rise. Scene I., however, does not last above a
minute, as it only consists of eight short lines.
The second scene introduces us to the old king,
Duncan, to whom "a bleeding soldier" relates
the progress of an insurrection which has just
been quelled by the valour of Macbeth. In
Scene III. we return to thunder, witches, and
gibberish. One of the old women compares
herself to "a rat without a tail," and threatens
to drain a certain mariner as "dry as hay,"
which induces us to suppose that she must be a
skittle-sharper in disguise, since the draining of
sailors is generally effected by those ingenious
practitioners. Presently Macbeth comes in
from the wars, and the witches hail him as
thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and future
king of Scotland. Thane of Glamis he is
already, but to be thane of Cawdor and king of
Scotland seems to this worthy gentleman beyond
the reach of thought. However, somebody
comes in shortly afterwards, and tells Macbeth
that, the thane of Cawdor being a traitor, the
title has been transferred to the putter-down of
traitors. This sets Macbeth plotting how he
may become a traitor on his own account, and
secure the crown for himself. He has a bold,
bad woman for his wife—a strong-minded
woman, who gives us to understand that she will
stick at nothing to satisfy her ambition. In
very plain language she invokes all the devils of
the nether regions to take possession of her
soul—which we dare say they were not slow in
doing. We have too much respect for our
readers to reproduce the dreadful things uttered
by this she-dragon, perhaps the most unnatural
character that even Mr. Shakespeare's lurid and
unhealthy imagination has ever conceived.
Suffice it to say that she eggs on her husband to
murder Duncan, which, after a good deal of
hesitation (proceeding rather from cowardice
than conscience), and some idiotic ravings about
an "air-drawn dagger," which he elegantly
describes as being covered with "gouts of blood,"
he accomplishes in the dead of night, and lays
the blame on the king's sleeping attendants.
Afterwards he kills these attendants to conceal
his own guilt, and in the next act we find him
king. But Macbeth, fearing that the crown
will in time come to one Banquo, and his son
Fleance, commissions "two Murderers" to make
away with those individuals. There is something
so homicidal and Newgate-Calendarish
about Mr. Shakespeare's mind, that he seems
actually to have persuaded himself that there
was at one time in Scotland a set of men who
followed murder as a trade or profession, and to
whom people applied in the ordinary course of
business whenever they wished to get rid of an
inconvenient rival, while feeling too squeamish
or too dignified to do the work for themselves.
The men in question have no names, but are
simply described as "First Murderer" and
"Second Murderer." Our Scottish brethren
are never slow to resent an insult to their
countrv, and we therefore confidently leave in
their hands the chastisement of Mr.
Shakespeare's ignorant impertinence. Well, the
Murderers despatch Banquo, but manage to let
Fleance escape; and in a subsequent scene we
have Macbeth, his queen, and their courtiers,
seated at a banquet, at which the ghost of
Banquo makes his appearance with "gory locks,"
and sits down to table, as if he had designs
upon the meat and drink. This unlooked-for
visitor greatly alarms the tyrant, who "makes
faces" at the spectre, foams at him, and remarks
that, inasmuch as he can "nod" (which seems
a strange occupation for a phantom), he may as
well "speak too." The ghost prudently
declines to give tongue (in this respect more
merciful than the ghost of Hamlet's father, who is
cruelly verbose); and Macbeth laments his
liability to such visitations in this graceful and
feeling manner:

                                        The times have been
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools.

We have no wish to invade the sanctities of
private life; but we have heard that Mr.
Shakespeare's father was a butcher, and we can
certainly very readily believe that the son was
brought up in a slaughter-house, and thus
acquired a practical knowledge of what commonly
results after "the brains are out," as well as a
tendency to delight in sanguinary subjects.

In Act IV. we discover the three-witches in a
gloomy cavern, preparing a "hell broth" in a
large caldron. The filthy and disgusting
ingredients of this broth are inflicted on the reader
with abominable minuteness; for nothing is too
nasty for Mr. Shakespeare's Muse. However, it
does not appear that the broth, or "gruel"—for
it is described by both words—is intended for
consumption, but only for conjuration.
Macbeth having entered to consult the witches,
"an armed head," "a bloody child," and "a
child crowned, with a tree in his hand"
(query, a Christmas-tree?), rise out of the
caldron, as birds, bouquets, and bon-bons emerge
from the magic hat of M. Robin or Herr Frikell.
These apparitions address Macbeth in some
highly ambiguous language, and then follows a
vision of eight kings, " the last with a glass in
his hand," which is unpleasantly suggestive of
the Cyder Cellars at four o'clock in the morning.
After this cavernous scene we are transported
to the castle of Lady Macduff, where the
Murderers come in again, stab a son of her
ladyship, and pursue the mother, who makes her
exit, crying "Murder!"—and we are afterwards
given to understand that she and all her young
ones and servants are slaughtered. Then comes
a little breathing space between Acts IV. and
V.; but no sooner is the drop scene up for the
last division than we are introduced to Lady
Macbeth walking in her sleep, muttering about
the murder of Duncan (which by this time has
been almost borne out of our remembrance by the
flood of later catastrophes), feigning to wash
her hands, informing us that "hell is murky,"
and remarking that no one would have "thought
the old man to have had so much blood in him!"