Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare - William Shakespeare (best romantic books to read TXT) 📗

defending his crown against the King who preceded Duncan, and by whose order her only brother was slain. To her, Duncan was a reminder of bitter wrongs. Her husband had royal blood in his veins, and when she read his letter, she was determined that he should be King.

When a messenger arrived to inform her that Duncan would pass a night in Macbeth’s castle, she nerved herself for a very base action.

She told Macbeth almost as soon as she saw him that Duncan must spend a sunless morrow. She meant that Duncan must die, and that the dead are blind. “We will speak further,” said Macbeth uneasily, and at night, with his memory full of Duncan’s kind words, he would fain have spared his guest.

“Would you live a coward?” demanded Lady Macbeth, who seems to have thought that morality and cowardice were the same.

“I dare do all that may become a man,” replied Macbeth; “who dare do more is none.”

“Why did you write that letter to me?” she inquired fiercely, and with bitter words she egged him on to murder, and with cunning words she showed him how to do it.

After supper Duncan went to bed, and two grooms were placed on guard at his bedroom door. Lady Macbeth caused them to drink wine till they were stupefied. She then took their daggers and would have killed the King herself if his sleeping face had not looked like her father’s.

Macbeth came later, and found the daggers lying by the grooms; and soon with red hands he appeared before his wife, saying, “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth destroys the sleeping.’”

“Wash your hands,” said she. “Why did you not leave the daggers by the grooms? Take them back, and smear the grooms with blood.”

“I dare not,” said Macbeth.

His wife dared, and she returned to him with hands red as his own, but a heart less white, she proudly told him, for she scorned his fear.

The murderers heard a knocking, and Macbeth wished it was a knocking which could wake the dead. It was the knocking of Macduff, the chieftain of Fife, who had been told by Duncan to visit him early. Macbeth went to him, and showed him the door of the King’s room.

Macduff entered, and came out again crying, “O horror! horror! horror!”

Macbeth appeared as horror-stricken as Macduff, and pretending that he could not bear to see life in Duncan’s murderers, he slew the two grooms with their own daggers before they could proclaim their innocence.

These murders did not shriek out, and Macbeth was crowned at Scone. One of Duncan’s sons went to Ireland, the other to England. Macbeth was King. But he was discontented. The prophecy concerning Banquo oppressed his mind. If Fleance were to rule, a son of Macbeth would not rule. Macbeth determined, therefore, to murder both Banquo and his son. He hired two ruffians, who slew Banquo one night when he was on his way with Fleance to a banquet which Macbeth was giving to his nobles. Fleance escaped.

Meanwhile Macbeth and his Queen received their guests very graciously, and he expressed a wish for them which has been uttered thousands of times since his day—“Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both.”

“We pray your Majesty to sit with us,” said Lennox, a Scotch noble; but ere Macbeth could reply, the ghost of Banquo entered the banqueting hall and sat in Macbeth’s place.

Not noticing the ghost, Macbeth observed that, if Banquo were present, he could say that he had collected under his roof the choicest chivalry of Scotland. Macduff, however, had curtly declined his invitation.

The King was again pressed to take a seat, and Lennox, to whom Banquo’s ghost was invisible, showed him the chair where it sat.

But Macbeth, with his eyes of genius, saw the ghost. He saw it like a form of mist and blood, and he demanded passionately, “Which of you have done this?”

Still none saw the ghost but he, and to the ghost Macbeth said, “Thou canst not say I did it.”

The ghost glided out, and Macbeth was impudent enough to raise a glass of wine “to the general joy of the whole table, and to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss.”

The toast was drunk as the ghost of Banquo entered for the second time.

“Begone!” cried Macbeth. “You are senseless, mindless! Hide in the earth, thou horrible shadow.”

Again none saw the ghost but he.

“What is it your Majesty sees?” asked one of the nobles.

The Queen dared not permit an answer to be given to this question. She hurriedly begged her guests to quit a sick man who was likely to grow worse if he was obliged to talk.

Macbeth, however, was well enough next day to converse with the witches whose prophecies had so depraved him.

He found them in a cavern on a thunderous day. They were revolving round a cauldron in which were boiling particles of many strange and horrible creatures, and they knew he was coming before he arrived.

“Answer me what I ask you,” said the King.

“Would you rather hear it from us or our masters?” asked the first witch.

“Call them,” replied Macbeth.

Thereupon the witches poured blood into the cauldron and grease into the flame that licked it, and a helmeted head appeared with the visor on, so that Macbeth could only see its eyes.

He was speaking to the head, when the first witch said gravely, “He knows thy thought,” and a voice in the head said, “Macbeth, beware Macduff, the chieftain of Fife.” The head then descended Into the cauldron till it disappeared.

“One word more,” pleaded Macbeth.

