"Macbeth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... similar way on the genetic sense. It begins by exciting sexual desire, but diminishes the power. As Shakespere says: "Lechery it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire but it takes away the performance." (Macbeth, Act II, Scene iii.) No doubt the narcotics are not all equal in action, and each has its specific peculiarities; but the words of Shakespere express the essential effect of all narcotics on the sexual appetite: First of all excitation of the appetite with the disappearance of moral and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... philosophy and logic; the prodigality of erudition displayed in the articles on Plato, Homer, Dinner Real and Reputed, Bentley; the transcendent critical skill revealed in the little paper entitled 'The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,' in the essays on Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Lamb, and others; the minute dissections of feeling and passion scattered broadcast throughout his writings. We shall content ourselves with merely adducing another illustration ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his writings. In 1744, he published the life of Savage; and then projected a new edition of Shakespeare. As a prelude to that design, he published, in 1745, Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on sir Thomas Hanmer's edition; to which were prefixed, Proposals for a new Edition of Shakespeare, with a specimen. Of this pamphlet, Warburton, in the preface to Shakespeare, has given his opinion: "As to all those things, which have been published under ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... witches in Macbeth. Romeo and Juliet lived and the quarreling families were united. Desdemona remained un-smothered to the end. There was one stout author—but here I trust to memory—who even attempted to rescue Hamlet and to substitute ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... be two legitimate modes of interweaving tragedy with something like comedy. The first and most easy, which has often been resorted to, is to make the lower or less marked characters of the drama, like the porter in "Macbeth," or the fool in "King Lear," speak the language appropriated to their station, even in the midst of the distresses of the piece; nay, they may be permitted to have some slight under-intrigue of their own. This, however, requires the exertion of much taste and discrimination; for ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... mother be pleased, when you represent her as deaf to the cries of her children? When you compare her to the infamous miscreant, who lately stood on the gallows for starving her child? When you resemble her to Lady Macbeth in Shakespear, (I cannot ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... unexceptionably good; the gems in this way being Mrs. Siddons, as Lady Macbeth, by C. Rolls, after Harlowe: the face is perhaps the most intellectual piece of engraving ever seen; the sublime effect in so small a space is truly surprising. A Portrait, by W. Danforth, after Leslie, ranks next; and the beauty and variety of the remainder of the prints are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... unfitting him for characters of dignity or heroism, even to his exclusion from Faulconbridge, Hotspur, &c. and if we find that the greatest admirers of Barry considered the harmony and softness of his features, as reducing his Macbeth, Pierre, &c. to poor lukewarm efforts, how can it be expected that a boy, just started from childhood, should present a true picture of a warrior or a philosopher? We premise this for the purpose of having it understood ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... superior beings. When I first saw the immense herd of these long-legged animals appearing in the distant horizon, they looked like groups of small trees; and I felt agreeably surprised to meet with vegetation in this endless wilderness. But the wood, like that in Shakspere's Macbeth, shortly advanced towards us, and the stems changed into legs and the crowns ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... service, others to pass the time. "When I knew that there was an army between my wife and myself," observed a cynic to me yesterday, "I rejoiced, but even the society of my wife would be better than this." There is a hideous old woman, like unto one of Macbeth's witches, who makes my bed. I had a horrible feeling that some day or other I should marry her, and I have been considerably relieved by discovering that she has a husband and several olive branches. Here is my day. In the morning the boots comes to call me. He announces the number of deaths ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... talked comfortingly, and tried to cheer Lucien. The poet spent an hour with his friends, then he went, but his conscience treated him hardly, crying to him, "You will be a journalist—a journalist!" as the witch cried to Macbeth that ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... on, oppressed, distracted by painful emotions—suddenly I found myself before Drury Lane Theatre. The play was Macbeth—the first actor of the age was there to exert his powers to drug with irreflection the auditors; such a medicine I yearned for, so I entered. The theatre was tolerably well filled. Shakspeare, whose popularity was established by the approval ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... figure he was, that great and wise Canute, the friend of the famous Godiva, and Leofric, Godiva's husband, and Siward Biorn, the conqueror of Macbeth; trying to expiate by justice and mercy the dark deeds of his bloodstained youth; trying (and not in vain) to blend the two races over which he ruled; rebuilding the churches and monasteries which his father had destroyed; ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... "Star Spangled Banner," is not the author of Hamlet, a tragedy. He wrote the banner business, and assisted in "The Female Pirate," BUT DID NOT WRITE HAMLET. Hamlet was written by a talented but unscrupulous man named Macbeth, afterwards tried and executed for ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... &c; many times, several times, a number of times; many a time, full many a time; frequently &c 136. Phr. ecce iterum Crispinus [Lat.]; toujours perdrix [Fr.]; cut and come again [Crabbe]; tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow [Macbeth]; cantilenam eandem canis [Lat.] [Terence]; nullum est jam dictum quod non dictum sit prius ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lyric to the dramatic poets. Historians appear in the second period, chroniclers and critics in the third. The characters of the ode are colossi—Adam, Cain, Noah; those of the epic are giants—Achilles, Atreus, Orestes; those of the drama are men—Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello. The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real. Lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources—The ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... combined in one school on one subject. An ingenious student of Shakspeare, or the elder dramatists, might impose upon the public credulity a new scene, or even a new play, as belonging to Shakspeare, but would that be any proof that a company of Shakspeares combined in the production of Macbeth? I own, by-the-way, that I am a little doubtful as to our acumen in ascertaining what is Homeric and what is not, seeing that Schlegel, after devoting half a life to Shakspeare (whose works are composed in a living language, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... catch this line in flank. The movement was completely successful, the first line of the enemy was swept away, and we captured the larger part of Rhett's brigade, two hundred and seventeen men, including Captain Macbeth's battery of three guns, and buried one hundred ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... thousand livres, which he placed in Derues' hands, asking