Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

Scene II

NORTH.

Claudius, the Uncle-king in Hamlet, is perhaps the most odious character in all Shakspeare. But he does no unnecessary murders. He has killed the Father, and will the Son, all in regular order. But Macbeth plunges himself, like a drunken man, into unnecessary and injurious cruelties. He throws like a reckless gamester. If I am to own the truth, I don't know why he is so cruel. I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero —

BULLER.

What do we know of Nero? Was he mad?

NORTH.

I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero; but he seems to be under some infatuation that drags or drives him along. To kill is, in every difficulty, the ready resource that occurs to him – as if to go on murdering were, by some law of the Universe, the penalty which you must pay for having once murdered.

SEWARD.

I think, Sir, that without contradicting anything we said before Lunch about his Lordship or his Kingship, we may conceive in the natural Macbeth considerable force of Moral Intuition.

NORTH.

We may.

SEWARD.

Of Moral Intelligence?

NORTH.

Yes.

SEWARD.

Of Moral Obedience?

NORTH.

No.

SEWARD.

Moral Intuition, and Moral Intelligence breaking out, from time to time, all through – we understand how there is engendered in him strong self-dissatisfaction – thence perpetual goadings on – and desperate attempts to lose conscience in more and more crime.

NORTH.

Ay – Seward – even so. He tells you that he stakes soul and body upon the throw for a Crown. He has got the Crown – and paid for it. He must keep it – else he has bartered soul and body – for nothing! To make his first crime good– he strides gigantically along the road of which it opened the gate.

TALBOYS.

An almost morbid impressibility of imagination is energetically stamped, and universally recognised in the Thane, and I think, sir, that it warrants, to a certain extent, a sincerity of the mental movements. He really sees a fantastical dagger – he really hears fantastical voices – perhaps he really sees a fantastical Ghost. All this in him is Nature – not artifice – and a nature deeply, terribly, tempestuously commoved by the near contact of a murder imminent – doing – done. It is more like a murderer a-making than a murderer made.

SEWARD.

See, sir, how precisely this characteristic is proposed.

BULLER.

By whom?

SEWARD.

By Shakspeare, in that first Soliloquy. The poetry colouring, throughout, his discourse, is its natural efflorescence.

NORTH.

Talboys, Seward, you have spoken well.

BULLER.

And I have spoken ill?

NORTH.

I have not said so.

BULLER.

We have all Four of us spoken well – we have all Four of us spoken ill – and we have all Four of us spoken but so-so – now and heretofore – in this Tent – hang the wind – there's no hearing twelve words in ten a body says. Honoured sir, I beg permission to say that I cannot admit the Canon laid down by your Reverence, an hour or two ago, or a minute or two ago, that Macbeth's extravagant language is designed by Shakspeare to designate hypocrisy.

NORTH.

Why?

BULLER.

You commended Talboys and Seward for noticing the imaginative – the poetical character of Macbeth's mind. There we find the reason of his extravagant language. It may, as you said, be cant and fustian – or it may not – but why attribute to hypocrisy – as you did – what may have flowed from his genius? Poets may rant as loud as he, and yet be honest men. "In a fine frenzy rolling," their eyes may fasten on fustian.

NORTH.

Good – go on. Deduct.

BULLER.

Besides, sir, the Stage had such a language of its own; and I cannot help thinking that Shakspeare often, and too frankly, gave in to it.

NORTH.

He did.

BULLER.

I would, however, much rather believe that if Shakspeare meant anything by it in Macbeth's Oratory or Poetry, he intended thereby rather to impress on us that last noticed constituent of his nature – a vehement seizure of imagination. I believe, sir, that in the hortatory scene Lady Macbeth really vanquishes – as the scene ostensibly shows – his irresolution. And if Shakspeare means irresolution, I do not know why the grounds thereof which Shakspeare assigns to Macbeth should not be accepted as the true grounds. The Dramatist would seem to me to demand too much of me, if, under the grounds which he expresses, he requires me to discard these, and to discover and express others.

SEWARD.

