Chapter XXI: Part 21

One of the most marked traits in James's political character was his eagerness to bring about and preserve peace with Spain. While yet on the way to London, he ordered a cessation of all hostilities, and by 1604 he had concluded peace. One of the reasons for his at once assuming a hostile attitude towards Raleigh was that he was well acquainted with Raleigh's hatred of Spain and disinclination to peace with that country; and Raleigh increased the King's displeasure during the following months by constantly urging upon him a war policy. But there were other and less impersonal reasons for the King's hostility. Raleigh had been Elizabeth's favourite, and had in 1601 presented to her a state-paper drawn up by himself on "The Dangers of a Spanish Faction in Scotland," the rumoured contents of which had so alarmed James that he offered Elizabeth the assistance of three thousand Scottish troops against Spain. Raleigh had been an opponent of Essex, who had sought support from James and attached himself to his fortunes. And what was worse, he had an enemy, though he scarcely knew it, in the person of a man who had opposed Essex much more strongly than he, but who had, even before the Queen's death, assured James of his absolute devotion. This was Robert Cecil, who feared Raleigh's ambition and ability.

Raleigh was in the West of England when the Queen died, and could not at once join in the great rush northwards to meet King James, which emptied London of all its nobility. By the time he started, with a large retinue, to wait on the King, he had already received a kind of command not to do so, in the shape of one of the orders dispensing the recipient from attendance on the King, which James had sent in blank to Cecil, to be filled in with the names of those whom Cecil thought he should keep at a distance. James received Raleigh ungraciously, and at once told him, with a bad pun on his name, that he had been prejudiced against him: "On my soul, man, I have heard but _rawly_ of thee." A few weeks later he was deprived (though not without compensation) of the office of Captain of the Guard, which was given to a Scotchman, Sir Thomas Erskine; and within the same month he was ordered immediately to give up to the Bishop of Durham the town palace of that See, which he had occupied, and on which he had spent great sums of money.

At last, one day in July 1603, as he was standing ready to ride out with the King, he was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of high treason. This was the beginning of a long series of base proceedings against this eminent man, who had deserved so well of his country. He was a prisoner in the Tower for thirteen years, and the persecution ended only with the judicial murder which was committed when, in 1618, after making the most beautiful speech ever heard from the scaffold, he laid his head on the block with incomparable courage and calm dignity.

It is difficult for us to-day to understand how a man of Raleigh's worth could at that time be the best-hated man in England. For us he is simply, as Gardiner has expressed it, "the man who had more genius than all the Privy Council put together;" or, as Gosse has called him, "the figure which takes the same place in the field of action which Shakespeare takes in that of imagination and Bacon in that of thought." But that he was generally hated at the time of his imprisonment is certain.

Many disliked him as the enemy of Essex. It was said that in Essex's last hours Raleigh had jeered at him. Raleigh himself wrote in 1618:--

"It is said I was a persecutor of my Lord of Essex; that I
puffed out tobacco in disdain when he was on the scaffold.
But I take God to witness I shed tears for him when he died.
I confess I was of a contrary faction, but I knew he was a
noble gentleman. Those that set me up against him [evidently
Cecil] did afterwards set themselves against me."

But what mattered the falseness of the accusation if it was believed? And there were other, much less reasonable, grounds of hatred. From one of Raleigh's letters, written in the last days of Queen Elizabeth, we learn that the tavern-keepers throughout the country held him responsible for a tax imposed on them, which was in fact due solely to the Queen's rapacity. In this letter he prays Cecil to prevail on Elizabeth to remit the tax, for, says he: "I cannot live, nor show my face out of my doors, without it, nor dare ride through the towns where these taverners dwell." It seems as if his very greatness had marked him out for universal hatred; and, being conscious of his worth, he would not stoop to a truckling policy.

There was much that was popularly winning about the tall, vigorous, rather large-boned Raleigh, with his bright complexion and his open expression; but, like a true son of the Renaissance, he challenged dislike by his pride and magnificence. His dress was always splendid, and he loved, like a Persian Shah or Indian Rajah of our day, to cover himself, down to his shoes, with the most precious jewels. When he was arrested in 1603, he had gems to the value of £4000 (about £20,000 in modern money) on his breast, and when he was thrown into prison for the last time in 1618, his pockets were found full of jewels and golden ornaments which he had hastily stripped off his dress.

He was worshipped by those who had served under him; they valued his qualities of heart as well as his energy and intellect. But the crowd, whom he treated with disdain, and the courtiers and statesmen with whom he had competed for Elizabeth's favour, saw nothing in him but matchless effrontery and unscrupulousness. In spite of the favour he enjoyed, his rivals prevented his ever attaining any of the highest posts. On those naval expeditions in which he most distinguished himself, his place was always second in command. He was baulked even in the desire which he cherished during Elizabeth's later years for a place in the Privy Council.