him for assistance in finding a business. The sight of gold was enough to rouse the instinct of crime in Derues, and the witches who hailed Macbeth with the promise of royalty did not rouse the latter's ambitious desires to a greater height than the chance of wealth did the greed of the assassin; whose hands, once closed over the eight thousand livres, were never again relaxed. He ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... heartily for the Bible, which is exquisite. I thoroughly appreciate the whole; but have you done justice to the third lion in Daniel (like the third murderer in Macbeth)—a singular animal—study him well. The soldier in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing which should divide or disturb my recollection of Siddons. Siddons and Kemble were the ideal of tragic action; I never saw anything at all resembling them, even in person; for this reason, we shall never see again Coriolanus or Macbeth. When Kean is blamed for want of dignity, we should remember that it is a grace, not an art, and not to be attained by study. In all, not super-natural parts, he is perfect; even his very defects ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... World of Strife, A Meeting with Lamb, A Meeting with Coleridge, Recollections of Wordsworth, Confessions, A Portion of Suspiria, The English Mail-Coach, Murder as one of the Fine Arts, Second Paper, Joan of Arc, and On the Knocking at the Gate in 'Macbeth.'"] ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... lord?"—"Shakspeare's an infernal humbug, Pip! What's the good of Shakspeare, Pip? I never read him. What the devil is it all about, Pip? There's a lot of feet in Shakspeare's verse, but there an't any legs worth mentioning in Shakspeare's plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of 'em, whatever their names are, might as well have no legs at all, for anything the audience know about it, Pip. Why, in that respect they're all Miss Biffins to the audience, Pip. I'll tell you what it is. What the people call dramatic ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... gods, such beings were hardly persons; they melted easily one into another. But when the Greek imagination had once done its work upon them, a figure like Athena or Aphrodite had become, for all practical purposes, a definite person, almost as definite as Achilles or Odysseus, as Macbeth or Falstaff. They crystallize hard. They will no longer melt or blend, at least not at an ordinary temperature. In the fourth and third centuries we hear a great deal about the gods all being one, 'Zeus the same as Hades, Hades as Helios, Helios the same as Dionysus',[64:1] ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... How like Macbeth he is!—the successful soldier, stirred by supernatural monitions of a greatness which he should achieve, and at ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sometimes to be referred to Mary. Similarly Margaret, popularly Mar-get, became Mag, Meg, Mog, whence Meggitt, Moxon, etc. The rarity of Maggot is easily understood, but Poll Maggot was one of Jack Sheppard's accomplices and Shakespeare uses maggot-pie for magpie (Macbeth, iii, 4). Meg was rimed into Peg, whence Peggs, Mog into Pog, whence Pogson, and Madge into Padge, whence Padgett, when this is not for Patchett (Chapter IX), or for the Fr. Paget, usually explained as Smallpage. The royal name Matilda appears ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... very picture of the man.... "The labour we delight in physics pain,"—said Lady Macbeth of old; and of a most extraordinary kind must the labour of Mons. Brunet be considered, when the pleasure in the prosecution of it balances the pain. We talked much and variously at our first interview: having previously interchanged many civilities by letter, and myself having ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... bedroom opened hastily, and that pink of maidenly propriety stepped out into the hail in her night-gown—the only indecorous thing I ever knew her to do. She held a lighted candle in her hand and looked like a very aged Lady Macbeth. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "Sleep-walking scene, 'Macbeth,'" said Arvasita. "Leola's great night at the church fair and bazar, El Paso, in Shakespeare's acknowledged masterpiece. Leola's repetwar likewise includes 'Catherine the Queen before her Judges,' 'Quality of Mercy is not Strained,' 'Death of Little Nell,' ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs! "And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the castle of Macbeth." ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... him,—she who had instigated him to the doing of the deed? "For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind," he said to himself over and over again, not, however, in truth thinking of the deed with any of the true remorse to which Macbeth was a prey. The "filing of his mind" only occurred to him because the words were otherwise apt. Would she even be grateful when she should tell herself,—as she surely would do,—that the deed had been done by ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... mortified) he threw himself into the business of collecting signatures. It was his part, on the ground of his Italian, to see and arrange with the actor; it was mine to write in the ACADEMY a notice of the first performance of MACBETH. Fleeming opened the paper, read so far, and flung it on the floor. 'No,' he cried, 'that won't do. You were thinking of yourself, not of Salvini!' The criticism was shrewd as usual, but it was unfair through ignorance; it was not of myself that I was thinking, but of the difficulties ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he was equally skilled in getting people into it. If he ultimately doubled their joys and halved their sorrows he inevitably first doubled their sorrows and halved their savings. Like the witch in Macbeth: "Double, double toil and trouble." His aims were childishly simple: First, to find out how much money his victim had, and then to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... fitted them for admission into the world. Had he lived till our hero was of a suitable age the probability is that the American stage would at this day want one of its greatest ornaments; and that the hand which now wields the truncheon of Macbeth, Richard, and Coriolanus on the American boards, would be grasping a sword or driving a quill in the service of the East India company in Bengal, whither doctor Cooper at last went himself, being promoted to a respectable rank on the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... masculines—(of less intention withal than one of those &cs. of crabbed Littleton, like an old shoe fricasseed into savourings of all things by its inimitable Coke,)—come we to the women-kind. Agrippina, (one of the school of Siddons,) empress-mother, a strong-minded, Lady-Macbeth sort of woman, and the only person in the world who can awe her amiable son. Lucia, (you cannot be spared here, clever Helen Faucit)—the heroine, secretly a Christian affianced to Manlius; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love. Rufa, a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... right hand of stage, leg it like lamplighters across front, and disappear at left. Fearful pow-wow behind the scenes. Five minutes elapse. Enter goats at right as before, followed by Obanjo and company as before, and so on da capo. It was more like a fight I once saw between the armies of Macbeth and Macduff than anything I have seen before or since; only our Rembwe play was better put on, more supers, and noise, and all that sort of thing, you know. It was a spirited performance I assure you and I and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... decent piece of clothing left, nor a wearable shoe, and each man had not more than two charges. He therefore had to retreat to Ufa for fresh ammunition. It appears that Michelson was just such a dreaded opponent to Pugasceff as the man not born of a woman was to