Part 2 — NO. VI.—MACBETH.

Macbeth is a great moral and religious lesson. Its application is as wide as Christendom, and I think may be justly regarded as an exposition of Christianity. It is applicable to all men, and is not by any means limited to kings or usurpers. Nearly every one has some strong desire, or passion, or plan. The “golden round” for which men, nowadays, file their minds, put rancors in the vessels of their peace, and give their eternal jewel to the common enemy of man, is not a crown, but it is not wanting. On a large or a small scale, the principle is the same. Whoever undertakes, by immoral, unlawful means, to effect a favorite object—whoever lives without habits of frequently appealing to God—whoever listens for an instant to the delusive promises of passion—is liable to be drawn on, like him, far beyond their intention, and involved at length in sin and ruin. The Scottish usurper—the individual, is dead. But the class, to which he belonged, survives. Macbeths are to be met with every day in the world—men who listen to the promises of the fiends, who build up a hope of safety and impunity upon as hollow a foundation as the charm of not being born of a woman—or of not being destroyed till the advancing against them of a forest. Many a man—many a woman—many a young girl becomes thus entangled from forgetting their Maker and clinging to the “weird sisters” of the world, till shame, vice and despair overwhelm them.

Read aright, this tragedy is a mighty lesson to the young. They are starting in life inexperienced, thoughtless, and ready to believe the brilliant promises of every wandering and dangerous hope. They are ready also to “jump the life to come,” if they can secure impunity in their present career. Let them read Macbeth with care, and get from its wondrous page a terrific glimpse of the world. Let them look on poor, weak, deluded human nature when trusting in itself. Let them see the highest earthly rank, when unblessed by Heaven—the haughtiest, loftiest, steadiest mind, when turned from God to follow, with its own rash steps, the mazes of life. Let them, while they are pure and innocent, remain so. Let them keep the quiet conscience of the gentlewoman, even if, to do so, they are obliged to remain in her lowly position. Let them never, for “the dignity of the body,” poison the quiet of the soul. Let them tread the darkest, weariest paths of common life, rather than file their minds with any delusive and hollow hope of worldly advantage. Put no rancors in the vessel of your peace, whatever be the temptation. Cling to him whose promises alone are fulfilled. Commit no act, great or small, which can prey on your imagination and poison the good which may be in store for you. Put no “damned spot” upon your hand. Once there, it is ineffacable by all the washing of the ocean—by all the perfumes of Arabia; and however great may appear the temptation, keep the eternal jewel, Innocence, from “the common enemy of man.”

I have said, in a former paragraph, that Macbeth had been guilty before, in deeds as well as thoughts. Let any one read the scene between him and the two murderers and he will feel at once the conviction that Macbeth himself has been guilty of those oppressive cruelties which he there lays upon Banquo.

“know

That it was he, in the times past, which held you

So under fortune; which you thought had been

Our innocent self: this I made good to you

In our last conference, past in probation with you;

How you were borne in hand; how crost,” etc.

And again,

“are you so gospell’d

To pray for this good man, and for his issue,

Whose heavy hand hath bowed you to the grave,

And beggared yours forever?”

What dark tale of oppression is connected with these vague disclosures we cannot tell; but the character of Banquo acquits him of having been the tyrant. These men have been, in some way or other, so trampled on that they are both rendered desperate, and Macbeth, who knows it so well, and whom, it seems, they had always considered the cause of their misfortunes, is most likely so in reality.

As to what I have said at the commencement of these papers respecting the want of a just appreciation of the poet on the part of his commentators—take Dr. Johnson, for example, on Macbeth. He begins with a defence of the introduction of supernatural machinery into the tragedy. This proves distrust of Shakspeare, as the transcendent genius he is now annually becoming in the estimation of every one. Hear the learned essayist descanting upon the dramatist as if he knew more of the art than the master. It is like the old Hungarian officer’s celebrated critique on Napoleon’s manœuvres.

“In order,” says Johnson, “to make a true estimate of the abilities and merit of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the genius of his age and the opinions of his cotemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of probability, be banished from the theatre to the nursery, and condemned to write fairy tales instead of tragedies.”

In other words, had Shakspeare written Macbeth in the time of Dr. Johnson, that play would be considered unworthy to be performed, except before an audience of children, and the critic would advise the mistaken young author to adopt a profession in which he might hope for more success, than in literature. I can fancy some wiseacre in a London weekly, with the smartness and knack at severity which daily practice confers, taking to pieces “the tragedy of Macbeth, by a Mr. William Shakspeare, said to be a subordinate at Astley’s”—and serving the ambitious young gentleman up such a dressing for his witches, ghosts and murders, as would be enough to extinguish a better educated and more promising litterateur; showing how impossible it must be for witches to mingle in human affairs, in this enlightened age of hebdomadals, and banishing to the nursery a blunderer unworthy to cater for such sensible critics.

