Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
disguise, and though he did not recognize her, he felt such a kindness
that he not only spared the boy's life, but he said--
“He shall have any boon he likes to ask of me, even though he ask a
prisoner, the noblest taken.”
Then Imogen said, “The boon I ask is that this gentleman shall say from
whom he got the ring he has on his finger,” and she pointed to Iachimo.
“Speak,” said Cymbeline, “how did you get that diamond?”
Then Iachimo told the whole truth of his villainy. At this, Leonatus was
unable to contain himself, and casting aside all thought of disguise, he
came forward, cursing himself for his folly in having believed Iachimo's
lying story, and calling again and again on his wife whom he believed
dead.
“Oh, Imogen, my love, my life!” he cried. “Oh, Imogen!
Then Imogen, forgetting she was disguised, cried out, “Peace, my
lord--here, here!”
Leonatus turned to strike the forward page who thus interfered in his
great trouble, and then he saw that it was his wife, Imogen, and they
fell into each other's arms.
The King was so glad to see his dear daughter again, and so grateful to
the man who had rescued him (whom he now found to be Leonatus), that he
gave his blessing on their marriage, and then he turned to Bellarius,
and the two boys. Now Bellarius spoke--
“I am your old servant, Bellarius. You accused me of treason when I had
only been loyal to you, and to be doubted, made me disloyal. So I stole
your two sons, and see,--they are here!” And he brought forward the two
boys, who had sworn to be brothers to Imogen when they thought she was a
boy like themselves.
The wicked Queen was dead of some of her own poisons, and the King, with
his three children about him, lived to a happy old age.
So the wicked were punished, and the good and true lived happy ever
after. So may the wicked suffer, and honest folk prosper till the
world's end.
MACBETH
When a person is asked to tell the story of Macbeth, he can tell two
stories. One is of a man called Macbeth who came to the throne of
Scotland by a crime in the year of our Lord 1039, and reigned justly
and well, on the whole, for fifteen years or more. This story is part
of Scottish history. The other story issues from a place called
Imagination; it is gloomy and wonderful, and you shall hear it.
A year or two before Edward the Confessor began to rule England, a
battle was won in Scotland against a Norwegian King by two generals
named Macbeth and Banquo. After the battle, the generals walked together
towards Forres, in Elginshire, where Duncan, King of Scotland, was
awaiting them.
While they were crossing a lonely heath, they saw three bearded women,
sisters, hand in hand, withered in appearance and wild in their attire.
“Speak, who are you?” demanded Macbeth.
“Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Glamis,” said the first woman.
“Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Cawdor,” said the second woman.
“Hail, Macbeth, King that is to be,” said the third woman.
Then Banquo asked, “What of me?” and the third woman replied, “Thou
shalt be the father of kings.”
“Tell me more,” said Macbeth. “By my father's death I am chieftain of
Glamis, but the chieftain of Cawdor lives, and the King lives, and his
children live. Speak, I charge you!”
The women replied only by vanishing, as though suddenly mixed with the
air.
Banquo and Macbeth knew then that they had been addressed by witches,
and were discussing their prophecies when two nobles approached. One of
them thanked Macbeth, in the King's name, for his military services, and
the other said, “He bade me call you chieftain of Cawdor.”
Macbeth then learned that the man who had yesterday borne that title
was to die for treason, and he could not help thinking, “The third witch
called me, 'King that is to be.'”
“Banquo,” he said, “you see that the witches spoke truth concerning me.
Do you not believe, therefore, that your child and grandchild will be
kings?”
Banquo frowned. Duncan had two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, and he
deemed it disloyal to hope that his son Fleance should rule Scotland.
He told Macbeth that the witches might have intended to tempt them
both into villainy by their prophecies concerning the throne. Macbeth,
however, thought the prophecy that he should be King too pleasant to
keep to himself, and he mentioned it to his wife in a letter.
Lady Macbeth was the grand-daughter of a King of Scotland who had died
in defending his crown against the King who preceded Duncan, and by
whose order her only brother was slain. To her, Duncan was a reminder
of bitter wrongs. Her husband had royal blood in his veins, and when she
read his letter, she was determined that he should be King.
When a messenger arrived to inform her that Duncan would pass a night in
Macbeth's castle, she nerved herself for a very base action.
She told Macbeth almost as soon as she saw him that Duncan must spend
a sunless morrow. She meant that Duncan must die, and that the dead are
blind. “We will speak further,” said Macbeth uneasily, and at night,
with his memory full of Duncan's kind words, he would fain have spared
his guest.
“Would you live a coward?” demanded Lady Macbeth, who seems to have
thought that morality and cowardice were the same.
“I dare do all that may become a man,” replied Macbeth; “who dare do
more is none.”
“Why did you write that letter to me?” she inquired fiercely, and with
bitter words she egged him on to murder, and with cunning words she
showed him how to do it.
After supper Duncan went to bed, and two grooms were placed on guard at
his bedroom door. Lady Macbeth caused them to drink wine till they were
stupefied. She then took their daggers and would have killed the King
herself if his sleeping face had not looked like her father's.
Macbeth came later, and found the daggers lying by the grooms; and soon
with red hands he appeared before his wife, saying, “Methought I heard a
voice cry, 'Sleep no more! Macbeth destroys the sleeping.'”
