Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
_Pericles_, _Two Noble Kinsmen_, and _Henry VIII._ he uses only those
parts of the plays which are attributed by certain authorities to
Shakespeare (_New Shakspere Soc. Trans._, 1874).
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| Light | | Percentage | Percentage | Percentage
|endings.| Weak.| of light in | of weak in | of
| | | verse lines.| verse lines.| both.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Antony & | | | | |
Cleopatra, | 71 | 28 | 2.53 | 1. | 3.53
Coriolanus, | 60 | 44 | 2.34 | 1.71 | 4.05
Pericles, | 20 | 10 | 2.78 | 1.39 | 4.17
Tempest, | 42 | 25 | 2.88 | 1.71 | 4.59
Cymbeline, | 78 | 52 | 2.90 | 1.93 | 4.83
Winter's Tale, | 57 | 43 | 3.12 | 2.36 | 5.48
Two Noble | | | | |
Kinsmen, | 50 | 34 | 3.63 | 2.47 | 6.10
Henry VIII., | 45 | 37 | 3.93 | 3.23 | 7.16
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, let us turn to our four tragedies (with _Timon_). Here again we
have one doubtful play, and I give the figures for the whole of _Timon_,
and again for the parts of _Timon_ assigned to Shakespeare by Mr. Fleay,
both as they appear in his amended text and as they appear in the Globe
(perhaps the better text).
-----------------------------------------
| Light. | Weak.
-----------------------------------------
Hamlet, | 8 | 0
Othello, | 2 | 0
Lear, | 5 | 1
Timon (whole), | 16 | 5
(Sh. in Fleay), | 14 | 7
(Sh. in Globe), | 13 | 2
Macbeth, | 21 | 2
-----------------------------------------
Now here the figures for the first three plays tell us practically
nothing. The tendency to a freer use of these endings is not visible. As
to _Timon_, the number of weak endings, I think, tells us little, for
probably only two or three are Shakespeare's; but the rise in the number
of light endings is so marked as to be significant. And most significant
is this rise in the case of _Macbeth_, which, like Shakespeare's part of
_Timon_, is much shorter than the preceding plays. It strongly confirms
the impression that in _Macbeth_ we have the transition to Shakespeare's
last style, and that the play is the latest of the five tragedies.[290]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 282: The fact that _King Lear_ was performed at Court on
December 26, 1606, is of course very far from showing that it had never
been performed before.]
[Footnote 283: I have not tried to discover the source of the difference
between these two reckonings.]
[Footnote 284: _Der Vers in Shakspere's Dramen_, 1888.]
[Footnote 285: In the parts of _Timon_ (Globe text) assigned by Mr.
Fleay to Shakespeare, I find the percentage to be about 74.5. Koenig
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. Koenig 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 pass 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 Koenig 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 assume 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 passage 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 passage by Koester in vol. I. of the
_Jahrbuecher d. deutschen Shakespeare-gesellschaft_, and on it is based
the interpretation of the play in Werder's very able _Vorlesungen ueber
Macbeth_.
The passage 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 asserts (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 passage.
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 passage which is troubling us. Is it likely,
to put it otherwise, that his idea was one which nobody 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.
But, in that case, what are we to say of this passage? I will answer
first by explaining the way in which I understood it before I was aware
that it had caused so much difficulty. I supposed that an interview had
taken place after scene v., a scene which shows Macbeth shrinking, and
in which his last words were 'we will speak further.' In this interview,
I supposed, his wife had so wrought upon him that he had at last yielded
and pledged himself by oath to do the murder. As for her statement that
he had 'broken the enterprise' to her, I took it to refer to his letter
to her,--a letter written when time and place did not adhere, for he did
not yet know that Duncan was coming to visit him. In the letter he does
not, of course, openly 'break the enterprise' to her, and it is not
likely that he would do such a thing in a letter; but if they had had
ambitious conversations, in which each felt that some half-formed guilty
idea was floating in the mind of the other, she might naturally take the
words of the letter as indicating much more than they said; and then in
her passionate contempt at his hesitation, and her passionate eagerness
to overcome it, she might easily accuse him, doubtless with
exaggeration, and probably with conscious exaggeration, of having