The Shakespeare Story-Book

At the further end of the churchyard, Friar Laurence, with a lantern, crowbar, and spade, was picking his way through the crowded ranks of graves, when he stumbled across a friend. This was Balthasar, who told him that Romeo had gone to the Capulets’ vault, but from fear of his master, did not dare accompany the Friar there. Dreading some fresh misfortune, Friar Laurence hurried onwards. At the entrance to the vault he was horrified to see fresh stains of blood, and on entering it he found, to his dismay, Romeo lying there beside the bier of Juliet, and Paris newly slain. But there was no time to spare for lament or wonder; Juliet was awakening.

“O comforting Friar, where is my lord?” she asked, opening her sweet eyes, and glancing about a little fearfully at her dreary surroundings. “I remember well where I should be, and there I am. Where is my Romeo?”

At this moment a noise was heard outside. Paris’s little page had warned the night-watchmen of Verona, and they were now approaching. Friar Laurence implored Juliet to leave the place at once. A greater power than theirs had thwarted their plans; her husband lay dead beside her, and Paris, too, was slain. The Friar said he would place Juliet in safety among a sisterhood of holy nuns, only let her come at once; he dared stay no longer.

“Go, get thee hence, for I will not go,” replied Juliet firmly; and seeing it was useless to attempt to argue with her, Friar Laurence slipped away.

Left alone, for one brief terrified moment Juliet glanced around her, but when her gaze fell on her dead husband all doubt and hesitation fled for ever.

“What’s here? A cup, closed in my true love’s hand?” she said, bending over him tenderly. “Poison, I see, has been his untimely end. O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me to follow thee? I will kiss thy lips; haply some poison yet hangs on them.” She leant forward and kissed him, and in the same moment caught sight of the dagger in Romeo’s belt. “Thy lips are warm.”

“Lead, boy! Which way?” said the voice of a watchman outside.

“Yea, noise! Then I’ll be brief,” said Juliet, snatching the dagger. “O happy dagger, this is thy sheath; there rest and let me die!” And she fell back dead on Romeo’s body.

When the watchmen, followed by the Prince of Verona and the parents of the ill-fated lovers, entered the vault, there was nothing to be done. All was over now – the joy and the sorrow, the hatred and the strife. Revenge was silenced; henceforth the voice of dissension was mute. In the presence of those unseeing witnesses the bitter enemies were reconciled.

In this “palace of dim night,” this dark abode of death, nothing was left now but peace and the abiding memory of undying love.

Macbeth

The Weird Sisters

Witchcraft is now a thing of the past, as far as England is concerned, unless there still lingers in some very remote corners a belief in the power for evil of some poor old body, whose only claim for such distinction is, perhaps, her loneliness and ugliness. But in ancient days, and even into the last century, such a belief was a very usual thing. “Wise women,” as they were often called, who pretended they had the power of foretelling the future, were by no means uncommon, and even learned people and those in high positions were not ashamed to consult them with regard to coming events. In Scotland this belief lingered much longer than in England, and even to this day, in remote parts of the Highlands, there are some who claim they have the gift of “second sight” – that is, that they can see in advance events that will happen several years hence.

The time when the present story occurred was hundreds of years ago, in the year 1039, before William the Conqueror had come to Britain, and when England and Scotland were entirely separate kingdoms.

The throne of Scotland was then occupied by a King called Duncan. The country at all times was much at the mercy of Northern invaders, and just at that period it was suffering from the inroads of the Norwegian hosts, who, secretly aided by the traitor Thane of Cawdor, had obtained a footing in the eastern county of Fife. But their brief victory was changed to defeat by the valour of the Scotch Generals, Macbeth and Banquo. Sweyn, King of Norway, was forced to sue for a truce, and had even to pay a fine of ten thousand dollars to obtain leave to bury his men who had fallen in the fight.

News was brought to King Duncan of the victory that had been gained by the valour of Macbeth, and, pronouncing the doom of instant death on the traitor Thane of Cawdor, he ordered that his title should be bestowed as a reward on Macbeth.