He was now over fifty, and aged before his time. His untrustworthy friend, Lord Cobham, was suspected of complicity in Watson's Catholic plot; and this suspicion extended to Raleigh, who was thought to have been a party to intrigues for the dethronement of James in favour of his kinswoman, Arabella Stuart. He was tried for high treason; and as the law then stood in England, any man accused of such a crime was as good as lost, however innocent he might be. "A century later," says Mr. Gardiner, "Raleigh might well have smiled at the evidence which was brought against him." Then the law was as cruel as it was unjust. The accused was considered guilty until he proved his innocence; no advocate was allowed to plead his cause; unprepared, at a moment's notice, he had to refute charges which had been carefully accumulated and marshalled against him during a long period. That a man should be suspected of such an enormity as desiring to bring Spanish armies on to the free soil of England was enough to deprive him at once of all sympathy. Little wonder that Raleigh, a few days after his indictment, tried to commit suicide. His famous letter to his wife, written before the attempt, gives consummate expression to a great man's despair in face of a destiny which he does not fear, yet cannot master.

While this tragedy was being enacted in the Tower, London was making magnificent preparations for the state entrance of King James and Queen Anne into their new capital. Seven beautiful triumphal arches were erected; "England's Cæsar," as Henry Petowe in his coronation ode with some little exaggeration entitled James, was exalted and glorified by the poets of the day with as great enthusiasm as though his exploits had already rivalled those of "mightiest Julius."

Henry Chettle wrote _The Shepheard's Spring Song for the Entertainment of King James, our most potent Sovereign_; Samuel Daniel, _A Panegyrike Congratulatorie to the Kings Majestie_; Michael Drayton, _To the Majestie of King James, a Gratulatorie Poem._ The actor Thomas Greene composed _A Poet's Vision and a Prince's Glorie. Dedicated to the high and mightie Prince James, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland_; and scores of other poets lifted up their voices in song. Daniel wrote a masque which was acted at Hampton Court; Dekker, a description of the King's "Triumphant Passage," with poetic dialogues; Ben Jonson, a similar description; and Drayton, a _Pæan Triumphall_. Ben Jonson also produced a masque called _Penates_, and another entitled _The Masque of Blackness_; while a host of lesser lights wrote poems in the same style. The unobtrusive, mildly flattering allusions to James, which we have found and shall presently find in Shakespeare's plays of this period, produce an exceedingly feeble, almost imperceptible effect amid this storm of adulation. To have omitted them altogether, or to have made them in the slightest degree less deferential, would have been gratuitously and indefensibly churlish, in view of the favour which James had made haste to extend to Shakespeare's company.

It is most interesting to-day to read the programme of the royal procession from the Tower to Whitehall in 1604, in which all the dignitaries of the realm took part, and all the privileged classes, court, nobility, clergy, royal guard, were fully represented.

In the middle of the enormous procession rides the King under a canopy. Immediately before him, the dukes, marquises, eldest sons of dukes, earls, &c. &c. Immediately behind him comes the Queen, and after her all the first ladies of the kingdom--duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, viscountesses, &c. Among the ladies mentioned by name is Lady Rich, with the note, "by especiall comandement." At the foot of the page, another note runs thus: "To go as a daughter to Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex." James desired to honour in her the memory of her ill-fated brother. Among the lawyers in the procession Sir Francis Bacon has a place of honour; he is described as "the King's Counsell at Lawe." Bacon's learning and obsequious pliancy, James's pedantry and monarchical arrogance, quickly brought these two together. But among "His Majesty's Servants," at the very head of the procession, immediately after the heralds and the Prince's and Queen's men-in-waiting, William Shakespeare was no doubt to be seen, dressed in a suit of red cloth, which the court accounts show to have been provided for him.

James was a great lover of the play, but Scotland had neither drama nor actors of her own. Not long before this, in 1599; he had vigorously opposed the resolution of his Presbyterian Council to forbid performances by English actors.

As early as May 17, 1603, he had granted the patent _Pro Laurentio Fletcher et Willielmo Shakespeare et aliis_, which promoted the Lord Chamberlain's company to be the King's own actors.

The fact that Lawrence Fletcher is named first gives us a clue to the reasons for this proceeding on the part of the King. In the records of the Town Council of Aberdeen for October 1601, there is an entry to the effect that, by special recommendation of the King, a gratuity was paid to a company of players for their performances in the town, and that the freedom of the city was conferred on one of these actors, Lawrence Fletcher. There can be hardly any doubt that Charles Knight, in spite of Elze's objections in his _Essays on Shakespeare_, is correct in his opinion that this Fletcher was an Englishman, and that he was closely connected with Shakespeare; for the actor Augustine Philipps, who, in 1605, bequeaths thirty shillings in gold to his "fellowe" William Shakespeare, likewise bequeaths twenty shillings to his "fellowe" Lawrence Fletcher.

