"Macbeth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the whole of my wild, forgotten forest-world absolutely changed and transformed into one great camp. But the empty wood was moving like a living thing, like the menacing 'Birnam wood' before the eyes of Macbeth. It was full of an army, with each of their handsome big horses tied to a pine in the forest. Farther off across the roots could be seen small grey tents stretched on logs. Most of the exhausted blackened men were lying all over the ground and sleeping among the quiet beasts. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... spiritual sympathy, and, except in his books, he habitually kept silence on ultimate things. But he had always thought of them; and as he lay dying, in almost the last moments of consciousness, he repeated dearly to himself those great, those superhuman lines which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Macbeth between his wife's death and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... certainly was the ugly, crabbed creature that Casorans had described; but had she been as frightful as the witches in Macbeth I was determined to make her conquest. So I began playing with unusual attention. I was her partner, and I knew from experience the profound horror which the loss of money inspires in old women. Thank ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... by, and even unheeding, the caress, "our way of life soon passes into the sear and yellow leaf; and when Macbeth grieved that he might not look to have that which should accompany old age, he had grown doting, and grieved ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... would have exerted himself to see a live, fullgrown king, just to find out if he looked like Macbeth, or Arthur, or Lear. To-day he was so tired that kings did ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the devoted victim. One negro who desires to be revenged on another, and is afraid to make an open and manly attack on his adversary, has usually recourse to this practice. Like the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, it is a combination of many strange and ominous things. Earth gathered from a grave, human blood, a piece of wood fastened in the shape of a coffin, the feathers of the carion crow, a snake or alligator's ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... poor little clerk who had just entered the house with a packet of letters for C—-n. He did not kneel, but sat down upon the steps as pale as death, looking as "creamed faced" as the messenger to Macbeth; and when the shock was over, he was so sick, that he ran out of the house without making any remarks. The scarlet hucamaya, with a loud shriek, flew from its perch, and performed a zig-zag flight through the air, down to the troubled fountain in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... "Saw 'Macbeth' in Smelter City Theatre last night. 'Member the place where he says 'Thou canst not say I did it?' Well, that's the beginning of the end for that old boy; fooled himself that time. If he'd remembered that, though he didn't do it with his own hand, he did do it all the same, he wouldn't ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... In Macbeth, the alternatives are very obvious. The interest of the play centres on the poise of incentive between action and non-action, and the absolute free-will of election. But that election once made, we see—and the hero himself acknowledges—a practical inevitableness ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... thought is of necessity not so wide, and his 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 ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... artists are wiser in these matters than the philosophers. Are we to suppose that the depths of malignity in an Iago, or the "dark backward and abysm" of remorse in a Macbeth, are things purely relative ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... wonderful strength. It was just such proud, dark, purposeful souls that Byron delighted to draw; but the only one in literature to whom I can fully liken her is the wife of Macbeth. There was the same ambition—the same ruthless will—the same disregard of everything that stood in her way. And, like Cawdor's wife, she weakened ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... 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
... sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. It was strange to see this little dark-complexioned, dark-eyed girl, the merest handful of flesh and bone, divest herself at will of her personality, and assume the tragic horror of Lady Macbeth, or the passionate rapture of Juliet detaining her husband-lover on the balcony of her chamber. Hubert watched in wonderment this girl, so weak and languid in her own nature, awaking only to life when she assumed the personality of another. There she lay, her wispy form ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... at Martinmas is more than I can well say. But this young birkie here, that ye are hounding the fastest way to the gallows—tell me, will all his stage-plays and his poetries, or your broad oaths and drawn dirks tell him where Rashleigh Osbaldistone is? Or Macbeth and all his kernes and galloglasses, and your own to boot, procure him the five thousand pounds to answer the bills that must fall due ten days hence—were they all sold by auction at Glasgow Cross—basket hilts, Andrea Ferraras, leathern ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his