n flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm me,
Then lay me forth: although unqueen'd, yet like
A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me
I can no more.--

In the epilogue to this play,[111] it is recommended--

To the merciful construction of good women,
For _such a one_ we show'd them:

alluding to the character of Queen Katherine. Shakspeare has, in fact,
placed before us a queen and a heroine, who in the first place, and
above all, is a _good_ woman; and I repeat, that in doing so, and in
trusting for all his effect to truth and virtue, he has given a sublime
proof of his genius and his wisdom;--for which, among many other
obligations, we women remain his debtors.

LADY MACBETH.

I doubt whether the epithet _historical_ can properly apply to the
character of Lady Macbeth; for though the subject of the play be taken
from history, we never think of her with any reference to historical
associations, as we do with regard to Constance, Volumnia, Katherine of
Arragon, and others. I remember reading some critique, in which Lady
Macbeth was styled the "_Scottish queen_;" and methought the title, as
applied to _her_ sounded like a vulgarism. It appears that the real wife
of Macbeth,--she who lives only in the obscure record of an obscure
age, bore the very unmusical appellation of Graoch, and was instigated
to the murder of Duncan, not only by ambition, but by motives of
vengeance. She was the grand-daughter of Kenneth the Fourth, killed in
1003, fighting against Malcolm the Second, the Father of Duncan. Macbeth
reigned over Scotland from the year 1039 to 1056--but what is all this
to the purpose? The sternly magnificent creation of the poet stands
before us independent of all these aids of fancy: she is Lady Macbeth;
as such she lives, she reigns, and is immortal in the world to
imagination. What earthly title could add to her grandeur? what human
record or attestation strengthen our impression of her reality?

Characters in history move before us like a procession of figures in
_basso relievo_: we see one side only, that which the artist chose to
exhibit to us; the rest is sunk in the block: the same characters in
Shakspeare are like the statues _cut out_ of the block, fashioned,
finished, tangible in every part: we may consider them under every
aspect, we may examine them on every side. As the classical times, when
the garb did not make the man, were pec