James arrived in London on the 7th of May 1603, removed to Greenwich on account of the plague on the 13th, and, as already mentioned, dated the patent from there on the 17th. It can scarcely be supposed that, in so short a space of time, the Lord Chamberlain's men should not only have played before James, but so powerfully impressed him that he at once advanced them to be his own company. He must evidently have known them before; perhaps he already, as King of Scotland, had some of them in his service. This supposition is supported by the fact that, as we have seen, some members of Shakespeare's company were in Aberdeen in the autumn of 1601. It is even probable that Shakespeare himself was in Scotland with his comrades. In _Macbeth_, he has altered the meadow-land, which Holinshed represents as lying around Inverness, into the heath which is really characteristic of the district; and the whole play, with its numerous allusions to Scottish affairs, bears the impress of having been conceived on Scottish soil. Possibly Shakespeare's thoughts were hovering round the Scottish tragedy while he passed along in the procession with the royal arms on his red dress.[1]

[1] S. R. Gardiner: _History of England_, vol. i. Thomas Milner: _The History of England_. Alfred Stern: _Geschichte der Revolution in England_. Gosse: _Raleigh._ J. Nicols: _The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First_, vol. i. Disraeli: _An Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James the First_. _Dictionary of National Biography: James, Anne_. Nathan Drake: _Shakespeare and his Times_.

XXII

_MACBETH--MACBETH AND HAMLET--DIFFICULTIES ARISING FROM THE STATE OF THE TEXT_

Dowden somewhere remarks that if Shakespeare had died at the age of forty, posterity would have said that this was certainly a great loss, but would have found comfort in the thought that _Hamlet_ marked the zenith of his productive power--he could hardly have written another such masterpiece.

And now follow in rapid succession _Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra_, and the rest. _Hamlet_ was not the conclusion of a career; _Hamlet_ was the spring-board from which Shakespeare leaped forth into a whole new world of mystery and awe. Dowden has happily compared the tragic figures that glide one after the other across his field of vision between 1604 and 1610 with the bloody and threatening apparitions that pass before Macbeth in the witches' cavern.

The natural tendency of his youth had been to see good everywhere. He had even felt, with his King Henry, that "there is some soul of goodness in things evil." Now, when the misery of life, the problem of evil, presented itself to his inward eye, it was especially the potency of wickedness that impressed him as strange and terrible. We have seen him brooding over it in _Hamlet_ and _Measure for Measure_. He had of course recognized it before, and represented it on the grandest scale; but in _Richard III_. the main emphasis is still laid on outward history; Richard is the same man from his first appearance to his last. What now fascinates Shakespeare is to show how the man into whose veins evil has injected some drops of its poison, becomes bloated, gangrened, foredoomed to self-destruction or annihilation, like Macbeth, Othello, Lear. Lady Macbeth's ambition, Iago's malice, the daughters' ingratitude, lead, step by step, to irresistible, ever-increasing calamity.

It is my conviction that _Macbeth_ was the first of these subjects which Shakespeare took in hand. All we know with certainty, indeed, is that the play was acted at the Globe Theatre in 1610. Dr. Simon Forman, in his _Booke of Plaies and Notes thereon_, gave a detailed account of a performance of it at which he was present on the 20th of April of this year. But in the comedy of _The Puritan_, dating from 1607, we find an unmistakable allusion to Banquo's ghost; and the lines in the play itself (iv. I)--

"And some I see
That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry,"

--a reference to the union of England and Scotland, and their conjunction with Ireland under James--would have had little effect unless spoken from the stage shortly after the event. As James was proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland on the 20th of October 1604, we may conclude that _Macbeth_ was not produced later than 1604-1605.

At James's accession a breath of Scottish air blew over England; we feel it in _Macbeth_. The scene of the tragedy is laid in the country from which the new king came, and most true to nature is the reproduction in this dark drama of Scotland's forests and heaths and castles, her passions and her poetry.

There is much to indicate that an unbroken train of thought led Shakespeare from _Hamlet_ to _Macbeth_. The personality of Macbeth is a sort of counterpart to that of Hamlet. The Danish prince's nature is passionate, but refined and thoughtful. Before the deed of vengeance which is imposed upon him he is restless, self-reproachful, and self-tormenting; but he never betrays the slightest remorse for a murder once committed, though he kills four persons before he stabs the King. The Scottish thane is the rough, blunt soldier, the man of action. He takes little time for deliberation before he strikes; but immediately after the murder he is attacked by hallucinations both of sight and hearing, and is hounded on, wild and vacillating and frenzied, from crime to crime. He stifles his self-reproaches and falls at last, after defending himself with the hopeless fury of the "bear tied to the stake."

Hamlet says:--

"And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

Macbeth, on the contrary, declares (iv. I)--

"From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand."

They stand at opposite poles--Hamlet, the dreamer; Macbeth, the captain, "Bellona's bridegroom." Hamlet has a superabundance of culture and of intellectual power. His strength is of the kind that wears a mask; he is a master in the art of dissimulation. Macbeth is unsophisticated to the point of clumsiness, betraying himself when he tries to deceive. His wife has to beg him not to show a troubled countenance, but to "sleek o'er his rugged looks."

Hamlet is the born aristocrat: very proud, keenly alive to his worth, very self-critical--too self-critical to be ambitious in the common acceptation of the word. To Macbeth, on the contrary, a sounding title is honour, and a wreath on the head, a crown on the brow, greatness. When the Witches on the heath, and another witch, his wife in the castle, have held up before his eyes the glory of the crown and the power of the sceptre, he has found his great goal--a tangible prize in this life, for which he is willing to risk his welfare in "the life to come." Whilst Hamlet, with his hereditary right, hardly gives a thought to the throne of which he has been robbed, Macbeth murders his king, his benefactor, his guest, that he may plunder him and his sons of a chair with a purple canopy.

