as that of Othello, seem to attain at times an almost superhuman stature.  The diction has in places a huge and rugged grandeur, which degenerates here and there into tumidity.  The solemn majesty of the royal Ghost in Hamlet, appearing in armour and standing silent in the moonlight, is exchanged for shapes of horror, dimly seen in the murky air or revealed by the glare of the caldron fire in a dark cavern, or for the ghastly face of Banquo badged with blood and staring with blank eyes.  The other three tragedies all open with conversations which lead into the action:  here the action bursts into wild life amidst the sounds of a thunder-storm and the echoes of a distant battle.  It hurries through seven very brief scenes of mounting suspense to a terrible crisis, which is reached, in the murder of Duncan, at the beginning of the Second Act.  Pausing a moment and changing its shape, it hastes again with scarcely diminished speed to fresh horrors.  And even when the speed of the outward action is slackened, the same effect is continued in another form:  we are shown a soul tortured by an agony which admits not a moment’s repose, and rushing in frenzy towards its doom. Macbeth is very much shorter than the other three tragedies, but our experience in traversing it is so crowded and intense that it leaves an impression not of brevity but of speed.  It is the most vehement, the most concentrated, perhaps we may say the most tremendous, of the tragedies.

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A Shakespearean tragedy, as a rule, has a special tone or atmosphere of its own, quite perceptible, however difficult to describe.  The effect of this atmosphere is marked with unusual strength in Macbeth.  It is due to a variety of influences which combine with those just noticed, so that, acting and reacting, they form a whole; and the desolation of the blasted heath, the design of the Witches, the guilt in the hero’s soul, the darkness of the night, seem to emanate from one and the same source.  This effect is strengthened by a multitude of small touches, which at the moment may be little noticed but still leave their mark on the imagination.  We may approach the consideration of the characters and the action by distinguishing some of the ingredients of this general effect.

Darkness, we may even say blackness, broods over this tragedy.  It is remarkable that almost all the scenes which at once recur to memory take place either at night or in some dark spot.  The vision of the dagger, the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, all come in night-scenes.  The Witches dance in the thick air of a storm, or, ‘black and midnight hags,’ receive Macbeth in a cavern.  The blackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; and that which he feels becomes the spirit of the play.  The faint glimmerings of the western sky at twilight are here menacing:  it is the hour when the traveller hastens to reach safety in his inn, and when Banquo rides