# Shakespearean Tragedy/Note AA

Layout 2
London: Macmillan, pages 467–469
NOTE AA.
HAS MACBETH BEEN ABRIDGED?
Macbeth is a very short play, the shortest of all Shakespeare’s except the Comedy of Errors. It contains only 1993 lines, while King Lear contains 3298, Othello 3324, and Hamlet 3924. The next shortest of the tragedies is Julius Caesar, which has 2440 lines. (The figures are Mr. Fleay’s. I may remark that for our present purpose we want the number of the lines in the first Folio, not those in modern composite texts.)
Is there any reason to think that the play has been shortened? I will briefly consider this question, so far as it can be considered apart from the wider one whether Shakespeare’s play was rehandled by Middleton or some one else.
That the play, as we have it, is slightly shorter than the play Shakespeare wrote seems not improbable. (1) We have no Quarto of Macbeth; and generally, where we have a Quarto or ​Quartos of a play, we find them longer than the Folio text. (2) There are perhaps a few signs of omission in our text (over and above the plentiful signs of corruption). I will give one example (I. iv. 33–43). Macbeth and Banquo, returning from their victories, enter the presence of Duncan (14), who receives them with compliments and thanks, which they acknowledge. He then speaks as follows:
Here the transition to the naming of Malcolm, for which there has been no preparation, is extremely sudden; and the matter, considering its importance, is disposed of very briefly. But the abruptness and brevity of the sentence in which Duncan invites himself to Macbeth’s castle are still more striking. For not a word has yet been said on the subject; nor is it possible to suppose that Duncan had conveyed his intention by message, for in that case Macbeth would of course have informed his wife of it in his letter (written in the interval between scenes iii. and iv.). It is difficult not to suspect some omission or curtailment here. On the other hand Shakespeare may have determined to sacrifice everything possible to the effect of rapidity in the First Act; and he may also have wished, by the suddenness and brevity of Duncan’s self-invitation, to startle both Macbeth and the audience, and to make the latter feel that Fate is hurrying the King and the murderer to their doom.
And that any extensive omissions have been made seems not likely. (1) There is no internal evidence of the omission of anything essential to the plot. (2) Forman, who saw the play in 1610, mentions nothing which we do not find in our play; for his statement that Macbeth was made Duke of Northumberland is obviously due to a confused recollection of Malcolm’s ​being made Duke of Cumberland. (3) Whereabouts could such omissions occur? Only in the first part, for the rest is full enough. And surely anyone who wanted to cut the play down would have operated, say, on Macbeth’s talk with Banquo’s murderers, or on III. vi., or on the very long dialogue of Malcolm and Macduff, instead of reducing the most exciting part of the drama. We might indeed suppose that Shakespeare himself originally wrote the first part more at length, and made the murder of Duncan come in the Third Act, and then himself reduced his matter so as to bring the murder back to its present place, perceiving in a flash of genius the extraordinary effect that might thus be produced. But, even if this idea suited those who believe in a rehandling of the play, what probability is there in it?
Thus it seems most likely that the play always was an extremely short one. Can we, then, at all account for its shortness? It is possible, in the first place, that it was not composed originally for the public stage, but for some private, perhaps royal, occasion, when time was limited. And the presence of the passage about touching for the evil (IV. iii. 140 ff.) supports this idea. We must remember, secondly, that some of the scenes would take longer to perform than ordinary scenes of mere dialogue and action; e.g. the Witch-scenes, and the Battle-scenes in the last Act, for a broad-sword combat was an occasion for an exhibition of skill. And, lastly, Shakespeare may well have felt that a play constructed and written like Macbeth, a play in which a kind of fever-heat is felt almost from beginning to end, and which offers very little relief by means of humorous or pathetic scenes, ought to be short, and would be unbearable if it lasted so long as Hamlet or even King Lear. And in fact I do not think that, in reading, we feel Macbeth to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear that it is about half as long as Hamlet. Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatre too it appeared to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded.
Footnotes