It was a wild night, on a desolate heath near Forres. The setting sun, low down on the horizon, cast a blood-red glow over the withered bracken and a group of blasted fir-trees. The thunder rolled overhead, the wind howled in long moaning gusts, the lightning flashed in jagged streaks. But to the three strange figures that approached from different quarters, and met in the centre of this lonely heath, such wild weather was of no import, or, rather, it suited well with their grim and sinister mood. Children of the night, their deeds were those of darkness. The wholesome sunlight and the breath of day made them shrink and cower in secret lurking-places, but when midnight veiled the sky they stole out to their unholy revels, or on the wings of the tempest they rode forth, bringing death or disaster to all who crossed their track.

“Where hast thou been, sister?” asked the first witch.

And the second replied: “Killing swine.”

“Sister, where thou?” asked the third witch.

“A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, and munched, and munched, and munched,” said the first witch. “‘Give me,’ quoth I. ‘Aroint thee, witch!’ the pampered creature cried. Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger; but in a sieve I’ll thither sail, and, like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do,” ended the witch spitefully.

“I’ll give thee a wind,” said the second witch.

“Thou art kind.”

“And I another,” said the third witch.

“I myself have all the other,” continued the first witch, gloating over the revenge she intended to take on the husband of the woman who had repulsed her, and she continued in a sort of chant:

“And the very ports they blow,All the quarters that they knowIn the shipman’s card.I will drain him dry as hay;Sleep shall neither night nor dayHang upon his pent-house lid;He shall live a man forbid:Weary seven-nights nine times nineShall he dwindle, peak and pine:Though his bark cannot be lost,Yet it shall be tempest-tost.Look what I have.”

“Show me, show me!” cried the second witch eagerly.

“Here I have a pilot’s thumb,Wrecked as homeward he did come.”

At this moment across the heath came the roll of a drum and the tramp of marching feet.

“A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come!” cried the third witch.

Then the three fearsome creatures, linking hands, solemnly performed a wild dance, waving their skinny arms in strange gestures, and uttering a discordant wail:

“The weird sisters, hand in hand,Posters of the sea and land,Thus do go about, about;Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,And thrice again to make up nine.Peace! The charm’s wound up.”

Macbeth and Banquo, marching across the heath on their way home, after the campaign with the Norwegians, were startled at the sight of these three uncanny figures barring their path.

“What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire, that look not like the inhabitants of earth, and yet are on it?” said Banquo. “Are you alive? Or are you anything that man may question?”

“Speak, if you can; what are you?” said Macbeth.

And the three witches answered by saluting him, each in turn:

“All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!”

“All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!”

“All hail, Macbeth! Thou shalt be King hereafter.”

“Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?” said Banquo, for Macbeth stood as if rapt in a dream, amazed at what he heard.

Then Banquo asked the witches, if indeed they could look into the future, to say something to him, who neither begged nor feared their favours nor their hate.

The witches thereupon replied:

“Hail!” “Hail!” “Hail!”

“Lesser than Macbeth and greater!”

“Not so happy, yet much happier!”

“Thou shalt beget Kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!”

“Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!”

Macbeth would fain have questioned these mysterious creatures further, but not a word more would they speak. By the death of a relative, he was certainly Thane of Glamis, but, as far as he knew, the Thane of Cawdor lived, an honourable gentleman, for Macbeth had not yet heard of his treachery, and how his title was forfeited. And to be King stood not within the prospect of belief, no more than to be Thane of Cawdor. But when Macbeth again charged the witches to speak, they vanished, seeming almost to melt like bubbles into the misty twilight from which they had emerged.

The two victorious generals stood and looked at each other, mute for awhile with awe and wonder. They had fought with armed hosts on the field of battle, but here was a mystery which might amaze the stoutest heart. The poison was already beginning to work. Deeply ambitious at heart, though lacking in resolution to cut his way ruthlessly to the highest goal, the witches’ words had found a ready welcome in Macbeth’s secret desires. But not yet could he openly avow them.

