The plays of Shakespeare. The tragedy of Macbeth

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Prefatory Note

THHE collected edition of Shakespeare's plays issued in 1623 ^ and known as Folio^ is the first edition and prime authority for the text of Macbeth. Of the later Folios, printed in 1632, 1663, 1685, Folio^ prints many careless blunders, and is followed in most of these blunders by Folio^ and Folio^ Macbeth is not accurately printed even in Folio^; the Clarendon editors surmise that it was printed from a transcript of the author's MS. dictated to the transcriber, for the blunders are of the ear, not of the eye. Folio^ and especially Folio^ correct a few of these errors, but between them introduce nearly a hundred blunders of their own. The present text is based, therefore, on the text of Folio^ but it incorporates the accepted corrections of Shakespeare editors, and presents the text modernized in spelling and punctuation.

Macbeth is especially suited for study of the drama as a form of literature, because of its simplicity of motive, the inevitable progress of its stirring scenes, its vivid characterization, and its superb technique. Following the plan of the edition of Julius CcBsar in the present series of English Classics, the editor offers an interpretation that is intended to elucidate not only the meaning of the text, but the meaning of the play as a play — as a definite literary form.

The element of witchcraft in Macbeth gets a peculiar light from the tremendous interest in the practice of witchcraft during the period of Elizabeth and James I. The present editor has sought out much of the witchcraft literature contemporary with the play, and preserved in the Bodleian Library, to present Shakespeare's point of view — as reflecting a time when to most people witchcraft was a devilish reality.

In the preparation of material for annotations the editor has had the aid of Miss Lizette Andrews Fisher, to whom his thanks are here gratefully recorded.

Contents

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Frontispiece

"Macbeth and the Witches/' By Jean Baptistb CoROT. In the Wallace Collection, London.

Introduction

I — General Considerations

The Place of " Macbeth." Macbeth stands chronologically last in the series of tragedies, Julius Coesar, Hamlety Othello, Lear, Macbeth — plays on which Shakespeare spent his perfected art. All these plays are alike tragedies of temperament; each one of them brings some great but fated character into conflict with an environment to which he is unfitted, and from that conflict issues the inner history of the hero's soul, which is the main interest of the play. Macbeth distinguishes itself from the other tragedies named by the hero's voluntary participation in crime; but it is further distinguished by the incorporation of a supernatural action, so complete and powerful that all the incidents of the play, in themselves coherent and self-sufficient, seem the fated fulfilment of destiny. The whole play, short, swift, simple in its main movement, is yet the most highly wrought of Shakespeare's works, — harmonized to the utmost, so that part answers part, line echoes line, motifs repeat themselves in subtle variations throughout its wonderful orchestration. The language of the play is in keeping with the highly wrought structure; it is picturesque, figurative, charged with meaning and passion, — at times turbid with condensation, with heaped-up figures. No play except Hamlet has given more to our language of superb phrases, and no play, not even Hamlet, vies with Macbeth in lines that record the psychology of crime, from its mysterious inception to the mental agony and world- weariness of the catastrophe.

Macbeth does not offer us the most significant study of life among Shakespeare's tragedies; because the theme is self-aggrandizement, and not a struggle for right, because the action presents the ruin of souls rather than their redemption through suffering. In this respect Hamlet, or Othello, or Lear is a more

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moving play. But in respect to construction, wonderfully intricate and harmonious; in the conception of the leading characters, heroic, passionate, suffering; in the tremendous appeal to the imagination; in the language of the play — a pregnant lyric speech that speaks and speeds passion like great music, Macbeth stands unsurpassed among Shakespeare's works — the last accomplishment of his greatest dramatic period.

