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Updated: June 2, 2025
As to Shakspeare, there never was a better; as his description of the murdered Duke of Gloucester, in Henry VI., of Duncan's, Banquo's, &c., sufficiently proves. The foundation of the art having been once laid, it is pitiable to see how it slumbered without improvement for ages.
He cannot change it from what it is, an object of general disgust and scorn. On the contrary, the contact, if he choose to touch it, is more likely to drag him down, down, to the place where it lies itself. But, Sir, the honorable member was not, for other reasons, entirely happy in his allusion to the story of Banquo's murder and Banquo's ghost.
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.
At the utterance of that fearful name, young girls crowded together like frightened doves; the child hid its terrified face in its mother's lap; the eyes of the matron overflowed with tears as the images of murdered sons and outraged daughters passed before her mind's eye, and, like Banquo's ghost, filled the vacant seats at the table; while the men gazed anxiously out, expecting to see their granaries and store-houses in flames.
Unfortunately, however, a great actor cannot fill more than a very small fraction of the boards; and though Banquo's ghost will probably be more seasonable in his future apparitions, there are some more inherent difficulties in the piece. The company at large did not distinguish themselves. Macduff, to the huge delight of the gallery, out-Macduff'd the average ranter.
And there would be ample time for retreat. But still as he arranged it all in his mind he regarded it all not as a thing fixed, but as a thing which was barely possible. It was thus that it might be done, had the Lady Macbeth of the occasion really shown herself competent to such a task. Why should he trouble himself on such a matter? Why should he file his mind for Banquo's issue?
"Tra-de-ri-di-ra," exclaimed the artist, striking alternately with his knife a glass and a bottle, as if he were playing a triangle. "I must say that you choose madly gay subjects for conversation. We are truly a joyous crowd; look at Bergenheim opposite us; he looks like Macbeth in the presence of Banquo's ghost; here is my friend Gerfaut drinking water with a profoundly solemn air.
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred A whole one; and my heart flies to my head As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams, The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, Like Banquo's offspring...
This spectral figure was going away from the shack, anyway. It appeared to be bearing something in its arms. But then came a second ghost, likewise burdened. Gasping, Jennie waited, clinging to the window-sill for support. A third spectre appeared, rising like Banquo's spirit at Macbeth's feast. This was too much for the plump girl's self-control.
Shakspere's age believed in witches, elves, and apparitions; and yet there is always something shadowy or allegorical in his use of such machinery. The ghost in Hamlet is merely an embodied suspicion. Banquo's wraith, which is invisible to all but Macbeth, is the haunting of an evil conscience.
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