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The “Lost Scenes” of Macbeth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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Professor J. Q. Adams, in his admirable edition of Macbeth, has recently contended unequivocally that “in several places” of the original text, the Folio, “portions of Shakespeare's play are lost or intentionally omitted.” Specifically, he argues that three scenes—one each in the first, second, and last acts—have been lost. For various reasons this contention challenges more detailed consideration than it seems thus far to have received. It is an integral though not necessarily a vital part of the commentary in this edition; it revives—though with a decided difference—an old and much-debated hypothesis concerning textual losses from this play; and it requires, if certain aspects of the reasoning underlying it are to be accepted, a not inconsiderable readjustment of current views as to the swift and compelling structural efficacy of the play as it stands, not to mention a fresh appraisal of no less a personage than Lady Macbeth. Yet Professor Adams's edition adheres scrupulously—except perhaps in the three instances to be noted—to the principle which prompts the present inquiry. “We ought,” says Bradley in a very similar connection, “to do our best to interpret the text”—i.e., the text as it stands—“before we have recourse to this kind of suggestion.” Granting that an able exposition of textual difficulties is a boon in itself, are the difficulties such as to justify conjecture concerning exactly what may or may not have been lost or purposely omitted, and where?
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934
References
1 Macbeth, ed. J. Q. Adams (1931), p. 253.
2 Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 483, n.
3 Jahrbuch (1865), i, 146 ff.
4 Macbeth, i. vii. 47–52.
5 This quotation and the next are from Furness' (substantially fair though not altogether accurate) summary translation of Koester in Variorum Macbeth, p. 79.
6 Op. cit., pp. 480–484.
7 The latter alternative is supported by numerous editors, including Sir E. K. Chambers (Heath's Arden Macbeth, p. xviii, n.) and, perhaps, Professor Adams (see below, nn. 11–12).
8 i. v.
9 See below, n. 32 and text.
10 See below, nn. 14, 16, and text.
11 Adams, p. 134.
12 Ibid., p. 128.
13 P. 21, n. 1; 139.
14 Bradley, for instance, admits that “it is difficult not to suspect some omission or curtailment here,” but adds that “Shakespeare may have determined” to secure “rapidity in the First Act” at almost any reasonable cost. “That any extensive omissions have been made seems not likely” (op. cit., p. 468).
15 Though some commentators emphasize the point that he sounds “noticeably less cordial” toward Macbeth than to Banquo in thanking them.—See Brooke, Cunliffe and MacCracken, Shakespeare's Principal Plays, p. 693.
16 Macbeth, i. ii; v. 37; ii. iii. 51.
17 Adams, pp. 164 f.
18 Arden Macbeth, p. vi.
19 By “cutting” for stage purposes, or, as Adams (p. 258) suggests, by damage, badly “restored” subsequently, through such an accident as the Globe fire of 1613.
20 P. 469.
21 E.g., Hamlet (the difficulty concerning Hamlet's age) and Romeo (Juliet's forty-two hour sleep); or, to mention another Folio play, the Fair Maudlin episode in All's Well (cf. the writer's Shakspere's Silences, pp. 57–59).
22 Immediately followed by his directions to the servant—
Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.
23 The banquet scene (iii. iv) in and by itself has half a dozen such broken lines, but no omissions are suspected. (Forother broken lines cf. i. ii, iii; ii. iii; iii. i, ii, iii; iv. iii, 139, etc. In my reckoning of a score or more I have purposely left out the witch scenes.)
O, never
Shall sun that morrow seel
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters … (i. v. 61)
Mach. … No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Lady M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white … (ii. ii. 61)
(Compare also Julius Caesar, ii. i. 61:
Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar,
I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion …
where the broken line, once more, does not signalize an omission.)
25 My italics.
26 Or between then and three.
27 “I take't, ‘tis later, sir” (ii. i. 3).—A strikingly similar use of the soliloquy is made in Cymbeline (ii, ii, 2–7, 49–51), when four hours are supposed to pass between Imogen's falling asleep and her re-awakening after Iachimo's invasion of her chamber. Imogen's query, “What hour is it?” is answered by the Lady: “Almost midnight;” whereupon Imogen begs that she be called by “four o’ the clock.” After praying for protection against the tempters of the night, she sleeps. Then follows a long pause (like that after the murder of Duncan) here broken by Iachimo's emergence from the trunk:
The crickets sing, and man's o'erlabour'd sense
Repairs itself by rest … 'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus … But my design
To note the chamber: I will write all down,
Such and such pictures …
He notes them, screws them into his memory, takes her bracelet, observes her book (the tale of Tereus), and then concludes his long soliloquy by hastening back into the trunk before the clack strikes four. During the long opening pause and the forty lines of the soliloquy, the dragons of the night have flown far and fast:
… I lodge in fear;
Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here. [Clock strikes.]
One, two, three: time, time! [Goes into the trunk.]
28 Julius Caesar, ii. i. 63.
29 i, vii. 16.
30 His refusal to return to smear the grooms with blood is merely a momentary nervous-hysterical revulsion after the act.
31 P. 219.
32 I have discussed this subject more fully in Shakspere's Silences, pp. 48–54.
33 See above, n. 9.
34 Among other unwritten scenes in Macbeth I may mention: (1) Macbeth's inquiries concerning the witches (i. v.); (2) two scenes between him and the murderers of Banquo (“This I made good to you in our last conference” and “I'll come to you anon”—iii. i. 79, 139); (3) a scene between him and the murderers of Lady Macduff (iv. i. 155); (4) Duncan's sending forth largess; (5) the doctor's double watch before the Sleep-walking.
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