The 'if' means, if, when the murder is committed, there were the end of it. So Schiller, in his admirable translation of the play, clearly discerns it: War' es auch abgethan, wenn es gethan ist, Dann wär' es gut, es würde rasch gethan!' We cannot but perceive, however, that the German translator, though he apprehends the idea aright, foregoes the advantage of using precisely the same word, repeated immediately in an altered sense, which gives such a power to the English text. This is one of Shakespeare's bold peculiarities, and a great favorite with him, as the careful reader of his works may easily see. Two instances, at least, occur in this very tragedy: Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff,' and 'Those he commands move only in command.' A single further specimen of it may be permitted; and it shall be one that seemed to elude the notice of the accomplished lady whose readings, the past winter, gave to multitudes of persons a fresh interest and delight in Shakespeare's genius. It is where the poor, humbled Richard II says to Bolingbroke: [III, iii, 206,]

'What you will have, I'll give, and willing too:

For do we must what force will have us do.'

But even yet I have never felt perfectly satisfied with any rendering of those two lines in Macbeth, that it has been my fortune to hear. The words 'It were done quickly' sound supernumerary and out of place, as they are generally recited. They hang like an encumbrance. They clog the movement of the verse. Above all, they drag in a new and inferior thought, after the great argument has been sufficiently pronounced. Cut them off, then, from their connection with the preceding line, which they do but cumber, and see what new force you will give to the whole soliloquy :

'If it were Done when 'tis done, then 'twere well.'

There is the full theme and true key-note of the piece. It is complete in itself. It prepares the way for all that follows. It announces the terrible problem with which Macbeth's unsteady purpose was wrestling. It reminds us of the first line of Hamlet's bewildered self-confidence: To be, or not to be; that is the question.' The speaker may well pause, in both cases, when he comes to that point of the awful debate. And there the rather, because by such a course the sentence that follows will be as much enriched by what it gains, as the sentence that precedes is relieved by what it surrenders. The clause, that seemed almost impertinent where it stood, becomes a reinforcement in its new relation:

'It were done quickly, if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence,' &c.

Observe how much clearer and more compact the rest of the period becomes by beginning it in this new way.

6

Macbeth professes to defy religion, and to care nothing for the threatened retributions of another world; but he dreads the avenging of his crimes here:' 'But here, upon this bank and shoal of Time.' This description, by the way, of the guilty Thane, thinking only of the earth, with its shattering fortunes, and of the present life with its petty space' and its brief candle,' its creeping to-morrows and its yesterdays, that do nothing but light fools to their death, is wondrously sustained in every part of the play, till at last he cries out in despair:

'I'gin to grow aweary of the sun,

And wish the estate o' the world were now undone."

In conclusion, it must be frankly confessed, that this proposed change of punctua

tion is justified by no edition of Shakespeare yet published; it has been adopted by no performer or public reader, so far as I am aware; if it has been ever suggested in print, I am ignorant of it. No inventor of various readings,—which half the time are various follies,-has pounced upon it. Even Mr Collier, with his huge bunches of 'margoram notes,' which seem in general to be culled by the hands of idle apprentices or prosaic players, offers no conjecture upon the matter. But neither does it belong to the present writer. It was originated by no ingenuity of his. Whence he derived it he cannot tell. It comes to his memory from a very distant and untraceable past. It has his thorough conviction of its justness. Let others favor it or refuse it, as they see best reason to do one or the other. X.

GERMAN TRANSLATIONS.

HOWEVER pleasant may be the task to trace the gradual growth of a just appreciation of Shakespeare in Germany from LESSING'S solitary voice a hundred years ago down to the present day, when a Shakespeare Society, numbering among its active members some of the most eminent names in the present literature of that country, puts forth annually a volume of criticisms on the dramas of him whom, as HEINE says, 'a splendid procession of German literary kings, one after another throwing their votes into the urn, elected Emperor of Literature,' yet such a review can scarcely with propriety come within the scope of a volume like the present, which is dedicated to one play alone. Of the duties of an Editor there is perhaps none harder than that which obliges him to keep steadfastly to the purpose of his labours, and resolutely to resist all temptations to wander into neighboring quarters with which he may justly be expected to have become better acquainted than many of his readers.