“Your children shall be Kings,” he said to Banquo; and back came the answer which perhaps he was longing to hear:

“You shall be King!”

“And Thane of Cawdor, too, went it not so?” he asked, with a half-assumed air of incredulity.

“To the self-same tune and words,” said Banquo.

The mysterious greeting of the witches now received strange confirmation, for messengers arrived from King Duncan, bringing news that the Thane of Cawdor had been condemned to death for treason, and that his title and estate were conferred on Macbeth. Such an instant proof of the witches’ powers of divination could not fail to fill Macbeth’s mind with strange imaginings.

“Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor!” he murmured to himself. “The greatest is behind.” Then he spoke to Banquo apart: “Do you not hope your children shall be Kings, when those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me promised no less to them?”

But Banquo’s nature was less easily carried away than Macbeth’s. He warned him that it was dangerous to put any trust in doers of evil; often to win people to their harm they would tell truth in trifles, in order to betray them in matters of the deepest consequence.

Macbeth scarcely paid any attention to what Banquo said. His thoughts were fixed now on one idea. The witches had foretold truly that he should be Thane of Cawdor when there seemed no likelihood of such an event taking place. Why, then, should they not have spoken equal truth when they foretold a higher honour?

A dreadful idea was already beginning to take shape in Macbeth’s mind. At first he shrank from it in horror, but again and again it came back with renewed force. At last he tried resolutely to thrust it from him.

“If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me, without my stir,” he said to himself. Then, with the feeling that he would leave events to work out as fate chose, he added: “Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”

But even yet he could not put the matter from him, and determine to think no more about it, as a wise man would have done. He wanted to reflect over what had passed, and discuss it again with Banquo.

“Let us go to the King,” he said to Banquo; for the messengers had come to summon him to Duncan, in order to receive his thanks for the victory. “We will think over what has chanced, and later on, having in the meanwhile pondered it, let us speak our hearts freely to each other.”

“Very gladly,” agreed Banquo.

“Till then, enough,” said Macbeth. “Come, friends;” and away he went with Banquo and the other lords to receive his new honours from the King’s hands.

At the Castle of Macbeth

King Duncan received Macbeth and Banquo most graciously, and at the same time as he conferred the new dignity on Macbeth he took the opportunity of announcing that his own eldest son, Malcolm, should succeed himself as King of Scotland, and should be named hereafter Prince of Cumberland. In those days of strife and bloodshed it was by no means an assured fact that the crown should descend peaceably from father to son. When the rightful heir was young or feeble, some more powerful relative often stepped forward and seized the sceptre for himself. Macbeth’s wife was a near kinswoman of the King – according to some of the old chroniclers, she had even a better claim to the throne than Duncan himself. Macbeth may have been hoping that after the King’s death, if it came about by natural means, the crown might pass to himself. But this public proclamation of the young Prince as the heir was an obstacle in his path which would prove a stumbling-block to his ambition, unless he overleaped it. Once more, stronger than ever, rose the evil suggestion in his mind. He knew well the dark deed to which it was leading, but he was already almost determined to go through with it, cost what it might.

Macbeth’s character was well understood by his wife. He wished to be great, was not without ambition, but his nature was not yet sufficiently hardened to snatch what he wanted by the shortest way. The great things he wanted he would have been glad to get by rightful means; he did not wish to play falsely, but he was quite content to win wrongly. Accustomed to rely on the stern judgment of his wife, he now wrote to her a full account of the meeting with the witches, and left the matter to her firmer will to puzzle out.

If there were any hesitation in Macbeth’s mind, there was none at all in Lady Macbeth’s. Her husband was already Thane of Glamis and Thane of Cawdor; well, he should reach the highest honour prophesied. So resolved was she on this point, and so swift was her mind to plot evil, that when a messenger arrived to say that King Duncan was then on his way to the castle, and would be there that night, she almost betrayed the treason in her heart by the startled exclamation, “Thou art mad to say it!” It seemed as though fate itself were delivering the unsuspecting victim straight into her hands.

