cess. The creation is worthy of a place beside the same
artist's Othello and Hamlet. It is the simplest and most unsympathetic
of the three; but the absence of the finer lineaments of Hamlet is
redeemed by gusto, breadth, and a headlong unity. Salvini sees nothing
great in Macbeth beyond the royalty of muscle, and that courage which
comes of strong and copious circulation. The moral smallness of the man
is insisted on from the first, in the shudder of uncontrollable jealousy
with which he sees Duncan embracing Banquo. He may have some northern
poetry of speech, but he has not much logical understanding. In his
dealings with the supernatural powers he is like a savage with his
fetich, trusting them beyond bounds while all goes well, and whenever he
is crossed, casting his belief aside and calling "fate into the list."
For his wife, he is little more than an agent, a frame of bone and sinew
for her fiery spirit to command. The nature of his feeling towards her
is rendered with a most precise and delicate touch. He always yields to
the woman's fascination; and yet his caresses (and we know how much
meaning Salvini can give to a caress) are singularly hard and unloving.
Sometimes he lays his hand on her as he might take hold of any one who
happened to be nearest to him at a moment of excitement. Love has fallen
out of this marriage by the way, and left a curious friendship. Only
once--at the very moment when she is showing herself so little a woman
and so much a high-spirited man--only once is he very deeply stirred
towards her; and that finds expression in the strange and horrible
transport of admiration, doubly strange and horrible on Salvini's
lips--"Bring forth men-children only!"

The murder scene, as was to be expected, pleased the audience best.
Macbeth's voice, in the talk with his wife, was a thing not to be
forgotten; and when he spoke of his hangman's hands he seemed to have
blood in his utterance. Never for a moment, even in the very article of
the murder, does he possess his own soul. He is a man on wires. From
first to last it is an exhibition of hideous cowardice. For, after all,
it is not here, but in broad daylight, with the exhilaration of
conflict, where he can assure himself at every blow he has the longest
sword and the heaviest hand, that this man's physical bravery can keep
him up; he is an unwieldy ship, and needs plenty of way on before he
will steer.

In the banquet scene, while the first murderer