Part 48 (1/2)

[Footnote 284: _Der Vers in Shakspere's Dramen_, 1888.]

[Footnote 285: In the parts of _Timon_ (Globe text) a.s.signed by Mr.

Fleay to Shakespeare, I find the percentage to be about 74.5. Konig gives 62.8 as the percentage in the whole of the play.]

[Footnote 286: I have noted also what must be a mistake in the case of Pericles. Konig gives 17.1 as the percentage of the speeches with broken ends. I was astounded to see the figure, considering the style in the undoubtedly Shakespearean parts; and I find that, on my method, in Acts III., IV., V. the percentage is about 71, in the first two Acts (which show very slight, if any, traces of Shakespeare's hand) about 19. I cannot imagine the origin of the mistake here.]

[Footnote 287: I put the matter thus, instead of saying that, with a run-on line, one does pa.s.s to the next line without any pause, because, in common with many others, I should not in any case whatever _wholly_ ignore the fact that one line ends and another begins.]

[Footnote 288: These overflows are what Konig calls 'schroffe Enjambements,' which he considers to correspond with Furnivall's 'run-on lines.']

[Footnote 289: The number of light endings, however, in _Julius Caesar_ (10) and _All's Well_ (12) is worth notice.]

[Footnote 290: The Editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare might appeal in support of their view, that parts of Act V. are not Shakespeare's, to the fact that the last of the light endings occurs at IV. iii. 165.]

NOTE CC.

WHEN WAS THE MURDER OF DUNCAN FIRST PLOTTED?

A good many readers probably think that, when Macbeth first met the Witches, he was perfectly innocent; but a much larger number would say that he had already harboured a vaguely guilty ambition, though he had not faced the idea of murder. And I think there can be no doubt that this is the obvious and natural interpretation of the scene. Only it is almost necessary to go rather further, and to suppose that his guilty ambition, whatever its precise form, was known to his wife and shared by her. Otherwise, surely, she would not, on reading his letter, so instantaneously a.s.sume that the King must be murdered in their castle; nor would Macbeth, as soon as he meets her, be aware (as he evidently is) that this thought is in her mind.

But there is a famous pa.s.sage in _Macbeth_ which, closely considered, seems to require us to go further still, and to suppose that, at some time before the action of the play begins, the husband and wife had explicitly discussed the idea of murdering Duncan at some favourable opportunity, and had agreed to execute this idea. Attention seems to have been first drawn to this pa.s.sage by Koester in vol. I. of the _Jahrbucher d. deutschen Shakespeare-gesellschaft_, and on it is based the interpretation of the play in Werder's very able _Vorlesungen uber Macbeth_.

The pa.s.sage occurs in I. vii., where Lady Macbeth is urging her husband to the deed:

_Macb._ Prithee, peace: I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.

_Lady M._ What beast was't, then, That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.

Here Lady Macbeth a.s.serts (1) that Macbeth proposed the murder to her: (2) that he did so at a time when there was no opportunity to attack Duncan, no 'adherence' of 'time' and 'place': (3) that he declared he wou'd _make_ an opportunity, and swore to carry out the murder.

Now it is possible that Macbeth's 'swearing' might have occurred in an interview off the stage between scenes v. and vi., or scenes vi. and vii.; and, if in that interview Lady Macbeth had with difficulty worked her husband up to a resolution, her irritation at his relapse, in sc.

vii., would be very natural. But, as for Macbeth's first proposal of murder, it certainly does not occur in our play, nor could it possibly occur in any interview off the stage; for when Macbeth and his wife first meet, 'time' and 'place' _do_ adhere; 'they have made themselves.'

The conclusion would seem to be, either that the proposal of the murder, and probably the oath, occurred in a scene at the very beginning of the play, which scene has been lost or cut out; or else that Macbeth proposed, and swore to execute, the murder at some time prior to the action of the play.[291] The first of these hypotheses is most improbable, and we seem driven to adopt the second, unless we consent to burden Shakespeare with a careless mistake in a very critical pa.s.sage.

And, apart from unwillingness to do this, we can find a good deal to say in favour of the idea of a plan formed at a past time. It would explain Macbeth's start of fear at the prophecy of the kingdom. It would explain why Lady Macbeth, on receiving his letter, immediately resolves on action; and why, on their meeting, each knows that murder is in the mind of the other. And it is in harmony with her remarks on his probable shrinking from the act, to which, _ex hypothesi_, she had already thought it necessary to make him pledge himself by an oath.

Yet I find it very difficult to believe in this interpretation. It is not merely that the interest of Macbeth's struggle with himself and with his wife would be seriously diminished if we felt he had been through all this before. I think this would be so; but there are two more important objections. In the first place the violent agitation described in the words,

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

would surely not be natural, even in Macbeth, if the idea of murder were already quite familiar to him through conversation with his wife, and if he had already done more than 'yield' to it. It is not as if the Witches had told him that Duncan was coming to his house. In that case the perception that the moment had come to execute a merely general design might well appal him. But all that he hears is that he will one day be King--a statement which, supposing this general design, would not point to any immediate action.[292] And, in the second place, it is hard to believe that, if Shakespeare really had imagined the murder planned and sworn to before the action of the play, he would have written the first six scenes in such a manner that practically all readers imagine quite another state of affairs, and _continue to imagine it_ even after they have read in scene vii. the pa.s.sage which is troubling us. Is it likely, to put it otherwise, that his idea was one which n.o.body seems to have divined till late in the nineteenth century? And for what possible reason could he refrain from making this idea clear to his audience, as he might so easily have done in the third scene?[293] It seems very much more likely that he himself imagined the matter as nearly all his readers do.