Date of Composition. The composition of the Tragedy of Macbeth is very generally ascribed to the year 1606. It is certainly not earlier than 1603; for we may well believe that it was the accession of a Scottish king to the throne of England in 1603, and the consequent interest in London in things Scottish, that turned Shakespeare to Scottish story for the material of a timely play. The theme and scene of the play, the amelioration of Banquo's character, and the representation of witchcraft show a close association of the play with a Scottish King who loved the drama, who claimed descent from Banquo, and who led the persecution of witches in Scotland and England. It may even have been written, in the first instance, for production before the court. Macbeth is then subsequent to 1603. It is also not later than 1610. For Dr. Simon Forman recorded in his note-book that he saw Macbeth played at the Globe on April 20, 1610. The pointed references to "equivocation'* in II, iii, 8^., and V, v, 43, point to a date between these two termini; for the doctrine of equivocation became a by-word through the trial of the Jesuit Garnet, March, 1606, in which the doctrine greatly figured. The abundant harvest of 1606 is thought to be alluded to in II, iii, 4/. To that year, 1606, therefore, Macbeth is generally ascribed. Metrical tests (see Appendix II) are not against this ascription.

Sources. The narrative basis of the play — the facts of the story as distinguished from the psychology of the characters — Shakespeare drew from Holinshed's Description and Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, first published in London in 1577, and reissued in 1587, and subsequently. The reigns of Duncan and Macbeth are given in Volume I, pp. 239-252, of the first edition. With the story of Macbeth as given by Holinshed, Shakespeare blended splendid suggestions of dramatic

INTRODUCTION xiii

material from the story of an earlier Scottish reign, that of King Duff (HoHnshed, I, p. 208), who was murdered by Donwald, egged on to the crime by his wife. The significant passages from HoHnshed are reprinted in Appendix I of this edition. The mention of witches in the HoHnshed story of Macbeth gave the starting-point for the incorporation of the ritual of witchcraft familiar to the Elizabethans by passages in the classics, but more particularly through the fury of witchcraft, its practice and persecution, which culminated about the time of the production of the play.

Shakespeare shows himself possessed of further knowledge of the history of Macbeth. HoHnshed drew his story from the Latin history of Scotland by Hector Boece or Boethius (1465- 1536), printed in 1527, which John Bellenden (fl.1533-1587) rendered into English in a version that was printed in 1536. Either from the Latin version or from the translation Shakespeare got important hints. Instances of these may be cited: —

Boece (Bellenden) specifically suggests Macbeth, I, vii. — "His wife, impatient of long tarry, as all women are, especially where they are desirous of any purpose, gave him great artation {incited him) to pursue the third weird {witch) that she might be a queen, calling him ofttimes feeble coward, and not desirous of honors, since he durst not assail {carry through boldly) the thing with manhood and courage, which is offered him by benevolence of fortune, though sundry others here assailed such things before, with most terrible jeopardies, when they had not such sickerness {certainty) to succeed in the end of their labors as he had.'' (Tr. Bellenden, XH, in.) The words describing how the witches "by their illusion shall draw on to his confusion" (HI, v, 28 /.) and the term "butcher" applied to Macbeth (V, viii, 69) are from Boece-Bellenden.

In general, however, it is only the frame of the story that Shakespeare borrows; and for dramatic reasons he modifies what he borrows. The Duncan of Shakespeare is more gracious, Banquo is much more honest. Lady Macbeth is more human, Macbeth more poetic and more desperate, than the same characters in the original. As for the life of it all — the interpretation of the characters, the play of motive to act and the reactions of the xiv MACBETH

deed, the shaping of all into the great impressive story and personalities — that is Shakespeare's work, and Shakespeare's only.

The Historical Macbeth. Elements of historical fact are, without doubt, found amidst the mass of fable making up the Macbeth story as recounted by Holinshed. It would seem (see Dictionary of National Biography, art. "Macbeth") that Macbeth, son of Finlay, was a sub-king in the reign of Malcolm II. He was Tnormaor, or district chief, of Moray and -^ommander of the forces in the reign of Duncan. He rebelled against his master, slew him, and took his kingdom in 1040. His wife, Gruach, was the daughter of Boete, son of Kenneth III; through his marriage Macbeth had thus perhaps acquired a claim to the Scottish throne. "He seems to have represented the Celtic and Northern element in the population as against Duncan and his family, who were gradually drawing south, and connecting themselves by intermarriage and customs with the Saxons of England and Lothian."

