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aſſumed by king James I. is uncertain. Macbeth was not entered in the Stationers’ books, nor printed, till 1623.
In The Tragidy of Cæſar and Pompey, or Cæſar’s Revenge, are theſe lines:
“ Why think you, lords, that ’tis ambition’s ſpur
“ That pricketh Cæſar to theſe high attempts?”
If the author of that play, which was publiſhed in 1607, ſhould be thought to have had Macbeth’s ſoliloquy in view, (which is not unlikely) this circumſtance may add ſome degree of probability to the ſuppoſition that this tragedy had appeared before that year:
“ I have no ſpur
“ To prick the ſides of my intent, but only
“ Vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itſelf
“ And falls at the other”
At the time when Macbeth is ſuppoſed to have been written, the ſubject, it is probable, was conſidered as a topick the moſt likely to conciliate the favour of the court. In the additions to Warner’s Albion’s England, which were firſt printed in 1606, the ſtory of “the Three Fairies or Weird Elves,” as he calls them, is ſhortly told, and king James’s deſcent from Banquo carefully deduced.
Ben Jonſon, a few years afterwards, paid his court to his majeſty by his Maſque of Queens[1], preſented at Whitehall, Feb. 12, 1609; in which he has given a minute detail of all the magick rites that are recorded by king James in his book of Dæmonologie, or by any other author ancient or modern.
Mr. Steevens has lately diſcovered a Mſ. play, entitled The Witch, written by Thomas Middleton[2], which ren-
- ↑ Mr. Upton was of opinion that this maſque preceded Macbeth. But the only ground that he ſtates for this conjecture, is, “that Jonſon’s pride would not ſuffer him to borrow from Shakeſpeare, though he ſtole from the ancients.”
- ↑ In an advertiſement prefixed to an edition of A Mad World my Maſters, a comedy by Thomas Middleton, 1640, the printer ſays, that the author was “ long ſince dead.” Middleton probably died ſoon after the year 1616. He was chronologer to the city of London, and it does not appear that any maſque or pageant, in honour of the Lord Mayor, was ſet forth by him after that
