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Ib. p. 909. If the reader will look back at the passage touching the premunire, quoted above, he will see that these few lines from Raphael Holinshed are somewhat fatal to an argument in favor of Shakespeare's "legal acquirements," in so far as it rests in any degree upon the use of terms or the knowledge displayed in that passage.
It is perfectly clear that Holinshed used these words as a sort of synonym for the "goddesses of Destinie;" but with such a mass of evidence as has been produced to show that Shakspere elected to introduce witches in the place of the Norns, it surely would not be unwarrantable to suppose that he might retain this term as a poetical and not unsuitable description of the characters to whom it was applied.
And in the humbler manors and farm-houses the latter idea is even more perfectly expressed, for houses were affected by the new fashions in architecture generally in proportion to their size. Holinshed tells of the increased use of stone or brick in his age in the district wherein he lived.
The only excuse that can be offered, not good for much, is that Shakespeare found the story in the Arcadia, and that in his day horrors on the stage were not so repulsive as they are to us. Cordelia's death taken from Holinshed is almost as bad. It is not involved in the tragedy like the death of Ophelia or of Desdemona. All's Well that Ends Well.
Duncan I, Macbeth, and Thorfinn Sigurd's son were thus first cousins, and, in spite of the fiction of Holinshed, Boece, and William Shakespeare, they were all about the same age, being born within seven years of each other; and none of them lived to old age.
Again when Shakespeare treats of the history of England from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, it is wonderful how careful he is to have his facts perfectly right indeed he follows Holinshed with curious fidelity.
Our astonishment is often increased to find that the merest hint led to an imperishable creation, such as the character of Lady Macbeth, the reference to whom in Holinshed is confined to these twenty-eight words, "...specially his wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to bear the name of a queen."
A curious account of his frantic demeanour, after divesting himself of so much power and extending so greatly the liberties of the subject, is given by Holinshed: "Having acted so far contrary to his mind, the king was right sorrowful in heart, cursed his mother that bare him, and the hour in which he was born; wishing that he had received death by violence of sword or knife instead of natural nourishment.
This prolonged period of incessant war brought about the almost complete devastation of wide tracts of country in Ireland. Historians and poets tell the same sad story. Holinshed says that except in the cities or towns the traveller might journey for miles without meeting man, woman, child, or even beast.
We must remember that our own annalists, Holinshed and Stow, were later by two centuries than the Villani. While discussing the historical work of Dante and the Villani, it is impossible that another famous Florentine should not occur to our recollection, whose name has long been connected with the civic contests that resulted in the exile of Italy's greatest poet from his native city.
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