In 1050 he went to Rome, perhaps for the papal absolution.

In 1054 Siward, Earl of Northumberland, took up the cause of his nephew or cousin Malcolm, invaded Scotland, and defeating Macbeth, established Malcolm as King of Cumbria. Macbeth held out, north of the Mounth, until Malcolm defeated him at Lumphanan, August 15th, 1057, and became King of all Scotland. Macbeth left a nephew or son Lulach, who was slain the year following.

Witchcraft and "Macbeth." New laws are always significant records of public opinion. The first year of the reign of James VI of Scotland as King of England was signalized by a new statute against witchcraft (1604) that marks both the practice of magic and the public belief in the malignant power of its devotees.

This statute repealed the laws against witchcraft and magic of the fifth year of Elizabeth's reign, to impose heavier penalties. It enacted: —

1. That if any person practise any invocation of an evil spirit; or consult with, covenant with, or reward any evil spirit; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his or her grave, or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be used in any manner of witchcraft; or shall use any witchcraft.

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whereby any person shall be killed, wasted, pined, or lamed, that offender, lawfully convicted, shall suffer death as a felon. 2. If any person shall take upon him by witchcraft to tell in what place any treasure should be found, or goods or things lost, or to the intent to provoke any person to unlawful love, or whereby any cattle or goods shall be destroyed or impaired, or to hurt any person in his body, although the same be not affected, that the offender shall suffer imprisonment for one year, and once in every quarter of the year, on marketday, stand on the pillory for the space of six hours and openly confess his offence. If the offender be a second time lawfully convicted, he shall suffer death as a felon.

Public opinion, expressed in these enactments, was the result of many forces. There was the ever-present suggestion of folk-lore story from which magic is rarely absent. The Bible, too, had familiarized the Christian world w^ith the story of the Witch of Endor and the activity of Satan in human affairs. The miracle-plays had shown the struggle of the" devils for the souls of men (the Porter of Macbeth harks back to the Porter of helFs mouth). The mediaeval world, projecting the conception of the organization of the Christian world into the realm of Satan, founded a hierarchy of evil spirits that was Christianity inverted — Satan as Prince of Devils, with his legions of ministers of evil, his fight for the souls of men in the maintenance and extension of his evil kingdom, his priests and nuns in the shape of wizards and witches, with Hecate as their Mary, with their baptisms and renunciation of God, their confessions, meetings, or "Sabbaths," and the constant practice of working wonders and doing evil with the aid of legions of minor devils. The Renaissance reinforced this popular belief with the stories and incantations of Circe, Medea, Canidia, in the works of Vergil, Ovid, and Horace. (The learning of the Renaissance concerning witchcraft is gathered in Ben Jonson's annotations to his Masque of Queens, 1609.) The Faustus story is typical of the attitude of the folk mind toward science and invention — the learned man can gain supernatural power only at the price of the forfeit of his soul to Satan.

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In the twilight of science, the superstitious and imaginative, when bent on evil, readily had recourse to magic. The perfected ritual of witchcraft won it its devotees, and at the same time excited terror in the pubHc. Elizabeth strove to suppress witchcraft by more specific enactments in the statute of 1562. Under this law those who caused death by magic art should suffer death; if only bodily harm resulted, they should suffer for a first offence a year's imprisonment and for a second offence death. The bloody persecutions of religion were extended to the black art.

On the other hand, Reginald Scot, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, gave an exposure of the system, crammed with detail gathered from books of the learned and the practice of the witches; Scot fought with learning and common sense the emotional insanity of the whole wretched business. Scot's book gave Shakespeare innumerable hints for the ritual of the Weird Sisters. But the practice and the fear of witchcraft grew. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, 1588, is a sign of its hold on the public. The»accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England ushered in the trials and convictions that gave the seventeenth century its bad eminence.

