ion of the actors, there is not,
to the best of my remembrance, a single pun or play on words in the whole
drama. I have previously given an answer to the thousand times repeated
charge against Shakespeare upon the subject of his punning, and I here
merely mention the fact of the absence of any puns in _Macbeth_, as
justifying a candid doubt, at least, whether even in these figures of
speech and fanciful modifications of language, Shakespeare may not have
followed rules and principles that merit and would stand the test of
philosophic examination. And hence, also, there is an entire absence of
comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in _Macbeth_,--the
play being wholly and purely tragic. For the same cause, there are no
reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required a more
leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;--no sophistry
of self-delusion,--except only that previously to the dreadful act, Macbeth
mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience into
prudential and selfish reasonings; and, after the deed done, the terrors
of remorse into fear from external dangers,--like delirious men who run
away from the phantoms of their own brains, or, raised by terror to rage,
stab the real object that is within their reach:--whilst Lady Macbeth
merely endeavours to reconcile his and her own sinkings of heart by
anticipations of the worst, and an affected bravado in confronting them.
In all the rest, Macbeth's language is the grave utterance of the very
heart, conscience-sick, even to the last faintings of moral death. It is
the same in all the other characters. The variety arises from rage, caused
ever and anon by disruption of anxious thought, and the quick transition
of fear into it.

In _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ the scene opens with superstition; but, in each
it is not merely different, but opposite. In the first it is connected
with the best and holiest feelings; in the second with the shadowy,
turbulent, and unsanctified cravings of the individual will. Nor is the
purpose the same; in the one the object is to excite, whilst in the other
it is to mark a mind already excited. Superstition, of one sort or
another, is natural to victorious generals; the instances are too
notorious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare, and
such vast events are connected with the acts of a single individual,--the
representative, in truth, of the efforts of myriads