And to have any virtue is caufe fufficient of a tyrant's hatred; hence vengeance is vowed against Macduff. I am in blood Stept in fo far, that should I wade no 12 more, This is one of the great morals inculcated in the play, that wickedness draws on wickedness, such is it's deceitful nature. And how poetically is the whole managed, to make all the incidents produce each the other neceffarily and in order; till the measure of their iniquity being full, they both miferably perish? And thus the fatal effects of ambition are described, and the story is one. The episodes, or under-actions, are fo interwoven with the fabric of the story, that they are really parts of it, though feemingly but And ze also feil bodyis of Trojanis, That war not put by Greikis to uterance. Chauc. The gloffary thus explains it: "Uterance. "Outrance, deftruction: to the uttermost of their power. a F. "Oultrance, extremity, excefs; combatre a oultrance, to fight it out, or to the uttermoft, not to spare one another "in fighting: and that from the adv. oultre, ultra. q. d. "ultrantia." 12. i. e. as to go o'er. 'Tis very common for our poet and his contempories to omit [to] the sign of the infinitive mood. adornings. adornings. Thus, for inftance, it being proper to fhew the terrors of Macbeth for his murder of Banquo; the poet makes him haunted with " his apparition. And as wicked men are often fuperftitious, as well as inquifitive and jealous, to draw this character in him more strongly, he fends him to enquire his deftiny of the three witches. But every thing falls out to encrease his misfortunes. There is fuch a caft of 14 an tiquity, 13. The Greek rhetoricians call this, palacía and ridwλomoiia. One of the finest inftances of this kind is in the Oreftes of Euripides. 14. If the reader has a mind to compare Shakespeare with the ancients, I would refer him to Ovid's Circe: and Medaea, Met. VII. where the boiling and bubbling of the cauldron is prettily exprest: Interea validum pofito medicamen aheno Feruet et exultat, fpumifque tumentibus albet. among the ingredients in her charms, are mentioned the owlet's wing, and fillet of a fenny Snake. Et ftrigis infames ipfis cum carnibus alas Squamea Cinyphii tenuis membrana Chelydri. See likewife the Medaea of Seneca: Mortifera carpit gramina, ac ferpentium E 2 And tiquity, and fomething fo horridly folemn in this infernal ceremony of the witches, that I never confider it without admiring our poet's improvement of every hint he receives from the ancients, And the priestess in Virgil, Aen. IV, 509, &c. And the witch Ericho in Lucan, B. VI. where the mixes for her ingredients every thing of the ill-ominous kind. Huc quicquid foetu genuit natura finiftro And Canidia in Horace, Epod. V. Jubet fepulcris caprificos erutas, Et uncta turpis ova ranae fanguine, Herbafque, &c. Before the witches call up the apparitions, they pour into the cauldron fow's blood. So the witches in Horace, L. I. fat. 8. pour out the blood of a black ram into a pit digged for that purpose. Cruor in foffam confufus, ut in inde Manes elicerent, animas refponfa daturas. The ghost of Darius is conjur'd up in the Perfae of Aeschylus, and foretells to queen Atoffa her calamities. Sextus Pompeius, in Lucan, enquired of Erictho the forceress the event of the civil wars, and the raifed up a dead body by her magic art, to answer his demands. Homer ought not to be paffed over; in his Odyff. B. XI. Ulyffes calls up Tirefias. Our poet will bear comparison with any of thefe. 16 or is moderns. Then again those apparitions, being " fymbolical representations of what shall happen to him, are introduced paltering with him in a double sense, and leading him on, according to the common notions of diabolical oracles, to his confufion. And when the kings appear, we have a piece of machinery, that neither the ancients or moderns can exceed. I know nothing 15 See a masque of Johnson's at Whitehall, Feb. 2. 1609. which feems to have preceded this play. For Johnson's pride would not suffer him to borrow from Shakespeare, tho' he ftole from the ancients: a theft excufable enough. Both thefe poets made this entertainment of the witches to please king James, who then had written his book of Demonology. Johnson, in the introduction of the mafque fays, "The part of the scene which first presented itself was an "ugly Hell, which flaming beneath, fmoked unto the top "of the roofe. And in refpect all evils are morally faid "to come from hell; as alfo from that obfervation of "Torrentius upon Horace his Canidia, quae tot inftructa "venenis, ex orci faucibus, profecta videri poffit: these "witches, with a hollow and infernal musick came forth "from thence." He tells us, Jones invented the architecture of the whole fcene and machine. Perhaps Shakefpeare made ufe of the fame fcenes. 16. The armed head, represents symbolically Macbeth's head cut off and brought to Malcolm by Macduff. The bloody child, is Macduff untimely ripp'd from his mother's womb. The child with a crown on his head, and a bough in his hand, is the royal Malcolme; who ordered his foldiers to hew them down a bough, and bear it before them to Dunfinane. any where can parallel it, but that moft fublime paffage in Virgil, where the great fucceffors of Aeneas pass in review before the hero's eyes. Our poet's clofing with a compliment to James the first upon the union, equals Virgil's compliment to Auguftus, The variety of characters with their different manners ought not to be paffed over in filence. Banquo was as deep in the murder of the king, as fome of the "7 Scotifh writers inform us, as Macbeth. But Shakespeare, with great art and addrefs, deviates from the hiftory. By these means his characters have the greater variety; and he at the fame time pays a compliment to king James, who was lineally defcended from Banquo. There is a thorough honesty, and a love of his country in Macduff, that distinguishes him from all the reft. The characters of the two kings, Duncan and Macbeth, are finely contrafted; so are thofe of the two women, lady Macbeth and lady Macduff. 17. Igitur re cum intimis amicorum, in quibus erat BANQUO, communicatâ, regem opportunum infidiis ad Enverneffum nactus, feptimum jam regnantem annum, obtruncat. Buchan. rer. Scot. L. 7. Confilia igitur cum proximis amicis communicata ac in primis cum BANQUHONE; qui ubi omnia polliciti fuiffent, per occafionem regem feptimum jam annum regnantem ad Envernes (alii dicunt ad Botgofuanae) obtruncat. Hect. Boeth. p. 250. |