der has been useless.
All that he has done is to damn his soul through the centuries during
which the line of Banquo will reign. He dies with a courage that is half
fury against the fate that has tricked him.

No play contains greater poetry. There is nothing more intense. The mind
of the man was in the kingdom of vision, hearing a new speech and seeing
what worldly beings do not see, the rush of the powers, and the fury of
elemental passions. No play is so full of an unspeakable splendour of
vision--

"his virtues
Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued."

"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air."

"Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible."

"In the great hand of God I stand."

"A falcon towering in her pride of place
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and killed.
And Duncan's horses--a thing most strange and certain--
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.
'Tis said they eat each other."

"the time has been
That, when the brains were out, the man would die."

All the splendours and powers of this great play have been praised and
re-praised. Noble inventions, like the knocking on the door and the
mutterings of the hags, have thrilled thousands. One, not less noble, is
less noticed. It is in Act IV, sc. i, Macbeth has just questioned the
hags for the last time. He calls in Lennox, with the words--

"I did hear
The galloping of horse: who was't came by?"

It was the galloping of messengers with the news that Macduff, who is to
be the cause of his ruin, has fled to England. An echo of the galloping
stays in the brain, as though the hoofs of some horse rode the night,
carrying away Macbeth's luck for ever.

_Antony and Cleopatra._

_Written._ 1607-8 (?)

_Published_, in the folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The life of Antonius in Sir Thomas North's
translation of Plutarch's _Lives_.

_The Fable._ Antony, entangled by the wiles of Cleopatra, shakes
himself free so that he may attend to the conduct of