And yet there is a certain resemblance between Macbeth and Hamlet. One feels that the two tragedies must have been written close upon each other. In his first monologue (i. 7) Macbeth stands hesitating with Hamlet-like misgivings:--

"If it were done, when't is done, then't were well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,--
We'd jump the life to come.--But in these cases
We still have judgment here."

Hamlet says: Were we sure that there is no future life, we should seek death. Macbeth thinks: Did we not know that judgment would come upon us here, we should care little about the life to come. There is a kinship in these contradictory reflections. But Macbeth is not hindered by his cogitations. He pricks the sides of his intent, as he says, with the spur of ambition, well knowing that it will o'erleap itself and fall. He cannot resist when he is goaded onward by a being superior to himself, a woman.

Like Hamlet, he has imagination, but of a more timorous and visionary cast. It is through no peculiar faculty in Hamlet that he sees his father's ghost; others had seen it before him and see it with him. Macbeth constantly sees apparitions that no one else sees, and hears voices that are inaudible to others.

When he has resolved on the king's death he sees a dagger in the air:--

"Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:--
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"

Directly after the murder he has an illusion of hearing:--

"Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep.'"

And, very significantly, Macbeth hears this same voice give him the different titles which are his pride:--

"Still it cried, 'Sleep no more!' to all the house:
'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!'"

Yet another parallel shows the kinship between the Danish and the Scottish tragedy. It is in these dramas alone that the dead leave their graves and reappear on the scene of life; in them alone a breath from the spirit-world reaches the atmosphere of the living. There is no trace of the supernatural either in _Othello_ or in _King Lear_.

No more here than in _Hamlet_ are we to understand by the introduction of supernatural elements that an independently working superhuman power actively interferes in human life; these elements are transparent symbols. Nevertheless the supernatural beings that make their appearance are not to be taken as mere illusions; they are distinctly conceived as having a real existence outside the sphere of hallucination. As in _Hamlet_, the Ghost is not seen by the prince alone, so in _Macbeth_ it is not only Macbeth himself who sees the Witches; they even appear with their queen, Hecate, when there is no one to see them except the spectators of the play.

It must not be forgotten that this whole spirit--and witchworld meant something quite different to Shakespeare's contemporaries from what it means to us. We cannot even be absolutely certain that Shakespeare himself did not believe in the possible existence of such beings. Great poets have seldom been consistent in their incredulity--even Holberg believed that he had seen a ghost. But Shakespeare's own attitude of mind matters less than that of the public for whom he wrote.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the English people still believed in a great variety of evil spirits, who disturbed the order of nature, produced storms by land and sea, foreboded calamities and death, disseminated plague and famine. They were for the most part pictured as old, wrinkled women, who brewed all kinds of frightful enormities in hellish cauldrons; and when such beldams were thought to have been detected, the law took vengeance on them with fire and sword. In a sermon preached in 1588, Bishop Jewel appealed to Elizabeth to take strong measures against wizards and witches. Some years later, one Mrs. Dyer was accused of witchcraft for no other reason than that toothache had for some nights prevented the Queen from sleeping. In the small town of St. Osees in Essex alone, seventy or eighty witches were burnt. In a book called "The Discoverie of Witchcraft," published in 1584, Reginald Scott refuted the doctrine of sorcery and magic with wonderful clearness and liberal-mindedness; but his voice was lost in the chorus of the superstitious. King James himself was one of the most prominent champions of superstition. He was present in person at the trial by torture of two hundred witches who were burnt for occasioning the storm which prevented his bride's crossing to Scotland. Many of them confessed to having ridden through the air on broomsticks or invisible chariots drawn by snails, and admitted that they were able to make themselves invisible--an art of which they, strangely enough, did not avail themselves to escape the law. In 1597 James himself produced in his _Dæmonologie_ a kind of handbook or textbook of witchcraft in all its developments, and in 1598 he caused no fewer than 600 old women to be burnt. In the Parliament of 1604 a bill against sorcery was brought in by the Government and passed.

Shakespeare produced wonderful effects in _Hamlet_ by drawing on this faith in spirits; the apparition on the castle platform is sublime in its way, though the speech of the Ghost is far too long. Now, in _Macbeth_, with the Witches' meeting, he strikes the keynote of the drama at the very outset, as surely as with a tuning-fork; and wherever the Witches reappear the same note recurs. But still more admirable, both psychologically and scenically, is the scene in which Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost sitting in his own seat at the banquet-table. The words run thus:--

"_Rosse_. Please it your highness
To grace us with your royal company?
_Macbeth_. The table's full.
_Lennox_. Here is a place reserv'd, sir.
_Macb_. Where?
_Len_. Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness?
_Macb_. Which of you have done this?
_Lords_. What, my good lord?
_Macb._ Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
Thy gory locks at me."

The grandeur, depth, and extraordinary dramatic and theatrical effect of this passage are almost unequalled in the history of the drama.

