Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

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 approached 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 were the names given to the children who floated away from him. At the age of eighteen the son who was with AEgeon grew restless with a desire to find his brother. AEgeon let him depart with his servant, and the young men are henceforth known as Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse. Let alone, AEgeon found his home too dreary to dwell in, and traveled for five years. He did not, during his absence, learn all the news of Syracuse, or he would never have gone to Ephesus. As it was, his melancholy wandering ceased in that town, where he was arrested almost as soon as he arrived. He then found that the Duke of Syracuse had been acting in so tyrannical a manner to Ephesians unlucky enough to fall into his hands, that the Government of Ephesus had angrily passed a law which punished by death or a fine of a thousand pounds any Syracusan who should come to Ephesus. AEgeon was brought before Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, who told him that he must die or pay a thousand pounds before the end of the day. You will think there was fate in this when I tell you that the children who were kidnaped by the fishermen of Corinth were now citizens of Ephesus, whither they had been brought by Duke Menaphon, an uncle of Duke Solinus. They will henceforth be called Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus. Moreover, on the very day when AEgeon was arrested, Antipholus of Syracuse landed in Ephesus and pretended that he came from Epidamnum in order to avoid a penalty. He handed his money to his servant Dromio of Syracuse, and bade him take it to the Centaur Inn and remain there till he came. In less than ten minutes he was met on the Mart by Dromio of Ephesus, his brother’s slave, and immediately mistook him for his own Dromio. “Why are you back so soon? Where did you leave the money?” asked Antipholus of Syracuse. This Drornio knew of no money except sixpence, which he had received on the previous Wednesday and given to the saddler; but he did know that his mistress was annoyed because his master was not in to dinner, and he asked Antipholus of Syracuse to go to a house called The Phoenix without delay. His speech angered the hearer, who would have beaten him if he had not fled. Antipholus of Syracuse them went to The Centaur, found that his gold had been deposited there, and walked out of the inn. He was wandering about Ephesus when two beautiful ladies signaled to him with their hands. They were sisters, and their names were Adriana and Luciana. Adriana was the wife of his brother Antipholus of Ephesus, and she had made up her mind, from the strange account given her by Dromio of Ephesus, that her husband preferred another woman to his wife. “Ay, you may look as if you did not know me,” she said to the man who was really her brother-in-law, “but I can remember when no words were sweet unless I said them, no meat flavorsome unless I carved it.” “Is it I you address?” said Antipholus of Syracuse stiffly. “I do not know you.” “Fie, brother,” said Luciana. “You know perfectly well that she sent Dromio to you to bid you come to dinner;” and Adriana said, “Come, come; I have been made a fool of long enough. My truant husband shall dine with me and confess his silly pranks and be forgiven.” They were determined ladies, and Antipholus of Syracuse grew weary of disputing with them, and followed them obediently to The Phoenix, where a very late “mid-day” dinner awaited them. They were at dinner when Antipholus of Ephesus and his slave Dromio demanded admittance. “Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cecily, Gillian, Ginn!” shouted Dromio of Ephesus, who knew all his fellow-servants’ names by heart. From within came the reply, “Fool, dray-horse, coxcomb, idiot!” It was Dromio of Syracuse unconsciously insulting his brother. Master and man did their best to get in, short of using a crowbar, and finally went away; but Antipholus of Ephesus felt so annoyed with his wife that he decided to give a gold chain which he had promised her, to another woman. Inside The Phoenix, Luciana, who believed Antipholus of Syracuse to be her sister’s husband, attempted, by a discourse in rhyme, when alone with him, to make him kinder to Adriana. In reply he told her that he was not married, but that he loved her so much that, if Luciana were a mermaid, he would gladly lie on the sea if he might feel beneath him her floating golden hair. Luciana was shocked and left him, and reported his lovemaking to Adriana, who said that her husband was old and ugly, and not fit to be seen or heard, though secretly she was very fond of him.