The denunciation, however, would embrace other literary works besides the puerile attempt of Mr. Shakspeare. Manfred, Cain, the Faust, and other trifles of the same description, in which the poet has made the action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment. Virgil or Homer might be equally censured. It is quite true that the witches may not be considered probable characters, but how can any one overlook their fearful and magnificent meaning allegorically?

Johnson goes on, however, in his defence.

“But a survey of the notions that prevailed at the time when this play was written, will prove that Shakspeare was in no danger of such censures, since he only turned the system that was then universally admitted to his advantage, and was far from overburthening the credulity of his audience.”

The doctor then goes on to a learned and interesting dissertation on the gross darkness of ignorance—on the credulity of the common people—on the diabolical opposition supposed to have been offered to the Christians in the crusades—quotes Olympidorus, St. Chrysostom, and a law of King James I. against conjurors, and shows much sagacious wisdom and learning, which have about as much to do with the real living beauty of Macbeth as they have with the Temple of Jerusalem.

“Upon this general infatuation,” continues the doctor, “Shakspeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially as he has followed, with great exactness, such histories as were then thought to be true: nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting.”

No one can doubt the moral greatness of Dr. Johnson, but it was not of a kind which enabled him to enter fully into the living principle of beauty which inspires the Shakspeare plays.

He speaks of Macbeth with a sort of indifference which betrays his blindness to its highest merits. He praises the propriety of its fiction, and the solemnity, grandeur and variety of its actions. He adds, “but it has no nice discrimination of character. The events are too great to admit the influence of particular dispositions, etc. The danger of ambition is well described; and I know not whether it may not be said in defence of some parts which now seem improbable, that, in Shakspeare’s time, it was necessary to warn credulity against vain and illusive predictions.”

And in our own time, what leads every criminal astray, but some “vain and illusive prediction,” not uttered by three weird sisters, by an armed head, or the “apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand,” but by the temptations of the world and the treacherous passions of the human heart? What was it which told Napoleon⁠—

“Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care,

Who chafes, who frets, and where conspirers are?”

Who told Robespierre—

“Be bloody, bold and resolute, laugh to scorn,

The power of man,” etc.?

It was not the spectres, in the witches’ case—nor the express conditions added.

“Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him.”

Or,

“None of woman born shall harm Macbeth.”

But who can doubt that the principle of evil, had held forth, before both their minds, some illusive hope which led them to ruin?

As another instance of the careless errors committed by the commentators, and Johnson among the rest, take the following. The note occurs in Cawthorn’s (successor to Bell) edition, London, 1801, and although without Johnson’s name, is found between two notes of his, (p. 41,) and is, I believe, from his pen.

The passage referred to is in the second act of the Tempest, where the King of Naples, after the shipwreck, is wandering about the island with some of his suite. The reader will remember that the storm raised by Prospero overtakes them as the King Alonso is coming to Naples from Tunis, where he had been to marry his daughter Claribel. Great regret has been expressed that this marriage should have ever been thought of, since it is the cause of their present misfortune. The king himself is sorry and the rest are some of them angry and satirical.

Sebastian says,

“ ’Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in our

return.”

The match is thought absurd by most of them, and when, in answer to Antonio’s question, “Who’s the next heir to Naples?” Sebastian replies, “Claribel,” Antonio rejoins the following passage;

“She that is Queen of Tunis; she that dwells

Ten leagues beyond man’s life; she that from Naples

Can have no note, unless the sun were post,

(The man in the moon’s too slow) till new born urchins

Be rough and razorable,”

On this there is the following note:

“Shakspeare’s great ignorance of geography is not more conspicuous in any instance than in this, where he supposes Tunis and Naples to have been at such an immeasurable distance from each other.”

It does not seem to me that the passage warrants the supposition of such an opinion on the part of Shakspeare. It is obviously a mere hyperbole in jest. It is not credible that such a writer could be so ignorant, and where other evidences of it appear in the course of his works, it is more rational (when they cannot be explained away as in the present instance) to ascribe them to typographical confusion, or the liberties of ignorant copyists, &c.

To the passage complained of, Sebastian himself answers,

“What stuff is this? How say you?

’Tis true, my brother’s daughter’s Queen of Tunis;

So is she heir of Naples; ’twixt which regions

There is some space.”