I do not know, sir, if that horrible Invocation of hers to the Spirits of Murder to unsex her, be held by many to imply that she has no need of their help?

NORTH.

It is held by many to prove that she was not a woman but a fiend. It proves the reverse. I infer from it that she does need their help – and, what is more, that she gets it. Nothing so dreadful, in the whole range of Man's Tragic Drama, as that Murder. But I see Seward is growing pale – we know his infirmity – and for the present shun it.

SEWARD.

Thank you, sir.

NORTH.

I may, however, ask a question about Banquo's Ghost.

SEWARD.

Well – well – do so.

TALBOYS.

You put the question to me, sir? I am inclined to think, sir, that no real Ghost sits on the Stool – but that Shakspeare meant it as with the Daggers. On the Stage he appears – that is an abuse.

NORTH.

Not so sure of that, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

Had Macbeth himself continued to believe that the first-seen Ghost was a real Ghost, he would not, could not have ventured so soon after its disappearance to say again, "And to our dear friend Banquo." He does say it – and then again diseased imagination assails him at the rash words. Lady Macbeth reasons with him again, and he finally is persuaded that the Ghost, both times, had been but brain-sick creations.

BULLER.

That certainly looks as if he did then know he had been deceived. But perhaps he only censures himself for being too much agitated by a real ghost.

TALBOYS.

That won't do.

NORTH.

But go back, my dear Talboys, to the first enacting of the Play. What could the audience have understood to be happening, without other direction of their thoughts than the terrified Macbeth's bewildered words? He never mentions Banquo's name – and recollect that nobody sitting there then knew that Banquo had been murdered. The dagger is not in point. Then the spectators heard him say, "Is this a dagger that I see before me?" And if no dagger was there, they could at once see that 'twas phantasy.

TALBOYS.

Something in that.

BULLER.

A settler.

NORTH.

I entirely separate the two questions – first, how did the Manager of the Globe Theatre have the King's Seat at the Feast filled; and second, what does the highest poetical Canon deliver. I speak now, but to the first. Now, here the rule is – "the audience must understand, and at once, what that which they see and hear means" – that Rule must govern the art of the drama in the Manager's practice. You allow that, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

I do.

BULLER.

Rash – Talboys – rash: he's getting you into a net.

NORTH.

That is not my way, Buller. Well, then, suppose Macbeth acted for the first time to an audience, who are to establish it for a stock-play or to damn it. Would the Manager commit the whole power of a scene which is perhaps the most – singly – effective of the whole Play —

BULLER.

No – no – not the most effective of the whole Play —

NORTH.

The rival, then, of the Murder Scene – the Sleep-Walking stands aloof and aloft – to the chance of a true divination by the whole Globe audience? I think not. The argument is of a vulgar tone, I confess, and extremely literal, but it is after the measure of my poor faculties.

SEWARD.

In confirmation of what you say, sir, it has been lately asserted that one of the two appearings at least is not Banquo's – but Duncan's. How is that to be settled but by a real Ghost – or Ghosts?

NORTH.

And I ask, what has Shakspeare himself undeniably done elsewhere? In Henry VIII., Queen Katherine sleeps and dreams. Her Dream enters, and performs various acts – somewhat expressive – minutely contrived and prescribed. It is a mute Dream, which she with shut eyes sees – which you in pit, boxes, and gallery see – which her attendants, watching about her upon the stage, do not see.

SEWARD.

And in Richard III – He dreams, and so does Richmond. Eight Ghosts rise in succession and speak to Richard first, and to the Earl next – each hears, I suppose, what concerns himself – they seem to be present in the two Tents at once.

NORTH.

In Cymbeline, Posthumus dreams. His Dream enters – Ghosts and even Jupiter! They act and speak; and this Dream has a reality – for Jupiter hands or tosses a parchment-roll to one of the Ghosts, who lays it, as bidden, on the breast of the Dreamer, where he, on awaking, perceives it! I call all this physically strong, sir, for the representation of the metaphysically thought.

BULLER.

If Buller may speak, Buller would observe, that once or twice both Ariel and Prospero come forward "invisible." And in Spenser, the Dream of which Morpheus lends the use to Archimago, is – carried.

