me time when he
was writing those tragedies. And even turn back and compare it with the
rhyming speeches of his other supernatural personages, of Puck and
Titana and Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which he wrote at
least ten or twelve years earlier, and you will see that it is not only
so inferior, but so unlike his undoubted work that it must be rejected.
Turn next to Scene 3 of Act II., and read the speeches of the Porter.
Long ago Coleridge said of these, "This low soliloquy of the Porter and
his few speeches afterward I believe to have been written for the mob by
some other hand." That they were written for the mob is nothing against
them as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare wrote for the mob. He made a point of
putting in something for the groundlings[I] in every play that he wrote.
But with what a mighty hand he did it! so that those who have since then
sat in the highest seats in the world's theatre have laughed, and
pondered as they laughed. "Lear" is notably free from this element; but
even in the philosophical "Hamlet" we have the much elaborated scene of
the Gravediggers, which was written only to please Coleridge's "mob."[J]
But let the reader now compare these Porter's speeches in "Macbeth" with
those of the Gravediggers in "Hamlet," and if he is one who can hope to
appreciate Shakespeare at all, he will at this stage of his study see at
once that although both are low-comedy, technically speaking, the former
are low-lived, mean, thoughtless, without any other significance than
that of the surface meaning of the poor, gross language in which they
are written; while the latter, although, far more laughable even to the
most uncultivated hearer, are pregnant with thought and suggestion.
There can be no question that these speeches in "Macbeth" were written
by some other hand than Shakespeare's.

Having now satisfied ourselves that some part of "Macbeth" is not
Shakespeare's (and I began with those so manifestly spurious passages to
establish that point clearly and easily in the reader's apprehension),
"we are in a proper mood of mind to consider the objections that have
been made by the Cambridge editors to other parts of the tragedy. The
whole second scene of Act I. is regarded as spurious because of
"slovenly metre," too slovenly for him even when he is most careless;
"bombastic phraseology," too bombastic for him even when he is most so;
also because he had too much good sense to send a severely wounded
so