King James had interested himself in the question of witchcraft when John Feane and his associates were tried in Edinburgh, in 1590, for sorcery. They had, it appeared, besides doing people to death by magic, raised the storm that had separated the king's ship from its companions as King James was sailing to Denmark. The accused were put to death. (The story was given to the London public by Pitcairn in News from Scotland.^) James formulated his belief in a dialogue called Demonologie, printed in Edinburgh in 1597, and reprinted in London in 1603. His belief in witchcraft is here written out, fortified by the authority of verses of the Bible and references to men of learning — Bodinus, Hyperius, Hemmingius, Cornelius Agrippa, Wierus; "one called Scot, an Englishman," was in his opinion nothing short of a heretic; magicians and witches were in league with the Prince of the Air; they should, without regard to age, sex, or rank, be burned to death.

The public terror showed itself in laws more and more » In Robert Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, I, 213 fif. (1592).

INTRODUCTION xvii

stringent, in torture (in Scotland), hanging or burning on the Continent, in England, and subsequently in the colonies of New England. Pamphlets fed the public with the details of each trial — at Edinburgh, Lancaster, Abingdon, Ipswich, Essex. Preachers denounced witchcraft from the pulpit. In the midst of the fury, with the echoes of new laws, new trials, fresh executions, in the ears of his audience, Shakespeare produced his Macbeth.

^11 — Interpretation of '' Macbeth "j

The Theme of the Play. Each play of Shakespeare's contains in its action the conflict growing out of some great phase or passion of life. In Macbeth the motive of the play is ambition — an ambition so conditioned that its realization is possible only through crime. Crime becomes, therefore, the complication of his story, and the reactions from evil done constitute a counteraction both in the spiritual life of the royal criminals and in the outer social world outraged by their deeds of murder.

Crime is the complication and resolution of the story — evil ambition that steps through murder to its goal and seeks to maintain itself through murder and is overcome by return for evil done. This crime has a wonderful connotation and dramatic visualization in the part of the Weird Sisters who hover on the borderland of humanity, instruments of the unseen powers of evil whose human allies they are. The note of evil finds its expression at the outset, — "Fair is foul and foul is fair."

That note of evil can be traced in infinite repetitions in speech and deed throughout the play. At the last it meets the truth of life in the counteraction that centres in Malcolm, who, "fair,'' still paints himself **foul."

Macbeth's vaulting ambition o'erleaps itself.

"Even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips/'

He seeks to maintain the thesis " things bad begun make strong themselves by ill," but his peace of mind, his cause, his life, come to naught, and justice and social order are vindicated in the person of the victim's son, Malcolm.

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The Atmosphere. Every play has its tone, its atmosphere, appropriate to its theme. Here Shakespeare **dips his pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse." The heath, thunder, lightning, rain, — that is the opening note, darkening into night, the season of all the important scenes of the play. The witches, whose element is the fog and filthy air, are '* secret, black, and midnight hags"; and Macbeth meets them "at set of sun." Night surrounds all the evil deeds and great scenes of the play — the contagion of evil infecting Macbeth and, again. Lady Macbeth, the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth. The. great invocations of the play are addressed to night — painted again and again as the season of crime. Night brings to the criminal, not sleep — "Macbeth doth murder sleep" — but fresh crime and new unrest; or if sleep comes it is a restless ecstasy of horrible dreams or sleep-walking with fitful visions of horror.

The human color counterpart to night is blood. The very word is iterated and reiterated more than elsewhere in Shakespeare. In how many scenes of first importance blood is in sight — Macbeth's victory; the sergeant's report; the murder of Duncan, after which Macbeth sees everything red in waking; the blood-boltered ghost of Banquo; the visions of Lady Macbeth tortured in her sleep with the fatal persistence of the smell of blood still!

Night and blood are the outer atmosphere — the atmosphere of the scenes of evil deeds, the physical concomitants of crime — what of the inner atmosphere, the spiritual state of the persons of the story? The human spirit here is suffused with tragic passion. Night and blood are but external signs of a spiritual uproar. The characters of the play are wrought to a spiritual tension in keeping with a great crime. Every word quivers with emotion, every scene wings the imagination. The play does not portray murder — the very murder of Duncan is kept from our eyes, so that the imagination may be free to grasp the real interest, the psychology of the murderers.

