the unhappy queen
from her sleepless couch night after night, and hounds her at last to
death.

This is the shortest of all Shakespeare's plays in actual number of
lines; and no other work of his reveals such condensation and
lightning-like rapidity of movement. It is the tragedy of eager
ambition, which allows a man no respite after the first fatal mistake,
but hurries him on irresistibly through crime after crime to the final
disaster. Over all, like a dark cloud above a landscape, hovers the
presence of the supernatural beings who are training on the sinful but
unfortunate monarch to his ruin.

+Authorship+.--The speeches of Hecate and the dialogue connected with
them in III, v and IV, i, 39-47 are suspected by many to be the work of
Thomas Middleton, a well-known contemporary playwright. They are
unquestionably inferior to most of the play. Messrs. Clark and Wright
have assigned several other passages to Middleton; but these are now
generally regarded as Shakespeare's, and some of them are considered as
by no means below his usual high level.

+Date+.--We find no copy of _Macbeth_ earlier than the First Folio. It
was certainly written before 1610, however; for Dr. Simon Forman saw it
acted that year and records the fact in his _Booke of Plaies_. The
allusion to "two-fold balls and treble sceptres" (IV, i, 121) shows
that the play was written after 1603 when James I became king of both
Scotland and England. So does the allusion to the habit of touching
for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),--a custom which James revived.
The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may
allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the
{190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the
doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition is usually placed
1605-6.

+Sources+.--The plot is borrowed from Holinshed's _Historie of
Scotland_. Most of the material is taken from the part relating to the
reigns of Duncan and Macbeth; but other incidents, such as the drugging
of the grooms, are from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe, which is
described in another part of Holinshed.

+Antony and Cleopatra+.--There is no other passion in mankind which
makes such fools of wise men, such weaklings of brave ones, as that of
sinful love. For this very reason it is the most tragic of all human
passions; and from this comes the dramatic power of _Antony and
Cleopatra_. The ru