Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/369

 accent ought to have sung Shakspeare's feeling into the critic's ear; for so the foot of Fate would fall in order to pitch the key of the tragedy, and lead its crime into our presence. Its measured step seems to issue out of some foreboding by Macbeth of his ambition's purpose. The weird sisters are not merely enjoying a thunderstorm, and wondering when they shall meet again in similar favorable weather. Their lips put a stress of destiny upon every syllable. The poet's pen unconsciously follows in their traces.

The same metre is employed in the "Tempest" and "Midsummer-Night's Dream," by Ariel, Oberon, and Puck, when they are on sublunary business. But they

"Foot it featly here and there:"

the lines skim or flutter, and do not tread. The accent is not so persistent: it does not sound like the hinge on which a pause swings open to admit the foot of a thing that is burdened with a solemn message. On the blasted heath of Macbeth, the verses of Ariel would be like a strayed butterfly:—

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I."

He spurs the omen out of owls and bats, and rides them away from the chill of the evening, "after summer, merrily." Prospero, hearing him sing, says, "That's my dainty Ariel." Puck likewise, too mercurial for chanting, carols with a broom on his shoulder to make a clean sweep of mischief:—

"And we fairies, that do run By the triple Hecate's team,