twenty-four ribs was taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely upon yourself in the selection of a wife, there are twenty-three possibilities to one that you will select the wrong rib. By the fate of Ahab, whose wife induced him to steal; by the fate of Macbeth, whose wife pushed him into massacre; by the fate of James Ferguson, the philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing and willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to the audience ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... former self, and contemplating the sports of his youth with a sort of melancholy pleasure, yet under the influence of the strong fatality which hurried him to his end. It is by mixing somewhat of this feeling in the character of Macbeth, that Shakspeare has excited a momentary interest even for a murderer and usurper, who perceives "his life fallen into the sere and yellow leaf," and pauses for a moment in melancholy reflection as he rushes to "die with harness ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... termination by the troops, who, on seeing him approach them, rushed towards him and overpowered him. However, he unfortunately succeeded in seriously wounding one of the best and bravest soldiers in the command, Private Richard G. Macbeth, of Co. "F" 27th U. S. Infantry, whose bravery in time of danger had made him an unanimous favorite among his comrades. Another victim of this savage Sultan was Pvt. James Nolan, Jr., of Co. "G" 27th U. S. Infantry, who, having been detailed as a scout, had fearlessly advanced upon one of ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... allies unnecessary; and, independent of this great irreconcilable difference, they wanted a piece containing very few characters in the whole, but every character first-rate, and three principal women. All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal, Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively dismissed with yet warmer objections. No piece could be proposed that did not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Macbeth's "this perilous stuff, which weighs upon the heart"—recalls the essay[106] OF SADNESS, in which Montaigne remarks ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Arthur and Emmeline, and a variety of other pieces. It may be observed that these names are not clustering, but solitary, appearing at long intervals. Locke, the producer of the music in the incantation scene in Macbeth, as now sung and played, was the contemporary of Purcell. Dr. Arne next appears, the famous composer of Artaxerxes. Bishop, who has identified himself with almost every thing valuable in modern composition, is well known, as are also his works. It would be impossible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... to his character, Kinglake pursues him into his December treason, contrasts the consummate cleverness of his schemes with the faltering cowardice which shrank, like Macbeth's ambition, from "the illness should attend them," and which, but for the stronger nerve of those behind him, would have caused his collapse, at Paris as at Strasburg and Boulogne, in contact with the shock of action. It is difficult now to realize the commotion caused by this fourteenth ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... an 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
... when I need them. The anguish of death is very bitter, which you are too young to know, and it is a blessed thing to have a sovereign ready for that anguish in the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. The Holy Oils are the thing which Macbeth desired when he demanded ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... considered by many the 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 ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... 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 ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... "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 and made traitors of honest men—and our Laputa philosopher at Washington ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the position of the manager of a country theatre who, just as the curtain is about to be drawn up, is obliged to come forward and announce that the amateur gentleman who had solicited the part of Macbeth, who had attended all the rehearsals, and whose only difficulty, which was about money, seemed to be in a fair way of adjustment, had unexpectedly intimated his intention to withdraw in a ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... simple expressions, and taking sentences that express more and more feeling as your freedom is better established. This practice can be continued until you are able to recite the potion scene in Juliet, or any of Lady Macbeth's most powerful speeches, with an case and freedom which is surprising. This refers only to the voice; the practice which has been spoken of in a previous chapter brings the same ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... Macbeth says that "under Banquo his own genius was rebuked [or snubbed], as it is said Mark Antony's was by Caesar" (act iii. sc. 1), and in Antony and Cleopatra ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... kind, and 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 he should ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... prosaic or the common as commonplace. Popular art in all ages has been interested in 