Since then there has been a great bankruptcy, and if we do not now allot to many crowned personages the transcendent love which they deserve, those people are to blame who, like the Queen of Scotland in the period of the Restoration, made utter booty of our hearts.
Whether men still defend in Germany the amiability of this lady, I do not know. Since the revolution of July many views of many things have greatly changed, and it may be that even in Berlin they have learned to perceive that that dear nice Lady Macbeth may be an awfully horrid beast, don'cher know.[1]
In this paper our author has a little too authoritatively, though very ingeniously, set forth a theory of Macbeth, which will hardly bear examination. That the weird sisters were derived from the Valkyries, is just possible. But at a very early time there were, in the North, variations on these, down to witches of the vulgar devilish sort, and all the accounts which were current in Shakespeare's time represent these of Macbeth as being of the latter kind, and as deliberately deceiving and leading him to deadly ruin. That this was so understood in the sixteenth century is absolutely shown by the fact that Grosius, in his Magica seu mirabilium Historiarum de Spectris et variis Prœstigiis et Impos-
- ↑ Das die jute Macbeth eine sehr bese Bestie sint.
