s Well_ (12) is worth notice.]

[Footnote 290: The Editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare might appeal in
support of their view, that parts of Act V. are not Shakespeare's, to
the fact that the last of the light endings occurs at IV. iii. 165.]

NOTE CC.

WHEN WAS THE MURDER OF DUNCAN FIRST PLOTTED?

A good many readers probably think that, when Macbeth first met the
Witches, he was perfectly innocent; but a much larger number would say
that he had already harboured a vaguely guilty ambition, though he had
not faced the idea of murder. And I think there can be no doubt that
this is the obvious and natural interpretation of the scene. Only it is
almost necessary to go rather further, and to suppose that his guilty
ambition, whatever its precise form, was known to his wife and shared by
her. Otherwise, surely, she would not, on reading his letter, so
instantaneously assume that the King must be murdered in their castle;
nor would Macbeth, as soon as he meets her, be aware (as he evidently
is) that this thought is in her mind.

But there is a famous passage in _Macbeth_ which, closely considered,
seems to require us to go further still, and to suppose that, at some
time before the action of the play begins, the husband and wife had
explicitly discussed the idea of murdering Duncan at some favourable
opportunity, and had agreed to execute this idea. Attention seems to
have been first drawn to this passage by Koester in vol. I. of the
_Jahrbuecher d. deutschen Shakespeare-gesellschaft_, and on it is based
the interpretation of the play in Werder's very able _Vorlesungen ueber
Macbeth_.

The passage occurs in I. vii., where Lady Macbeth is urging her husband
to the deed:

_Macb._ Prithee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.

_Lady M._ What beast was't, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smili