
And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips:--You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.

_Macbeth._ Speak, if you can;--What are you?

_1st Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!

_2d Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!

_3d Witch._ All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter.

_Banquo._ Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair?--I' the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
You greet with present grace, and great prediction
Of noble having, and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal; to me you speak not:
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not;
Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.

_1st Witch._ Hail!

_2d Witch._ Hail!

_3d Witch._ Hail!

_1st Witch._ Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

_2d Witch._ Not so happy, yet much happier.

_3d Witch._ Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:
So, all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

_1st Witch._ Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!

_Macbeth._ Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:
By Sinel's death, I know, I am thane of Glamis;
But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman; and to be king,
Stands not within the prospect of belief,
No more than to be Cawdor. Say, from whence
You owe this strange intelligence? or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting?--Speak, I charge you.

[_Witches vanish._

_Banquo._ The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them:--Whither are they vanish'd?

_Macbeth._ Into the air, and what seem'd corporal, melted
As breath into the wind. 'Would they had staid!

_Banquo._ Were such things here, as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten of the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner.

_Macbeth._ Your children shall be kings.

_Banquo._ You shall be king.

_Macbeth._ And thane of Cawdor too; went it not so?

_Banquo._ To the self-same tune, and words."

NORTH.

Charles Kemble himself could not have given it more impressively.

BULLER.

You make him blush, sir.

NORTH.

Attend to that "start" of Macbeth, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

He might well start on being told of a sudden, by such seers, that he was hereafter to be King of Scotland.

NORTH.

There was more in the start than that, my lad, else Shakspeare would not have so directed our eyes to it. I say again--it was the start--of a murderer.

TALBOYS.

And what if I say it was not? But I have the candour to confess, that I am not familiar with the starts of murderers--so may possibly be mistaken.

NORTH.

Omit what intervenes--and give us the Soliloquy, Talboys. But before you do so, let me merely remind you that Macbeth's mind, from the little he says in the interim, is manifestly ruminating on something bad, ere he breaks out into Soliloquy.

TALBOYS.

"Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme--I thank you, gentlemen.--
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill--cannot be good:--If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought whose murder is yet but fantastical
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise; and nothing is,
But what is not."

NORTH.

Now, my dear Talboys, you will agree with me in thinking that this first great and pregnant, although brief soliloquy, stands for germ, type, and law of the whole Play, and of its criticism--and for clue to the labyrinth of the Thane's character. "Out of this wood do not desire to go." Out of it I do not expect soon to go. I regard William as a fair Poet and a reasonable Philosopher; but as a supereminent Play-wright. The First Soliloquy _must_ speak the nature of Macbeth, else the Craftsman has no skill in his trade. A Soliloquy _reveals_. That is its function. Therein is the soul heard and seen discoursing with itself--within itself; and if you carry your eye through--up to the First Appearance of Lady Macbeth--this Soliloquy is distinctly the highest point of the Tragedy--the tragic acme--or dome--or pinnacle--therefore of power indefinite, infinite. On this rock I stand, a Colossus ready to be thrown down by--an Earthquake.

BULLER.

Pushed off by--a shove.

NORTH.

Not by a thousand Buller-power. Can you believe, Buller, that the word of the Third Witch, "that shalt be KING Hereafter," _sows_ the murder in Macbeth's heart, and that it springs up, flowers, and fruits with such fearful rapidity.

BULLER.

Why--Yes and No.

NORTH.

Attend, Talboys, to the words "supernatural soliciting." What "supernatural soliciting" to evil is there here? Not a syllable had the Weird Sisters breathed about Murder. But now there is much soliloquising--and Cawdor contemplates himself _objectively_--seen busy upon an elderly gentleman called Duncan--after a fashion that so frightens him _subjectively_--that Banquo cannot help whispering to Rosse and Angus--

"See how our partner's rapt!"

TALBOYS.

"My thought whose murder's yet fantastical." I agree with you, sir, in suspecting he must have thought of the murder.

NORTH.

It is from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters--whom I never set eyes on but once, and then without interchanging a word, leapt momentarily out of this world into that pitch-pot of a pond in Glenco--it is, I say, from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters that I take this view of Macbeth's character. No "sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, tenderness, and every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind," do I ever suffer to pass by without approbation, when coruscating from the character of any well-disposed man, real or imaginary, however unaccountable at other times his conduct may appear to be; but Shakspeare, who knew Macbeth better than any of us, has here assured us that he was in heart a murderer--for how long he does not specify--before he had ever seen a birse on any of the Weird Sisters' beards. But let's be canny. Talboys--pray, what is the meaning of the word "soliciting," "preternatural soliciting," in this Soliloquy?

TALBOYS.

Soliciting, sir, is, in my interpreting, "an appealing, intimate visitation."

NORTH.

Right. The appeal is general--as that _challenge_ of a trumpet--_Fairy Queen_, book III., canto xii., stanza 1--

"Signe of nigh battail or got victorye"--

which, all indeterminate, is notwithstanding _a challenge_--operates, and is felt as such.

TALBOYS.

So a thundering knock at your door--which may be a friend or an enemy. It comes as a summoning. It is more than internal urging and inciting of me by my own thoughts--for mark, sir, the rigour of the word "supernatural," which throws the soliciting off his own soul upon the Weirds. The word is really undetermined to pleasure or pain--the essential thought being that there is a searching or penetrating provocative--a stirring up of that which lay dead and still. Next is the debate whether this intrusive, and pungent, and stimulant assault of a presence and an oracle be good or ill?

