s of
literature to which it belongs. The interweaving with the tragic story
of supernatural interludes in which Fate is weirdly personified is not
exactly matched in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. In the second
place, the action proceeds with a rapidity that is wholly without
parallel in the rest of Shakespeare's plays. Nowhere, moreover, has
Shakespeare introduced comic relief into a tragedy with bolder effect
than in the porter's speech after the murder of Duncan (II. iii. I seq.)
The theory that this passage was from another hand does not merit
acceptance. {240} It cannot, however, be overlooked that the second
scene of the first act--Duncan's interview with the 'bleeding
sergeant'--falls so far below the style of the rest of the play as to
suggest that it was an interpolation by a hack of the theatre. The
resemblances between Thomas Middleton's later play of 'The Witch' (1610)
and portions of 'Macbeth' may safely be ascribed to plagiarism on
Middleton's part. Of two songs which, according to the stage directions,
were to be sung during the representation of 'Macbeth' (III. v. and IV.
i.), only the first line of each is noted there, but songs beginning with
the same lines are set out in full in Middleton's play; they were
probably by Middleton, and were interpolated by actors in a stage version
of 'Macbeth' after its original production.

'King Lear.'

'King Lear,' in which Shakespeare's tragic genius moved without any
faltering on Titanic heights, was written during 1606, and was produced
before the Court at Whitehall on the night of December 26 of that year.
{241a} It was entered on the 'Stationers' Registers' on November 26,
1607, and two imperfect editions, published by Nathaniel Butter, appeared
in the following year; neither exactly corresponds with the other or with
the improved and fairly satisfactory text of the Folio. The three
versions present three different playhouse transcripts. Like its
immediate predecessor, 'Macbeth,' the tragedy was mainly founded on
Holinshed's 'Chronicle.' The leading theme had been dramatised as early
as 1593, but Shakespeare's attention was no doubt directed to it by the
publication of a crude dramatic adaptation of Holinshed's version in 1605
under the title of 'The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three
Daughters--Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella.' Shakespeare did not adhere
closely to his original. He invested the tale of Lear with a hopeless