n's successor (I.
iv.) changes the position, but the design of murder is prior to this.]

[Footnote 208: Schlegel's assertion that the first thought of the murder
comes from the Witches is thus in flat contradiction with the text. (The
sentence in which he asserts this is, I may observe, badly mistranslated
in the English version, which, wherever I have consulted the original,
shows itself untrustworthy. It ought to be revised, for Schlegel is well
worth reading.)]

[Footnote 209: It is noticeable that Dr. Forman, who saw the play in
1610 and wrote a sketch of it in his journal, says nothing about the
later prophecies. Perhaps he despised them as mere stuff for the
groundlings. The reader will find, I think, that the great poetic effect
of Act IV. Sc. i. depends much more on the 'charm' which precedes
Macbeth's entrance, and on Macbeth himself, than on the predictions.]

[Footnote 210: This comparison was suggested by a passage in Hegel's
_Aesthetik_, i. 291 ff.]

[Footnote 211: _Il._ i. 188 ff. (Leaf's translation).]

[Footnote 212: The supernaturalism of the modern poet, indeed, is more
'external' than that of the ancient. We have already had evidence of
this, and shall find more when we come to the character of Banquo.]

[Footnote 213: The assertion that Lady Macbeth sought a crown for
herself, or sought anything for herself, apart from her husband, is
absolutely unjustified by anything in the play. It is based on a
sentence of Holinshed's which Shakespeare did _not_ use.]

[Footnote 214: The word is used of him (I. ii. 67), but not in a way
that decides this question or even bears on it.]

[Footnote 215: This view, thus generally stated, is not original, but I
cannot say who first stated it.]

[Footnote 216: The latter, and more important, point was put quite
clearly by Coleridge.]

[Footnote 217: It is the consequent insistence on the idea of fear, and
the frequent repetition of the word, that have principally led to
misinterpretation.]

[Footnote 218: _E.g._ I. iii. 149, where he excuses his abstraction by
saying that his 'dull brain was wrought with things forgotten,' when
nothing could be more natural than that he should be thinking of his new
honour.]

[Footnote 219: _E.g._ in I. iv. This is so also in II. iii. 114 ff.,
though here there is some real imaginative excitement mingled with the
rhetorical antitheses and balanced clauses and forced bombast.]

[Footnote 220: III. i. Lady Macbeth hersel