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When the murder of Banquo is resolved on,

it is announced that

"ere the bat hath flown

His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's summons,
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note ;"

and as Banquo advances towards the bloody reception too carefully prepared for him,

"light thickens; and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse."

Macbeth was, at all times, a manly and courageous soldier: he waded through a sea of blood, and having "supp'd full with horrors" "almost forgot the taste of fears;" but in his days of innocence, he informs us, his "senses would have cool'd to hear a night-shriek."

The owl might almost be designated the genius of darkness and horror: Lady Macbeth is startled by a noise, as she awaits the completion of the murder:

"It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,

That gives the stern'st good-night;"

and while "lamentings were heard i' the air"

"strange screams of death;

Of dire combustion and confus'd events,

VOL. II.

New hatch'd to the woeful time. The obscure bird
Clamour'd the livelong night."

We know that the predictions of the classic augurs were made from peculiarities in the flight of the eagle, the vulture, and other birds of prey, and from observations on the crowing of the cock, the croaking of the raven, and the chattering of pies. The raven's cry was deemed infallibly indicative of approaching death: there is much force and beauty, therefore, in the figurative description of the servant almost choked by his exertions to communicate with the utmost speed the news of the king's arrival at Inverness,

"The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under these battlements."

The imps supposed to be constantly attendant upon witches were mere modifications of the demons or genii, who possessed the power of metamorphosis to an unlimited extent, and this opinion was, in truth, the foundation of the classic doctrine of lycanthropy. Modern superstition condemned all spirits as infernal; and, therefore, the genius, or attendant spirit of the witch, was declared to be the devil which she worshipped, disguised under the form of a cat,

a dog, a weazel, or a rat, who fed upon her blood.

These notions, as well as the former, were plagiarisms from paganism, for the Greeks recognised the approach of evil in a black dog, snakes, toads, weazels, and other noxious reptiles; and it is notorious that the Egyptians worshipped a variety of animals, such as the ox, dog, wolf, hawk, crocodile, the ibis and the cat. Of all the attendants on a witch, though no bestial shape appears to have been exempt from possession by these familiars, a cat was most commonly assigned to her. "Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed" intimates to Macbeth's witches, that it is time to commence the celebration of their rites; in the first scene of the play, they appear to consider the summons of "graymalkin" as imperative, as well as that of "paddock" or the frog. Witches themselves also possessed the power of transformation; but their metamorphoses into animals were always deficient of that most essential ornament, a tail:

"And like a rat without a tail,

I'll do, I'll do, I'll do."

Only one point of witchcraft, as connected with Macbeth, remains to be noticed.

All the

wise and weird among the northern nations

claimed a power over winds and tempests. “ I know a song of such virtue," says Odin, "that were I caught in a storm, I can hush the winds, and render the air perfectly calm." The Lapland witches pretended to send winds to sailors, and the Finlanders sold cords, tied with three magical knots the loosening of the first produced a favourable gale, of the second a brisker, but when the third was untied, a terrific hurricane was the consequence. There are penal statutes in the Capitularies of Charlemagne, in the canons of several councils, and in the ancient laws of Norway, against those who raised storms and tempests. Shakspeare has followed the common superstitions.

"2. Witch. I'll give thee a wind.

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1. Witch. I myself have all the other."

And he makes Macbeth confess the power of the witches to "untie the winds, and let them fight against the churches."

197

TWELFTH NIGHT.

1607.

THE

HE thirty-sixth novel of the second part of Bandello's novels bears a very striking general resemblance to the plot of this comedy.

Ambrogio was the father of a son and a daughter, Paolo and Nicuola, remarkable for their extraordinary beauty and perfect resemblance to each other. Their age was about fifteen years, when Rome was sacked by the united arms of Spain and Germany. Paolo, the boy, was made prisoner, and carried by a person of consideration to Naples. The distressed Ambrogio retired with his daughter to Aix, where she became enamoured of the wealthy and accomplished Lattantio. She was happy in the return of her passion, till the charms of a rival seduced her lover from his faith. Every expedient to recall his affections was resorted to in vain, and the unhappy Nicuola resolved, in de

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