Macbeth. Immediately he disappeared from the horizon, he arose anew, and at each encounter with the pretender beat him right and left. When Michelson drove him away from Ufa, Pugasceff totally defeated the Russian leaders approaching from other ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... act Lady Macbeth!" she urged. "Best opportunity for a star performance you've ever had in your ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Heath has proved the worth of crape. But how, you ask, can we e'er hope to soar. Above these scenes, and rise to tragic lore? Too oft, alas! we've forced the unwilling tear, And petrified the heart with real fear. Macbeth a harvest of applause will reap, For some of us, I fear, have murdered sleep. His lady, too, with grace will sleep and talk: Our females have been used at night to walk. Grant us your favor, put us to the test: To gain your smiles we'll do our very best, And ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... detachment. The duty was executed with skill; the enemy was completely in his power. But he labored under an impediment in his speech, which, we may readily suppose, was greatly increased by anxiety and excitement. The word "fire" stuck in his throat, as "amen" did in that of Macbeth. The emergency was pressing, but this only increased the difficulty. In vain did he make the attempt. He could say "fi-fi-fi!" but he could get no further—the "r" was incorrigible. At length, irritated almost to madness, he exclaimed, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... Irish legends which I have heard on the subject—and is of a truly mythic character. Since visiting Shetland I have thought a great deal about the Picts, but cannot come to any satisfactory conclusion. Were they Celts? were they Laps? Macbeth could hardly have been a Lap, but then the tradition of the country that they were a diminutive race, and their name Pight or Pict, which I almost think is the same as petit—pixolo—puj—pigmy. It ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... representations, the depth of the reflections, whether he be writing the two worst plays in which he took part (for portions only seem to have been supplied by him), Pericles and Titus Andronicus, or his two best, conceived so massively and executed in such a masterly manner, Macbeth and Othello. In the Two Noble Kinsmen, which he wrote with Fletcher, any body familiar with his acknowledged dramas, can trace him as easily as a traveller follows with his finger the course of the Rhone while that river is traversing ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... underlies Macbeth's "this perilous stuff, which weighs upon the heart"—recalls the essay[106] OF SADNESS, in which ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... dash at him before he could elude him. At the same time he did not forget the dozen horsemen that had stolen out so cautiously from the rear, and he knew that "if it were done, then 'twere well it were done quickly," as Macbeth so aptly puts it. ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... have been haunted by Harry's ghost," Stanley laughed. "It would have been as bad as Banquo and Macbeth; he would have sat at my table, and stood at the head of my bed. No, no; that would have been a much more serious affair, to face, than a party of Burmese. The title and estates would have been too ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... now in preparation; and Hamlet and Macbeth are stock pieces. But even your Shakspeare was far from the truth, the great truth, that the drama should represent the progress, development, and accomplishment of the natural and moral world, without reference to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Doctor, whose suspicions were all alive. "And have a care, sir," said he, just as I came in, "the Old Lion will not bear to be tickled." The other was pale with rage, the lady wept at the confusion she had caused, and I could only say with Lady Macbeth— ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of Banquo, who was murdered by the order of the Usurper Macbeth, to avoid the like Fate, fled to North Wales, where he was kindly and hospitably entertained by Prince Gryffydd ab Llewelyn ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... the love of God, they recked not where. The boat in which they came was made of two hides and a half; and they took with them provisions for seven nights; and within seven nights they came to land in Cornwall, and soon after went to King Alfred. They were thus named: Dubslane, and Macbeth, and Maelinmun. And Swinney, the best teacher that was among the Scots, departed this life. And the same year after Easter, about the gang-days or before, appeared the star that men in book-Latin call "cometa": some men say that in English it may be termed "hairy star"; for that there standeth ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... story. Suspense is the key-note of the romance. The characters are still subordinate to incident, but La Motte and his wife claim our interest because they are exhibited in varying moods. La Motte has his struggles and, like Macbeth, is haunted by compunctious visitings of nature. Unlike the thorough-paced villain, who glories in his misdeeds, he is worried and harassed, and takes no pleasure in his crimes. Madame La Motte is not a jealous woman from beginning to end like the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... bundle of stalks on which she had been seated at the head of her assailant, kicked up a tornado of loose husks with her trim foot, and stood brandishing her red ear furiously, as if it had been a dagger in the hand of Lady Macbeth, rather ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Macbeth does look strutting about and clasping her hands, dressed in that black skirt, shirt-waist, and sailor ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... Raro antecedentem scelestum Deseruit pede paena claudo.—TRANS.] Let only the attempt be made, for instance, to bring within the narrow frame of the Unity of Time Shakspeare's gigantic picture of Macbeth's murder of Duncan, his tyrannical usurpation and final fall; let as many as may be of the events which the great dramatist successively exhibits before us in such dread array be placed anterior to the opening of the piece, and made the subject ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... banks, with plantations of birch and oak. Quitting Blair he followed the course of the Spey, and passing, as he told his brother, through a wild country, among cliffs gray with eternal snows, and glens gloomy and savage, reached Findhorn in mist and darkness; visited Castle Cawdor, where Macbeth murdered Duncan; hastened through Inverness to Urquhart Castle, and the Falls of Fyers, and turned southward to Kilravock, over the fatal moor of Culloden. He admired the ladies of that classic region for their snooded ringlets, simple elegance of dress, and expressive eyes: in Mrs. Rose, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... excluded so many, and being ushered into a shady parlour, feasted her eyes upon several fine portraits of great actors while she waited. She had read about most of them, and knew their trials and triumphs so well that she soon forgot herself, and tried to imitate Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth, looking up at the engraving as she held her nosegay like the candle in the sleep-walking scene, and knit her youthful brows distressfully while murmuring the speech of the haunted queen. So busy was she that Miss Cameron ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Mask" and "Macbeth" were on their repertoire. Probably "Macbeth" was never played to better advantage or to more appreciative audiences than it was during the stay of the Wallacks. Mrs. Wallack's Lady Macbeth was a piece of acting that few of the present ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... famous Shakespeare is fortunate, I trow, in having him to play his great characters. You must see Burbadge, likewise, in