praise of Fortinbras the play finds its perfect consummation.

Let four captains

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have prov'd most royally; and, for his

passage,

The soldier's music and the rites of war

Speak loudly for him.

Take up the bodies; such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

(A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies, after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.)

This is the only play of Shakespeare's in which our interest in the central figure is compelled to extend itself beyond the grave. When Lear, Macbeth, or Othello die, our connection with them is dissolved: their mortality is the only thing that concerns us. Whereas, in Hamlet, we find ourselves gazing after him into that undiscovered country from whose bourne

no traveller returns, uniting in Horatio's exquisite adieu,

Good night, sweet prince : And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Hamlet is not directly on trial for his soul, but the question of eternal loss or gain is constantly suggested. It is the management of this deep shadow of the world to come; this complicated war between conscience and passion; this sharp contrast between providence and fate; this final appeal from time to eternity, that gives the drama such universal, indestructible interest. Its felicities of diction, miracles of invention, exhaustless variety of character; its splendor of imagery, constructive symmetry, and pre-eminent glory of thought, would abundantly account for the critical admiration it inspires; but the critical awe and popular love it never fails to awaken can only be attributed to that rare but sovereign charm with which the highest human genius can sometimes in

There is a

vest a religious mystery. poetic compulsion that after the fatal defeat of so blameless a youth, after a career of such unexampled, unprovoked agony, there should be in distinct perspective the ineffable amends of the hereafter. In Hamlet, Shakespeare has not only created a character but a soul. The deep spirituality of the part not only fills the play itself, but, acting as a centre of light, diffuses an ethereal lustre over all his works, and supplies the most imperishable element of his immortality. Strike any other single play from the list, and though the loss would be irreparable, yet the main characteristics of the entire fabric would remain radically the same. Strike out Hamlet, and the aspect of the whole structure is hopelessly altered.

Macbeth

(A Fragment. Left unfinished by the death of the author.)

Macbeth is one of the twenty plays which first appeared in print in the Folio of 1623. It was probably written in 1605, perhaps two or three years after Hamlet; acted probably in 1606, certainly in 1610, at the Globe Theatre. With the exception perhaps of Lear, it is the latest of the four tragedies.

In

Macbeth himself is one of Shakespeare's great criminal characters. Hamlet, intellect, individual force, and courage were on the side of innocence: in Macbeth, intellect, energy, and daring are on the side of guilt. In Hamlet, the villain of the piece is a cunning, cowardly voluptuary of small intelligence and smaller will; unscrupulous, unconscientious, unredeemed by a single approxi

mation to virtue unless it be implied fidelity to an incestuous love. In Macbeth, the hero is bold, ambitious, dauntless, dangerous; with a mind of vast undisciplined power: striding from guilt to deeper guilt with a speed accelerated by remorseful self-abhorrence. The 'King of shreds and patches" is a selfimpelled, instinctively and elaborately hyprocritical assassin, who takes his rouse, keeps midnight wassail, drains his draughts of Rhenish down; who clings complacently to his crown, his own ambition, and his queen; a smiling Cain, who, with but one faint effort at remorse, finds life a joy till Hamlet teaches him to fear.

The Thane of Cawdor is driven half reluctantly to crime by a spell of "Magic sleight" and the horrible compulsion of a fiend-like woman. When he murders Duncan he murders sleep; puts rancours in the vessel of his peace; eats his daily meal in fear and shakes nightly in the affliction of terrible dreams: sees a gory