ote 281: These two considerations should also be borne in mind in
regard to the exceptional shortness of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ and
the _Tempest_. Both contain scenes which, even on the Elizabethan stage,
would take an unusual time to perform. And it has been supposed of each
that it was composed to grace some wedding.]

NOTE BB.

THE DATE OF _MACBETH_. METRICAL TESTS.

Dr. Forman saw _Macbeth_ performed at the Globe in 1610. The question is
how much earlier its composition or first appearance is to be put.

It is agreed that the date is not earlier than that of the accession of
James I. in 1603. The style and versification would make an earlier date
almost impossible. And we have the allusions to 'two-fold balls and
treble sceptres' and to the descent of Scottish kings from Banquo; the
undramatic description of touching for the King's Evil (James performed
this ceremony); and the dramatic use of witchcraft, a matter on which
James considered himself an authority.

Some of these references would have their fullest effect early in
James's reign. And on this ground, and on account both of resemblances
in the characters of Hamlet and Macbeth, and of the use of the
supernatural in the two plays, it has been held that _Macbeth_ was the
tragedy that came next after _Hamlet_, or, at any rate, next after
_Othello_.

These arguments seem to me to have no force when set against those that
point to a later date (about 1606) and place _Macbeth_ after _King
Lear_.[282] And, as I have already observed, the probability is that it
also comes after Shakespeare's part of _Timon_, and immediately before
_Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_.

I will first refer briefly to some of the older arguments in favour of
this later date, and then more at length to those based on
versification.

(1) In II. iii. 4-5, 'Here's a farmer that hang'd himself on the
expectation of plenty,' Malone found a reference to the exceptionally
low price of wheat in 1606.

(2) In the reference in the same speech to the equivocator who could
swear in both scales and committed treason enough for God's sake, he
found an allusion to the trial of the Jesuit Garnet, in the spring of
1606, for complicity in the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. Garnet protested
on his soul and salvation that he had not held a certain conversation,
then was obliged to confess that he had, and thereupon 'fell into a
large discourse defending equivocation.' This argumen