The same may be said of well-nigh the whole outline of this tragedy--from a dramatic and theatrical point of view it is beyond all praise. The Witches on the heath, the scene before the murder of Duncan, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth--so potent is the effect of these and other episodes that they are burnt for ever on the spectator's memory.

No wonder that _Macbeth_ has become in later times Shakespeare's most popular tragedy--his typical one, appreciated even by those who, except in this instance, have not been able to value him as he deserves. Not one of his other dramas is so simple in composition as this, no other keeps like this to a single plane. There is no desultoriness or halting in the action as in _Hamlet_, no double action as in _King Lear_. All is quite simple and according to rule: the snowball is set rolling and becomes the avalanche. And although there are gaps in it on account of the defective text, and although there may here and there be ambiguities--in the character of Lady Macbeth, for instance--yet there is nothing enigmatic, there are no riddles to perplex us. Nothing lies concealed between the lines; all is grand and clear--grandeur and clearness itself.

And yet I confess that this play seems to me one of Shakespeare's less interesting efforts; not from the artistic, but from the purely human point of view. It is a rich, highly moral melodrama; but only at occasional points in it do I feel the beating of Shakespeare's heart.

My comparative coolness of feeling towards _Macbeth_ may possibly be due in a considerable degree to the shamefully mutilated form in which this tragedy has been handed down to us. Who knows what it may have been when it came from Shakespeare's own hand! The text we possess, which was not printed till long after the poet's death, is clipped, pruned, and compressed for acting purposes. We can feel distinctly where the gaps occur, but that is of no avail.

The abnormal shortness of the play is in itself an indication of what has happened. In spite of its wealth of incident, it is distinctly Shakespeare's shortest work. There are 3924 lines in _Hamlet_, 3599 in _Richard III_., &c., &c., while in _Macbeth_ there are only 1993.

It is plain, moreover, that the structure of the piece has been tampered with. The dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff (iv. 3), which, strictly speaking, must be called superfluous from the dramatic point of view, is so long as to form about an eighth part of the whole tragedy. It may be presumed that the other scenes originally stood in some sort of proportion to this; for there is no other instance in Shakespeare's work of a similar disproportion.

In certain places omissions are distinctly felt. Lady Macbeth (i. 5) proposes to her husband that he shall murder Duncan. He gives no answer to this. In the next scene the King arrives. In the next again, Macbeth's deliberations as to whether or not he is to commit the murder are all over, and he is only thinking how it can be done with impunity. When he wavers, and says to his wife, "I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none," her answer shows how much is wanting here:--

"When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both."

We spectators or readers know nothing of all this. There has not even been time for the shortest conversation between husband and wife.

Shakespeare took the material for his tragedy from the same source on which he drew for all his English histories--Holinshed's Chronicle to wit. In this case Holinshed, at no time a trustworthy historian, simply reproduced a passage of Hector Boece's _Scotorum Historiæ_. Macdonwald's rebellion and Sweno's Viking invasion are fables; Banquo and Fleance, as founders of the race of Stuart, are inventions of the chroniclers. There was a blood-feud between the house of Duncan and the house of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, whose real name was Gruoch, was the grand-daughter of a king who had been killed by Malcolm II., Duncan's grandfather. Her first husband had been burnt in his castle with fifty friends. Her only brother was killed by Malcolm's order. Macbeth's father also, Finlegh or Finley, had been killed in a contest with Malcolm. Therefore they both had the right to a blood-revenge on Duncan. Nor did Macbeth sin against the laws of hospitality in taking Duncan's life. He attacked and killed him in the open field. It is further to be observed that by the Scottish laws of succession he had a better right to the throne than Duncan. After having seized the throne he ruled firmly and justly. There is a quite adequate psychological basis for the real facts of the year 1040, though it is much simpler than that underlying the imaginary events of Holinshed's Chronicle, which form the subject of the tragedy.

Shakespeare on the whole follows Holinshed with great exactitude, but diverges from him in one or two particulars. According to the Chronicle, Banquo was accessory to the murder of Duncan; Shakespeare alters this in order to give King James a progenitor of unblemished reputation. Instead of using the account of the murder which is given in the Chronicle, Shakespeare takes and applies to Duncan's case all the particulars of the murder of King Duffe, Lady Macbeth's grandfather, as committed by the captain of the castle of Forres, who "being the more kindled in wrath by the words of his wife, determined to follow her advice in the execution of so heinous an act." It is hardly necessary to remark that the finest parts of the drama, such as the appearance of Banquo's ghost and Lady Macbeth's sleep-walking scene, are due to Shakespeare alone.

Some sensation was made in the year 1778 by the discovery of the manuscript of _The Witch_, a play by Shakespeare's contemporary Middleton, containing in their entirety two songs which are only indicated in _Macbeth_ by the quotation of their first lines. These are "Come away, come away" (iii. 5), and "Black spirits, &c." (iv. I). A very idle dispute arose as to whether Shakespeare had here made use of Middleton or Middleton of Shakespeare. The latter is certainly the more probable assumption, if we must assume either to have borrowed from the other. It is likely enough, however, that single lines of the lesser poet have here and there been interpolated in the witch scenes of Shakespeare's text as contained in the Folio edition.

