Part 50 (1/2)

Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, Here grow no d.a.m.ned drugs: here are no storms, No noise, but silence and eternal sleep,

with _Macbeth_, III. ii. 22 f.:

Duncan is in his grave; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further.

In writing IV. i. Shakespeare can hardly have failed to remember the conjuring of the Spirit, and the ambiguous oracles, in _2 Henry VI._ I.

iv. The 'Hyrcan tiger' of _Macbeth_ III. iv. 101, which is also alluded to in _Hamlet_, appears first in _3 Henry VI._ I. iv. 155. Cf. _Richard III._ II. i. 92, 'Nearer in b.l.o.o.d.y thoughts, but not in blood,' with _Macbeth_ II. iii. 146, 'the near in blood, the nearer b.l.o.o.d.y'; _Richard III._ IV. ii. 64, 'But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin,' with _Macbeth_ III. iv. 136, 'I am in blood stepp'd in so far,'

etc. These are but a few instances. (It makes no difference whether Shakespeare was author or reviser of _t.i.tus_ and _Henry VI._).]

NOTE FF.

THE GHOST OF BANQUO.

I do not think the suggestions that the Ghost on its first appearance is Banquo's, and on its second Duncan's, or _vice versa_, are worth discussion. But the question whether Shakespeare meant the Ghost to be real or a mere hallucination, has some interest, and I have not seen it fully examined.

The following reasons may be given for the hallucination view:

(1) We remember that Macbeth has already seen one hallucination, that of the dagger; and if we failed to remember it Lady Macbeth would remind us of it here:

This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, Led you to Duncan.

(2) The Ghost seems to be created by Macbeth's imagination; for his words,

now they rise again With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,

describe it, and they echo what the murderer had said to him a little before,