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58 Macbeth have all a tendency to ‘drag’ in this section of the play, and that the first and perhaps also the last of these four fail even in the catastrophe to reach the height of the greatest scenes that have preceded the Fourth Act. I will not ask how far these impressions are justified. The difficulties in question will become clearer and will gain in interest if we look rather at the means which have been employed to meet them, and which certainly have in part, at least, overcome them.

(a) The first of these is always strikingly effective, sometimes marvellously so. The crisis in which the ascending force reaches its zenith is followed quickly, or even without the slightest pause, by a reverse or counter-blow not less emphatic and in some cases even more exciting. And the effect is to make us feel a sudden and tragic change in the direction of the movement, which, after ascending more or less gradually, now turns sharply downward. To the assassination of Caesar ( i.) succeeds the scene in the Forum ( ii.), where Antony carries the people away in a storm of sympathy with the dead man and of fury against the conspirators. We have hardly realised their victory before we are forced to anticipate their ultimate defeat and to take the liveliest interest in their chief antagonist. In Hamlet the thrilling success of the play-scene ( ii.) is met and undone at once by the counter-stroke of Hamlet’s failure to take vengeance ( iii.) and his misfortune in killing Polonius ( iv.). Coriolanus has no sooner gained the consulship than he is excited to frenzy by the tribunes and driven into exile. On the marriage of Romeo follows immediately the brawl which leads to Mercutio’s death and the banishment of the hero ( vi. and i.). In all of these instances excepting that of Hamlet the scene of the counterstroke is at least as exciting as that of the crisis, perhaps more so. Most people, if asked to mention