at interest to the thoughtful
reader--that of mixed authorship. In the introductory essay to my
edition of this play (published in 1861) attention was directed to the
internal evidence that it was hastily written and left unfinished.[H]
Subsequent editors and critics, notably the Cambridge editors and the
Rev. F. G. Fleay, in his "Shakespearian Manual," starting from this
view, have gone so far as to say that "Macbeth," as we have it, is not
all Shakespeare's, but in part the work of Thomas Middleton, a second or
third-rate playwright contemporary with Shakespeare, who wrote a play,
called "The Witch," which is plainly an imitation of the supernatural
scenes in this tragedy. The Cambridge editors believe that Middleton was
permitted to supply certain scenes at the time of the writing of
Macbeth: Mr. Fleay, that Middleton cut down and patched up Shakespeare's
perfected work, adding much inferior matter of his own, and that he did
this being engaged to alter the play for stage purposes. The latter
opinion I must reject, notwithstanding Mr. Fleay's minute, elaborate,
and often specious argument; but the opinion of the Cambridge editors
seems to me to a certain extent sound. I cannot, however, go to the
length which they do in rejecting parts of this play as not being
Shakespeare's work. This study of Shakespeare's style and of what is not
his work at a certain period of his life being directly to our purpose,
let us examine the tragedy for traces of his hand and of another.

And first let the reader turn to Scene 5 of Act III., which consists
almost entirely of a long speech by Hecate, beginning:

Have I not reason, beldames as you are,
Saucy, and overbold? How did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death:
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?

This speech is surely not of Shakespeare's writing. Its being in
octosyllabic rhyme is not against it, however; although he abandoned
rhyme almost altogether at or before this period. The fact of the
business of the scene being supernatural would account for its form. But
it is mere rhyme; little more than an unmeaning jingle of verses. Any
journeyman at versemaking would write such stuff. Read the speech
through, and then think of the writer of "Hamlet," and "Lear," and
"Othello," producing such a weak wash of words at the sa