of Cawdor!

_3 Witch_. All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be King hereafter!

Here too our Poet found the equivocal Predictions, on which his Hero so
fatally depended. "He had learned of certain wysards, how that he ought to
take heede of Macduffe;--and surely hereupon had he put Macduffe to death,
but a certaine witch, whom he had in great trust, had tolde that he should
neuer be slain with _man borne of any woman_, nor vanquished till the Wood
of Bernane came to the Castell of Dunsinane." p. 244. And the Scene
between Malcolm and Macduff in the fourth act is almost literally taken
from the Chronicle.

Macbeth was certainly one of Shakespeare's latest Productions, and it
might possibly have been suggested to him by a little performance on the
same subject at Oxford, before King James, 1605. I will transcribe my
notice of it from Wake's _Rex Platonicus_: "Fabulae ansam dedit antiqua de
Regia prosapia historiola apud Scoto-Britannos celebrata, quae narrat tres
olim Sibyllas occurrisse duobus Scotiae proceribus, Macbetho & Banchoni, &
illum praedixisse Regem futurum, sed Regem nullum geniturum; hunc Regem non
futurum, sed Reges geniturum multos. Vaticinii veritatem rerum eventus
comprobavit. Banchonis enim e stirpe Potentissimus Jacobus oriundus." p.
29.

A stronger argument hath been brought from the Plot of _Hamlet_. Dr. Grey
and Mr. Whalley assure us that for _this_ Shakespeare _must_ have read
_Saxo Grammaticus_ in Latin, for no translation hath been made into any
modern Language. But the truth is, he did not take it from _Saxo_ at all;
a Novel called the _Hystorie of Hamblet_ was his original: a fragment of
which, in _black Letter_, I have been favoured with by a very curious and
intelligent Gentleman, to whom the lovers of Shakespeare will some time or
other owe great obligations.

It hath indeed been said that, "IF _such an history exists_, it is almost
impossible that any poet unacquainted with the Latin language (supposing
his perceptive faculties to have been ever so acute) could have caught the
characteristical madness of Hamlet, described by _Saxo Grammaticus_, so
happily as it is delineated by Shakespeare."

Very luckily, our Fragment gives us a part of Hamlet's Speech to his
_Mother_, which sufficiently replies to this observation:--"It was not
without cause, and juste occasion, that my gestures, countenances, and
words seeme to proceed from a madman, and that I desire to haue all men
esteeme mee whol