SEWARD.

We all remember the Dream which Jupiter sends to Agamemnon, and which, while standing at his bed's-head, puts on the shape of Nestor and speaks; – the Ghost of Patroclus – the actual Ghost which stands at the bed's-head of Achilles, and is his Dream.

NORTH.

My friends, Poetry gives a body to the bodiless. The Stage of Shakspeare was rude, and gross. In my boyhood, I saw the Ghosts appear to John Kemble in Richard III. Now they may be abolished with Banquo. So may be Queen Katherine's Angels. But Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about one person's seeing what another does not – or one's not seeing, rather, that which another does. Nor had Homer, when Achilles alone, in the Quarrel Scene, sees Minerva. Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about the bodily representation of Thoughts – the inward by the outward. Shakspeare and the Great Old Poets leave vague, shadowy, mist-shrouded, and indeterminate the boundaries between the Thought and the Existent – the Real and the Unreal. I am able to believe with you, Talboys, that Banquo's Ghost was understood by Shakspeare, the Poet, to be the Phantasm of the murderer's guilt-and-fear-shaken soul; but was required by Shakspeare, the Manager of the Globe Theatre, to rise up through a trap-door, mealy-faced and blood-boultered, and so make "the Table full."

BULLER.

Seward, do bid him speak of Lady Macbeth.

SEWARD.

Oblige me, sir – don't now – after dinner, if you will.

NORTH.

I shall merely allude now, as exceedingly poetical treatment, to the discretion throughout used in the SHOWING of Lady Macbeth. You might almost say that she never takes a step on the stage, that does not thrill the Theatre. Not a waste word, gesture, or look. All at the studied fulness of sublime tragical power – yet all wonderfully tempered and governed. I doubt if Shakspeare could have given a good account of everything that he makes Macbeth say – but of all that She says he could.

TALBOYS.

As far as I am able to judge, she but once in the whole Play loses her perfect self-mastery – when the servant surprises her by announcing the King's coming. She answers, 'thou'rt mad to say it;' which is a manner of speaking used by those who cannot, or can hardly believe tidings that fill them with exceeding joy. It is not the manner of a Lady to her servant who unexpectedly announces the arrival of a high – of the highest visitor. She recovers herself instantly. 'Is not thy master with him, who, wer't so, would have informed for preparation?' This is a turn colouring her exclamation, and is spoken in the most self-possessed, argumentative, demonstrative tone. The preceding words had been torn from her; now she has passed, with inimitable dexterity, from the dreamed Queen, to the usual mistress of her household —to the huswife.

NORTH.

In the Fourth Act – she is not seen at all. But in the Fifth, lo! and behold! and at once we know why she had been absent – we see and are turned to living stone by the revelation of the terrible truth. I am always inclined to conceive Lady Macbeth's night-walking as the summit, or topmost peak of all tragic conception and execution – in Prose, too, the crowning of Poetry! But it must be, because these are the ipsissima verba– yea, the escaping sighs and moans of the bared soul. There must be nothing, not even the thin and translucent veil of the verse, betwixt her soul showing itself, and yours beholding. Words which your "hearing latches" from the threefold abyss of Night, Sleep, and Conscience! What place for the enchantment of any music is here? Besides, she speaks in a whisper. The Siddons did – audible distinctly, throughout the stilled immense theatre. Here music is not – sound is not – only an anguished soul's faint breathings – gaspings. And observe that Lady Macbeth carries – a candle – besides washing her hands – and besides speaking prose – three departures from the severe and elect method, to bring out that supreme revelation. I have been told that the great Mrs Pritchard used to touch the palm with the tips of her fingers, for the washing, keeping candle in hand; – that the Siddons first set down her candle, that she might come forwards, and wash her hands in earnest, one over the other, as if she were at her wash-hand stand, with plenty of water in her basin – that when Sheridan got intelligence of her design so to do, he ran shrieking to her, and, with tears in his eyes, besought that she would not, at one stroke, overthrow Drury Lane – that she persisted, and turned the thousands of bosoms to marble.

