[Footnote 206:  See Note CC.]

[Footnote 207:  The proclamation of Malcolm as Duncan’s successor (I. iv.) changes the position, but the design of murder is prior to this.]

[Footnote 208:  Schlegel’s assertion that the first thought of the murder comes from the Witches is thus in flat contradiction with the text. (The sentence in which he asserts this is, I may observe, badly mistranslated in the English version, which, wherever I have consulted the original, shows itself untrustworthy.  It ought to be revised, for Schlegel is well worth reading.)]

[Footnote 209:  It is noticeable that Dr. Forman, who saw the play in 1610 and wrote a sketch of it in his journal, says nothing about the later prophecies.  Perhaps he despised them as mere stuff for the groundlings.  The reader will find, I think, that the great poetic effect of Act IV.  Sc. i. depends much more on the ‘charm’ which precedes Macbeth’s entrance, and on Macbeth himself, than on the predictions.]

[Footnote 210:  This comparison was suggested by a passage in Hegel’s Aesthetik, i. 291 ff.]

[Footnote 211:  Il. i. 188 ff. (Leaf’s translation).]

[Footnote 212:  The supernaturalism of the modern poet, indeed, is more ‘external’ than that of the ancient.  We have already had evidence of this, and shall find more when we come to the character of Banquo.]

[Footnote 213:  The assertion that Lady Macbeth sought a crown for herself, or sought anything for herself, apart from her husband, is absolutely unjustified by anything in the play.  It is based on a sentence of Holinshed’s which Shakespeare did not use.]

[Footnote 214:  The word is used of him (I. ii. 67), but not in a way that decides this question or even bears on it.]

[Footnote 215:  This view, thus generally stated, is not original, but I cannot say who first stated it.]

[Footnote 216:  The latter, and more important, point was put quite clearly by Coleridge.]

[Footnote 217:  It is the consequent insistence on the idea of fear, and the frequent repetition of the word, that have principally led to misinterpretation.]

[Footnote 218:  E.g. I. iii. 149, where he excuses his abstraction by saying that his ‘dull brain was wrought with things forgotten,’ when nothing could be more natural than that he should be thinking of his new honour.]

[Footnote 219:  E.g. in I. iv.  This is so also in II. iii. 114 ff., though here there is some real imaginative excitement mingled with the rhetorical antitheses and balanced clauses and forced bombast.]

[Footnote 220:  III. i.  Lady Macbeth herself could not more naturally have introduced at intervals the questions ‘Ride you this afternoon?’ (l. 19), ‘Is’t far you ride?’ (l. 24), ‘Goes Fleance with you?’ (l. 36).]

[Footnote 221:  We feel here, however, an underlying subdued frenzy which awakes some sympathy.  There is an almost unendurable impatience expressed even in the rhythm of many of the lines; e.g.: