ANALYSIS OF MACBETH.

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BY HENRY C. MOORHEAD.

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The reader who has not considered the subject in Ulrici’s point of view, will, perhaps, scarcely be prepared, at first sight, to believe that the two plays of Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice, have the same “ground-idea;” that both are, throughout, imbued with the same sentiment, yet he will readily perceive the similarity of the leading incidents of these plays. Shylock insists on the literal terms of his bond, and “stands for judgment,” according to the strict law of Venice. He is entitled to a pound of flesh; “the law allows it, and the court awards it;” but his bond gives him no drop of blood, and neither more nor less than just a pound. Thus the letter of the law, on which he has so sternly insisted, serves in the end to defeat him. In like manner Macbeth relies with fatal confidence on the predictions of the weird sisters, that “none of woman born shall harm Macbeth;” and that he “shall never vanquished be till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane.” The predictions are more literally fulfilled than he anticipated, and that very strictness of interpretation makes them worthless.

Now it is from these incidents—both of the same import—that the respective themes of these plays are drawn; hence those themes are substantially the same, and may be thus expressed:

The relation of form to substance—of the letter to the spirit—of the real to the ideal. But the different aspects in which this idea is presented are multiform; as empty, superfluous words; ambiguities, equivocations, irony, riddles, formality, prescription, superstition; witches, ghosts, dreams, omens, etc., etc.

The reason and the propriety of the introduction of the witches in Macbeth, has often been a subject of speculation. It may be remarked in general, that Shakspeare always follows very closely the original story on which his plot is founded. The question as to any given circumstance, therefore, generally is rather why he has retained than why he has introduced it. In the history of Macbeth, as he read it in the old chronicles, he found the weird sisters, and also their equivocal predictions; and it was upon these predictions as a “ground-idea,” (as has already been observed,) that he constructed the play. The witches, therefore, were not introduced for the sake of the play, but it might rather be said the play was written for the sake of the witches.

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