No. XII. A DELINEATION OF SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS OF MACBETH AND RICHARD. THERE are two very striking characters delineated by our great dramatic poet, which I am desirous of bringing together under one review; and these are Macbeth and Richard the Third. The parts which these two persons sustain in their respective dramas, have a remarkable coincidence: both are actuated by the same guilty ambition in the opening of the story; both murder their lawful sovereign in the course of it; and both are defeated and slain in battle at the conclusion of it yet these two characters, under circumstances so similar, are as strongly distinguished in every passage of their dramatic life by the art of the poet, as any two men ever were by the hand of nature. Let us contemplate them in the three following periods, viz. the premeditation of their crime; the perpetration of it; and the catastrophe of their death. Duncan, the reigning king of Scotland, has two sons: Edward the Fourth of England has also two sons; but these kings and their respective heirs do not affect the usurpers Macbeth and Richard in the same degree, for the latter is a prince of the blood royal, brother to the king, and next in consanguinity to the throne after the death of his elder brother the Duke of Clarence: Macbeth, on the contrary, is not in the succession And to be king Stands not within the prospect of belief. His views, therefore, being further removed and more out of hope, a greater weight of circumstances should be thrown together to tempt and encourage him to an undertaking so much beyond the prospect of his belief. The art of the poet furnishes these circumstances, and the engine which his invention employs, is of a preternatural and prodigious sort. He introduces in the very opening of his scene a troop of sybils or witches, who salute Macbeth with their divinations, and in three solemn prophetic gratulations hail him Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter! By Sinel's death I know I'm thane of Glamis ; One part of the prophecy, therefore, is true; the remaining promises become more deserving of belief. This is one step in the ladder of his ambition, and mark how artfully the poet has laid it in his way. No time is lost; the wonderful machinery is not suffered to stand still, for behold a verification of the second prediction, and a courtier thus addresses him from the king : And for an earnest of a greater honour, He bade me from him call thee THANE OF CAWDOR. The magic now works to his heart, and he cannot wait the departure of the royal messenger before his admiration vents itself aside Glamis, and thane of Cawdor! The greatest is behind. A second time he turns aside, and unable to repress the emotions which this second confirmation of the predictions has excited, repeats the same secret observation Two truths are told As happy prologues to the swelling act A soliloquy then ensues, in which the poet judiciously opens enough of his character to show the spectator that these preternatural agents are not superfluously set to work upon a disposition prone to evil, but one that will have to combat many compunctious struggles before it can be brought to yield even to oracular influence. This alone would demonstrate (if we needed demonstration) that Shakspeare, without resorting to the ancients, had the judgment of ages as it were instinctively. From this instant we are apprised that Macbeth meditates an attack upon our pity as well as upon our horror, when he puts the following question to his conscience Why do I yield to that suggestion, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs Now let us turn to Richard, in whose cruel heart no such remorse finds place; he needs no tempter. There is here no dignus vindice nodus, nor indeed any knot at all; for he is already practised in murder ambition is his ruling passion, and a crown is in view; and he tells you at his very first entrance on the scene I am determined to be a villain. We are now presented with a character full formed and complete for all the savage purposes the drama : Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer. of The barriers of conscience are broken down, and the soul, hardened against shame, avows its own depravity : Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, He observes no gradations in guilt, expresses no hesitation, practises no refinements, but plunges into blood with the familiarity of long custom, and gives orders to his assassins to dispatch his brother Clarence with all the unfeeling tranquillity of a Nero or Caligula. Richard, having no longer any scruples to manage with his own conscience, is exactly in the predicament which the dramatic poet Diphilus has described with such beautiful simplicity of expression Όστις γαρ αὗτος αὑτον οὐκ αίσχυνεται, Πως τον γε μηδεν εἶδοτ ̓ αἰσχυνθήσεται· The wretch who knows his own vile deeds, and yet fears not himself, how should he fear another, who knows them not? It is manifest therefore that there is an essential difference in the developement of these characters, and that in favour of Macbeth. In his soul cruelty seems to dawn; it breaks out with faint glimmerings, like a winter-morning, and gathers strength by slow degrees. In Richard it flames forth at once, mounting like the sun between the tropics, and enters boldly on its career without a herald. As the character of Macbeth has a moral advantage in this distinction, so has the drama of that name a much more interesting and affecting cast. The struggles of a soul naturally virtuous, whilst it holds the guilty impulse of ambition at bay, affords the noblest theme for the drama, and puts the creative fancy of our poet upon a resource, in which he has been rivalled only by the great father of tragedy, Æschylus, in the prophetic effusjons of Cassandra, the incantations of the Persian magi for raising the ghost of Darius, and the imaginary terrific forms of his furies; with all which |