TALBOYS.

Our dear, dear Master.

NORTH.

You will remember, my friends, her four rhymed lines– uttered to herself in Act Third. They are very remarkable —

They are her only waking acknowledgments of having mistaken life! So – they forebode the Sleep-Walking, and the Death – as an owl, or a raven, or vulture, or any fowl of obscene wing, might flit between the sun and a crowned but doomed head – the shadow but of a moment, yet ominous, for the augur, of an entire fatal catastrophe.

SEWARD.

They do. But to say the truth, I had either forgot them, or never discovered their significancy. O that William Shakspeare!

TALBOYS.

O that Christopher North!

NORTH.

Speak so, friends – 'tis absurd, but I like it.

TALBOYS.

It is sincere.

NORTH.

At last they call him "black Macbeth," and "this dead Butcher." And with good reason. They also call her "his fiend-like Queen," which last expression I regard as highly offensive.

BULLER.

And they call her so not without strong reason.

NORTH.

A bold, bad woman – not a Fiend. I ask – Did she, or did she not, "with violent hand foredo her life?" They mention it as a rumour. The Doctor desires that all means of self-harm may be kept out of her way. Yet the impression on us, as the thing proceeds, is, that she dies of pure remorse – which I believe. She is visibly dying. The cry of women, announcing her death, is rather as of those who stood around the bed watching, and when the heart at the touch of the invisible finger stops, shriek – than of one after the other coming in and finding the self-slain – a confused, informal, perplexing, and perplexed proceeding – but the Cry of Women is formal, regular for the stated occasion. You may say, indeed, that she poisoned herself – and so died in bed – watched. Under the precautions, that is unlikely – too refined. The manner of Seyton, "The Queen, my Lord, is dead," shows to me that it was hourly expected. How these few words would seek into you, did you first read the Play in mature age! She died a natural death – of remorse. Take my word for it – the rumour to the contrary was natural to the lip and ear of Hate.

TALBOYS.

A question of primary import is – What is the relation of feeling between him and her? The natural impression, I think, is, that the confiding affection – the intimate confidence – is "there" – of a husband and wife who love one another – to whom all interests are in common, and are consulted in common. Without this belief, the Magic of the Tragedy perishes – vanishes to me. "My dearest love, Duncan comes here to-night." "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest Chuck" – a marvellous phrase for Melpomene. It is the full union – for ill purposes – that we know habitually for good purposes – that to me tempers the Murder Tragedy.

NORTH.

Yet believe me, my dear Talboys – that of all the murders Macbeth may have committed, she knew beforehand but of ONE – Duncan's. The haunted somnambulist speaks the truth – the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

TALBOYS.

"The Thane of Fife had a Wife." Does not that imply that she was privy to that Murder?

NORTH.

No. Except that she takes upon herself all the murders that are the offspring, legitimate or illegitimate, of that First Murder. But we know that Macbeth, in a sudden fit of fury, ordered the Macduffs to be massacred when on leaving the Cave Lenox told him of the Thane's flight.

TALBOYS.

That is decisive.

NORTH.

A woman, she feels for a murdered woman. That is all – a touch of nature – from Shakspeare's profound and pitiful heart.

TALBOYS.

"The Queen, my lord, is dead." "She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word" – Often have I meditated on the meaning of these words – yet even now I do not fully feel or understand them.

NORTH.

Nor I. This seems to look from them – "so pressed by outward besiegings, I have not capacity to entertain the blow as it requires to be entertained. With a free soul I could have measured it. Now I cannot."

TALBOYS.

Give us, sir, a commentary on the Revelations of the Sleeping Spectre.

NORTH.

I dare not. Let's be cheerful. I ask this – when you see and hear Kemble-Macbeth – and Siddons-Macbeth – whom do you believe that you see and hear? I affirm that you at one and the same instant – (or at the most in two immediately successive instants – yet I believe in one and the same instant) —know that you see and hear Kemble – or if that accomplished gentleman and admirable actor – Macready be performing the part – then Macready; – and yet believe that you see and hear Lord Macbeth. I aver that you entertain a mixt – confused – self-contradictory state of mind – that two elements of thought which cannot co-subsist do co-subsist.