In order, therefore, to keep as near as possible to the subject of the present volume, I propose to confine myself to a brief notice only of some of the more prominent translations of Macbeth, devoting more space to the exposition of the parts in which the translators have diverged from the original than to those passages wherein they have been faithful. It is thus, I think, that we can best estimate Shakespeare's painful struggle for life in a nation that now claims him for its own. When we see GOETHE remodel Romeo and Juliet in a style that can be paralleled only by D'avenant's version of Macbeth, and find SCHILLER putting pious morality in the mouth of a coarse Porter, then we know how sore was the battle that SCHLEGEL fought, and how valuable are the labours of the German Shakespeare students of to-day, since their labours have, after all, more than counterbalanced those dark and imperfect pages of their literary history. *

The first considerable attempt to translate Shakespeare into German was made by WIELAND in 1763. There had been before that various translations of separate plays, but Wieland's twenty-two dramas first gave Germany an idea of the extent

*For full information on the rise and progress of Shakespearian criticism in Germany see GENÉE'S Geschichte der Shakespeare'schen Dramen in Deutschland, Leipsig, 1870; and the Introduction to THIMM'S Shakespeareana von 1564 bis 1871. London, 1872.

and variety of the original. The translator followed Warburton's text, and did not attempt a uniformly metrical rendering; by the Witch-scenes in Macbeth he was completely gravelled (as so many of his countrymen, since his day, have been) and confessed himself utterly unable to reproduce the rhythm of the original.

Twelve years later appeared the translation in prose by ESCHENBURG of all the dramas. His Macbeth has the advantage, in common with all prose translations, of having nothing sacrificed to the rhythm, and was the basis of Schiller's metrical translation some thirty years later. In the incantation of the Witches in the first Scene of the fourth Act he mistook 'baboon' for baby, and translated it Cool it with a baby's blood,' Kühlt's mit eines Säuglings Blut'; and, so far will a naughty deed shine in this good world, this 'baby' of Eschenburg's has been adopted by SCHILLER (of course), BENDA, KAUFMANN, and ORTLEPP.

Just before Eschenburg, however, in 1773, there appeared in Vienna, Macbeth, a Tragedy, in five Acts,' by STEPHANIE DER JÜNGERE. There is nothing on the titlepage to indicate that it is a translation from Shakespeare; it is, perhaps, unfair therefore to judge of it from that point of view. The opening scene is laid in Clydsdale,' between Hamilton' and 'Prebles,' seventeen years after the murder by Macbeth of his uncle, Duncan.' Macbeth and Banquo have lost themselves in a deep forest, in the blackest of nights and the fiercest of thunderstorms. From their conversation we learn that Banquo helped Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to murder Duncan. At last they both hear a hollow cry. Mach. Hold! I see a figure—. Banq. You are right, Sir! I also see-. Mach. Holloa! who goes there? (The Ghost of Duncan approaches.) Banq. Stand, and answer or else,— (draws his dagger). Macb. Who art thou?—I command thee: disclose whom thou art (also draws his dagger). Ghost. Thy uncle whom thou murderedst! (vanishes.)' Macbeth in terror appeals to his companion to know whether or not it were Duncan. Banquo with true Scotch logic replies that it could not have been Duncan because him they had stabbed and buried and heaped earth upon his grave, and we stamped it down hard to keep him safe.-It must have been his ghost.-That is what it was! -Even this tempest could not blow him away.' Macbeth cannot bring himself to believe it, and again appeals to Banquo, Didst thou hear his horrible voice?—was it English? By God! it was so plain that the worst Scotchman could have understood it!' As the plot unfolds, we find that Macduff, who is aided by the English in his rebellion against Macbeth, has a lovely daughter, Gonerill, living at Dunsinane in closest friendship with Lady Macbeth, and with whom Fleance is deeply in love, and whom he was about to marry when the feast took place at the castle. At this feast the ghost of Banquo, whom Macbeth had murdered with his own hands, appeared to all eyes and pointed out his murderer. Fleance then very naturally ran away. Macbeth's course now becomes much perplexed, and he thinks that if he had an heir the people would once more rally around him, and he could drive off the English and the rebellious Thanes who are now closely hemming him in. He therefore makes desperate love to Gonerill, and offers for her sake to remove Lady Macbeth, and to give a free pardon to her father the traitor Macduff. Before, however, he can carry out his plans, Macduff, in disguise, gains admission to the castle and carries off his daughter. Before Macbeth discovers Gonerill's flight, and while he is plotting with Lady Macbeth new atrocities in order to exterminate the memory of Duncan from the minds of men and give repose to himself, the statue of Duncan speaks and says, 'That thou shalt never obtain till Duncan be avenged! Vengeance is at hand! Prepare for judgement and tremble!'