the mad Prince of Denmark,—the part was written for him, and fits him exactly. See him also in gentle and love-sick Romeo, in tyrannous and murderous Macbeth, and in crookback Richard; in all of which, though different, our Dick is equally good. He hath some other parts of almost equal merit,—as Malevole, in the 'Malcontent;' Frankford, in the 'Woman Killed with Kindness;' Brachiano, in Webster's 'White Devil;' and Vendice, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... contemporary manners and costume; it dressed the groups around the Crucifixion in the garb of Florentine gentlefolk or Flemish burghers. In the last century it was the custom for distinguished actors to present Macbeth in a powdered wig and ruffles. How far we are ourselves in this age from such conviction of the poetry of our own life and manners may easily be conceived by anyone who chooses to imagine a picture of Alfred the Great toasting the cakes dressed in tourist's ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... and to the office, where all the morning, at noon to the 'Change, and thence home to dinner, and so with my wife to the Duke's house to a play, "Macbeth," a pretty good play, but admirably acted. Thence home; the coach being forced to go round by London Wall home, because of the bonefires; the day being mightily observed in the City. To my office late at business, and then home to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of savage sheep-dogs. For a good conduct prize, I have a friend up there—a farming clergyman—who will teach you words of cheer by introducing you to a bull that can't pass the Board of Trade test because he's like Lady Macbeth's hand— however you babble to him in a green field he makes the green one red. But these shall be special treats, you understand, held in reserve. Most days you'll just climb till you're tired, and your dinner shall be mutton for three weeks on end. . . . Now, don't interrupt. I may seem ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Handy, in his favorite Macbeth voice. "You make me a bit tired with this kind of baby talk. Haven't you fellows got common sense enough to know that it is not absolutely necessary to have a voice to be a singer? Suppose a singer once had a voice and lost it, would that be a good and sufficient ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... critical moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide to him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catastrophe follows. Finally, though there are three wicked women among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence also in proportion to the power for ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... concessions must needs be greater than the novelist's. On these points we will cry quits, and come at once to the vital question—the creation. Is Lucien inferior to Hamlet? Is Eugénie Grandet inferior to Desdemona? Is her father inferior to Shylock? Is Macbeth inferior to Vautrin? Can it be said that the apothecary in the "Cousine Bette," or the Baron Hulot, or the Cousine Bette herself is inferior to anything the brain of man has ever conceived? And it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare has had three hundred ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... friend," said he, good-humouredly. "It is a pleasure we lose as we grow older,—that of being sleepy. However, 'to bed,' as Lady Macbeth says. Faith, I don't wonder the poor devil of a thane was slow in going to bed with such a tigress. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to the priming with a vengeance. My good resolutions vanished like a wreath of vapor before a westerly gale. Those longings which I had endeavored to stifle, returned with more than their original force. In fancy's eye, I saw a marlinspike where Macbeth saw the dagger, and snuffed the fragrance of a tar-bucket ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... to be supposed merely as the effects of diseased vision, or a guilty imagination? Ought an enlightened audience to tolerate the mischievous impressions produced on the minds of ignorance or youth by the gross exhibitions which now disgrace our stage in Hamlet, Richard, and Macbeth? We all know that fever of the brain produces successions of spectres or images, the result of diseased organs; but no one ever conceived that such melancholy effects of disease could be seen by healthy by-standers, till our stage-managers availed themselves of vulgar credulity, and dared ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... towards us. Beneath them my swarthy and hardy peasants are plodding up the hill asweat and athirst. When I first descended to the wadi, one such load of brushwood emerging suddenly from behind a cliff surprised and frightened me. But soon I was reminded of the moving forest in Macbeth. The man bowed beneath the load was hidden from view, and the boy directly behind was sweating under a load as big as that of his father. 'Awafy!' (Allah give you strength), I said, greeting them. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... whereby, in and through some serious collision, followed by fatal catastrophe or inner ruin, something valuable in personality becomes manifest, either as sublime or admirable in the hero, or as triumph of an idea." But "Lear," "Macbeth," "Hamlet," "Oedipus King," "Othello," exist to contravene this view. No, the tragic (in its first sense, in the sense derived from the dramatic form from which it is named) is in the collision itself; it is the profound ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the day he spent in looking for a room, which he soon found, and in familiarising himself with liberty. In the evening I took him to the Olympic, where Robson was then acting in a burlesque on Macbeth, Mrs Keeley, if I remember rightly, taking the part of Lady Macbeth. In the scene before the murder, Macbeth had said he could not kill Duncan when he saw his boots upon the landing. Lady Macbeth put a stop to her ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... business is with the diggings and the diggers. We have often wished we could interrogate one of those unquiet spirits in the manner of Macbeth—'What is't ye do?' How do you manage? By what signs do you know a locality that is likely to repay your pains? What are your instruments, your machinery? What do you conceive to be the prospects of your singular trade? And, in fact, our curiosity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... walk in their sleep (of which our inimitable Shakespear has, in his tragedy of MACBETH, drawn out a fine scene) are said to have their eyes open; though they are not, the more for that, conscious of any thing, but the dream which has got possession of their imagination. I never saw one of those persons, therefore cannot describe their manner from nature; but ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hate this woman; she was, so to speak, mingled with the blood of my veins; I cursed her, but I dreamed of her. What could I do with a dream? By what effort of the will could I drown a memory of flesh and blood? Lady Macbeth, having killed Duncan, saw that the ocean would not wash her hands clean again; it would not have washed away my wounds. I said to Desgenais: "When I sleep, her head is ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... heard, beginning Vixere fortes, &c., which, as it avers that there were a great number of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may not unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to succeed him. Shakspeare made a better man when his imagination moulded the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you will measure Satan by Prometheus, the blind old Puritan's work by that of the fiery Grecian poet, does not Milton's angel surpass AEschylus's—surpass him ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spoke of castles generally, and averred that the dearest wish of her life was to see Macbeth's castle at Glamis, where Duncan was murdered. At