“He will not be commanded,” said the first witch, and then a crowned child ascended from the cauldron bearing a tree in his hand The child said—

“Macbeth shall be unconquerable till The Wood of Birnam climbs Dunsinane Hill.”

“That will never be,” said Macbeth; and he asked to be told if Banquo’s descendants would ever rule Scotland.

The cauldron sank into the earth; music was heard, and a procession of phantom kings filed past Macbeth; behind them was Banquo’s ghost. In each king, Macbeth saw a likeness to Banquo, and he counted eight kings.

Then he was suddenly left alone.

His next proceeding was to send murderers to Macduff’s castle. They did not find Macduff, and asked Lady Macduff where he was. She gave a stinging answer, and her questioner called Macduff a traitor. “Thou liest!” shouted Macduff’s little son, who was immediately stabbed, and with his last breath entreated his mother to fly. The murderers did not leave the castle while one of its inmates remained alive.

Macduff was in England listening, with Malcolm, to a doctor’s tale of cures wrought by Edward the Confessor when his friend Ross came to tell him that his wife and children were no more. At first Ross dared not speak the truth, and turn Macduff’s bright sympathy with sufferers relieved by royal virtue into sorrow and hatred. But when Malcolm said that England was sending an army into Scotland against Macbeth, Ross blurted out his news, and Macduff cried, ““All dead, did you say? All my pretty ones and their mother? Did you say all?”

His sorry hope was in revenge, but if he could have looked into Macbeth’s castle on Dunsinane Hill, he would have seen at work a force more solemn than revenge. Retribution was working, for Lady Macbeth was mad. She walked in her sleep amid ghastly dreams. She was wont to wash her hands for a quarter of an hour at a time; but after all her washing, would still see a red spot of blood upon her skin. It was pitiful to hear her cry that all the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten her little hand.

“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” inquired Macbeth of the doctor, but the doctor replied that his patient must minister to her own mind. This reply gave Macbeth a scorn of medicine. “Throw physic to the dogs,” he said; “I’ll none of it.”

One day he heard a sound of women crying. An officer approched him and said, “The Queen, your Majesty, is dead.” “Out, brief candle,” muttered Macbeth, meaning that life was like a candle, at the mercy of a puff of air. He did not weep; he was too familiar with death.

Presently a messenger told him that he saw Birnam Wood on the march. Macbeth called him a liar and a slave, and threatened to hang him if he had made a mistake. “If you are right you can hang me,” he said.

From the turret windows of Dunsinane Castle, Birnam Wood did indeed appear to be marching. Every soldier of the English army held aloft a bough which he had cut from a tree in that wood, and like human trees they climbed Dunsinane Hill.

Macbeth had still his courage. He went to battle to conquer or die, and the first thing he did was to kill the English general’s son in single combat. Macbeth then felt that no man could fight him and live, and when Macduff came to him blazing for revenge, Macbeth said to him, “Go back; I have spilt too much of your blood already.”

“My voice is in my sword,” replied Macduff, and hacked at him and bade him yield.

“I will not yield!” said Macbeth, but his last hour had struck. He fell.

Macbeth’s men were in retreat when Macduff came before Malcolm holding a King’s head by the hair.

“Hail, King!” he said; and the new King looked at the old.

So Malcolm reigned after Macbeth; but in years that came afterwards the descendants of Banquo were kings.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

AEGEON was a merchant of Syracuse, which is a seaport in Sicily. His wife was AEmilia, and they were very happy until AEgeon’s manager died, and he was obliged to go by himself to a place called Epidamnum on the Adriatic. As soon as she could AEmilia followed him, and after they had been together some time two baby boys were born to them. The babies were exactly alike; even when they were dressed differently they looked the same.

And now you must believe a very strange thing. At the same inn where these children were born, and on the same day, two baby boys were born to a much poorer couple than AEmilia and AEgeon; so poor, indeed, were the parents of these twins that they sold them to the parents of the other twins.

AEmilia was eager to show her children to her friends in Syracuse, and in treacherous weather she and AEgeon and the four babies sailed homewards.

They were still far from Syracuse when their ship sprang a leak, and the crew left it in a body by the only boat, caring little what became of their passengers.

AEmilia fastened one of her children to a mast and tied one of the slave-children to him; AEgeon followed her example with the remaining children. Then the parents secured themselves to the same masts, and hoped for safety.

The ship, however, suddenly struck a rock and was split in two, and AEmilia, and the two children whom she had tied, floated away from AEgeon and the other children. AEmilia and her charges were picked up by some people of Epidamnum, but some fishermen of Corinth took the babies from her by force, and she returned to Epidanmum alone, and very miserable. Afterwards she settled in Ephesus, a famous town in Asia Minor.

AEgeon and his charges were also saved; and, more fortunate than AEmilia, he was able to return to Syracuse and keep them till they were eighteen. His own child he called Antipholus, and the slavechild he called Dromio; and, strangely enough, these