Shak

Shakspeare's King Lear' may-as Gervinus thinks, though not exactly in his sense-be called the tragedy par excellence, the climax of tragic art and tragic effect, to such a height does it carry the marvellous blending of softness, of intense and emotional feeling with the deeply pathetic, the awful and the terrible, which affect the soul with equal power from both sides. Gervinus justly asks whether in the poetry of all times and all nations— anything more touching and more affecting for the stage was ever written, than the scene of recognition between Cordelia and the awakening Lear. But as little could any poem equal it in the exciting and overwhelming power of those scenes, where the aged king-thrust out into the fearful storms of night-combats with the raging elements, with the terrible anguish of his soul and with his approaching madness, till in the end he succumbs to his more powerful antagonists. It is, however, just here, that there is an easily recognisable and hence often censured defect in this great work of art. speare, in allowing himself to be misled by the predilection of his age and nation for scenes of blood and horror, has carried the tragic effect to the height of what is repulsive and revolting. To have the scene where Cornwall puts out Gloster's eyes, represented directly on the stage, can only arouse a feeling of disgust which has nothing in common with the idea of beauty, nor with that of grandeur, power or sublimity, and which consequently can only impair the effect of the tragedy. Whether or not the nerves of Shakspeare's public may have been of a stronger fibre than those of the present generation-it is not the business of art to consider strong or weak nerves, but to aim only at the strengthening, the refreshing and elevating of the mind and feelings, and such scenes do not effect this even in the case of the strongest nerves. A second defect has already been referred to. The main levers of the action and its tragic course are contained in the first two scenes, in Lear's conduct, Cordelia's disinheritance and Edgar's flight. And yet the decisive motives for both Lear's and Edgar's proceedings are enveloped in a certain degree of misty obscurity; they can, indeed, as already said, be surmised with the aid of re

flection, from interspersed hints and indications, but they are not brought distinctly forward. The actor's skill, however, can remedy the defect by appropriate gestures, by special accentuation of those words, etc., containing the hints, and if we are to do Shakspeare justice we must never lose sight of the fact that he wrote only for the stage, and might with safety calculate upon the intelligent play of his fellow actors, who would meet him in his intentions, and whom he no doubt rehearsed in their respective parts. When well acted 'The Tragedy of King Lear and his daughters, of Gloster and his Sons,' (this is the original title) will, at the present day produce the same mighty effect, which we know it did on its first appearance.

CHAPTER IV.

MACBETH.

IN Romeo and Juliet,' in 'Othello,' and 'King Lear,' the drama keeps exclusively within the region of feelings and sentiments, of emotions and passions. The point of view from which it represents life and history is, to a certain extent, the simplest and most natural, so to speak, the patriarchal state of society, the first stage of human life, where the destiny of man appears directly dependent upon internal and external circumstances, and where the form and nature of the earliest, primary, and original relations of human society-courtship, marriage, and the family circle are expressed. It is not the will with its premeditations, not the thought with its free and conscious activity, but the direct sentiment, the want of free feeling -amounting to passion-which, in these dramas, directly becomes the tragic action, and consequently the tragic destiny. Intention, deliberation, reflection appear only as subordinate motives of the tragic development, inasmuch as they do not so much belong to the characters of the principal persons in whom are manifested the power and significance of the tragic pathos, but rather to the actions of the secondary personages who stand by the side, or are opposed to them as adversaries.

A different point of view is taken by the poet in the case of Macbeth.' Here it is the will with its aims and objects, the manly deed with the often deeply hidden springs of its origin, and the deliberate purposeness of its accomplishment, that form the chief motives of the tragic development. The poem therefore quits the region of those natural, simple, and fundamental relations of human society, and enters into the more complicate relation belonging to a different stage of human civilization, that of the state, the foundation of which is the justice and morality

of external works, and which, therefore, is no longer governed by the gushing immediateness of feeling and passion, but by the manly will, in its manifestation as the deliberate deed. This is the ground upon which the poet here takes his position, in order therefrom to arrange his tragico-poetical picture; it represents the lofty greatness of a manly, heroic energy of will and action, the tragic fall and ruin of which that forms its substance. The peculiar modification thus given to the general tragic view of things is then (as in the first three tragedies) still more definitely limited and shaded off by the peculiar relations in the lives and characters of the principal personages, as well as by the spirit and character of the time and nation in which the scene of the story represented is laid.

The tragedy opens in an extraordinary manner by the appearance of the three witches, who flit across the scene and vanish after giving an obscure intimation of their designs upon Macbeth. This opening, and indeed the whole of the witchery here introduced, has been censured by some as being a remnant of a degrading superstition, by others as being unpoetical and inconsistent with the nature of tragedy. The first objection is one of those prosaic views of the eighteenth century which, in rejecting the happily overcome superstition, at the same time threw overboard its poetical significance; the other is simply unreasonable, and is based partly upon an erroneous view as to the nature of tragedy, partly upon a superficial conception of the censured drama. If lofty energy of will and action be the field upon which the power of the tragic pathos is here manifested, then just this very opening and the introduction of the witches serves, at the beginning, to throw the clearest light on the tragic foundation upon which the drama is to be constructed. The will of man is not absolutely free self-determination, with the full and clear consciousness of its motives; it is rather only conditionally or relatively free, determined not merely by the definite, demonstrable influences of individual things (of which it becomes conscious), of special relations and circumstances, but also by those dark, involuntary and unconscious influences, which are the result of the general position of affairs, the general character of the world of

man and surrounding nature, which forms, so to say, the atmosphere in which it has its life and which affects its decisions. This atmosphere acts like air and moisture upon the seed of the determination; it can hasten and mature it, so that it may shoot forth quickly as a germ; it can, however, also check and destroy it, so that it may never become a germ or merely obtain a stunted existence. If the general conditions and relations are favourably met. by the instinct, the inclination, by the first embryonic, and as yet indefinite thought in the breast of man, then the inner impulse does not indeed necessarily become a determination, but it requires an incalculably greater strength of will and self-control to overcome the inclination, and to lead the thought into another direction. Nay, it is frequently the external circumstances and relations which first awaken and develop the dormant inclination, without which man would perhaps never have become clearly conscious of it.

This knowledge, or if it be preferred, this feeling of the connection between the human will and the outer world became Shakspeare's, if not conscious, yet unconscious and instinctive motive for retaining in his tragedy the figures of the witches offered by the old legend. He wished by the actions assigned to them and their chief, Hecate, not merely symbolically to point out the demoniacal power of ambition, to which the hero falls a victim, but they were, to him, at the same time, the allegorical expression of the mysterious interaction between the human will and the surrounding outer world; to him they signify the power of evil, which, by having struck root in man himself, also meets him—with tempting and seductive allurements -externally in the forces of nature, in accidental events, conditions, and relations; they are to him the personifications of those powers of nature and of the mind which mature the seed of the determination, awaken the dormant thought and excite the desires, powers which sometimes present themselves to man as sudden phenomena from the land of wonders, and which point out to him the road he is to follow. They, at the same time, represent the necessary, though dark and mysterious connection between what is evil, hideous, and destructive in nature and the moral