ing some very good laws,* but becoming afterwards a tyrant, through fear of his thanes. The more ancient Chronicle nowhere says that he was a tyrant, or a bad king, unless it be for his treatment of Macduff. "When his uncle was dead (says Wyntown) he succeeded in his place, and reigned as king in Scotland for seventeen years. All this time there was great abundance both by land and sea : he was right lawful in matters of justice, and very awful to his lieges. When Leo the Tenth† was Pope of Rome, he went to that court as a pilgrim, and distributed alms of silver to all poor folk that were collected, and he acted, all his time, profitably for the holy church." Macbeth's second resort to the weird sisters,+ and their equivocating predictions, are in Holinshed, § and so is the dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff, which is taken from Boethius. This curious incident is also found in Wyntown. It is unnecessary to say that the sleep-walking scene is a beautiful fiction. The remaining events are told in the play in pretty close accordance with Holinshed. Malcolm returned to Scot *See Hol., 270. But these laws are not deemed authentic.-Lord Hailes, i. 3. + It should be Leo IX. § P. 274. Act iv. Sc. 1. Act iv. Sc. 3. land, accompanied by an English army, under the command of Siward, Earl of Northumberland, and was joined by several of the Scottish chiefs: "Menteth. The English power is near, led on by Malcolm, His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff."* The wife of Duncan is supposed to have been the sister of Siward;† who is, therefore, properly styled uncle to Duncan's son. Holinshed tells us that the Scottish thanes were divided into the parties of Macbeth and Malcolm; Shakspeare does not assign a single "nobleman of Scotland" to the party of the usurper. Seyton, described as "an officer attendant upon Macbeth," is his only partizan. The names of the thanes who sided with Malcolm are from Holinshed and Boethius. But the genealogist of the Scottish peerage does not claim for the families named so ancient an existence among the nobles of the land.§ It is evidently Shakspeare's intention to represent Macbeth as suffering from remorse, and * Act v. Sc. 2. + Hol., 269. "Dram. Pers.-Macduff, Lenox, Rosse, Menteth, Angus, Caithness-noblemen of Scotland." § Douglas, i. 62, 292; ii. 80, 223, 417. Macduff, Earl of Fife, appears to be only one of Shakspeare's earls who is acknowledged by the Scottish genealogist, i. 573. occasionally despairing, from consciousness of the hate which he had inspired. Caithness. Some say he's mad; others, that lesser hate him, Do call it valiant fury; but, for certain, Angus. Nor does he feel His secret murders sticking on his hands; "Menteth. Who then shall blame His pester'd senses to recoil and start, When all that is within him doth condemn Itself for being there?" Such are the observations of his enemies; but his own language confirms them. After receiving with pettish impatience the news of the approach of the English force; "I'm sick at heart When I behold-Seyton, I say! This push As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, But dare not." And when told by the physician of his wife's "thick-coming fancies;" "Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseas'd; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom oi that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the heart?”* Moreover, presently, having heard of Lady Macbeth's death, he moralizes— 66 She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word- And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, * Sc. 3. He becomes more and more desperate, and is for a moment quite unnerved, when he finds that the witches have equivocated with him. The stratagem by which Birnam wood is made to appear to come to Dunsinane is taken from Holinshed. In Wyntown, the boughs are assumed for the very purpose of frightening Macbeth, whose confidence in the prophecy was known to his enemies.* Shakspeare and Holinshed also differ from Wyntown as to the death of Macbeth. They make Macduff the victor in a personal combat; and Holinshed, as well as Wyntown, represents Macbeth as taking to flight, so soon as he perceived the moving wood; but the old Chronicler says that Macduff was unsuccessful in his pursuit, and was forestalled by a certain knight; and to him, and not to Macduff, is assigned the strange birth which responded to the assurance of the weird sisters. It is from Holinshed+ that our poet took the remark of old Siward upon his son's death— "Siward. Had he his hurts before? Rosse. Aye, on the front. Siward. Why, then, God's soldier be he! * Wyntown, line 361. † Hol., i. 749. |