MACBETH. Act 3. Scene 4. A Room of state in the palace.-Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Rosse, Lenox, Ghost, etc. First Published by F. & F. Boydell, Shakspeare Gallery, London. THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE EDITED BY HENRY MORLEY, LL.D. MACBETH WITH "HOLINSHED'S HIS- IN WRITING THE PLAY NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO, ED. TRANSFER JAN 261942 INTRODUCTION. SHAKESPEARE'S Macbeth was first printed among his collected plays in the folio of 1623. It was registered at the Stationers' Company on the 8th of November, 1623, as one of the plays "not formerly entered to other men." There was a "Ballad of Macdobeth" registered on the 27th of August, 1596; and the player Thomas Kemp, in his "Nine Days' Wonder," printed in 1600, speaks of "a penny poet whose first making was the miserable stolen story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Mac- somewhat, for I am sure Mac it was, though I never had the maw to see it." There may have been, therefore, an older play of small account on the same theme. Shakespeare built his story upon the record in Holinshed. That record is here appended to the play; and Holinshed based his account upon the Scottish Chronicles. There can be no doubt that Macbeth was written in the reign of James I., that is to say, after March, 1603.. The wearing of the crowns of England and Scotland by one sovereign dates from that month, when James VI. of Scotland became also James I. of England. Macbeth sees in the glass borne by the eighth king in his vision of the future line of Banquo (Act iv. scene 1) some "That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry?" This is an obvious reference to James twice crowned and 1 ruler over the three kingdoms. But in what year of the reign of James Macbeth was first produced there is no evidence to show. It was certainly not later than the 20th of April, 1610, when Dr. Simon Forman saw the play acted at the Globe, and described it in his "Booke of Plaies, and Notes thereof for common Pollicie" (conduct in ordinary life), of which the MS. remains among the papers of Elias Aslimole. Simon Forman was a physician and astrologer living in the parish of Lambeth. Forman's way of practice annoyed regular practitioners, and he had no license but his own until he at last succeeded in obtaining a degree in medicine from Cambridge. He was implicated with Lady Essex in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Before the trial, he died suddenly in a boat, on the Thames, in 1611. This is Forman's way of recording what he had seen at the Globe : "In Macbeth, at the Globe, 1610, the 20th of April, Saturday, there was to be observed, first, how Macbeth and Banquo, two noblemen of Scotland, riding through a wood, there stood before them three women fairies, or nymphs, and saluted Macbeth, saying three times unto him, 'Hail, Macbeth, King of Codor, for thou shalt be a king, but shalt beget no kings,' etc. Then said Banquo, 'What all to Macbeth and nothing to me?' 'Yes,' said the nymphs, 'Hail to thee, Banquo; thou shalt beget kings, yet be no king.' And so they departed, and came to the Court of Scotland, to Duncan, King of Scots, and it was in the days of Edward the Confessor. And Duncan bade them both kindly welcome, and made Macbeth forthwith Prince of Northumberland; and sent him home to his own castle, and appointed Macbeth to provide for him, for he would sup with him the next day at night, and did so. "And Macbeth contrived to kill Duncan, and through the persuasion of his wife did that night murder the king in his own castle, being his guest. And there were many prodigies seen that night and the day before. And when Macbeth had murdered the king, the blood on his hands could not be washed off by any means, nor from his wife's hands, which handled the bloody daggers in hiding them; by which means they became both much amazed and affronted. "The murder being known, Duncan's two sons fled, the one to England, the other to Wales, to save themselves: they, being fled. |