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 ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... son Temps (Shakspeare and his Times). It is to be composed of his Life of Shakspeare, and the articles that he has written at various times upon different plays. The only novelty in it is a notice on Hamlet which was prepared expressly for this publication. He regards both Macbeth and Othello as better dramas than Hamlet, but thinks the last contains more brilliant examples of Shakspeare's sublimest beauties and grossest faults. "Nowhere," says Guizot, "has he unveiled with more originality, depth and dramatic ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... better than a trembling saint. If Shakespeare's instinctive taste revealed the absurdity of the bombastic exaggeration of such tendencies, his characters are equally unbending. His villains die, like Macbeth and Iago, with their teeth set, and scorn even a deathbed repentance. Hamlet exhibits the unfitness for a world of action of the man who is foolish enough to see two sides to every question. So again, Chapman, the writer who in fulness and fire ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "that quality of experience 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 and, to our vision, the irreconcilable antagonism of different elements in ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... this kind was aimed at Illowski, who continued calmly. Admiring Richard Strauss, he saw that the man did not dare enough, that his effort to paint in tone the poetic heroes of the past century, himself included, was laudable; but Don Juan, Macbeth, quaint Till Eulenspiegel, fantastic Don Quixote were, after all, chiefly concerned with a moribund aestheticism. Illowski best liked the Strauss setting of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" because it approached his own darling ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... Jones) more parkish, as he was pleased to call it; to raze all those exterior defences, and bring his mean and paltry gravel-walk up to the very door from which, deluded by the name, one might have imagined Lady Macbeth (with the form and features of Siddons) issuing forth to receive King Duncan. It is thirty years and upwards since I have seen Glammis, but I have not yet forgotten or forgiven the atrocity which, under pretence of improvement, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... highest imaginative excellence, and displays the possession of an extraordinary dramatic force such as Mr. Webster rarely exerted. It has the same power of exciting a kind of horror and of making us shudder with a creeping, nameless terror as the scene after the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth rushes out from the chamber of death, crying, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" I have studied this famous exordium with extreme care, and I have sought diligently in the works of all the great modern orators, and of some of the ancient as well, for similar passages of higher ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... his breast with his hands, the foaming mouth, the implication, the shriek, the madness, the flying here and there in the one attempt to get rid of himself, the horror increased at his every appearance, whether in company or alone, regarded in contrast with the dagger scene of "Macbeth" makes the latter mere child's play. That day, John Zwink, in the character of Judas, preached fifty sermons on the ghastliness of betrayal. The fire-smart of ill-gotten gain, the iron-beaked vulture of an aroused conscience; all the bloodhounds of despair seemed tearing him. Then, when he can ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... of this hostility toward him, Macready came over in the spring of 1849, and at once made an engagement at the Astor-place Opera House, corner of Eighth Street and Lafayette Place. He was to appear as Macbeth; and the play was announced sometime beforehand. Forrest at the same time had an engagement at the Broadway Theatre. On the 7th of May, the following two significant placards appeared side by side in all ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... she had called me, in calmer moments, when I was able to discuss our affair objectively. And once she declared that I had no sense of tragedy. We read "Macbeth" together, I remember, one rainy Sunday. The modern world, which was our generation, would seem to be cut off from all that preceded it as with a descending knife. It was precisely from "the sense of tragedy" that we had been emancipated: from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... herds slow winding down the cottaged vale, Where day's last sunshine linger. Such repose He feels, who, following where his SHAKSPEARE leads, As in a dream, through an enchanted land, Here, with Macbeth, in the dread cavern hails The weird sisters, and the dismal deed Without a name; there sees the charmed isle, The lone domain of Prospero; and, hark! Wild music, such as earth scarce seems to own, 150 And Ariel o'er the slow-subsiding surge Singing her smooth air quaintly! ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... cascos now surround the transport, and the new arrival sees the Filipino for the first time. Under the woven helmet of the nearest casco squats a shriveled woman, one of the witches from Macbeth, stirring a blackened pot of rice. A gamecock struggles at his tether in the stern, while the deck amidships swarms with wiry brown men, with bristling pompadours and feet like rubber, with wide-spreading ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... that 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 memory of flesh and blood? Macbeth having killed Duncan saw that the ocean would not wash his hands clean again; it would not have washed away my wounds. I said to Desgenais: "When I sleep, her ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... sealed, and came forward accordingly. Leaning over the edge of the ebony caldron, he found that it contained nothing more dreadful than water, for he labored under a vague and unpleasant idea that, like the witches' caldron in Macbeth, it might be filled with serpents' blood and children's' brains. La Masque opened her golden casket, and took from it a portion of red powder, with which it was filled. Casting it into the caldron, she murmured an invocation in Sanscrit, or Coptic, or some ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the open, but seeks some advantage, plans to get behind us and execute some cunning coup-de-theater, while our suspicions are lulled by the hospitable and comfortable glow of the exterior. In his dealings with the convicts as a body, he is apt to imitate Macbeth's witches, and keep the word of promise to the ear, but break it to the hope; he has vanity without self confidence, lacks the truthfulness of the strong, his voice does not resound and compel, he dances and fidgets, grins and is grave in the same instant. If the men's attitude ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... bad company to which it professed to relegate him. As for me, my scepticism was to me robur et aes triplex. I disposed of the snake, put out the gas; and down we three sat, amid profound darkness, like three male witches in "Macbeth," having previously locked the door to prevent any one disturbing ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... 'Lear, Macbeth, Mercutio—they live on their own, as it were. The newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it. Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever WATCHED tradesmen behind their counters? My soul, the secrets walking in the streets! You jostle them at every corner. There's ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Ginx surrendered before the fight was fought. So did the Baby. There is nothing for it, my good masters, but a fight to a finish. Yes, even though Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, still must we fight, like Macbeth, and all the more valiantly for that we know our sins are heavy upon our heads and hearts. "Courage, my comrades, the devil is dead," said Denys of Burgundy. But there is a greater courage, my comrades: it is fighting the devil who never dies ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ignorance. Certainly she spent a good deal of money over entertaining, but Robert had lately made twenty times daily what Lucia spent annually, over Roumanian oils. As for her acting, had she not completely forgotten her words as Lady Macbeth in the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... with some sharper instinct, are aware and afraid, straining, quivering. One of them throws back its head, but dares not whinny. As though under some evil spell, all nature seems to be holding its breath. Stealthily, noiselessly, I turn the leaves of my catalogue... 'Macbeth and the Witches.' Why, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... humorous Poems, Irish Melodies, Maxims of Mr. O'Doherty, Miscellaneous Papers, The Tobias Correspondence, a translation of Lucian's Timon, Shakspere Papers on Sir John Falstaff Jaques, Romeo, Bottom the Weaver, Lady Macbeth, and Timon; a Translation of the Batrachomyomachia, and three or four ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... it. "Why, it ought actually to have begun with one!" was the natural exclamation of the person he was addressing, who added instantly, with affected indignation, "Not one? Why, next they'll be playing Macbeth without the Witches!" The joyous laugh with which this ludicrous conceit was greeted by the Humorist, still rings freshly and musically in our remembrance. And the recollection of it is doubtless all the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... 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 and lovers of the picturesque, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... having written it. When he had quite finished HENRY IRVING, 'laying low' in his chair at the table, adjusted his pince-nez, and, looking straight at the clever young gentleman, asked, in the mildest possible tone, 'My dear Sir, have you ever read Macbeth?' So," resumes the Baron, "I am inclined to ask Mr. BLACK'S young man, 'Do you know Ramsgate?' And of course I mean ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... 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 ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Milton seems to have been the first author who made a profound impression upon his mind; but it is also reported that the schoolmaster once indignantly snatched Gray's "Elegy" from his hand, because he so frequently selected that poem for his reading-lesson. Somewhat later, he saw "Macbeth" performed, and was immediately seized with the ambition to become an actor,—a profession for which few persons could be less qualified. The impression produced by this tragedy, combined with the strict religious training which he appears to have received, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, "Hold!, hold!" —Macbeth. