and unsupported by steadiness of principle. When he has once given admission to the suggestion that it is possible " to win wrongly" without "playing false," his doom is sealed, and the temptings of the weird sisters merely accelerate it. Lady Macbeth is the true evil genius of her husband, and the peculiar pathos of her situation is that for so long she has no suspicion of it. She loves him so well that her love even survives what to her coarser apprehension seems his childish and cowardly scruple. When she perceives the abyss into which she has led him she breaks down, as revealed in the sleep-walking scene, perhaps the highest achievement in all dramatic poetry for the union of pity and terror. The Witches exalt the piece by providing a supernatural background, precipitate a tragedy which would have taken place without them, and incite to the further crime of the murder of Banquo. The ease with which the naturally virtuous Macbeth, having once imbrued his hands in blood, is wrought up to this foul deed, is one of the most striking moral lessons in Shakespeare. The speech of Hecate is probably an interpolation. Other passages, such as the second scene of the first act, can hardly have come from Shakespeare's pen, and the comparative brevity of the piece, with some apparent disproportion in the length of the scenes, has led to the suspicion that it has been systematically reduced to acting proportions by some meddling playwright. There are, indeed, a few indications of retrenchment, but in our opinion this curtness is sufficiently accounted for by the obvious fact that Shakespeare must have had a Court representation of his piece in his mind from the moment that he began to plan it. He was manifestly guided to his subject by the desire to celebrate the accession of James and the consequent union of the English and Scottish crowns, the most important political event of his time. It would have been idle for him to have so laboured if the play had never been seen by him whom it was designed to honour. He must therefore have contemplated a Court representation from the first, and it had doubtless been impressed upon his mind by much mortifying experience, that a Court play must not be too long. The like cause produced the like effect when he wrote The Tempest, the only other play, unless the tradition respecting The Merry Wives of Windsor can be credited, which he composed with Mrs. Cibber as Cordelia in "King Lear" Shakespeare's retirement from the stage the Court mainly in his eye. The result was not unfortunate. "Shake speare has employed in the treatment of this subject," says Brandes, "a style that suits it, vehement to violence, compressed to congestion, eminently fitted to express and to show terror." The question whether Macbeth was not withheld from the public stage for some time after its Court representation will be considered in another place. We are now approaching an important era in Shakespeare's life, his re-establishment in his native town. He had ever since 1597 been in possession of the best house in Stratford, and his wife and daughters no doubt habitually dwelt in it, but, so long as he continued to be an actor, his own residences must have been occasional. He had clearly purchased it with the view of making it his home when circumstances should allow, and he must have been eager to carry this purpose into effect, especially as he appears to have had no great vocation for the stage. How well he understood the performer's art theoretically the directions to the players in Hamlet evince, and his dramas in general display a consummate knowledge of dramatic effect. But sound theory does not necessarily imply successful practice, and the minor part of the Ghost is the only one which tradition has identified with his name. Apart from this, he has recorded his distaste for the theatrical calling in lines of tragic earnestness, which alone refute the Baconian theory of the authorship of the Sonnets: O for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth REMOVAL TO STRATFORD That did not better for my life provide Than public means, which public manners breeds. To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. 239 Shakespeare's annual emolument as an actor has been computed at £180, His settlement or about a third of his probable total income from the Globe Theatre. He at Stratford had two residences to keep up, and his father having died in September 1601, leaving little if any property beside two houses in Henley Street, he was probably now the sole support of his mother. He would therefore be cautious about quitting the actor's profession, little as he loved it. The precise time of his emancipation cannot be determined, but may well have been not very remote from his contemptuous mention of the poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. A very likely date would be the spring or summer of 1607, in the June of which year his eldest daughter Susanna married Dr. John Hall, a physician of Stratford, and quitted New Place for her husband's house. This would leave Mrs. Shakespeare alone in the house with her second daughter. It may have become necessary that Shakespeare should live more at Stratford; the marriage of his daughter would certainly bring him there, and the conjecture that his residence then became permanent is at all events very plausible. Another motive might be the probably declining health