Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,

Can touch her further."

But to Macbeth the crisis of his fate is yet to come. Like Richard III, the sense of power rises as his circumstances become more desperate (Act v. Scene 3). On the one side, Lenox, Angus, and all the train of Scottish nobles (Act v. Scene 2) are burning to revenge the wrongs of Macduff; on the other (Act v. Scene 4), Malcolm, old Siward, all the forces of England's might are marching to his overthrow. Of all the men who march beneath his banner, he cannot trust one.

"Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love."

In the midst of these manifold disasters Macbeth's mind seems rather to be exalted than cast down. In prospect of battle he is still the man who quelled Macdonwald and overthrew the forces of invading

Norway.

"I have almost forgot the taste of fears:

The time has been, my senses would have cooled

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir

As life were in't: I have supped full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me."

In face of the death of his wife he is as calm as Brutus. The man who at Duncan's death shuddered because he could not say "Amen" now holds the sombre creed of the fatalist. "Life is but a walking shadow... it is a tale told

by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." What must be, must; and it is in this mood that he meets disaster after disaster.

"Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Does come against him."

This moves Macbeth to greater stoicism.

"Blow wind! come wrack!

At least we'll die with harness on our back."

In the joy of battle Macbeth is still Bellona's bridegroom. The youthful Siward, the pride of England's youth, falls dead at his feet. Macbeth will never die a suicide like Brutus. "Why should I play the Roman fool, and die on mine own sword?" But fate will have its due the warrior unconquerable by any born of woman falls a victim to Macduff; but he is great even in his death. Face to face with his slayer, all hope of respite gone, Macbeth dies a warrior.

:

Here the long and the human is

contest between the supernatural brought to a close, and humanity has not been the victor. Every device of Shakespeare has been designed to accentuate the overweening influence of the unseen world. So long as Macbeth is striving to bring about the fulfilment of the prophecy, he is a bungler; but at every turn the unseen agency brings fortune to his aid. So soon, however, as he bends his efforts to defeat the intentions of the supernatural world, fortune deserts him. Everything goes wrong. Fleance escapes. Suspicion seizes his

nobles. Macduff flies, and Macbeth's insensate revenge has the effect of bringing to a head the smouldering anger of the nobility. Finally, the unseen universe interferes directly in the scene, and by its deceitful oracles lulls him into a state of false security. Were it not for the prophecy about Birnam wood, Macbeth would have met his foes in the field, and not cooped himself up in his castle of Dunsinane, where, as he says himself, "he is tied as a bear to the stake." Had it not been for his belief in his charmed existence he would never have risked his life in single combat with all and sundry of the besieging host. He the protégé of destiny had attempted to defy his patron; and to the last farthing he was called upon to pay the price of his temerity.

KING LEAR

PART I

If it were asked on what text Shakespeare was preaching when he composed the tragedy of King Lear, we might answer: "It must needs be that offences come; but woe unto that man through whom the offence cometh. Good were it for that man if he had never been born." To show fully the working of his theory of life, Shakespeare was compelled to adopt a plot of unusual complexity. The plots of Hamlet, Julius Cæsar, and Macbeth all move along single lines; in King Lear we have two distinct stories acting and reacting upon one another, and the reading of the moral of one is not complete unless due regard is paid to the teaching of the other.

As is usual with Shakespeare, the opening scene, simple as it appears, gives the key to the situation. The figures on the stage are two noblemen, Kent and Gloucester, and a lad or young gentleman. Kent's first remarks show us the courtier's astonishment at a sudden change of purpose in the king.

“I thought the king had more affected (i.e. cared more for) the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

Glo. It did always seem so to us; but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most."

From this we learn that the keynote of the king's character is fickleness.

Shakespeare next explains, through the mouth of the father, that the young gentleman, Edmund, is a bastard son of the Duke of Gloucester, born after the birth of a legitimate son of that nobleman; and he asks us to observe with what unblushing effrontery Gloucester, in the presence of his child, speaks of his sin. characteristic, then, of Gloucester's character is disregard of moral obligations. Levity, both in regard to matters of state and matters of family relationships, is the characteristic of Lear's court.

The

A moment later Lear and his court enter, and a speech by Lear reveals what he calls his darker purpose, though we know that it has already become the common property of the court. The king's present pleasure is to "shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened crawl toward death." With this view he has made up his mind to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, and the shares of the two former, as we have learned from Gloucester, "are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety." So far Lear's plan is at any rate plausible. He will do