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... one of Mr. Disraeli's peculiarities that he could fight most brilliantly when he knew that his cause was already lost. That which would have disheartened and disarmed other men, seemed only to animate him with all Macbeth's wild courage of despair. Never did his gift of satire, of invective, and of epithet show to more splendid effect than in the speech with which he closed his part of the debate, and mercilessly assailed his opponents. Mr. Disraeli sat down at two o'clock in the morning, and then Mr. Gladstone ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... were going on in the middle of the road. Her age Charteris put down at a venture at twelve—a correct guess. Her state of mind he also conjectured. She was letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would', like the late Macbeth, the cat i' the adage, and numerous other celebrities. She evidently had plenty of remarks to make on the subject in hand, but refrained ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... There are some fine scenes in 'I Due Foscari' (1844), but it has little of the vigour of 'Ernani.' 'Giovanna d'Arco' (1845), 'Alzira' (1845), and 'Attila' (1846), were almost total failures. In 'Macbeth' (1847), however, Verdi seems to have been inspired by his subject, and wrote better music than he had yet given to the world. The libretto is a miserable perversion of Shakespeare, and for that reason the opera has never ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... God's creatures, the persons who would bolster themselves into respectability must have the aid of law. Luther could march fearlessly to the Diet of Worms if every tile on the houses were a devil; but Macbeth was conquered by the remembrance of the wrong he had done the virtuous Duncan and the unoffending Banquo, long before he was slain by Macduff. A guilty conscience always needs a multitude of subterfuges to guard against dreaded contingencies. So when the society in the Virginia Colony ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... 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 my faithful old servant, Cuthbert, to watch—not ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... day to Fores, the town to which Macbeth was travelling, when he met the weird sisters in his way. This to an Englishman is classic ground. Our imaginations were heated, and our thoughts recalled ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... to these hypnotic tales is the terror they inspire. I am not talking of ordinary human terror, which, of course, is the basis of much of the best tragedy. We are terrified by the story of Macbeth; but it is with a rational and a salutary terror. We are aware all the while that the moral laws are at work. We see a hideous calamity looming, approaching, imminent: but we can see that it is the effect of causes which have been duly exhibited ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was probably well advanced in his sixty-seventh year, but grief and travel had made him look much older. He was still vigorous, however, and the effusion from his body was so extraordinary, that many of the spectators shared the wonder of Lady Macbeth, that the old man had so much blood in him. The head was shown to the spectators, on both sides of the scaffold, and was then dropped into a red bag. The body was wrapt in the velvet night-gown, and both were carried to Lady Raleigh. By this time, perhaps, she had heard from her brother ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... no need to take offence; so much the better! 'Tis all the same to a gentleman. To-morrow an elegant lady of fashion, to-day a Cinderella, one as beautiful as a young goddess, the other as villainous as Macbeth's witches; there perfume, here the smell of onions. C'est le meme chose! 'tis all one; such is ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Summertrees had not escaped Alan's acute observation; and it was plain that the provost's inclinations towards him, which he believed to be sincere and good, were not firm enough to withstand the influence of this league between his wife and friend. The provost's adieus, like Macbeth's amen, had stuck in his throat, and seemed to intimate that he apprehended more than ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... king of England, and king of Ireland; and his queen as daughter, sister, wife, and mother of kings. The occasion is memorable in dramatic history, if it be true that this address, or a translation of it, led Shakspeare to write on the story of Macbeth. Much has been said for the probability of this supposition; but surely the legend of Macbeth and Banquo must have been abundantly discoursed of in England between James's accession and the year when this pageant was exhibited; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... an argument in favor for Mr. Elliott of Indiana, Lady Macbeth played the opposite part for Mr. Parker of New Jersey, Republican . . . . "I will not debate the question as to whether in a time of war women are the best judges of policy. That great student of human nature, William Shakespeare, in the play of Macbeth, makes Lady Macbeth eager ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... published the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays. But for them, it is more than likely that such of his works as had remained to that time unprinted