Shakespearean Tragedy Part 46

SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN _MACBETH_.

I have a.s.sumed in the text that almost the whole of _Macbeth_ is genuine; and, to avoid the repet.i.tion of arguments to be found in other books,[280] I shall leave this opinion unsupported. But among the pa.s.sages that have been questioned or rejected there are two which seem to me open to serious doubt. They are those in which Hecate appears: viz. the whole of III. v.; and IV. i. 39-43.

These pa.s.sages have been suspected (1) because they contain stage-directions for two songs which have been found in Middleton's _Witch_; (2) because they can be excised without leaving the least trace of their excision; and (3) because they contain lines incongruous with the spirit and atmosphere of the rest of the Witch-scenes: _e.g._ III.

v. 10 f.:

all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son, Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, Loves for his own ends, not for you;

and IV. i. 41, 2:

And now about the cauldron sing, Like elves and fairies in a ring.

The idea of s.e.xual relation in the first pa.s.sage, and the trivial daintiness of the second (with which cf. III. v. 34,

Hark! I am call'd; my little spirit, see, Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me)

suit Middleton's Witches quite well, but Shakespeare's not at all; and it is difficult to believe that, if Shakespeare had meant to introduce a personage supreme over the Witches, he would have made her so unimpressive as this Hecate. (It may be added that the original stage-direction at IV. i. 39, 'Enter Hecat and the other three Witches,'

is suspicious.)

I doubt if the second and third of these arguments, taken alone, would justify a very serious suspicion of interpolation; but the fact, mentioned under (1), that the play has here been meddled with, trebles their weight. And it gives some weight to the further fact that these pa.s.sages resemble one another, and differ from the bulk of the other Witch pa.s.sages, in being iambic in rhythm. (It must, however, be remembered that, supposing Shakespeare _did_ mean to introduce Hecate, he might naturally use a special rhythm for the parts where she appeared.)

The same rhythm appears in a third pa.s.sage which has been doubted: IV.

i. 125-132. But this is not _quite_ on a level with the other two; for (1), though it is possible to suppose the Witches, as well as the Apparitions, to vanish at 124, and Macbeth's speech to run straight on to 133, the cut is not so clean as in the other cases; (2) it is not at all clear that Hecate (the most suspicious element) is supposed to be present. The original stage-direction at 133 is merely 'The Witches Dance, and vanish'; and even if Hecate had been present before, she might have vanished at 43, as Dyce makes her do.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 280: _E.g._ Mr. Chambers's excellent little edition in the Warwick series.]

NOTE AA.

HAS _MACBETH_ BEEN ABRIDGED?

_Macbeth_ is a very short play, the shortest of all Shakespeare's except the _Comedy of Errors_. It contains only 1993 lines, while _King Lear_ contains 3298, _Oth.e.l.lo_ 3324, and _Hamlet_ 3924. The next shortest of the tragedies is _Julius Caesar_, which has 2440 lines. (The figures are Mr. Fleay's. I may remark that for our present purpose we want the number of the lines in the first Folio, not those in modern composite texts.)

Is there any reason to think that the play has been shortened? I will briefly consider this question, so far as it can be considered apart from the wider one whether Shakespeare's play was re-handled by Middleton or some one else.

That the play, as we have it, is _slightly_ shorter than the play Shakespeare wrote seems not improbable. (1) We have no Quarto of _Macbeth_; and generally, where we have a Quarto or Quartos of a play, we find them longer than the Folio text. (2) There are perhaps a few signs of omission in our text (over and above the plentiful signs of corruption). I will give one example (I. iv. 33-43). Macbeth and Banquo, returning from their victories, enter the presence of Duncan (14), who receives them with compliments and thanks, which they acknowledge. He then speaks as follows:

My plenteous joys, Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes, And you whose places are the nearest, know, We will establish our estate upon Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter The Prince of c.u.mberland; which honour must Not unaccompanied invest him only, But signs of n.o.bleness, like stars, shall s.h.i.+ne On all deservers. From hence to Inverness, And bind us further to you.

Here the transition to the naming of Malcolm, for which there has been no preparation, is extremely sudden; and the matter, considering its importance, is disposed of very briefly. But the abruptness and brevity of the sentence in which Duncan invites himself to Macbeth's castle are still more striking. For not a word has yet been said on the subject; nor is it possible to suppose that Duncan had conveyed his intention by message, for in that case Macbeth would of course have informed his wife of it in his letter (written in the interval between scenes iii. and iv.). It is difficult not to suspect some omission or curtailment here.

On the other hand Shakespeare may have determined to sacrifice everything possible to the effect of rapidity in the First Act; and he may also have wished, by the suddenness and brevity of Duncan's self-invitation, to startle both Macbeth and the audience, and to make the latter feel that Fate is hurrying the King and the murderer to their doom.

And that any _extensive_ omissions have been made seems not likely. (1) There is no internal evidence of the omission of anything essential to the plot. (2) Forman, who saw the play in 1610, mentions nothing which we do not find in our play; for his statement that Macbeth was made Duke of Northumberland is obviously due to a confused recollection of Malcolm's being made Duke of c.u.mberland. (3) Whereabouts could such omissions occur? Only in the first part, for the rest is full enough.

And surely anyone who wanted to cut the play down would have operated, say, on Macbeth's talk with Banquo's murderers, or on III. vi., or on the very long dialogue of Malcolm and Macduff, instead of reducing the most exciting part of the drama. We might indeed suppose that Shakespeare himself originally wrote the first part more at length, and made the murder of Duncan come in the Third Act, and then _himself_ reduced his matter so as to bring the murder back to its present place, perceiving in a flash of genius the extraordinary effect that might thus be produced. But, even if this idea suited those who believe in a rehandling of the play, what probability is there in it?