“The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements,” she muttered to herself; and with terrible decision she began to stifle all thoughts of womanly weakness or pity, and to nerve herself with unflinching cruelty for the deed that lay before her.

A few minutes in advance of the King came Macbeth, and was received with the warmest greeting from his wife.

“My dearest love,” he said, “Duncan comes here to-night.”

“And when goes hence?” asked Lady Macbeth, in a voice of dreadful import.

“To-morrow – as he purposes,” faltered Macbeth, avoiding his wife’s direct gaze.

“Oh, never shall sun that morrow see!” cried Lady Macbeth. “Your face, my Thane, is as a book, where men may read strange matters. To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your hand, your eye, your tongue; look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it. He who is coming must be provided for, and you shall put this night’s great business into my despatch.”

“We will speak further,” said Macbeth, still irresolute.

“Only look up clear,” said Lady Macbeth; “to alter favour ever is to fear. Leave all the rest to me.”

The counsel Lady Macbeth gave her husband she was quite ready to carry out herself. King Duncan was welcomed with smiling courtesy, and the gentle old King was charmed by the grace and kind attention of his hostess.

The castle itself was pleasantly situated; the air was fresh and sweet, and so mild that the guests of summer, the temple-haunting martins, built in every nook and coign of vantage. In truth, everything around seemed to breathe peace and innocent security.

But the hearts of the master and mistress of this castle were far from the loyalty they paraded to their royal guest, though the unbending will of Lady Macbeth was lacking to her husband. Torn with conflicting thoughts, he stole away from the chamber where King Duncan was supping, in order to ponder alone over the problem whether or not he should commit this crime. There were many reasons that cried out against it. First, Macbeth was the kinsman and subject of Duncan, both strong reasons against the deed. Then, he was the host of Duncan, and as such should have barred the door against his murderer, not borne the knife himself. Duncan had shown himself so meek in his high office that all his virtues would plead in his behalf, and fill the land with horror and pity at his fate. Macbeth had no spur to urge him onward except his vaulting ambition, which might overleap its aim and fail, after all.

Missing her husband from the supper-room, Lady Macbeth followed him into the deserted hall, and when he said to her, “We will proceed no further in this business,” she overwhelmed him with the bitterest contempt. She taunted him with his pitiful lack of resolution, and derided him for his cowardly want of valour – “Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’ like the poor cat in the adage,” as she expressed it. When Macbeth suggested that they might fail, she laughed the idea to scorn. “We fail!” she cried. “But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.” Then she sketched out the plan of how they might proceed. When Duncan was asleep, she would drug with wine the two soldiers who kept watch at his door, and what then would prevent her and her husband doing anything they liked to the unguarded King? And, finally, what would prevent their laying the blame on the two drowsy officers, who would thus bear the guilt of the murder?

Fired with admiration for his wife’s undaunted courage, Macbeth made no further demur, and the murder of their guest, the King, was agreed on.

That night was dark and wild, one of the roughest that had ever been known. The moon went down at twelve o’clock, and after that all was black, not a star visible. The wind moaned and wailed round the turrets of the castle, chimneys were blown down, strange screams were heard, which seemed to foretell coming woe; the owl, the fatal bellman of death, shrieked the livelong night.

The inmates of the castle were disturbed and uneasy; it was late before they sought their rooms, for there was feasting and revelry because of the King’s arrival; and, then, to many of them, sleep was impossible, because of the raging of the storm outside. But of what was happening in their midst they had no suspicion.

At the appointed hour, Macbeth, trembling with terror at his own deed, crept into Duncan’s room, and killed the King. He looked so calm and peaceful as he lay there wrapt in slumber that sudden remorse filled the heart of the murderer, and he stood fixed in horror, gazing at what he had done. In a neighbouring room two of the King’s followers stirred and called out in their sleep. One laughed, and one cried “Murder!” so that they woke each other; and Macbeth stood and heard them. But with a muttered prayer they turned again to sleep, and presently Macbeth recovered sufficiently to creep back to his wife to tell her that the deed was done.