Shakespeare has employed in the treatment of this subject a style that suits it--vehement to violence, compressed to congestion--figures treading upon each other's heels, while general philosophic reflections occur but rarely. It is a style eminently fitted to express and to awaken terror; its tone is not altered, but only softened, even in the painfully touching conversation between Lady Macduff and her little son. It is sustained throughout with only one break--the excellent burlesque monologue of the Porter.

The play centres entirely round the two chief characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; in their minds the essential action takes place. The other personages are only outlined.

The Witches' song, with which the tragedy opens, ends with that admirable line, in which ugliness and beauty are confounded:--

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair."

And it is significant that Macbeth, who has not heard this refrain, recalls it in his very first speech:--

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

It seems as if these words were ringing in his ears; and this foreshadows the mysterious bond between him and the Witches. Many of these delicate consonances and contrasts may be noted in the speeches of this tragedy.

After Lady Macbeth, who is introduced to the spectator already perfected in wickedness, has said to herself (i. 5)--

"The raven himself is hoarse,
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements,"

the next scene opens serenely with the charming pictures of the following dialogue:--

"_Duncan_. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
_Banquo_. This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd
The air is delicate."

Then the poet immediately plunges anew into the study of this lean, slight, hard woman, consumed by lust of power and splendor. Though by no means the impassive murderess she fain would be, she yet goads her husband, by the force of her far stronger will, to commit the crime which she declares he has promised her:--

"I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums.
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this."

So coarsely callous is she! And yet she is less hardened than she would make herself out to be; for when, just after this, she has laid the daggers ready for her husband, she says:--

"Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done't."

The absolutely masterly, thrilling scene between husband and wife after the murder, is followed, in horrible, humoristic contrast, by the fantastic interlude of the Porter. He conceives himself to be keeping watch at hell-gate, and admitting, amongst others, an equivocating Jesuit, with his casuistry and _reservatio mentalis_; and his soliloquy is followed by a dialogue with Macduff on the influence of drink upon erotic inclination and capacity. It is well known that Schiller, in accordance with classical prejudices, omitted the monologue in his translation, and replaced it by a pious morning-song. What seems more remarkable is that an English poet like Coleridge should have found its effect disturbing and considered it spurious. Without exactly ranking with Shakespeare's best low-comedy interludes, it affords a highly effective contrast to what goes before and what follows, and is really an invaluable and indispensable ingredient in the tragedy. A short break in the action was required at this point, to give Macbeth and his wife time to dress themselves in their nightclothes; and what interruption could be more effective than the knocking at the castle gate, which makes them both thrill with terror, and gives occasion to the Porter episode?

Another of the gems of the play is the scene (iv. 2) between Lady Macduff and her wise little son, before the murderers come and kill them both. All the witty child's sayings are interesting, and the mother's bitterly pessimistic speeches are not only wonderfully characteristic of her, but also of the poet's own present frame of mind:--

"Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world, where, to do harm,
Is often laudable; to do good, sometime,
Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas!
Do I put up that womanly defence,
To say I have done no harm?"

Equally despairing is Macduff's ejaculation when he learns of the slaughter in his home: "Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?" The beginning of this lengthy scene (iv. 3), with its endless dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff, which Shakespeare has transcribed literally from his Holinshed, is weak and flagging. It presents hardly any point of interest except the far-fetched account of King Edward the Confessor's power of curing the king's evil, evidently dragged in for the sake of paying King James a compliment which the poet knew he would value, in the lines--

"'Tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction."

But the close of the scene is admirable, when Rosse breaks the news to Macduff of the attack on his castle and the massacre of his family:--

"_Macd_. My children too?
_Rosse_. Wife, children, servants, all
That could be found.
_Macd_. And I must be from thence!
My wife kill'd too?
_Rosse_ I have said.
_Mal_. Be comforted:
Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.
_Macd_. He has no children.--All my pretty ones?
Did you say, all?--O hell-kite!--All?
What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
At one fell swoop?
_Mai_. Dispute it like a man.
_Macd_. I shall do so;
But I must also feel it as a man:
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.--_Did Heaven look on,_
_And would not take their part?_"

The voice of revolt makes itself heard in these words, the same voice that sounds later through the despairing philosophy of _King Lear_: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods: They kill us for their sport." But immediately afterwards Macduff falls back on the traditional sentiment:--

"Sinful Macduff!
They are all struck for thee. Naught that I am,
Not for their own demerits, but for mine,
Fell slaughter on their souls."

Among these horror-stricken speeches there is one in particular that gives matter for reflection--Macduff's cry, "He has no children." At the close of the third part of _Henry VI._ there is a similar exclamation of quite different import. There, when King Edward, Gloucester, and Clarence have stabbed Margaret of Anjou's son before her eyes, she says:--

"You have no children, butchers! if you had,
The thought of them would have stirr'd up remorse."

Many interpreters have attributed the same sense to Macduff's cry of agony; but their mistake is plain; for the context undeniably shows that the one thought of the now childless father is the impossibility of an adequate revenge.

