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POEMS.

ALL THE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL DESIGNS BY W. HARVEY.)

Title-page Portrait of Shakspere, from the Portrait prefixed to his Works, page 361

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A LOVER'S COMPLAINT, THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM, &c.

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STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY, OF MACBETH.

'THE Tragedie of Macbeth' was first published in the folio collection of 1623. Its place in that edition is between Julius Cæsar and Hamlet. In the entry on the Stationers' register, immediately previous to the publication of the edition of 1623, it is also classed amongst the Tragedies. And yet, in many modern reprints of the text of Shakspere, Macbeth is placed the first amongst the Histories. This is to convey a wrong notion of the character of this great drama. Shakspere's Chronicle-histories are essentially conducted upon a different principle. The interest of Macbeth is not an historical interest. It matters not whether the action is true, or has been related as true: it belongs to the realms of poetry altogether. We might as well call Lear or Hamlet historical playɛ, because the outlines of the story of each are to be found in old records of the past. Our text is, with very few exceptions, & restoration of the text of the original folio.

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Malone and Chalmers agree in assigning this tragedy to the year 1606. Their proofs, as we apprehend, are entirely frivolous and unsatisfactory. The Porter says, Here's a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty :" the year 1606 was a year of plenty, and therefore Macbeth was written in 1606. Again, the same character says, "Here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales, against either scale." This passage Malone most solemnly tells us, "without doubt, had a direct reference to the doctrine of equivocation avowed and maintained by Henry Garuet, superior of the order of the Jesuits in England, on his trial for the Gunpowder Treason, on

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