would have been irrecoverably lost, and among them were "Julius Caesar," "The Tempest," and "Macbeth." But are we to believe them when they assert that they present to us the plays which they reprinted from stolen and surreptitious copies "cured and perfect of their limbs," and those which are original in their edition "absolute ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... people are asleep for the night.) Cram three Cook towels into my pockets. Hastily pin a handkerchief over the name on a white bit of a tent wall. Must have it cut out, and patched with something, later. Shall have to pay damages when I settle up with Slaney. Lady Macbeth wasn't in it with me! All she needed was a little water. I have to have pins and penknives and pockets ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... of operations seems to have been to concentrate in the western Highlands, with Inverness for head-quarters. The town Charles easily got, but Fort-George, a powerful fortress, built upon the site of the castle where Macbeth was said to have murdered Duncan, commanded the Loch. Stapleton and his Irish, captured it, however, as well as the neighbouring Fort-Augustus. Joined by some Highlanders, they next attempted Fort-William, the last fortress of King George in the north, but on the 3rd of April ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... instance, it was said that they possessed "an evil eye," and that, if they looked on a man before he saw them, he would forthwith lose his voice. Again, we find the Roman witches, like the weird sisters of Macbeth, employing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to bed in broad daylight," said Duprez. "But it must be done. Cher Philippe, your eyes are heavy. 'To bed, to bed,' as the excellent Madame Macbeth says. Ah! quelle femme! What an exciting wife she was for a man? Come, let us follow our dear Lorimer,—his music was delicious. Good night or good morning? . . . I know not which it is in this strange land where the sun ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... this old Eastern poem which fascinated him. At first he was prejudiced against it because it was in the Bible, but the majesty of the poem charmed him, overwhelmed him. He had read the plays of Shakespeare; he had closely studied what many consider to be the great dramatist's masterpiece, but "Macbeth" seemed to him poor and small compared with the Book of Job. The picture of Satan going to and fro on the earth, the story of Job's calamities, of his sorrows, and of the dire extremity in which he found himself, appealed to him and fascinated him. Yes, it was ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... left, and, if possible, 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
... But now all such principles have been sold as in open market, and those imported in exchange, by which Greece is ruined and diseased. [Footnote: [Greek: Apolole] in reference to foreign affairs; [Greek: nenosaeken] in regard to internal broils and commotions. Compare Shakspeare, Macbeth IV. 8. ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... an angel to telephone," he said. "Come early, sweetheart, and we'll go up to Macbeth's,—they say it's quite an extraordinary collection. And don't worry—I'll be nice to Mamma. And wear ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... assigned for this strange behaviour on the part of certain skulls is that their owners met with a violent death, and that the avenging spirit in this manner annoys the living, reminding us of Macbeth's words: ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... sir," said the man, leaning forward. "The hag may be unsavoury, but she is wise. The Three Sisters who accosted the Scottish Thane, sir (Macbeth—you have seen it on the stage?) were not savoury. Withered, and wild in their attire, sir, but they knew a thing or two! She sees luck in your face. Cross her hand ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... played Lady Macbeth on the occasion of her benefit, when was also performed a musical farce she had composed entitled, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... at the door, which, for some unreasonable reason, curdled everyone's blood like the knocking in Macbeth. Amid that frozen silence Dr. Simon managed to say: "A ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... as to have a spire of 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 a supposed immediate ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... not all of earth. Cornelius Agrippa, in his book of the Secret Doctrine, shows that they are astral too. The familiar spirits of Mars, in his account, are no lovelier than Macbeth's witches:—"They appear in a tall body, cholerick, a filthy countenance, of colour brown, swarthy or red, having horns, like Harts' Horns, and gryphon's claws, and ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... "The Old Bachelor in the Old Scottish Village," a collection of tales and sketches of Scottish scenery, character, and life. In 1848 he collected and published his poems. In 1852 he wrote a memoir of his friend, David Macbeth Moir (the well-known "Delta" of Blackwood's Magazine), and prefixed it to an edition of Moir's poems, which he edited for behoof of the poet's family, under the generous instructions of the Messrs Blackwood. In 1856 a new edition of Mr Aird's poems appeared, with many fresh pieces, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... looks at the end, not the means. A woman, set on anything, will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing. She'd be a great deal more unscrupulous in politics than the average man. Did you ever see a female lobbyist? Or a criminal? It is Lady Macbeth who does not falter. Don't raise your hands at me! The sweetest angel or the coolest devil is a woman. I see in some of the modern novels we have been talking of the same unscrupulous daring, a blindness to moral distinctions, a constant exaltation of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end: but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools. SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth. ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... incidents that seemed to intensify every line of the poem. In this view of Rossetti's account of the additions, there were certainly difficulties out of which I could see no way, but I seemed to realise that Helen's hate, like Macbeth's ambition, had overleaped itself, and fallen on the other side, and that she would undo her work, if to return were not harder than to go on; her initiate sensibility had gained hard use, but even as hate recoils on love, so out of the ashes of hate love had arisen. In this ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... became first acquainted with Shakespeare, I was displeased with his coldness, with his insensibility, which allows him to jest even in the most pathetic moments, to disturb the impression of the most harrowing scenes in "Hamlet," in "King Lear," and in "Macbeth," etc., by mixing with them the buffooneries of a madman. I was revolted by his insensibility, which allowed him to pause sometimes at places where my sensibility would bid me hasten and bear me along, and which sometimes carried him away with indifference when my heart would be ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... is fixed by 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 the title of essays, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... hostile powers which operate in nature; and the repugnance of our senses is outweighed by the mental horror. With one another the witches discourse like women of the very lowest class; for this was the class to which witches were ordinarily supposed to belong: when, however, they address Macbeth they assume a loftier tone: their predictions, which they either themselves pronounce, or allow their apparitions to deliver, have all the obscure brevity, the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... unsuspected, lay there sleeping. I never heard "The Black Mass" played by anyone else; indeed, I am not aware that it was ever published. But had it been we should rarely hear it. Like Locke's music to "Macbeth" it bears an unpleasant reputation; to include it in any concert programme would be to court disaster. An idle superstition, perhaps, but there is much naivete in ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... 'Macbeth' to you, trying to indicate by changes in my voice which character is speaking." I ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... and lounged into the hall. If Dorcas Brandon had been a plain woman, I think she would have been voted an impertinent bore; but she was so beautiful that she became an enigma. I looked at her as she stood gravely gazing from the window. Is it Lady Macbeth? No; she never would have had energy to plan her husband's career and manage that affair of Duncan. A sultana rather—sublimely egotistical, without reverence—a voluptuous and haughty embodiment of indifference. I paused, looking at a picture, but ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... linendrapers. TWO SISTERS first assume that biscuits are 4 a penny, and then that they are 2 a penny, adding that "the answer will of course be the same in both cases." It is a dreamy remark, making one feel something like Macbeth grasping at the spectral dagger. "Is this a statement that I see before me?" If you were to say "we both walked the same way this morning," and I were to say "one of you walked the same way, but the ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... 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. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... patronymic, the name of some region or some mythical ancestor. In other words, it is a signal for widening our view and for conceiving the object, not only vividly and with pause, but in an adequate historic setting. Macbeth tells us that his dagger was "unmannerly breeched in gore." Achilles would not have amused himself with such a metaphor, even if breeches had existed in his day, but would rather have told us whose blood, on other occasions, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... not the real Andrea. Historic fact has nothing to do with poetry: it is mere material, the quarry of ideas; and the real truth of Browning's portrait of Andrea would no more be impugned by the establishment of Vasari's inaccuracy, than the real truth of Shakespeare's portrait of Macbeth by the proof of the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... 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 in "El ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... motive-force, to say nothing of the numbers who may be regarded simply as stagestruck; and to such as these nothing seems worth striving for save to represent the triumphant heroine, the fascinating soubrette, or Lady Macbeth. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette" |
