[Footnote 286:  I have noted also what must be a mistake in the case of Pericles.  Koenig gives 17.1 as the percentage of the speeches with broken ends.  I was astounded to see the figure, considering the style in the undoubtedly Shakespearean parts; and I find that, on my method, in Acts III., IV., V. the percentage is about 71, in the first two Acts (which show very slight, if any, traces of Shakespeare’s hand) about 19.  I cannot imagine the origin of the mistake here.]

[Footnote 287:  I put the matter thus, instead of saying that, with a run-on line, one does pass to the next line without any pause, because, in common with many others, I should not in any case whatever wholly ignore the fact that one line ends and another begins.]

[Footnote 288:  These overflows are what Koenig calls ’schroffe Enjambements,’ which he considers to correspond with Furnivall’s ’run-on lines.’]

[Footnote 289:  The number of light endings, however, in Julius Caesar (10) and All’s Well (12) is worth notice.]

[Footnote 290:  The Editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare might appeal in support of their view, that parts of Act V. are not Shakespeare’s, to the fact that the last of the light endings occurs at IV. iii. 165.]

NOTE CC.

WHEN WAS THE MURDER OF DUNCAN FIRST PLOTTED?

A good many readers probably think that, when Macbeth first met the Witches, he was perfectly innocent; but a much larger number would say that he had already harboured a vaguely guilty ambition, though he had not faced the idea of murder.  And I think there can be no doubt that this is the obvious and natural interpretation of the scene.  Only it is almost necessary to go rather further, and to suppose that his guilty ambition, whatever its precise form, was known to his wife and shared by her.  Otherwise, surely, she would not, on reading his letter, so instantaneously assume that the King must be murdered in their castle; nor would Macbeth, as soon as he meets her, be aware (as he evidently is) that this thought is in her mind.

But there is a famous passage in Macbeth which, closely considered, seems to require us to go further still, and to suppose that, at some time before the action of the play begins, the husband and wife had explicitly discussed the idea of murdering Duncan at some favourable opportunity, and had agreed to execute this idea.  Attention seems to have been first drawn to this passage by Koester in vol.  I. of the Jahrbuecher d. deutschen Shakespeare-gesellschaft, and on it is based the interpretation of the play in Werder’s very able Vorlesungen ueber Macbeth.

The passage occurs in I. vii., where Lady Macbeth is urging her husband to the deed: 

     Macb. Prithee, peace: 
               I dare do all that may become a man;
               Who dares do more is none.