I would add, though without much confidence, another suggestion.  The simplicity of Macbeth is one of the reasons why many readers feel that, in spite of its being intensely ‘romantic,’ it is less unlike a classical tragedy than Hamlet or Othello or King Lear.  And it is possible that this effect is, in a sense, the result of design.  I do not mean that Shakespeare intended to imitate a classical tragedy; I mean only that he may have seen in the bloody story of Macbeth a subject suitable for treatment in a manner somewhat nearer to that of Seneca, or of the English Senecan plays familiar to him in his youth, than was the manner of his own mature tragedies.  The Witches doubtless are ‘romantic,’ but so is the witch-craft in Seneca’s Medea and Hercules Oetaeus; indeed it is difficult to read the account of Medea’s preparations (670-739) without being reminded of the incantations in Macbeth.  Banquo’s Ghost again is ‘romantic,’ but so are Seneca’s ghosts.  For the swelling of the style in some of the great passages—­however immeasurably superior these may be to anything in Seneca—­and certainly for the turgid bombast which occasionally appears in Macbeth, and which seems to have horrified Jonson, Shakespeare might easily have found a model in Seneca.  Did he not think that this was the high Roman manner?  Does not the Sergeant’s speech, as Coleridge observed, recall the style of the ‘passionate speech’ of the Player in Hamlet,—­a speech, be it observed, on a Roman subject?[241] And is it entirely an accident that parallels between Seneca and Shakespeare seem to be more frequent in Macbeth than in any other of his undoubtedly genuine works except perhaps Richard III., a tragedy unquestionably influenced either by Seneca or by English Senecan plays?[242] If there is anything in these suggestions, and if we suppose that Shakespeare meant to give to his play a certain classical tinge, he might naturally carry out this idea in respect to the characters, as well as in other respects, by concentrating almost the whole interest on the important figures and leaving the others comparatively shadowy.

4

Macbeth being more simple than the other tragedies, and broader and more massive in effect, three passages in it are of great importance as securing variety in tone, and also as affording relief from the feelings excited by the Witch-scenes and the principal characters.  They are the passage where the Porter appears, the conversation between Lady Macduff and her little boy, and the passage where Macduff receives the news of the slaughter of his wife and babes.  Yet the first of these, we are told even by Coleridge, is unworthy of Shakespeare and is not his; and the second, with the rest of the scene which contains it, appears to be usually omitted in stage representations of Macbeth.