The Action. The action is three-fold, — a three-fold action woven out of an outer action of Macbeth against the state; a spiritual conflict in Macbeth's soul and in the soul of Lady

INTRODUCTION xix

Macbeth; and both outer and inner actions are related to a supernatural action through the association of Macbeth with the powers of evil.

I — The Outer Action, Here we have the framework of the story — the mere facts of the action as respects Macbeth and the state. Macbeth desires the crown worn by his kinsman Duncan; he wavers in his will till his wife determines him; he kills Duncan; he accuses Duncan's sons of the murder; he gains the throne: then he murders Banquo to frustrate a prophecy that Banquo's children should succeed; then murders all in the castle of Macduff to frustrate an oracle that declared Macduff his chief enemy. By these deeds he arrays against him the King's sons, especially Malcolm, and the Scottish nobility, especially Macduff; so that all the forces of order and justice unite, and the moral world — the will of rightminded men — is reasserted when Macbeth falls beneath the sword of the Thane of Fife, and Malcolm reigns in his stead.

II — The Inner Action, Shakespeare's real interest does not lie in the outer action. It is the skeleton, not the life, of his drama. It is the portrayal of the inner action, the spiritual life of Macbeth and the dearest partner of his greatness, that interests us in this play. Macbeth is a drama of the ruin of souls.

Macbeth, the hero, is first presented in heroic guise. We see him, at the outset, as the successful general, returning flushed with victory over the rebels of the Western Isles and the invading Danes. He has won not merely the strategic victory of the general but the personal glory of the warrior, having slain, hand to hand, the arch-rebel, the merciless Macdonwald. He is the great man of the time, compared with whom the reigning king, Duncan, is only a sentimental king, gracious in mind, but lacking discernment, courage, strength, in turbulent times, to rule. In nature Macbeth, till he meets the witches, is loyal — no rancors in the sacred vessels of his peace, the milk of human kindness is still in his veins. If there be a flaw in his nature, the rift has not y^t shown itself to the world. And he has one flaw, visible to the one nearest him, who knows him best. Not a wrong-doer, he would profit by wrong-doing; would not play false — said his wife — and yet

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would wrongly win. Thus his loyalty of nature is unsafe, is in unstable equilibrium; the proper temptation at the opportune time will send him headlong. Ambition whispers to the saviour of the country; suggestions as if from cosmic evil reach him. Why should not he, the great man of the time — the one man of the royal family — be King rather than Duncan? And the answer to the temptation offered by the witches is the fatal answer of his temperament.

To explain Macbeth^s actions, we must study his character. Macbeth has, like all Shakespeare's dramatic characters, the nature that explains all his words and deeds. Macbeth is no vulgar cut-throat. Notice his keen sensibility, nervous organism, acute, even morbid imagination. There is the field of the inner action. He is a poet or a painter in the distinctness with which color and form affect him: — you think of Dore when Macbeth etches out those terrible pictures of night and evil that come from his lips. What does this imaginative nature do for him? He is superstitious, is given to hallucinations. The uncanny easily finds credence in such a man. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth live, too, among the moors and mists of the Highlands — the atmosphere of which Norse mythology was born. Therefore the Weird Sisters, the dagger, the ghost of Banquo, are to him realities. He is of a passionate nature; as such, he sees but one object and is blind to the rest, feels one desire and recks not of consequences. It is for that reason that when Macbeth's mind plays with the prospect of the crown, imagination fascinates him and his passion carries him forward to fresh murder.

He is a man of physical courage, yet his imagination is stronger than his courage. Not present fears but horrible imaginings unman him. Let him outrage his conscience with crime and his imagination awakes; he feels himself an outcast from man and God, he cannot say amen; he sees till his death hallucinations, ghosts of blood-stained men. The taint spreads, corroding and agonizing. Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care leaves his pillow, or else he sleeps in the affliction of terrible dreams, he lies on the torture of the mind in restless ecstasy. Step by step his will weakens; self-control,

INTRODUCTION xxi

courage become desperation. Crime from the single thought becomes a raging torrent, — each fresh deed only adds to the avenging furies that pursue him, till finally death brings the eternal rest. Wonderful unity of character! — itself the central point of the play as well as the explanation of all actions, all relations, all deeds of the play. What an opportunity for the actor in such a role!

Yet Lady Macbeth is a more tragic figure than her husband, for we pity her and we can scarcely pity him — and pity is essential in tragedy. The two natures are distinct and yet correlative, and they are man and woman even in their common crime. The time is past when Lady Macbeth can be regarded as a large, coarse-limbed virago — "merely detestable," as Dr. Johnson said. She is not what Mrs. Jameson describes her, the "evil genius to her husband, a terrible personification of evil passions." To Macbeth she is the "dearest partner of my greatness"; to the nobles, "most gentle lady." With subtle touches the woman — daughter, wife, mother — is suggested. You see the fineness of her nature and the keenness of her sensibility breathed out unconsciously in the sleep-walking — "Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." With that fineness of nature there is united a will of steel, a practical will — a force that can be wrought to command, to impel, drive all to its own tune and fashion, but liable, like fine high-pressure mechanism, to go suddenly to pieces, to total collapse. An imperious nature — notice that "the fatal entrance of Duncan" is "under my battlements."

With her, memory is as keen as with Macbeth imagination is, and it is a woman's memory. The thought of her babe returns to her in her supreme appeal to Macbeth's fortitude —

" I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me."

As she looks on Duncan, thinking herself to do the murder, the face of her father comes to her mind and checks her.

But these things are as nothing to the realization of her purpose. She is a wife; she can do all that may become a wife, who dares do more is none. She knows her husband through xxii MACBETH and through — is, heart and soul, one with him in his interests. It is clear to her that Macbeth dreams of kingship without the courage to ''sin the whole sin." He would not play false and yet would wrongly win. Lady Macbeth has no lukewarm blood. It was enough for her that her husband would be king; her part therefore was clear; she would be the practical will and courage he lacked: —

"Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be What thou art promised. ...

Hie thee hither That I may pour my spirits in thine ear And chastise with the valor of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round."

Do you suppose if Macbeth had willed the right, she would have failed him ? We know she would have been by his side — resolute, resourceful, successful. She failed only in that she thwarted her nature, stifled her sensibility, and bound herself to evil.

But her nature could not follow her will. Her fainting after the murder is the first note of the collapse of her nature that ends in sleep-walking and death. She too has misunderstood life terribly. We see a glimpse of her in her real self just before the banquet scene — restless, unsatisfied, unhappy as Macbeth himself:

"Nought's had, all's spent.

Where our desire is got without content."

But let her husband enter — she is by his side once more, ready, resolute, resourceful, daring —

" Things without all remedy Should be without regard. . . .

Be bright and jovial 'mong our guests to-night."

If Macbeth regrets that Banquo and Fleance live, she boldly voices his secret thought —

"But in them nature's copy's not eterne."

She appears in the coronation banquet to support, counsel, govern her frenzied husband, to explain, persuade, dismiss the frightened guests. But she has no part in the later path of

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blood through which Macbeth descends to the deep damnation of his taking off — no primrose path, though it lead to the everlasting bonfire. She disappears from the action, as the need of will disappears. It is desperation alone that rules the darkening mind of her husband.

Death can come to such a nature only as a relief. And it is quite a part of Lady Macbeth's nature that it should come by an act of resolution. Such an act her physician feared: — "Remove from her the means of all annoyance." No word escaped her waking lips to warn Macbeth of her state. Macbeth knows her state in the end, but only through the doctor's report, and never to the full. It is of himself that he thinks chiefly when he talks with her physician.

As for Macbeth, he has now supped full with horrors. The worst can no longer move him.

^^ Wherefore was that cry?

Sey. The Queen, my lord, is dead.

Mach. 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 candlel 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.''