NORTH.

Does the hope live in him for a moment that this home-visiting is not ill--that the Spirits are not ill? They have spoken truth so far--ergo, the Third "All hail!" shall be true, too. But more than that--they have spoken _truth_. Ergo, they are not spirits of Evil. That hope dies in the same instant, submerged in the stormy waves which the blast from hell arouses. The infernal revelation glares clear before him--a Crown held out by the hand of Murder. One or two struggles occur. Then the truth stands before him fixed and immutable--"Evil, be thou my good." He is dedicated: and passive to fate. I cannot comprehend this so feeble debate in the mind of a good man--I cannot comprehend any such debate at all in the mind of a previously settled and determined murderer; but I can comprehend and feel its awful significancy in the mind of a man already in a most perilous moral condition.

SEWARD.

The "start" shows that the spark has caught--it has fallen into a tun of gunpowder.

TALBOYS.

The touch of Ithuriel's spear.

NORTH.

May we not say, then, that perhaps the Witches have shown no more than this--the Fascination of Contact between Passion and Opportunity?

SEWARD.

To Philosophy reading the hieroglyphic; but to the People what? To them they are a reality. They seize the imagination with all power. They come like "blasts from hell"--like spirits of Plague, whose breath--whose very sight kills.

"Within them Hell
They bring, and round about them; nor from Hell
One step, no more than from themselves, can fly."

The contagion of their presence, in spite of what we have been saying, almost reconciles my understanding to what it would otherwise revolt from, the _suddenness_ with which the penetration of Macbeth into futurity lays fast hold upon Murder.

BULLER.

Pretty fast--though it gives a twist or two in his handling.

SEWARD.

Lady Macbeth herself corroborates your judgment and Shakspeare's on her husband's character.

TALBOYS.

Does she?

SEWARD.

She does. In that dreadful parley between them on the night of the Murder--she reminds him of a time when

"_Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both_;
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you."

This--mark you, sir--must have been before the Play began!

NORTH.

I have often thought of the words--and Shakspeare himself has so adjusted the action of the Play as that, _since the encounter with the Weirds_, no opportunity had occurred to Macbeth for the "making of time and place." Therefore it must, as you say, have been _before it_. Buller, what say you now?

BULLER.

Gagged.

NORTH.

True, she speaks of his being "full of the milk of human kindness." The words have become favourites with us, who are an affectionate and domestic people--and are lovingly applied to the loving; but Lady Macbeth attached no such profound sense to them as we do; and meant merely that she thought her husband would, after all, much prefer greatness unbought by blood; and, at the time she referred to, it is probable he would; but that she meant no more than that, is plain from the continuation of her praise, in which her ideas get not a little confused; and her words, interpret them as you will, leave nothing "milky" in Macbeth at all. Milk of human kindness, indeed!

TALBOYS.

"What thou would'st highly,
That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false,
And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'dst have great Glamis,
That which cries, 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.'"

_That_ is her Ladyship's notion of the "milk of human kindness"! "I wish somebody would murder Duncan--as for murdering him myself, I am much too tender-hearted and humane for perpetrating such cruelty with my own hand!"

BULLER.

Won't you believe a Wife to be a good judge of her Husband's disposition?

NORTH.

Not Lady Macbeth. For does not she herself tell us, at the same time, that he had formerly schemed how to commit Murder?

BULLER.

Gagged again.

NORTH.

I see no reason for doubting that she was attached to her husband; and Shakspeare loved to put into the lips of women beautiful expressions of love--but he did not intend that we should be deceived thereby in our moral judgements.

SEWARD.

Did this ever occur to you, sir? Macbeth, when hiring the murderers who are to look after Banquo and Fleance, cites a conversation in which he had demonstrated to them that the oppression under which they had long suffered, and which they had supposed to proceed from Macbeth, proceeded really from Banquo? My firm belief is that it proceeded from Macbeth--that their suspicion was right--that Macbeth is misleading them--and that Shakspeare means you to apprehend this. But why should Macbeth have oppressed his inferiors, unless he had been--long since--of a tyrannical nature? He oppresses his inferiors--they are sickened and angered with the world--by his oppression--he tells them 'twas not he but another who had oppressed them--and that other--at his instigation--they willingly murder. An ugly affair altogether.

NORTH.

Very. But let us keep to the First Act--and see what a hypocrite Macbeth has so very soon become--what a savage assassin! He has just followed up his Soliloquy with these significant lines--

"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 pains
Are registered where every day I turn
The 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' part
Is to receive our duties; and our duties
Are to your throne and state, children, and servants;
Which do but what they should by doing everything
Safe 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 themselves
In 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 upon
Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter,
The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must
Not, unaccompanied, invest him only,
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On 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 step
On 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 a _tendresse_ towards 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 at _home_, 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, never
Shall 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 read strange 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 coming
Must be provided for; and you shall put
This 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 her _that 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 some place 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 walking _about_ with 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 be
What 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 seem
To have thee crown'd withal."

BULLER.

Grand indeed.

NORTH.

It _is_ grand 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 persuades _that_ in 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.