Thus it seems most likely that the play always was an extremely short one. Can we, then, at all account for its shortness? It is possible, in the first place, that it was not composed originally for the public stage, but for some private, perhaps royal, occasion, when time was limited. And the presence of the pa.s.sage about touching for the evil (IV. iii. 140 ff.) supports this idea. We must remember, secondly, that some of the scenes would take longer to perform than ordinary scenes of mere dialogue and action; _e.g._ the Witch-scenes, and the Battle-scenes in the last Act, for a broad-sword combat was an occasion for an exhibition of skill.[281] And, lastly, Shakespeare may well have felt that a play constructed and written like _Macbeth_, a play in which a kind of fever-heat is felt almost from beginning to end, and which offers very little relief by means of humorous or pathetic scenes, ought to be short, and would be unbearable if it lasted so long as _Hamlet_ or even _King Lear_. And in fact I do not think that, in reading, we _feel Macbeth_ to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear that it is about half as long as _Hamlet_. Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatre too it appeared to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 281: These two considerations should also be borne in mind in regard to the exceptional shortness of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ and the _Tempest_. Both contain scenes which, even on the Elizabethan stage, would take an unusual time to perform. And it has been supposed of each that it was composed to grace some wedding.]

NOTE BB.

THE DATE OF _MACBETH_. METRICAL TESTS.

Dr. Forman saw _Macbeth_ performed at the Globe in 1610. The question is how much earlier its composition or first appearance is to be put.

It is agreed that the date is not earlier than that of the accession of James I. in 1603. The style and versification would make an earlier date almost impossible. And we have the allusions to 'two-fold b.a.l.l.s and treble sceptres' and to the descent of Scottish kings from Banquo; the undramatic description of touching for the King's Evil (James performed this ceremony); and the dramatic use of witchcraft, a matter on which James considered himself an authority.

Some of these references would have their fullest effect early in James's reign. And on this ground, and on account both of resemblances in the characters of Hamlet and Macbeth, and of the use of the supernatural in the two plays, it has been held that _Macbeth_ was the tragedy that came next after _Hamlet_, or, at any rate, next after _Oth.e.l.lo_.

These arguments seem to me to have no force when set against those that point to a later date (about 1606) and place _Macbeth_ after _King Lear_.[282] And, as I have already observed, the probability is that it also comes after Shakespeare's part of _Timon_, and immediately before _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriola.n.u.s_.

I will first refer briefly to some of the older arguments in favour of this later date, and then more at length to those based on versification.

(1) In II. iii. 4-5, 'Here's a farmer that hang'd himself on the expectation of plenty,' Malone found a reference to the exceptionally low price of wheat in 1606.

(2) In the reference in the same speech to the equivocator who could swear in both scales and committed treason enough for G.o.d's sake, he found an allusion to the trial of the Jesuit Garnet, in the spring of 1606, for complicity in the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. Garnet protested on his soul and salvation that he had not held a certain conversation, then was obliged to confess that he had, and thereupon 'fell into a large discourse defending equivocation.' This argument, which I have barely sketched, seems to me much weightier than the first; and its weight is increased by the further references to perjury and treason pointed out on p. 397.

(3) Halliwell observed what appears to be an allusion to _Macbeth_ in the comedy of the _Puritan_, 4to, 1607: 'we'll ha' the ghost i' th'

white sheet sit at upper end o' th' table'; and Malone had referred to a less striking parallel in _Caesar and Pompey_, also pub. 1607:

Why, think you, lords, that 'tis _ambition's spur_ That _p.r.i.c.keth_ Caesar to these high attempts?

He also found a significance in the references in _Macbeth_ to the genius of Mark Antony being rebuked by Caesar, and to the insane root that takes the reason prisoner, as showing that Shakespeare, while writing _Macbeth_, was reading Plutarch's _Lives_, with a view to his next play _Antony and Cleopatra_ (S.R. 1608).

(4) To these last arguments, which by themselves would be of little weight, I may add another, of which the same may be said. Marston's reminiscences of Shakespeare are only too obvious. In his _Dutch Courtezan_, 1605, I have noticed pa.s.sages which recall _Oth.e.l.lo_ and _King Lear_, but nothing that even faintly recalls _Macbeth_. But in reading _Sophonisba_, 1606, I was several times reminded of _Macbeth_ (as well as, more decidedly, of _Oth.e.l.lo_). I note the parallels for what they are worth.

With _Sophonisba_, Act I. Sc. ii.:

Upon whose tops the Roman eagles stretch'd Their large spread wings, which fann'd the evening aire To us cold breath,

cf. _Macbeth_ I. ii. 49:

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky And fan our people cold.

Cf. _Sophonisba_, a page later: 'yet doubtful stood the fight,' with _Macbeth_, I. ii. 7, 'Doubtful it stood' ['Doubtful long it stood'?] In the same scene of _Macbeth_ the hero in fight is compared to an eagle, and his foes to sparrows; and in _Soph._ III. ii. Ma.s.sinissa in fight is compared to a falcon, and his foes to fowls and lesser birds. I should not note this were it not that all these reminiscences (if they are such) recall one and the same scene. In _Sophonisba_ also there is a tremendous description of the witch Erictho (IV. i.), who says to the person consulting her, 'I know thy thoughts,' as the Witch says to Macbeth, of the Armed Head, 'He knows thy thought.'

(5) The resemblances between _Oth.e.l.lo_ and _King Lear_ pointed out on pp. 244-5 and in Note R. form, when taken in conjunction with other indications, an argument of some strength in favour of the idea that _King Lear_ followed directly on _Oth.e.l.lo_.