our countryman probably had no acquaintance, or at most a very obscure one." CUMBERLAND." The latter part of this number, here omitted, and which includes a comparison between Eschylus and Shakspeare, will be found in the second part of our volume. • The Observer, No. 55. No. XIII. ON THE CHARACTERS OF MACBETH AND RICHARD CONTINUED. WE are now to attend Macbeth to the perpetration of the murder which puts him in possession of the crown of Scotland; and this introduces a new personage on the scene, his accomplice and wife she thus developes her own character -Come, all you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, Stop up Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts, You wait on nature's mischief: Come, thick night, Terrible invocation! Tragedy can speak no stronger language, nor could any genius less than Shakspeare's support a character of so lofty a pitch, so sublimely terrible at the very opening. The part which Lady Macbeth fills in the drama, has a relative as well as positive importance, and serves to place the repugnance of Macbeth in the strongest point of view; she is in fact the auxiliary of the witches, and the natural influence which so high and predominant a spirit asserts over the tamer qualities of her husband, makes those witches but secondary agents for bringing about the main action of the drama. This is well worth a remark; for if they, which are only artificial and fantastic instruments, had been made the sole or even principal movers of the great incident of the murder, nature would have been excluded from her share in the drama, and Macbeth would have become the mere machine of an uncontrollable necessity; and his character, being robbed of its free agency, would have left no moral behind. I must take leave therefore to anticipate a remark, which I shall hereafter repeat, that when Lady Macbeth is urging her lord to the murder, not a word is dropped by either, of the witches or their predictions. It is in these instances of his conduct that Shakspeare is so wonderful a study for the dramatic poet. But I proceed Lady Macbeth, in her first scene, from which I have already extracted a passage, prepares for an attempt upon the conscience of her husband, whose nature she thus describes -Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. He arrives before she quits the scene, and she receives him with consummate address -Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor! Greater than both by the All-hail hereafter! These are the very gratulations of the witches: she welcomes him with confirmed predictions, with the tempting salutations of ambition, not with the softening caresses of a wife MACB. Duncan comes here to-night. LADY. And when goes hence? Shall sun that morrow see! The rapidity of her passion hurries her into immediate explanation, and he, consistently with the character she had described, evades her precipitate solicitations with a short indecisive answer We will speak further His reflections upon this interview, and the dreadful subject of it are soon after given in soliloquy, in which the poet has mixed the most touching strokes of compunction with his meditations. He reasons against the villainy of the act, and honour jointly with nature assails him with an argument of double force : He's here in double trust; First as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then as his host, This appeal to nature, hospitality, and allegiance, was not without its impression: he again meets his lady, and immediately declares We will proceed no further in this business. This draws a retort upon him, in which his tergiversation and cowardice are satirized with so keen an edge, and interrogatory reproaches are pressed so fast upon him, that catching hold in his retreat of one small but precious fragment in the wreck of innocence and honour, he demands a truce from her attack, and with the spirit of a combatant who has not yet yielded up his weapons, cries out Pr'ythee, peace! The words are no expletives; they do not fill up a sentence, but they form one. They stand in a most important pass; they defend the breach her ambition has made in his heart, a breach in the very citadel of humanity; they mark the last dignified struggle of virtue, and they have a double reflecting power, which in the first place shows that nothing but the voice of authority could stem the torrent of her invective, and in the next place announces that something, worthy of the solemn audience he had demanded, was on the point to follow-and worthy it is to be a standard sentiment of moral truth expressed with proverbial simplicity, sinking into every heart that hears it I dare do all that may become a man, Who dares do more is none. |