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The gods themselves, that kind of gods, became as extinct as the deities of the Druids, the Greek fates, the terrible figures of German mythology. Yes, and as the God of Christian orthodoxy. Had any dire calamities overtaken the modern Macbeths, of whose personal lives we happened to know something? Had not these great ones broken with impunity all the laws of traditional morality?
Then for the first time in his three years' employment on the paper he asked for two show tickets! The entire office lined up at the opera house most of us paying our own way, not to see the Macbeths, but to see Mehronay's Romeo and Juliet.
The gods themselves, that kind of gods, became as extinct as the deities of the Druids, the Greek fates, the terrible figures of German mythology. Yes, and as the God of Christian orthodoxy. Had any dire calamities overtaken the modern Macbeths, of whose personal lives we happened to know something? Had not these great ones broken with impunity all the laws of traditional morality?
Each important clan had some of those Helots attached to them; thus, the Mac-Couls, though tracing their descent from Comhal, the father of Finn or Fingal, were a sort of Gibeonites, or hereditary servants to the Stewarts of Appin; the Macbeths, descended from the unhappy monarch of that name, were subjects to the Morays, and clan Donnochy, or Robertsons of Athole; and many other examples might be given, were it not for the risk of hurting any pride of clanship which may yet be left, and thereby drawing a Highland tempest into the shop of my publisher.
That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view. They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins. They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat.
"Peace on earth, and good-will towards men." There had been Jezebels and Lady Macbeths enough; the memory of David still smelt of blood; the Roman eagles were gorging their beaks on human flesh; and the Samaritan everywhere felt the gnawing, shuddering sense of hatred and scorn.
There seems no reason why he should not have continued, year after year, to produce Othellos, Hamlets, and Macbeths; instead, he turned over a new leaf, and wrote Coriolanus.
After it was over, he thus delivered himself, on my laughing it off and giving him some wine: "No, Dickens er er I will NOT," with sudden emphasis, "er have it er put aside. In my er best times er you remember them, my dear boy er gone, gone! no," with great emphasis again, "it comes to this er TWO MACBETHS!" with extraordinary energy.
What, in effect, was Macready's comment upon it some months afterwards, when, with an especial eye to the great tragedian's opinion, "Sikes and Nancy" was given at Cheltenham? It was laconic enough, but it afforded a world of pleasure to the Author-Actor when his old friend himself the hero of so many tragic triumphs summed up his estimate, by saying, characteristically, "Two Macbeths!"
In actual life, and among strong positive natures, the deepest feelings find no vent in the effervescence of passionate verbal outbreaks, and outside the charmed precincts of the tragic stage, the world would not tolerate the raving Hamlets and Othellos, the Macbeths and Medeas, that scowl and storm and anathematize so successfully in the magic glow of the footlights.
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