which the Englishman, still deferentially, mistrusted the fact that the murder had been committed there, and thought that the castle to which Shakespeare probably referred, if he hadn't invented the murder, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... obliterating them, when suddenly a new and horrid consciousness emerged from the trodden slime— that she was glad that at least Sophy had the money! For one passing moment she was glad with the joy of Lady Macbeth, that what was done was done, and could not be altered. Then once more the storm within her awoke and would not again ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... The programme was soon ready and contained the following, which was purely Shakespearean. An orchestra of thirty pieces played the overture and accompanied the several numbers. The Rialto, Bargain, and Trial scenes from the Merchant of Venice, four glees, a reading, and Locke's music to Macbeth's witches in character. Sergeant-Instructor Smith and his brother conducted the programme. No ladies took part. The characters were all male, John Smith taking the part of Portia, and his brother that of Shylock. Schoolmaster Ward made a good Antonio, ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... better actor, Forrest was exceptionally popular with a certain class of people in New York whose sympathies were easily enlisted and whose passions were readily aroused. During the evening referred to, while Macready was acting in the role of Macbeth, a determined mob attacked the theater, and the riot was not quelled until after a bitter struggle, in which the police and the military were engaged, and during which twenty-one were killed and ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... felt, too, that mine was not an interesting or in anyway respectable distress. There was nothing in it to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known where to seek it, would have been most precious. The words of Macbeth to the physician often occurred to my thoughts. But there was no one on whom I could build the faintest hope of such assistance. My father, to whom it would have been natural to me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last person to whom, in such a case as this, I looked ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... it. Men who lived one or two thousand years had time to invent and improve everything; and a play could have had its natural length then. It would not have been necessary to crowd the whole history of Macbeth, from his youth to his old age, into an absurd epitome of three hours. One cannot trace a touch of real human nature in any actor's delineation of that very interesting Scotchman, because the actor always comes on the stage as if he were ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... much pretence at feeling. She could bring it to a whisper that would almost melt your heart with tenderness,—as she had melted Sir Florian's, when she sat near to him reading poetry; and then she could raise it to a pitch of indignant wrath befitting a Lady Macbeth when her husband ventured to rebuke her. And her ear was quite correct in modulating these tones. She knew,—and it must have been by instinct, for her culture in such matters was small,—how to use her voice so that neither its tenderness nor its wrath ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... water, will make quite short work of fresh blood-spots—at least to all outward appearances. But nothing but a most thorough cleaning can conceal them from the Uhlenhuth test, even when they are apparently wiped out. It is a case of Lady Macbeth over again, crying in the face of modern science, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... if an owl sits on the house-top, the occupants dare scarcely lie down to sleep, for they know that the devil is walking the rooms and marking someone for death. Lady Macbeth, when about the murder ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... sentence. Take as an example, "Early in the morning the nobles and gentlemen who attended on the king assembled in the great hall of the castle; and here they began to talk of what a dreadful storm it had been the night before. But Macbeth could scarcely understand what they said, for he was thinking of something worse." The last sentence has been amended by Professor Bain into "What they said, Macbeth could scarcely understand." But there appears to be an antithesis between the guiltless nobles who can think about ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... Mansfield, and perhaps turns it over, the following Monday night, to the tender mercies of performing dogs and cats. 'Tis all grist that comes to his mill, and what cares he whether that grist represent "Macbeth" or canine drama? ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and all the intermediate centuries simultaneously. Fierce men, clothed in the hides of beasts, and carrying, for defence and attack, huge clubs and pointed spears, rose from the rock, like the phantoms before the doomed Macbeth. They lived in hollows, woods, and mud huts—perhaps in caves of the neighbouring rocks. Behind them stood an earlier band. No man was there. Huge elephantine forms, the mastodon, the hippopotamus, the tapir, antelopes of monstrous size, the megatherium, and the myledon—all, for the moment, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Midnight weeds] The force of the epithet midnight, will be best displayed by a corresponding passage in Macbeth: ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... war. The prairies were boundless, and the constant line of movers' wagons reaching out endlessly on the old trail, with fathers and mothers and children, children, children, like the ghosts of Banquo's lineal issue to King Macbeth, seemed numerous enough to people the world and put to the plough every foot of the virgin soil of the beautiful Plains. With the downfall of slavery the strife for commercial supremacy began in earnest here, and there are no ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... its surface. Its appearance has suggested the name, which Hedges has given, of "Hell-Broth springs;" for, as we gazed upon the infernal mixture and inhaled the pungent sickening vapors, we were impressed with the idea that this was a most perfect realization of Shakespeare's image in Macbeth. It needed but the presence of Hecate and her weird band to realize that horrible creation of poetic fancy, and I fancied the "black and midnight hags" concocting a charm around this horrible cauldron. ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... Mrs Varden was dull; and that when other people were dull, Mrs Varden was disposed to be amazingly cheerful. Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... not known to have been one earlier. Shakespeare's company never included an actor named Martin. Fletcher repeated the visit in October 1601. {41b} There is nothing to indicate that any of his companions belonged to Shakespeare's company. In like manner, Shakespeare's accurate reference in 'Macbeth' to the 'nimble' but 'sweet' climate of Inverness, {41c} and the vivid impression he conveys of the aspects of wild Highland heaths, have been judged to be the certain fruits of a personal experience; but the passages in question, into which a more ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... with deep vibration thrill'd, In stagnant silence and petrific gloom, Unconscious sleeps, the tenant of the tomb! Extinct that spirit, whose strong-bidding drew From Fancy's confines Wonder's wild-eyed crew, Which bade Despair's terrific phantoms pass Like Macbeth's monarchs in the mystic glass. Before the youthful bard's impassion'd eye, Like him, led on, to triumph and to die; Like him, by mighty magic compass'd round, And seeking sceptres on enchanted ground. Such spells invest, such blear illusion waits ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... different-colored handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet there was something in