But there is another noticeable point about this speech, "He has no children," which is, that elsewhere we are led to believe that he has children. Lady Macbeth says, "I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;" and we have neither learned that these children are dead nor that they were born of an earlier marriage. Shakespeare never mentions the former marriage of the historical Lady Macbeth. Furthermore, not only does she talk of children, but Macbeth himself seems to allude to sons. He says (iii. I):--

"Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding. If't be so,
For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind."

If he had no children of his own, the last line is meaningless. Had Shakespeare forgotten these earlier speeches when he wrote that ejaculation of Macduff's? It is improbable; and, in any case, they must have been constantly brought to his mind again at rehearsals and performances of the play. We have here one of the difficulties which would be solved if we were in possession of a complete and authentic text.

The crown which the Witches promised to Macbeth soon becomes his fixed idea. He murders his king--and sleep. He slays, and sees the slain for ever before him. All that stand between him and his ambition are cut down, and afterwards raise their bloody heads as bodeful visions on his path. He turns Scotland into one great charnel-house. His mind is "full of scorpions;" he is sick with the smell of all the blood he has shed. At last life and death become indifferent to him. When, on the day of battle, the tidings of his wife's death are brought to him, he speaks those profound words in which Shakespeare has embodied a whole melancholy life-philosophy:--

"She should have died hereafter:
There would have been a time for such a word.--
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

This is the final result arrived at by Macbeth, the man who staked all to win power and glory. Without any underlining on the part of the poet, a speech like this embodies an absolute moral lesson. We feel its value all the more strongly, as Shakespeare's study of humanity in other parts of this play does not seem to have been totally unbiassed, but rather influenced by the moral impression which he desired to produce on the audience. The drama is even a little marred by the constant insistence on the _fabula docet_, the recurrent insinuation that "such is the consequence of grasping at power by the aid of crime." Macbeth, not by nature a bad man, might in the drama, as in real life, have tried to reconcile the people to that crime, which, after all, he had reluctantly committed, by making use of his power to rule well. The moral purport of the play excludes this possibility. The ice-cold, stony Lady Macbeth might be conceived as taking the consequences of her counsel and action as calmly as the high-born Locustas of the Renaissance, Catherine de' Medici, or the Countess of Somerset. But in this case we should have missed the moral lesson conveyed by her ruin, and, what would have been worse, the incomparable sleep-walking scene, which--whether it be perfectly motived or not--shows us in the most admirable manner how the sting of an evil conscience, even though it may be blunted by day, is sharpened again at night, and robs the guilty one of sleep and health.

In dealing with the plays immediately preceding _Macbeth_, we observed that Shakespeare at this period frequently gives a formal exposition of the moral to be drawn from his scenes. Possibly there is some connection between this tendency of his and the steadily-growing animosity of public opinion to the stage. In the year 1606, an edict was issued absolutely prohibiting the utterance of the name of God on the profane boards of the theatre. Not even a harmless oath was to be permitted. In view of the state of feeling which produced such an Act of Parliament, it must have been of vital importance to the tragic poet to prove as clearly as possible the strictly moral character of his works.

XXIII

_OTHELLO--THE CHARACTER AND SIGNIFICANCE OF IAGO_

When we consider how _Macbeth_ explains life's tragedy as the result of a union of brutality and malignity, or rather of brutality envenomed by malignity, we feel that the step from this to _Othello_ is not a long one. But in _Macbeth_ the treatment of life's tragedy as a whole, of wickedness as a factor in human affairs, lacks firmness, and is not in the great style.

In a very much grander and firmer style do we find the same subject treated in _Othello_.

_Othello_ is, in the popular conception, simply the tragedy of jealousy, as _Macbeth_ is simply the tragedy of ambition. Naïve readers and critics fancy in their innocence that Shakespeare, at a certain period of his life, determined to study one or two interesting and dangerous passions, and to put us on our guard against them. Following out this intention, he wrote a play on ambition and its dangers, and another of the same kind on jealousy and all the evils that attend it. But that is not how things happen in the inner life of a creative spirit. A poet does not write exercises on a given subject. His activity is not the result of determination or choice. A nerve in him is touched, vibrates, and reacts.

What Shakespeare here attempts to realise is neither jealousy nor credulity, but simply and solely the tragedy of life; whence does it arise? what are its causes? what its laws?

He was deeply impressed with the power and significance of evil. _Othello_ is much less a study of jealousy than a new and more powerful study of wickedness in its might. The umbilical cord that connects the master with his work leads, not to the character of Othello, but to that of Iago.

Simple-minded critics have been of opinion that Shakespeare constructed Iago on the lines of the historic Richard III.--that is to say, found him in literature, in the pages of a chronicler.

Believe me, Shakespeare met Iago in his own life, saw portions and aspects of him on every hand throughout his manhood, encountered him piecemeal, as it were, on his daily path, till one fine day, when he thoroughly felt and understood what malignant cleverness and baseness can effect, he melted down all these fragments, and out of them cast this figure.

Iago--there is more of the grand manner in this figure than in the whole of _Macbeth_. Iago--there is more depth, more penetrating knowledge of human nature in this one character than in the whole of _Macbeth_. Iago is the very embodiment of the grand manner.

