Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/371

 phantom banquet before a person's eyes. Shakspeare had no need of them to start the business of his play or to keep alive his plot. Macbeth and his wife did their own tempting so thoroughly that spirits might applaud and refrain from interfering. But these witches were characters of the second-sight which Shakspeare imputed to Macbeth, a distinguishing trait born into Macbeth's mind from the conception of this tragedy. The prosaic supernature of the old chronicle, on which the play is based, is transformed into a psychological peculiarity.

So we observe that these weird sisters were no posters of vulgar ill, horsed on nursery broomsticks, to deliver murrain in the fold and rheumatism at the hearth, in gratification of a vicious whim. But they became vulgarized into this whenever Macbeth was absent from the scene. Then they shrank from Fates to hags, such as Banquo's undistempered eyes saw them, withered, hairy-faced, laying chappy fingers upon skinny lips,—old women dreaded by the common people for reputed powers of bewitching. All such Celtic superstitions breed nobly in Macbeth's fancy: he knows all about the village gossip. The eldritch women are the nearest hint of supernature which he had; but his kingly anticipations tolerate no common pranks from them. When Macbeth is absent, Shakspeare shows what stale witcheries they traffic in. The critics blame the incongruity, or attribute it to some interpolating pen. But Shakspeare rightly intended to place in contrast with Macbeth's fantasy the popular material of his