Macbeth

MACBETH, it is probable, was the last-written of the four great tragedies, and immediately preceded

Antony and Cleopatra.(note 1, p 331]. In that play Shakespeare's final style appears for the first time

completely formed, and the transition to this style is much more decidedly visible in Macbeth than in

King Lear .Yet in certain respects Macbeth recalls Hamlet rather than Othello or King Lear. In the

heroes of both plays the passage from thought to a critical resolution and action is difficult, and excites

the keenest interest. In neither play, as in Othello and King Lear, is painful pathos one of the main

effects. Evil, again, though it shows in Macbeth a prodigious energy, is not the icy or stony

inhumanity of lago or Goneril; and, as in Hamlet, it is pursued by remorse. Finally, Shakespeare no

longer restricts the action to purely human agencies, as in the two preceding tragedies; portents once

more fill the heavens, ghosts rise from their graves, an unearthly light flickers about the head of the

doomed man. The special popularity of Hamlet and Macbeth is due in part to some of these common

characteristics, notably to the fascination of the supernatural, the absence of the spectacle of extreme

undeserved suffering, the absence of characters which horrify and repel and yet are destitute of

grandeur. The reader who looks unwillingly at lago gazes at Lady Macbeth in awe, because though she

is dreadful she is also sublime. The whole tragedy is sublime.

In this, however, and in other respects, Macbeth makes an impression quite different from that of

Hamlet. The dimensions of the principal characters, the rate of movement in the action, the supernatural

effect, the style, the versification, are an changed; and they are all changed in much the same

manner. In many parts of Macbeth there is in the language a peculiar compression, pregnancy, energy,

even violence; the harmonious grace and even flow, often conspicuous in Hamlet, have almost

disappeared. The chief characters, built on a scale at least as large as that of Othello, seem to attain at

times an almost