“Wash your hands,” said she. “Why did you not leave the daggers by the
grooms? Take them back, and smear the grooms with blood.”
“I dare not,” said Macbeth.
His wife dared, and she returned to him with hands red as his own, but a
heart less white, she proudly told him, for she scorned his fear.
The murderers heard a knocking, and Macbeth wished it was a knocking
which could wake the dead. It was the knocking of Macduff, the chieftain
of Fife, who had been told by Duncan to visit him early. Macbeth went to
him, and showed him the door of the King's room.
Macduff entered, and came out again crying, “O horror! horror! horror!”
Macbeth appeared as horror-stricken as Macduff, and pretending that he
could not bear to see life in Duncan's murderers, he slew the two grooms
with their own daggers before they could proclaim their innocence.
These murders did not shriek out, and Macbeth was crowned at Scone.
One of Duncan's sons went to Ireland, the other to England. Macbeth was
King. But he was discontented. The prophecy concerning Banquo oppressed
his mind. If Fleance were to rule, a son of Macbeth would not rule.
Macbeth determined, therefore, to murder both Banquo and his son. He
hired two ruffians, who slew Banquo one night when he was on his way
with Fleance to a banquet which Macbeth was giving to his nobles.
Fleance escaped.
Meanwhile Macbeth and his Queen received their guests very graciously,
and he expressed a wish for them which has been uttered thousands of
times since his day--“Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on
both.”
“We pray your Majesty to sit with us,” said Lennox, a Scotch noble; but
ere Macbeth could reply, the ghost of Banquo entered the banqueting hall
and sat in Macbeth's place.
Not noticing the ghost, Macbeth observed that, if Banquo were present,
he could say that he had collected under his roof the choicest chivalry
of Scotland. Macduff, however, had curtly declined his invitation.
The King was again pressed to take a seat, and Lennox, to whom Banquo's
ghost was invisible, showed him the chair where it sat.
But Macbeth, with his eyes of genius, saw the ghost. He saw it like a
form of mist and blood, and he demanded passionately, “Which of you have
done this?”
Still none saw the ghost but he, and to the ghost Macbeth said, “Thou
canst not say I did it.”
The ghost glided out, and Macbeth was impudent enough to raise a glass
of wine “to the general joy of the whole table, and to our dear friend
Banquo, whom we miss.”
The toast was drunk as the ghost of Banquo entered for the second time.
“Begone!” cried Macbeth. “You are senseless, mindless! Hide in the
earth, thou horrible shadow.”
Again none saw the ghost but he.
“What is it your Majesty sees?” asked one of the nobles.
The Queen dared not permit an answer to be given to this question. She
hurriedly begged her guests to quit a sick man who was likely to grow
worse if he was obliged to talk.
Macbeth, however, was well enough next day to converse with the witches
whose prophecies had so depraved him.
He found them in a cavern on a thunderous day. They were revolving round
a cauldron in which were boiling particles of many strange and horrible
creatures, and they knew he was coming before he arrived.
“Answer me what I ask you,” said the King.
“Would you rather hear it from us or our masters?” asked the first
witch.
“Call them,” replied Macbeth.
Thereupon the witches poured blood into the cauldron and grease into the
flame that licked it, and a helmeted head appeared with the visor on, so
that Macbeth could only see its eyes.
He was speaking to the head, when the first witch said gravely, “He
knows thy thought,” and a voice in the head said, “Macbeth, beware
Macduff, the chieftain of Fife.” The head then descended Into the
cauldron till it disappeared.
“One word more,” pleaded Macbeth.
“He will not be commanded,” said the first witch, and then a crowned
child ascended from the cauldron bearing a tree in his hand The child
said--
“Macbeth shall be unconquerable till
The Wood of Birnam climbs Dunsinane Hill.”
“That will never be,” said Macbeth; and he asked to be told if Banquo's
descendants would ever rule Scotland.
The cauldron sank into the earth; music was heard, and a procession of
phantom kings filed past Macbeth; behind them was Banquo's ghost. In
each king, Macbeth saw a likeness to Banquo, and he counted eight kings.
Then he was suddenly left alone.
His next proceeding was to send murderers to Macduff's castle. They
did not find Macduff, and asked Lady Macduff where he was. She gave
a stinging answer, and her questioner called Macduff a traitor. “Thou
liest!” shouted Macduff's little son, who was immediately stabbed, and
with his last breath entreated his mother to fly. The murderers did not
leave the castle while one of its inmates remained alive.
Macduff was in England listening, with Malcolm, to a doctor's tale of
cures wrought by Edward the Confessor when his friend Ross came to tell
him that his wife and children were no more. At first Ross dared not
speak the truth, and turn Macduff's bright sympathy with sufferers
relieved by royal virtue into sorrow and hatred. But when Malcolm said
that England was sending an army into Scotland against Macbeth, Ross
blurted out his news, and Macduff cried, “All dead, did you say? All my
pretty ones and their mother? Did you say all?”
His sorry hope was in revenge, but if he could have looked into
Macbeth's castle on Dunsinane Hill, he would have seen at work a force
more solemn than revenge. Retribution was working, for Lady Macbeth was
mad. She walked in her sleep amid ghastly dreams. She was wont to wash
her hands for a quarter of an hour at a time; but after all her washing,