This supernatural horror drives Lady Macbeth insane, and while re-enacting the murder of Duncan she imagines Macbeth to be her victim and stabs him. This restores her to her senses, and her first stab not proving immediately fatal, at her husband's urgent request she obligingly gives him a second, which permits him to expatiate on the horrors of remorse before he expires. Macduff and the English forces rush in. Malcolm is crowned. Duncan's spirit appears and blesses Malcolm, with the words, 'I am avenged! Govern. Be a Friend, a Father, a Judge, and a King.' They all then depart, and none too soon, for the castle is discovered to be in flames, and Lady Macbeth is seen rushing hither and thither, until, espying Macbeth's corpse, she falls upon it, with the words: 'Consume me, flames! But also consume my soul!' The roof falls in, and both bodies are buried in flames and smoke.

In 1777, F. J. FISCHER* adapted for the stage a new translation of Macbeth, because the public desired to see this tragedy of Shakespeare's with as few alterations as Hamlet. Duncan does not appear in it.

Seven years later appeared BÜRGER'S translation, in prose throughout except the scenes with the Witches. In the latter the author of Lenore could not restrain his imagination while dealing with so congenial a subject, and accordingly inserts lines and even entire scenes. Here and there he takes strange liberties with his text. For instance, Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wreck'd as homeward he did come' is rendered Schau, ä Bankrutirers Daum, Der sich selbst erhing am Baum!' Duncan does not appear in person; all his commendations of Macbeth are conveyed by letter, wherein there is no intimation of his selection of the Prince of Cumberland as his heir. This important point in the tragedy is only alluded to as a matter of hearsay by Banquo to Ross. The first Act closes with the following Witch scene:

Haide. Blitz und Donner. Die drei Hexen von verschiedenen Seiten.

For this notice of Fischer I am indebted to the excellent volume of GENÉE's already referred

to. ED.

Und das Fuhrwerk hergebannt!
Alle. Dreimal Hui von Land und Meer
Bannt uns Ross und Wagen her.
Eine Wolk' ist die Karosse;
Donnerstürme sind die Rosse

Hui Hui Hui! heran, heran!

Rollt uns auf den Burg-Altan. (Rauschend ab.)

An original Witch-scene closes the second act also; of which the refrain is:

Lust an Unlust, das ist Lust!

Krau't und Kitzelt uns die Brust.'

D'avenant, I think, suggested this scene, and in my opinion, Bürger's is an improvement, if that be any praise.

In the Fifth act Lady Macbeth's death is thus given:

Waiting Woman (rushing in). Come, dear Doctor, for God's sake, come! The Queen-she's off!

Doctor. What? You don't mean dead? Impossible!

Waiting Woman. Yes! Yes! Yes!-What a pother there was in her bed! How she cried, help! help!' half strangled! Then there were smacks and cracks. When I ran to her she jerked and rattled and gasped for the last time. God Almighty knows what claws those were that turned her face to her back, and left such blue pinches.

Doctor. It is undoubtedly a stroke of apoplexy, Madam. The lancet will relieve it.

Waiting Woman. Oh, in vain! in vain! Who can stay God's judgement?
Doctor. I will return as soon as I have announced it to the King.

[Exeunt.

SCHILLER'S translation was published in 1801. He adopted as his text Eschenburg's prose translation. From this source we certainly have a right to expect an excellent and faithful rendering of the original, and we are not disappointed except in the Witch-scenes, in the Porter scene, and in the omission of Lady Macduff. There is no play of Shakespeare's so compressed in its action as Macbeth, and no shade of character can be varied without marring the effect of the whole tragedy; and since it is one of the shortest, still less can there be any omission of entire scenes. The omission therefore of Lady Macduff and her son is fatal to Schiller's translation as a work of art, and still lower does it fall when we find Witches that are supernatural and hellish only in the stage directions. Schiller was evidently afraid of the fatalism which the predictions of the Witches seem to imply-he therefore in the opening scene actually represents these twilight hags, to whom fair is foul and foul is fair, as laying down axioms of free-agency:

'Third W. 'Tis ours, in human hearts to sow bad seed,
To man it still belongs to do the deed.'

And as though to divest these hateful things, the mere projections upon the outer world of all that is vile in our own breasts, of every attribute of badness, Schiller makes his First Witch plaintively ask why they are seeking Macbeth's ruin, since he is brave, and just, and good!