TALBOYS.

De jure they cannot – DE FACTO they do.

NORTH.

Just so.

TALBOYS.

They co-subsist fighting, and yet harmonising – there is half-belief – semi-illusion.

NORTH.

I claim the acknowledgment of such a state – which any one who chooses may better describe, but which shall come to that effect – for the lowest substratum of all science and criticism concerning Poesy. Will anybody grant me this, then I will reason with him about Poesy, for we begin with something in common. Will anybody deny me this, then I will not argue with him about Poesy, for we set out with nothing in common.

BULLER.

We grant you all you ask – we are all agreed – "our unanimity is wonderful."

NORTH.

Leave out the great Brother and Sister, and take the Personated alone. I know that Othello and Desdemona never existed – that an Italian Novelist began, and an English Dramatist ended them – and there they are. But do I not believe in their existence, "their loves and woes?" Yes I do believe in their existence, in their loves and woes – and I hate Iago accordingly with a vicious, unchristian, personal, active, malignant hatred.

TALBOYS.

Dr Johnson's celebrated expression, "all the belief that Poetry claims" —

BULLER.

Celebrated! Where is it?

TALBOYS.

Preface to Shakspeare – is idle, and frivolous, and false?

NORTH.

It is. He belies his own experience. He cannot make up his mind to admit the irrational thought of belief which you at once reject and accept. But exactly the half acceptance, and the half rejection, separates poetry from – prose.

TALBOYS.

That is, sir, the poetical from the prosaic.

NORTH.

Just so. It is the life and soul of all poetry – the lusus – the make-believe – the glamour and the gramarye. I do not know – gentlemen – I wish to be told, whether I am now throwing away words upon the setting up of a pyramid which was built by Cheops, and is only here and there crumbling a little, or whether the world requires that the position shall be formally argued and acknowledged. Johnson, as you reminded me, Talboys, did not admit it.

TALBOYS.

That he tells us in so many words. Has any more versed and profound master in criticism, before or since, authentically and authoritatively, luminously, cogently, explicitly, psychologically, metaphysically, physiologically, psychologically, propounded, reasoned out, legislated, and enthroned the Dogma?

NORTH.

I know not, Talboys. Do you admit the Dogma?

TALBOYS.

I do.

NORTH.

Impersonation – Apostrophe – of the absent; every poetical motion of the Soul; the whole pathetic beholding of Nature – involve the secret existence and necessity of this irrational psychical state for grounding the Logic of Poesy.

BULLER.

Go on, sir.

NORTH.

I will – but in a new direction. Before everything else, I desire, for the settlement of this particular question, a foundation for, and some progress in the science of Murder Tragedies.

SEWARD.

I know properly two.

BULLER.

Two only? Pray name.

SEWARD.

This of Macbeth and Richard III.

BULLER.

The Agamemnon – the Choephoræ – the Electra – the Medea —

SEWARD.

In the Agamemnon, your regard is drawn to Agamemnon himself and to Cassandra. However, it is after a measure a prototype. Clytemnestra has in it a principality. Medea stands eminent – but then she is in the right.

BULLER.

In the right?

SEWARD.

Jason at least is altogether in the wrong. But we must – for obvious reasons – discuss the Greek drama by itself; therefore not a word more about it now.

NORTH.

Richard III., and Macbeth and his wife, are in their Plays the principal people. You must go along with them to a certain guarded extent – else the Play is done for. To be kept abhorring and abhorring, for Five Acts together, you can't stand.

SEWARD.

Oh! that the difference between Poetry and Life were once for all set down – and not only once for all, but every time that it comes in question.

BULLER.

My dear sir, do gratify Seward's very reasonable desire, and once for all set down the difference.

SEWARD.

You bear suicides on the stage, and tyrannicides and other cides – all simple homicide – much murder. Even Romeo's killing Tybalt in the street, in reparation for Mercutio's death, you would take rather differently, if happening to-day in Pall Mall, or Moray Place.