Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/340

[ 324 ] aSS undefinedumed by king James I. is uncertain. Macbeth was not entered in the Stationers’ books, nor printed, till 1623.

In The Tragidy of Cæar and Pompey, or Cæar’s Revenge, are thee lines:

“ Why think you, lords, that ’tis ambition’s pur “ That pricketh Cæar to thee high attempts?”

If the author of that play, which was publihed in 1607, hould be thought to have had Macbeth’s oliloquy in view, (which is not unlikely) this circumtance may add ome degree of probability to the uppoition that this tragedy had appeared before that year:

“ I have no pur “ To prick the ides of my intent, but only “ Vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itelf “ And falls at the other”

At the time when Macbeth is uppoed to have been written, the ubject, it is probable, was conidered as a topick the mot likely to conciliate the favour of the court. In the additions to Warner’s Albion’s England, which were firt printed in 1606, the tory of “the Three Fairies or Weird Elves,” as he calls them, is hortly told, and king James’s decent from Banquo carefully deduced.

Ben Jonon, a few years afterwards, paid his court to his majety by his Maque of Queens, preented at Whitehall, Feb. 12, 1609; in which he has given a minute detail of all the magick rites that are recorded by king James in his book of Dæmonologie, or by any other author ancient or modern.

Mr. Steevens has lately dicovered a M. play, entitled, written by Thomas Middleton , which ren-