He is not the principle of evil, not an old-fashioned, stupid devil; nor a Miltonic devil, who loves independence and has invented firearms; nor a Goethe's Mephistopheles, who talks cynicism, makes himself indispensable, and is generally in the right. Neither has he the magnificently foolhardy wickedness of a Cæsar Borgia, who lives his life in open defiance and reckless atrocity.

Iago has no other aim than his own advantage. It is the circumstance that not he, but Cassio, has been appointed second in command to Othello, which first sets his craft to work on subtle combinations. He coveted this post, and he will stick at nothing in order to win it. In the meantime, he takes advantage of every opportunity of profit that offers itself; he does not hesitate to fool Roderigo out of his money and his jewels. He is always masked in falsehood and hypocrisy; and the mask he has chosen is the most impenetrable one, that of rough outspokenness, the straightforward, honest bluntness of the soldier who does not care what others think or say of him. He never flatters Othello or Desdemona, or even Roderigo. He is the free-spoken, honest friend.

He does not seek his own advantage without side-glances at others. He is mischievousness personified. He does evil for the pleasure of hurting, and takes active delight in the adversity and anguish of others. He is that eternal envy which merit or success in others never fails to irritate--not the petty envy which is content with coveting another's honours or possessions, or with holding itself more deserving of another's good fortune. No; he is an ideal personification. He is blear-eyed rancour itself, figuring as a great power--nay, as _the_ motive force--in human life. He embodies the detestation for others' excellences which shows itself in obstinate disbelief, suspicion, or contempt; the instinct of hatred for all that is open, beautiful, bright, good, and great.

Shakespeare not only knew that such wickedness exists; he seized it and set his stamp on it, to his eternal honour as a psychologist.

Every one has heard it said that this tragedy is magnificent in so far as the true and beautiful characters of Othello and Desdemona are concerned; but Iago--who knows him?--what motive underlies his conduct?--what can explain such wickedness? If only he had even been frankly in love with Desdemona and therefore hated Othello, or had had some other incentive of a like nature!

Yes, if he had been the ordinary amorous villain and slanderer, everything would undoubtedly have been much simpler; but, at the same time, everything would have sunk into banality, and Shakespeare would here have been unequal to himself.

No, no! precisely in this lack of apparent motive lies the profundity and greatness of the thing. Shakespeare understood this. Iago in his monologues is incessantly giving himself reasons for his hatred. Elsewhere, in reading Shakespeare's monologues, we learn what the person really is; he reveals himself directly to us; even a villain like Richard III. is quite honest in his monologues. Not so Iago. This demi-devil is always trying to give himself reason for his malignity, is always half fooling himself by dwelling on half motives, in which he partly believes, but disbelieves in the main. Coleridge has aptly designated this action of his mind: "The motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity." Again and again he expounds to himself that he believes Othello has been too familiar with his wife, and that he will avenge the dishonour. He now and then adds, to account for his hatred of Cassio, that he suspects him too of tampering with Emilia.[1] He even thinks it worth while to allege, as a secondary motive, that he himself is enamoured of Desdemona. His words are (ii. I):--

"Now, I do love her too;
Not out of absolute lust, (though, peradventure,
I stand accountant for as great a sin,)
But partly led to diet my revenge,
For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap'd into my seat."

These are half-sincere attempts at self-understanding, sophistical self-justifications. Yellow-green, venomous envy has always a motive in its own eyes, and tries to make its malignity towards the better man pass muster as a desire for righteous vengeance. But Iago, who, a few lines before, has himself said of Othello that he is "of a constant, loving, noble nature," is a thousand times too clever to believe that he has been wronged by him. The Moor is, to his eyes, transparent as glass.

An ordinary human capacity for love or hatred springing from a definite cause would degrade and detract from Iago's supremacy in evil. In the end, he is sentenced to torture, because he will not vouchsafe a word of explanation or enlightenment. Hard and, in his way, proud as he is, he will certainly keep his lips tightly closed under the torture; but even if he wanted to speak, it would not be in his power to give any real explanation. He has slowly, steadily poisoned Othello's nature. We watch the working of the venom on the simple-hearted man, and we see how the very success of the poisoning process brutalises and intoxicates Iago more and more. But to ask whence the poison came into Iago's soul would be a foolish question, and one to which he himself could give no answer. The serpent is poisonous by nature; it gives forth poison as the silkworm does its thread and the violet its fragrance.

Towards the close of the tragedy (iv. 2) there occurs one of its profoundest passages, which shows us how Shakespeare must have dwelt upon and studied the potency of evil during these years. After Emilia has witnessed the breaking out of Othello's mad rage against Desdemona, she says--

"_Emil_. I will be hang'd, if some eternal villain,
Some busy and insinuating rogue,
Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,
Have not devis'd this slander; I'll be hang'd else.
_Iago_. Fie! there is no such man: it is impossible.
_Des_. If any such there be, Heaven pardon him!
_Emil_. A halter pardon him, and hell gnaw his bones!"

All three characters stand out in clear relief in these short speeches. But Iago's is the most significant. His "Fie! there is no such man; it is impossible," expresses the thought under shelter of which he has lived and is living: other people do not believe that such a being exists.