Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/368

 *pect a more polished messenger of shamming faintness from loss of blood. He talks exactly as a common soldier should who is fresh from the great fight, puffed up with "valor's minion," and steadying himself upon reeking lines to deliver his message of victory. Middleton could not have so caught the color of the moment.

It is also supposed that Middleton wrote the scene, because when Ross enters he tells the King that

"Norway himself, with terrible numbers, Assisted by that most disloyal traitor The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict."

A discrepancy is charged between this and the report of Angus, in Scene 3 (acknowledged to be Shakspeare's), who enters with Ross, and says, concerning the thane of Cawdor,—

"Whether he was combin'd With those of Norway; or did line the rebel With hidden help and vantage; or that with both He labour'd in his country's wreck, I know not."

Perhaps Ross did not either. But he knew that Cawdor "assisted." He did not say that he was personally engaged in the fight.

The opening chant of the witches is denied to Shakspeare by one critic, because it seems to occupy the opening scene merely to inform us that they are to meet somewhere again; and by another it is attributed to Middleton because it does not flow in the usual trochaic manner of Shakspeare, and contains imperfect lines. Middleton may have Paddock and Graymalkin for his share in the attempt to spoil this grand chant, whose