Gagged again. BULLER. 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 lovebut he did not intend that we should be deceived thereby in our moral judg ments. 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 oppressionhe 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 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 Invaders-traitors-now there are none. Peace is restored to the Land-the 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 milk of human kindness has coagulated into the curd of inhuman ferocity 1 -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 i all three at once, and as many more as there may be in our Celtic Mythology-than see your Sophia, Seward, or, Buller, your— We have but Marmy. Wedded to a Macbeth. BULLER. NORTH. 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 origi-nated 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! VOL. LXVI.-NO. CCCCIX. 2 T 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? 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 nonehe 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. I don't find that in the record. BULLER. 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 There spoke one worthy to be a Queen! Worthy! SEWARD. 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 unhusbandly 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 road-side-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. 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 "Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, Grand indeed. BULLER. 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. See an artist with a pen in his hand, challenged; and with a few lines he will exhibit a pathetic story. From how many millions has he given you— One? The units which he abstracts, represent sufficiently and satisfactorily the millions of lines and surfaces which he neglects. NORTH. So in Poetry. You take little for much. You need not wonder, then, that on an attendant entering and saying, "The King comes here to-night," she cries, "Thou'rt mad to say it!" Had you happened to tell her so half-anhour ago, who knows but that she might have received it with a stately smile, that hardly moved a muscle on her high-featured front, and gave a merciful look to her green eyes even when she was communing with Murder! NORTH. What hurry and haste had been on all sides to get into the House of Murder! "Where's the Thane of Cawdor? We coursed him, at the heels, and had a purpose To be his purveyor: but he rides well : And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him To his home before us-Fair and noble Hostess, We are your guest to-night." Ay, where is the Thane of Cawdor? I, for one, not knowing, can't say. The gracious Duncan desires much to see him as well as his gracious Hostess. |