And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, The Commentators afford very little assistance to the understanding of this passage, which on a superficial view exhibits, though somewhat obscurely, striking and affecting images. I have often looked at it with despair of being able to trace the coherence which we expect, notwithstanding the distracted state of the mind of Macbeth, and have regarded it, not as a passage which has come down to us corrupted, but as one of those thrown off by this free spirit, in which he trusted to a certain general effect, without being solicitous about the inquiries of a too cold criticism. But having found in a contemporary writer the word foules used for crowds, it occurred to me that for fools we might read foules in this sense of crowds, and this led to what may perhaps have been the real intention of the Poet. Macbeth, when he hears of the death of his lady, thinks first of the unseasonableness of the time; sometime "hereafter" would have been the time for such a piece of intelligence as this: this introduces the idea of the disposition there is in man to procrastinate in every thing; we are for ever saying "to-morrow," and this though we see men dying around us, every "yesterday" having conducted crowds of human beings to the grave. This introduces more general ideas of the vanity of man, who "walketh in a vain show, and is disquieted in vain," a passage of Scripture which seems to have been in the Poet's mind when he wrote what follows; as is also another beautiful expression of that inexhaustible treasury of beautiful moral and divine sentiment, "we spend our years as a tale that is told." Shakespeare's intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures is observable in all his plays, shewn sometimes in a broad and palpa ble allusion or adaptation, and sometimes, as here, in passages of which the germ only is in that book. At the same time there is something in the passage partaking of the desperation of the thane's position, and perhaps intended to shew what thoughts possess a mind like his, burthened with heavy guilt, and having some reason to think retribution near at hand. The word foule for crowd occurs in Archibold's Evangelical Fruit of the Seraphical Franciscan Order, 1628, MS. Harl. 3888, "The foule of people past over him in time of sermon," f. 81. V. 7. MACDuff. I see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's PEARL. This is an expression for which it is not easy to account. There is as strange a use of the same word in Sylvester's Du Bartas These parasites are even the pearls and rings (Pearls, said I, perils) in the ears of kings. For, O, what mischief but their wiles can work !-P. 554. The notes upon the passage are nothing to the purpose. It is possible that Shakespeare might allude to this passage of Sylvester. HAMLET. UNLIKE in this respect to the noble tragedy we have just been considering, Hamlet has come down to us with a great variety of texts, each having claims upon our respectful attention. In a few instances it can hardly be doubted that we have two, and in one instance three, readings, which there is every reason to believe are readings of the author himself, who made slight changes in certain passages after the play in one form or other had been printed. The several texts presented to a modern editor are :— 1. That of the Second Folio of 1632;-2. That of the First Folio of 1623;-3. and 4. Those of the Quartos of 1609 and 1611;-5. A copy without date, assigned by Lowndes to 1607;-6. and 7. Those of the Quartos of 1605 and 1604;— and S. That of another Quarto printed in 1603. The last named quarto presents the play in a form nearly approaching to what it originally was, not much more than half the length of the play as we now have it, and with innumerable corruptions of the text of so gross a kind, that there is every reason to think that it was a surreptitious publication of some person who took down, and that most imperfectly, the words as they fell from the mouths of the performers in the theatre. Yet this edition has its value, and has not yet been made to bear as it ought to do on the criticism of this tragedy, either as a whole, or in respect of particular scenes or passages in it. That such an edition had existed was known, or at least surmised on very probable grounds, in the time of the middle-period editors and commentators; but no copy of it was known till the year 1825, when a copy wanting only the last leaf was discovered. Of this a reprint was immediately published, a most valuable contribution indeed to Shakespeare literature.* The discovery of this edition so late in the day, may be taken as an encouraging evidence that we ought not yet to think that no further additions, substantial and important, are likely to be made to our knowledge of Shakespeare and his writings. The received text of this play is an eclectic text formed out of all the early editions known before 1825, with a few conjectural readings. I cannot but think this mode of making up the text an error, when the diversities are so numerous and so important. The better plan would have been to have taken the text of the folios, introducing slight corrections from the quartos, where there could be no room for doubt, but not passages which we have reason to think have been altered by the author himself, or which are found in the quartos and not in the folios. These passages are too good to be lost, but their proper place would be the margin. There is an entry of this play for publication on the books of the Stationers' Company, under the date July 26, 1602. In the title page of the edition of 1603, it is said that the play had been several times acted, both in London and at the two Universities and elsewhere. In fact, it was then by no means a new play. The testimony of Gabriel Harvey, cited by Steevens (Boswell's Malone, vol. vii. p. 168) seems to be decisive as to the existence of a play called Hamlet in 1598, and to that play having been written by the same hand which produced the Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece. It might in that year have been a new play, and * It was found by Sir Henry Bunbury in a closet at Barton, bound up with many others of the quartos. The volume passed into the library of the Duke of Devonshire. See The Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, 8vo. 1838, p. 80. this may account for its absence from Meres' list of Shakespeare's Tragedies in a book published in that year. But, on the whole, having carried it back five years before the date of the earliest impression that is known, or likely to be known, there seems little difficulty in believing it might exist several years before 1598, and that this play by Shakespeare, and not another play by another hand on the same story, is the Hamlet alluded to by Lodge in 1596, and by Nash in the epistle before Green's Arcadia, written in or before 1592, Mr. Malone thinks in 1589. Of course, this is meant only of the play in the rude imperfect state, nearly, but in all probability not exactly, as we have it in the quarto of 1603. In the edition of 1604, it is said in the title page to be "enlarged to nearly as much again." If the play can really be carried back to a time before 1589, there may be some ground for the opinion of those who have thought that there were strokes in it levelled at the Queen of Scots, who was put to death in 1587. The exact mode of the preparation of this tragedy will probably never be fully ascertained. Shakespeare seems to have worked upon it in a manner different from what was his usual practice. We collect from the newly-discovered copy, not only that large additions were made to the play after it had been presented at the theatres, but that very material changes were made in the distribution of the scenes, and the order of the events. This seems to shew that there was no period when the poet sat down to his work having a settled project in his mind, and meaning to work out the design continuously from the opening to the catastrophe ; and this may be, after all, the true reason of the difficulty which has always been felt of determining what the character really is in which the Poet meant to invest the hero of the |