were taken by boys. Lady Macbeth :

Reflect upon this, and listen to

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 his boneless gums
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Shakespeare's

That in the mouth of a boy! triumph over this condition will remain a wonder, however closely it be studied. Nevertheless, there it was a condition which, having to lay account with it, he magnificently over-rode.

It were pedantic, of course, to lay upon a modern man the strain of constantly visualising that old theatre on the Bankside when reading Shakespeare, or, when seeing him acted, of perpetually reminding himself. "He did not write it for this." He did not, to be sure. But so potent was his genius that it has carried his work past the conditions of his own age to reincarnate, to revive, it in unabated vigour in later ages and under new conditions, even as the Iliad has survived the harp and the warriors' feast. This adaptable vitality is the test of first-rate genius; and, save Shakespeare's, few dramas even of the great Elizabethan age have passed it. But, as for Shakespeare, I verily believe that, could his large masculine spirit revisit London, it would-whatever the dilettante and the superior person may say-rejoice in what has been done to amplify that cage against which we have his own word that he fretted, and would be proud of the

care his countrymen, after three centuries, take to

interpret him worthily catch, together with a

and this although

and this although I seem to

,,

faint smell of brimstone, his comments on the star performer of these days, with the limelight following him about the stage and analysing the rainbow upon his glittering eye. These things, however, Shakespeare could not foresee and we must seek back to the limitations of his theatre for our present purpose, to understand what a workman he was.

(2)

We pass, then, from the conditions under which he built his plays to the material out of which he had to build this particular one. The material of Macbeth, as we know, he found in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of Scotland, first published in 1578 (but he appears to have read the second edition, of 1587). It lies scattered about in various passages in the separate chronicles of King Duncan, King Duff, King Kenneth, King Macbeth; but we get the gist of it in two passages from the Chronicle of King Duncan. There is no need to quote them in full: but the purport of the first may be gathered from its opening :

Shortly after happened a strange and uncouth wonder.. It fortuned as Macbeth and Banquho journeyed towards Fores, where the king as then lay, they went sporting by the way together without other companie save only themselves, passing through the woodes and fieldes, when sodenly, in the middes of a launde, there met them 3 women in strange and ferly apparell, resembling creatures of an elder worlde; whom they attentively behelde, wondering much at the sight.

Then follow the prophecies: "All hayle, Makbeth, Thane of Glamis," etc., with the promise to Banquho that "" contrarily thou in deede shall not

reigne at all, but of thee shall be borne which shall governe the Scottish Kingdome by long order of continuall descent." I pause on that for a moment, merely because it gives a reason, if a secondary one, why the story should attract Shakespeare: for James I., a descendant of Banquho, had come to be King of England: actors and playwrights have ever an eye for " topical" opportunity, and value that opportunity none the less if it be one to flatter a reigning house.

I take up the quotation at a later point :

The same night at supper Banquho jested with him and sayde, Nowe Makbeth thou hast obtayned those things which the two former sisters prophesied, there remayneth onely for thee to purchase that which the thyrd sayd should come to passe. Whereupon Makbeth, revolving the thing in his mind even then, began to devise how he mighte attayne to the kingdome.

Next we read that Duncan, by appointing his young son, Malcolm, Prince of Cumberland, as it were thereby to appoint him his successor in the Kingdome," sorely troubled Macbeth's ambition, insomuch that he now began to think of usurping the kingdom by force. The Chronicle goes on:

The wordes of the three weird sisters also (of whome before ye have heard) greatly encouraged him hereunto, but specially his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious burning in unquenchable desire to beare the name of a Queene. At length, therefore, communicating his proposed in

tent with his trustie friendes, amongst whom Banquho was the chiefest, upon confidence of their promised ayde, he slewe the king at Envernes (or as some say at Botgosuane) in the VI year of his reygne.

The Chronicle proceeds to tell how Macbeth had himself crowned at Scone; how he reigned (actually for a considerable time); how he got rid of Banquho; how Banquho's son escaped; how Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane, with much more that is handled in the tragedy; and ends (so far as we are concerned) as the play ends :

But Makduffe answered (with his naked sworde in his hande) saying: it is true, Makbeth, and now shall thine insatiable crueltie have an ende, for I am even he that thy wysards have tolde thee of, who was never borne of my mother, but ripped out of her wombe: therewithall he stept unto him, and slue him in the place. Then cutting his heade from the shoulders, he set it upon a poll, and brought it into Malcolme. This was the end of Makbeth, after he had reigned XVII years over the ScottishIn the beginning of his raigne he accomplished many worthie actes, right profitable to the common wealth (as ye have heard), but afterwards, by illusion of the Divell, he defamed the same with most horrible crueltie.

There, in brief, we have Shakespeare's material: and patently it holds one element on which an artist's mind (if I understand the artistic mind) would by attraction at once inevitably seize. I mean the element of the supernatural. It is the element which almost every commentator, almost every critic, has done his best to belittle. I shall recur to it, and recur with stress upon it; because, writing as diffidently as a man may who has spent thirty years of his life in learning

to understand how stories are begotten, and being old enough to desire to communicate what of knowledge, though too late for me, may yet profit others, I can make affidavit that what first arrested Shakespeare's mind as he read the Chronicles was that passage concerning the "three weird sisters "-" All hayle, Makbeth, Thane of Glamis !" and the rest.

Let us consider the Chronicle with this supernatural element left out, and what have we? An ordinary sordid story of a disloyal general murdering his king, usurping the throne, reigning with cruelty for seventeen years, and being overcome at length amid everyone's approval. There is no material for tragedy in that. Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?" Well (if we exclude the supernatural in the Chronicle), yes, he had; and for seventeen years: which, for a bloody tyrant, is no short run.

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Still, let us exclude the supernatural for a moment. Having excluded it, we shall straightway perceive that the story of the Chronicle has one fatal defect as a theme of tragedy. For tragedy demands some sympathy with the fortunes of its hero: but where is there room for sympathy in the fortunes of a disloyal, selfseeking murderer ?

Just there lay Shakespeare's capital difficulty.

(3)

Before we follow his genius in coming to grips with it, let us realise the importance as well as the magnitude of that difficulty. "Tragedy [says Aristotle] is the imitation of an action: and an action implies