it by which I could not help being affected; perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my slaves;—to be sure, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... an epilogue to "Macbeth," and the wonder is that an unlettered Indian should have had the wit to make such apt and subtle replies. It is also noteworthy that these strange proceedings took place after the expulsion of the royal governor, and previous to the provincial government of William III. If ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and at the same instant there came a loud knocking at the door behind him. The sound reverberated through the empty house, filling the place with awful echoes,—like those knocks at the gate of Macbeth's castle the night of Duncan's murder. Richard stood petrified for a second; then he hastily turned the key in the lock, and Mr. Taggett stepped into ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the Collection of Woodcut Books, Early Printed Books, and Manuscripts at Kelmscott House. The text of the Shakespeare was to have been prepared by Dr. Furnivall. The original intention, as first set out in the list of May 20, 1893, was to print it in three vols. folio. A trial page from Lady Macbeth, printed at this time, is in existence. The same information is repeated until the list of July 2, 1895, in which the book is announced as to be a 'small 4to (special size),' i. e., the size afterwards adopted for The Earthly Paradise. It was not, however, begun, nor was the volume of ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... cobblers' stalls, are plastered, as it were, against the Gothic projections and abutments, so that it seemed as if the traders had occupied with nests, bearing the same proportion to the building, every buttress and coign of vantage, as the martlett did in Macbeth's Castle. Of later years these booths have degenerated into mere toy-shops, where the little loiterers chiefly interested in such wares are tempted to linger, enchanted by the rich display of hobby-horses, babies, and Dutch toys, arranged in artful and gay confusion; yet half-scared by the cross ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... looked out upon a prospect which had been a fit setting for the witch scene in Macbeth. Thunder clouds hung low over the moor, but through them ran a sort of chasm, or rift, allowing a bar of lurid light to stretch across the drear, from east to west—a sort of lane walled by darkness. There came a remote murmuring, as of a troubled sea—a ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... with yellow paint, bleared and leering eyes, and horrid long, flapping breasts—ugh! it was a sight to make one feel sick. A degraded woman is the saddest spectacle on earth. Shakespeare knew what he was doing when he made the witches in Macbeth of the feminine gender. But as you look at them you almost forget that these Piute hags are women—they seem a cross between brute and devil. The unity of the human race is a fact which I accept; but some of our brothers and sisters are far ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... me on the road to the stage. I used to fancy myself as Macbeth, but I soon got switched into the belief that I could write plays. Now that I have demonstrated that"—his tone was a little bitter again—"I think I would better ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... So withered and so wild in their attire That look not like th' inhabitants of earth And yet are on't?" —Macbeth. ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... which they came was made of two hides and a half; and they took with them provisions for seven days; and about the seventh day they came on shore in Cornwall, and soon after went to King Alfred. Thus they were named, Dubslane, and Macbeth, and Maelinmun." ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... feet; and as he matured in his career, through acting every kind of part, from a dandy negro up to Hamlet, he at last made choice of the characters that afford scope for his powers and his aspirations, and so settled upon a definite, restricted repertory. His characters were Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, Iago, Richard the Second, Richard the Third, Shylock, Cardinal Wolsey, Benedick, Petruchio, Richelieu, Lucius Brutus, Bertuccio, Ruy Blas, and Don Caesar de Bazan. These he acted in customary usage, and to these he occasionally ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... something of a parody, especially a translation from a northern tongue, with its force and backbone, so to speak, into a southern, serpentine, gliding language. You have heard the absurd rendering of that passage from Macbeth where the witches salute him with 'Hail to thee, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!' into such French as 'Comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Macbeth; comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Thane de Cawdor!' A translation must pass through the medium of another ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... accessible: this was "Blanca de Borbn," a historical drama of the times of Peter the Cruel in five acts, in verse. The first two acts were written in Espronceda's early Classic manner; the last three, written at a later period, are Romantic in tone. The influence of "Macbeth" is apparent. "Blanca de Borbn" could never be a success on the stage. The verse, too, is not worthy of the author. Espronceda was too impetuous a writer to comply with the restrictions of dramatic technique. The dramatic passages ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... light a candle, it does not follow that they are guided by its light, or that they really see any thing by it. Their movements may still be purely automatic. This curious circumstance is finely illustrated by Shakspeare, who describes the Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep with a lighted ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... saw Ira Aldridge, the Foulah actor, play in Macbeth, Othello, and his other famous parts, saw nothing negro about him, except the length of his arm, the shrillness of his voice in excitement, the terrible animality of the murder-scenes, and his tendency to exaggerate. "The bright-colored nails were very evident, and his whole physiognomy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... asleep again to dream of a soft strong west wind chasing from her the offensive emanations of the tomb, that seemed to have long persecuted her nostrils as did the blood of Duncan those of the wretched Lady Macbeth. And every night to her sinful bosom came back the soft innocent hands of the child she had lost—when ever and again her dream would change, and she would be Hagar, casting her child away, and fleeing ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... high antiquity; for Malcolm II. was assassinated here in the year 1034, and the chamber in which he expired is still shown. Two obelisks, one near the Manse, and the other in a neighbouring field, denote the places where he was attacked. In this castle also, according to some historians, Macbeth murdered Duncan. We notice, however, that Sir Walter Scott, in his recently-published version of the story of Macbeth, states the murder to have been committed at "a great castle near Inverness," in which he is corroborated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of Humanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author, embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not COMMON to MANKIND. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; in Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth in the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinous, and the Laocoon. But you do not meet the originals of the words, the cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... proper effort without success, he should be assisted by the teacher. It is very important that the selection should be suited to the capacity and progress of the pupil. Beginners should take simple pieces, and not be allowed, as is sometimes the case, to murder a passage from Paradise Lost, or Macbeth. Sometimes a fault is committed on the part of the teacher, by permitting a pupil to confine his selections to one favorite class. I have observed in certain schools, that one particular boy would always appear in a comic piece, another in a tragic, and so on. