Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1875-02-05

tnOSe cnfOnlclerS, Is UTlelly \dllu uu
as follows: Crynin
(otherwise Crinan, from which latter
name the appellation of an old Scottish
town and modern canal), Lord of the
Isles, and father of Duncan, married
the eldest daughter of Malcolm the
Second, King of Scotland. Slnel,
Thane of Glamis and father of Mac
beth: married the second daughter of
the same king, giving to that family a
claim to the throne approaching that
of Crynin. On the death of Malcolm
without male issue, Duncan ascended
the throne, marrying the sister of
Siward, Earl of Northumberland.
was one of his principal war
rlors-indeed his leading, commander,
crushed for him the rebellion of
Macdonwald (progenitor of the Mae
donalds, afterwards successfully and
continuously Lords of the Isles, and
defeated Sueno, King of Norway, in II
bloody battle in Fife. Within few
months following, Macbeth, raised to
ambition by his successes i'll arms and
his rival claim to the crown, killed
Duncan in Inverness Castle, usurped
the throne, and was later slain by Mac
luH Thane of Fife, the succession
eventually passing to the descendant
Of Banquo (who is not mentioned by
the chronicle as murdered by Mae beth,
Malcolm, son Of Fleance.
Such is the received story upon
which Shakespeare founded unques-
tiOnabl V the greatest of his tragedies,
commencing the action Immediately ly
after the defeat of Sueno by Macbeth,
and blending, for some Of his purposes,
that essay in arms and the subjugation
of the earlier rebel Macdonwald.-
Throughout the tragedy the moving
spirit. however. is Lady Mae beth,
whose cruel ambition, goading on her
husband IL crimes half-hallowed by
her evident tender love for and pride
in him, supplies one Of the strangest
and most absorbing studies in all lit
erature-intinitely more fascinating,
however horrible, than the character
of the ambitious but hrsitatlng thane.
Without Lady Macbeth, the great
tragedy would be robbed of more than
half lis vitality; and such Lady
Macbeth. otherwise clrcumstanced
than she is. and lacking the single re-
detming trait Of u love which sought
honors for her husband more than for
herself, would be simply horrible and
repulsive. And yet this Lady Nae
BETH is entirely thing Of .ShaA'xpeare's s
owa ere ItioH-is not oHiy not n1msi
'trt tI1t- ,-,trcrtci-. bed c6uR! h0t hstut been
IN that or in tradition, from the fact
that she nsfpr eridedi
Had Macbeth, then. no wife: Up
To certain time. and that time involv-
ing much of the tragedy. he had none.
At a period following the death of
Duncan. he indeed became possessed
Of one. so burdcned with crime as few
women have come to the arms of the
most guilty husband. For (the allu-
sions Of John de Fordun, Of the four
teenth century, have now been fully
explained BY the discovery of the ac-
count Of Lampert of Aries. of the
twelfth1 the woman who assisted. in
whatever degree. ut the murder of
Duncan in his own (not Macbeth $ J
castle of Inverness, about the middle
Of the eleventh century. was the wife
ofDuncan and consequently the Queen
of Scotland, who thereafter married
the partner OF her crime. of whom she
NAV or NAV not have been the temp
trcSs. shared with him in his brief
career of ROYALTY (the space disputed,
and died very nearly at the same time
when the sword of Macduff (who did
not lose wife and children at Mac
beth's hands put an end to the usnr-
patton. Unfortunately for the posi-
bilities of cXactitudc, neither De For
dun. in his ambiguous allusions, Lam
pert, in his clear aud succinct state
ments. nor the records bearing on the
same subject, still existing and Sc
easily read by the light of the others,
in the council chamber at Edinburg
-unfOrtunately none of these give any
clew 10 the family of the murderous
and twice-wedded queen: but. follow
ing the laws of probability. and tax
ing into consideration the fact that in
none of those records is any allusion
made to marriage Of Duncan other
than his first already named, with the
sister of Siward, Earl of Northumber-
land. the conclusion becomes an ire
sistible one that she was not Scottish
by blood, bet belonged to that family
of known violence i'll temper as well as
undaunted bravery and power in arms.
having their origin and abode south
of the Tweed, and their blood still
traceable in some of the most distin-
guished families of the British peer
age.
Instantly the question occurs: Why
did Shakespeare. who undoubtedly y
knew this important fact, ignore it in
the tragedy, when he might have even
intensified the character of the murder
ess bv showing her in that additional
character of the murderous wife? 10
this the answer is obvious. and the
study involved one of the most inter-
esting in all literature. ':Macbeth'
was Que of his latest works, us one of
his most powerful. Years before he
had written and given to the world
"Hamlet," in which (then evidently
with no thought of the after-use of
his materials) he had used the charac-