But though he had nerved himself to strike the blow, all Macbeth’s courage again ebbed away. He shuddered with horror when he looked at the blood on his hands, and it was all his wife could do to rouse him from the sort of stupor that seemed to have seized him.

“These deeds must not be thought of in this way; it will make us mad,” she said, when Macbeth was telling her what had happened in the chamber of the King.

“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!’” continued Macbeth, still in the same dazed fashion: “‘Macbeth doth murder sleep’ – the innocent sleep, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast – ”

“What do you mean?” interrupted his wife.

“Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house; ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.’”

“Who was it that thus cried?” said Lady Macbeth impatiently. “Why, worthy Thane, you weaken your strength by thinking so foolishly of things. Go, get some water, and wash this witness from your hands. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there. – And smear the sleepy grooms with blood.”

“I’ll go no more,” said Macbeth. “I am afraid to think what I have done; look on it again I dare not.”

“Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers!” cried Lady Macbeth contemptuously. “The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.” And, seizing the daggers from her husband’s nerveless grasp, she carried them back into King Duncan’s room, and placed them in the hands of the drowsy attendants, to make it appear as if it were they who had murdered the King.

Before Lady Macbeth could rejoin her husband, there came a knocking at the outer gate, and she hurried him away to put on night apparel, in order to divert suspicion from themselves if they were summoned.

The new-comer was a Scotch lord called Macduff, whom the King had appointed to call on him early in the morning. He was admitted into Duncan’s room, when, of course, the crime was at once discovered. All was now horror and confusion. Macbeth feigned as much dismay as everyone else showed. The whole castle was aroused; the alarum bell pealed out. Macduff shouted for Banquo, and for the two young Princes, Malcolm and Donalbain. Lady Macbeth came running in, as if just disturbed from sleep.

Fearing what the two grooms might say when they recovered from their drugged sleep, Macbeth took the opportunity in the uproar to slay them both, pretending that he was carried away by the fury of the moment at seeing the evidence of their villainy, the daggers in their hands.

But the suspicions of the two young Princes were aroused; they dreaded that the treachery begun was not yet ended, and they felt no safety in their present abode. So when Macbeth summoned a meeting in the hall of the castle to decide what was to be the future course of action, they secretly stole away, for better security resolving to separate, Malcolm, the elder son, going to England, and Donalbain, the younger, to Ireland.

The Guest at the Banquet

Macbeth had all his promised honours now – King, Cawdor, Glamis – everything that the weird women had prophesied. But Macbeth was not satisfied. There was one danger ever present in his path. Banquo, his ancient comrade in arms, distrusted Macbeth; he suspected him of playing most foully to win his present high honours. Macbeth, for his part, feared Banquo, because of his noble nature, valour, and wisdom in judgment. Outwardly he treated him with flattering civility, but inwardly he was resolved to rid himself of this dangerous companion. It was nothing to be King unless he could reign in safety. Moreover, when the weird sisters gave the name of King to Macbeth, they had, prophet-like, hailed Banquo father to a line of Kings. They placed a fruitless crown on Macbeth’s head, and a barren sceptre in his grip, if no son of his succeeded. If this were so, it was for Banquo’s children he had defiled his mind and murdered the good King Duncan – only for them! Macbeth resolved to go a step further in the path of crime, and to kill both Banquo and his young son Fleance.

There was to be a great feast one night at the palace. Banquo was especially invited to be present, both by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and he promised to be back in time for the banquet, though he had to ride out that afternoon on a matter of business. Macbeth inquired if he had to ride far, and Banquo answered that it would take all the time between then and supper – possibly he might even have to borrow an hour or two from the darkness, unless his horse went very well.

“Fail not our feast,” said Macbeth.

“My lord, I will not,” said Banquo.

“We hear our cruel cousins are bestowed in England and Ireland, not confessing their murder of their father,” continued Macbeth, who now pretended to believe that King Duncan’s own sons had killed him. “But more of that to-morrow. Hie you to horse! Adieu till you return at night.”