Page:Shakespearean Tragedy (1912).djvu/482

 i.e. if we suffer so much, we shall not bear it as he has. If the Qq. ‘have’ is right, the reference is to Lear, Gloster and Kent.

 

I have assumed in the text that almost the whole of Macbeth is genuine; and, to avoid the repetition of arguments to be found in other books, I shall leave this opinion unsupported. But among the passages that have been questioned or rejected there are two which seem to me open to serious doubt. They are those in which Hecate appears: viz. the whole of v.; and  i. 39–43.

These passages have been suspected (1) because they contain stage-directions for two songs which have been found in Middleton’s Witch; (2) because they can be excised without leaving the least trace of their excision; and (3) because they contain lines incongruous with the spirit and atmosphere of the rest of the Witch-scenes: e.g. v. 10 f.:

and i. 41, 2:

The idea of sexual relation in the first passage, and the trivial daintiness of the second (with which cf. v. 34,

suit Middleton’s Witches quite well, but Shakespeare’s not at all; and it is difficult to believe that, if Shakespeare had meant to introduce a personage supreme over the Witches, he would have made her so unimpressive as this Hecate. (It may be added that the original stage-direction at i. 39, ‘Enter Hecat and the other three Witches,’ is suspicious.) 