features. I doubt
if any other great play of Shakespeare's contains so many speeches which
a student of the play, if they were quoted to him, would be puzzled to
assign to the speakers. Let the reader turn, for instance, to the second
scene of the Fifth Act, and ask himself why the names of the persons
should not be interchanged in all the ways mathematically possible. Can
he find, again, any signs of character by which to distinguish the
speeches of Ross and Angus in Act I. scenes ii. and iii., or to
determine that Malcolm must have spoken I. iv. 2-11? Most of this
writing, we may almost say, is simply Shakespeare's writing, not that of
Shakespeare become another person. And can anything like the same
proportion of such writing be found in _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _King
Lear_?

Is it possible to guess the reason of this characteristic of _Macbeth_?
I cannot believe it is due to the presence of a second hand. The
writing, mangled by the printer and perhaps by 'the players,' seems to
be sometimes obviously Shakespeare's, sometimes sufficiently
Shakespearean to repel any attack not based on external evidence. It may
be, as the shortness of the play has suggested to some, that Shakespeare
was hurried, and, throwing all his weight on the principal characters,
did not exert himself in dealing with the rest. But there is another
possibility which may be worth considering. _Macbeth_ is distinguished
by its simplicity,--by grandeur in simplicity, no doubt, but still by
simplicity. The two great figures indeed can hardly be called simple,
except in comparison with such characters as Hamlet and Iago; but in
almost every other respect the tragedy has this quality. Its plot is
quite plain. It has very little intermixture of humour. It has little
pathos except of the sternest kind. The style, for Shakespeare, has not
much variety, being generally kept at a higher pitch than in the other
three tragedies; and there is much less than usual of the interchange of
verse and prose.[240] All this makes for simplicity of effect. And, this
being so, is it not possible that Shakespeare instinctively felt, or
consciously feared, that to give much individuality or attraction to the
subordinate figures would diminish this effect, and so, like a good
artist, sacrificed a part to the whole? And was he wrong? He has
certainly avoided the overloading which distresses us in _King Lear_,
and has produced a tragedy utterly unlike it, not much less great