es to a ruler's dislike of mobs,
despite his love of his people, were perhaps penned in deferential
allusion to James I, whose horror of crowds was notorious. In act i. sc.
i. 67-72 the Duke remarks:

I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement.
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it.

Of like tenor is the succeeding speech of Angelo (act ii. sc. iv. 27-30):

The general [_i.e._ the public], subject to a well-wish'd king, . . .
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence.

'Macbeth.'

In 'Macbeth,' his 'great epic drama,' which he began in 1605 and
completed next year, Shakespeare employed a setting wholly in harmony
with the accession of a Scottish king. The story was drawn from
Holinshed's 'Chronicle of Scottish History,' with occasional reference,
perhaps, to earlier Scottish sources. {239} The supernatural machinery
of the three witches accorded with the King's superstitious faith in
demonology; the dramatist lavished his sympathy on Banquo, James's
ancestor; while Macbeth's vision of kings who carry 'twofold balls and
treble sceptres' (iv. i. 20) plainly adverted to the union of Scotland
with England and Ireland under James's sway. The allusion by the porter
(ii. iii. 9) to the 'equivocator . . . who committed treason' was perhaps
suggested by the notorious defence of the doctrine of equivocation made
by the Jesuit Henry Garnett, who was executed early in 1606 for his share
in the 'Gunpowder Plot.' The piece was not printed until 1623. It is in
its existing shape by far the shortest of all Shakespeare's tragedies,
('Hamlet' is nearly twice as long) and it is possible that it survives
only in an abbreviated acting version. Much scenic elaboration
characterised the production. Dr. Simon Forman witnessed a performance
of the tragedy at the Globe in April 1611, and noted that Macbeth and
Banquo entered the stage on horseback, and that Banquo's ghost was
materially represented (iii. iv. 40 seq.) Like 'Othello,' the play ranks
with the noblest tragedies either of the modern or the ancient world.
The characters of hero and heroine--Macbeth and his wife--are depicted
with the utmost subtlety and insight. In three points 'Macbeth' differs
somewhat from other of Shakespeare's productions in the great clas