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that speakers of all orders and characters use all the forms. Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Coriolanus, Lance, use prose; Leontes and his little boy, Lear, Coriolanus, and his domestics—to say nothing of the Steward—Macbeth and his murderlings, use blank verse. Even Falstaff, now and then, a verse. All, high and low, wise, merry, and sad, rhyme. Fools, witches, fairies—we know not who else—use lyrical measures. Upon the whole, the uttermost—that is, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... mixture.—Ver. 262. This reminds us of the line of Shakespeare in Macbeth, 'Make the hell-broth thick ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... suppress. The identical image that was labeled Bluebeard in the museum is now Saint Peter. The "Disconsolate Widow" is now "the Weeping Virgin." Charlotte Temple, and the baby that never knew its father, is now Mary and the infant Christ. Macbeth, looking as though he had the toothache, is Saint Francis. Othello is here a saint; and the sleeping Desdemona is now the sleeping Virgin. The monster that poisoned six husbands, and sits meditating the death of a seventh, is now dressed in the latest Paris finery, and is a saint. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... And Fortune, on his damned quarry smiling] Thus the old copy; but I am inclined to read quarrel. Quarrel was formerly used for cause, or for the occasion of a quarrel, and is to be found in that sense in Hollingshed's account of the story of Macbeth, who, upon the creation of the prince of Cumberland, thought, says the historian, that he had a just quarrel, to endeavour after the crown. The sense therefore is, Fortune smiling on his excrable cause, &c. This is followed by Dr. Warburten. (see ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... to shut out German music. "Germany, it must be said to its credit," I read in the daily Press, "is not boycotting foreign art." In the autumn of 1915 the Royal Theatres of Berlin announced Shakespeare's "Macbeth," and "Antony and Cleopatra," and Scribe's "Glass of Water." "Shakespeare, one hears," writes a reviewer in the Daily News, of December 4, 1915, "is still being played in the German theatres. If you go to a theatre in London you are more likely to see a performance ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... questioning, but she did not heed him. Slowly, with infinite effort, as if her slender hands were weighted down, she lifted them before her face. She stared at them with growing horror depicted on her face. He was suddenly reminded of an electrifying performance of Macbeth he had once witnessed. A red glare from a ruby lamp at a fire-street corner splashed her frail fingers with vivid color as they passed it by. She gave a scream that ended in a moan, and mechanically wiped her hands back and forth, back and forth, upon her coat. Brencherly's heart ached for her. Over ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... themselves with it, and find that there is a tide that bears them on. Divine will? Not necessarily. There is no understanding of it. Guardian spirits? There are many who so believe, to their utter undoing. (Witness Macbeth). An unconscious drift in the direction of right, virtue, duty? These are banners of mortal manufacture. Nothing is proved; all ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... first name. He wrote something in the ship's log, and I saw his signature. His name is Fleance, like in "Macbeth." He prefers to be called Jones. Pat uses his first name as a ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... high order that even man, with his perceptions, does not penetrate it unless he exercises his reasoning faculties. Because he knows that a spray of seaweed is not endowed with independent movement, when it does walk about he, at first, is as incredulous as was Macbeth when told of that "moving ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... on his throne! Ah, believe me, ye Gracchi, ye Acephali, ye Levelers, it is something worth seeing, be sure; whether beheld at Babylon the Tremendous, when Nebuchadnezzar was crowned; at old Scone in the days of Macbeth; at Rheims, among Oriflammes, at the coronation of Louis le Grand; at Westminster Abbey, when the gentlemanly George doffed his beaver for a diadem; or under the soft shade of palm trees on an isle ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... individual flavour of its own. To attempt to create this atmosphere in an artificial language is not only futile, but would introduce just the difficulties, redundancies, and complications which it is its chief object to avoid. Take a single instance, Macbeth's— ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... reinforcement; when I was struck with the fact that no actor so little graced by nature probably ever went so far toward repairing it by a kind of cold rage of endeavour. Were he and his wife really not coercively interesting on that Boston night of Macbeth in particular, hadn't their art a distinction that triumphed over battered age and sorry harshness, or was I but too easily beguiled by the old association? I have enjoyed and forgotten numberless rich hours of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... and we know it so well and feel so much with Caesar or with Lear or with Othello or with Macbeth, that we instinctively take it all for true psychology, while it after all covers just the exceptional cases ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... meaning. Every grouping of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays like 'Lear', 'Hamlet', and 'Macbeth'. But such is not the moral to be found in the great bulk of contemporary Drama. The moral of the average play is now, and probably has always been, the triumph at all costs of a supposed immediate ethical good over ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sense. A plan, a motive with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in the green-room or at the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say that this is Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform us that certain passions are supposed to be embodied in such and such persons: these persons should be placed in situations developing those passions. A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "Like Macbeth, he has done his murder and is on his way to be crowned at Scone. He has not a wife, but he has a daughter ambitious as himself. She has a son. He sees his line secured. He has suborned other murderers ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... find out the time. It was funny at first, but I am getting nervous. It's horrible to think that you're being watched all the time. I feel as if I'd committed a murder, and keep looking over my shoulder like—like Macbeth." ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition; which o'erleaps itself, And falls on the other.—-" Macbeth. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of "Madame Sans-Gene," A singing Napoleon, Royalties in opera, Henry the Fowler, King Mark, Verdi's Pharaoh, Herod, Boris Godounoff, Macbeth, Gustavus and some mythical kings and dukes, et seq.