of his aged mother, Stratford tradition respecting Shakespeare who died in the following year. So long as he continued to write plays he would, no doubt, be obliged to reside much in London. We may feel confident, however, that the more he accustomed himself to a country life the more he would be captivated by it, and the brighter and more cheerful character of his dramatic productions after the probable date of his settlement at Stratford may be traced in large measure to its wholesome influences. This settlement will be found to be connected with a peculiarity indisputably apparent in his later work, which will be best explained if considered along with one of the best authenticated of the Stratford traditions respecting him. Between 1661 and 1663 the Rev. John Ward, Vicar of Stratford, recorded in a memorandum-book that Shakespeare, after he had taken up his residence there, regularly supplied the London theatre with two plays a year. He must have heard the story in his parish less than fifty years after the death of Shakespeare, and nothing can be more intrinsically probable than the existence of some such contract between Shakespeare and his partners in the Globe. If, nevertheless, the tradition proves at variance with any known facts, it ought to be rejected, but it is, on the contrary, entirely in harmony with a remarkable phenomenon attending Shakespeare's later dramatic work. This is his constant endeavour to diminish the labour of composition. In every play known with certainty to have belonged to his later period, A Winter's Tale alone excepted, recourse is had to some device tending to save trouble to the author. In Troilus and Cressida he revives a former play. The Tempest is the shortest of his dramas. In Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra he leans upon Plutarch. Pericles and Timon are largely, Cymbeline perhaps to some extent, by other hands. In Henry VIII. he collaborates with Fletcher. While this slackness is fully in harmony with the circumstances of his residence at Stratford, the alleged contract would explain why his productiveness should still be so considerable. The obligation would pull both ways. Its fulfilment would sometimes be irksome, but would always be necessary. The natural resource would be the employment of any device by which the dramatist's labour might be diminished without lowering the standard of his art. The labour-saving tendency, at all events, is undeniable, and the obligation to produce two plays a year with or without the goodwill of Minerva affords as plausible a way of accounting for it as can be conceived. Quick as Launce in "Two Gentlemen of Verona " From a drawing by Ramberg It must be inquired, however, whether it is possible so to allot Shakespeare's DATES OF SHAKESPEARE'S LATER PLAYS 241 work during the last years of his dramatic activity as to justify the assertion of his having for several years regularly provided the theatre with two plays annually? This cannot be said unless the composition or, which would serve equally well, the first public representation of two plays can be brought lower than the generally accepted date. There are only two possible instances, Othello and Macbeth. Of Othello we have spoken. The versification of this play indicates a later period than that of Lear or Macbeth, and nearly that of Antony and Cleopatra. The absence of any trace of it until 1609-perhaps even 1610, when a performance was witnessed by a German prince on his travels in England-is remarkable in the case of a drama not only of transcendent merit, but admirably qualified for popularity. On the other side are two doubtful pieces of external evidence: Malone's statement that he knew it to have been performed in 1604, and the forged entry of its performance at Court in 1605, which may have been transcribed from a genuine entry. Decision is difficult. The question relating to Macbeth is curious. The evidence for the date of 1605 or 1606 seems satisfactory, but was there a public representation at that time? The brevity of the play, and the pointed compliments to James I., show that it was The Falcon Tavern Believed to have been frequented by Shakespeare and his companions From Wilkinson's "Londinia Illustrata," 1819 intended for performance at Court. This by no means excludes public Probable date representation, but would public representation be then permitted? The of "Macbeth" Gunpowder Plot had just exploded, and the air was full of treasons and conspiracies. Might not the representation of the murder of a King of Scotland have been thought unseemly and dangerous? The question would hardly have suggested itself but for the fact that in April 1610 the play is a new one to Dr. Simon Forman, a regular playgoer, who describes a performance of it in his diary with a minuteness proving that he had never seen it before, and suggesting that he had never heard of it. None of Shakespeare's dramas is more likely to have been frequently acted; if it had really been a stock-play for four years unknown to Forman, his nescience is extraordinary. On the other hand, there is an apparent allusion to Banquo's ghost in The Puritan, a play printed in 1607: "the ghost in white at the head of the table." This seems strong evidence, but would Banquo have been exhibited in a white sheet? This would be contrary to the precedent of Hamlet's father, "in his habit as he lived," and would VOL. II Q |