Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/370

 From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic."

The lines go lilting like a little boat over the accent which can hardly raise a ripple. It is a supernature in the best of humor, beguiling or blessing men and women in a dulcet style.

But the witches chant holding torches of the lightning while the thunder slowly scans their verse:—

When shall we three meet again, In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won.

That will be ere set of sun."

It will be on the same day, then, to intercept Macbeth as homeward his ambitious mood hurries. The battle, which the rebels against Duncan's rule have just lost, Macbeth has won. What else has he won? His thoughts, out-travelling his body's utmost speed, will change into witches by the way and inform him. Hitherto his fateful Self has remained vague and disembodied. Now it will meet itself, and hear it utter a threefold "Hail!"

For thus I conceive that when Macbeth's crime had fully infected Shakspeare's imagination, and was urging it into the appalling swiftness of the first scenes of this tragedy, he endowed Macbeth with its own shaping quality. The witches were not decoys of another world to lure him into acquaintanceship with crime. They were his own intention grown to be so ravenous that it framed a prelude to his deed, as the condition of starving sets a