—Mattheson's "Boris," Peter the Great, Sardou's play and Giordano's opera, Verdi on an operatic Bonaparte, Sardou's characters, "Andrea Chenier," French Rhythms, "Fedora," "Siberia," ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the most part Shakespear differentiates his heroes from his villains much more by what they do than by what they are. Don John in Much Ado is a true villain: a man with a malicious will; but he is too dull a duffer to be of any use in a leading part; and when we come to the great villains like Macbeth, we find, as Mr Harris points out, that they are precisely identical with the heroes: Macbeth is only Hamlet incongruously committing murders and engaging in hand-to-hand combats. And Hamlet, who does not dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always apologizing because he ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... quickly on, and she followed me in silence. Once I glanced back at her—there was an expression on her face which puzzled me, yes, almost made me afraid. I could imagine Clytemnestra holding her midnight watch, with a face like that—Lady Macbeth waiting for her husband's return, with eyes like those—oh, I had grown so fanciful and silly during ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... bright eyes, and a flushed face; and they moved off towards the theatre, where they paid their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money-taker's box. "Mrs. Dropsicum, Bingley's mother-in-law, great in Lady Macbeth," Foker said to his companion. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... painting cabinet pictures, refused to attempt anything on a smaller scale. He persuaded Sir George to withhold his decision until the picture was finished, and promised that if he still objected to the size, he would paint him another on any scale he pleased. While engaged on 'Macbeth,' he competed with 'Dentatus' for a hundred guinea prize offered by the Directors of the British Gallery for the best historical picture. 'Dentatus' won the prize, but this piece of good fortune was counterbalanced by a letter from Mr. Haydon, senior, containing the announcement ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... dark and solemn woods, stands Glamis Castle, the scene of the tragedy in Macbeth. We could see but a glimpse of it from the road, but the very sound of the name was enough to stimulate our imagination. It is still an inhabited dwelling, though much to the regret of antiquarians ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... tragic. What a Lady Macbeth you would make! Come quote, 'All the perfumes of Araby will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!' ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... participant in political affairs at that time. There may be a few errors but they are of a minor character. I am glad that I am able to be of some assistance to you in this matter, however, little, and I can only say in the words of Macbeth, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Return of Peter Grimm." The subject was very difficult, and the greatest problem confronting me was to preserve the illusion of a spirit while actually using a living person. The apparition of the ghost in "Hamlet" and in "Macbeth," the spirits who return to haunt Richard III, and other ghosts of the theatre convinced me that green lights and dark stages with spot-lights would not give the illusion necessary to this play. All other spirits have been ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... obtained a supply of dynamite, the needful mechanism, and the loan of a mechanic; the gaol was mined, and the Manono people in Vaiusu were advertised of the fact in a letter signed by Laupepa. Partly by the indiscretion of the mechanic, who had sought to embolden himself (like Lady Macbeth) with liquor for his somewhat dreadful task, the story leaked immediately out and raised a very general, or I might say almost universal, reprobation. Some blamed the proposed deed because it was barbarous and a foul example to set before a race half barbarous itself; others ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recreation rouses the old lady to feats of swearing far beyond the scope of most people. No man has yet been found who could withstand her onslaught. I saw her angry once! She positively alarmed me; the three witches in Macbeth thrown into one would be of no account in comparison. Had she lived a century or two ago she ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... drunken priest. "I went with an old friend to see Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth. The resemblance between Father Rowley and Miss Ellen Terry is very remarkable. Good-night, Lidderdale, I am perfectly comfortable on ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... But the prevailing manner was condemned as stiff and lifeless in comparison with the energy of Garrick's presentation. From his first triumph in Richard III in 1741, to his farewell performance of Lear in 1776, he won a series of signal successes in both tragedy and comedy, in Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Falconbridge, Romeo, Hotspur, Iago, Leontes, Posthumus, Benedick, and Antony. Garrick's services to Shakespeare extended beyond the parts which he impersonated. He revived many plays, and though he garbled the texts freely, yet in comparison with earlier practice he really had some ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... easy of imitation. We have, therefore, less hesitation in referring the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more injurious the delinquency. We therefore adduce as examples, works of our most inventive and able artist, his "Macbeth" and his "Hamlet"—they are greatly overloaded with the faults of superabundance of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works of great power, and such as none but a painter of high genius could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... read the Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, by that pleasing poet and most amiable man, the late David Macbeth Moir? I have been looking into it lately; and I have regretted much that the Lowland Scotch dialect is so imperfectly understood in England, and that even where so far understood its raciness is so little felt; for great as is the popularity of that work, it is much less known than it ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Paris has quartettes of old gossiping hags; and the "Thou shalt be King" could be quite as mournfully hurled at Bonaparte in the Carrefour Baudoyer as at Macbeth on the heath of Armuyr. The croak would ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... as he had done in the other: I mean, that he lost a large sum of money in the Olympic Theatre. He played all kinds of pieces: among others, he gave the public two very humorous burlesques, founded on Shakspeare's plays of "Macbeth" and "The Merchant of Venice." The authors were two clever young Oxford men: Frank Talfourd, the son of the poet-Judge,—father and son are, alas! both dead,—and William Hale, the son of the well-known Archdeacon and Master ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... from the castle where King Powell had his court, there was a hillock called the Mount of Macbeth. It was the common belief that some strange adventure would befall anyone who ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... strengthened my suspicions. Among others the persistence with which her ladyship, though in good health, and with no other engagement at hand, resolved and adhered to her resolution to remain at home and miss the rare opportunity of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Dean in their great parts of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Suspecting that her ladyship had some unlawful design in thus denying herself an amusement of which I know her to be excessively fond, and preferring to spend the evening at home, of which I know she is excessively tired, I ordered ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... exquisite irony of fate. He wondered in an abstract and dispassionate way whether the ghost of all his misdeeds were continually to rise before him. "Really," he said to himself with a smile that curled his lips "in that case I shall become a perfect Macbeth." And at that instant the ghost most dreadful of all rose at the feast like that of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates |
