+Sources+.--The story of Lear in some form or another had appeared in many writers before Shakespeare. The sources from which he drew chiefly were probably the early accounts by Geoffrey of Moumouth, a composite poem called _The Mirrour for Magistrates_, Holinshed's _Chronicles_, Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, and lastly an old play of _King Leir_, supposed to be the one acted in 1594. This old play ended happily; Shakespeare first introduced the tragic ending. He also invented Lear's madness, the banishment and disguise of Kent, and the characters of Burgundy and the fool. The underplot he drew from the story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in _Arcadia_, a long, rambling novel of adventure by Sir Philip Sidney. +Macbeth+.--Macbeth, one of the great Scottish nobles of early times, is led, partly by his own ambition, partly by the instigation of evil supernatural powers, to murder King Duncan and usurp his place on the throne of Scotland. In this bloody task he is aided and encouraged by his wife, a woman of powerful character, whose conscience is temporarily smothered by her frantic desire to advance her husband's career. We are forced to sympathize with this guilty pair, wicked as they {188} are, because we are made to feel that they are not naturally criminals, that they are swept into crime by the misdirection of energies which, if directed along happier lines, might have been praiseworthy. Macbeth, vigorous and imaginative, has a poet's or conqueror's yearning toward a larger fullness of life, experience, joy. It is the woeful misdirection of this splendid energy through unlawful channels which makes him a murderer, not the callous, animal indifference of the born criminal. Similarly, his wife is a woman of great executive ability, reaching out instinctively for a field large enough in which to make that ability gain its maximum of accomplishment. Nature meant her for a queen; and it is the instinctive effort to find her natural sphere of action,--an effort common to all humanity--which blinds her conscience at the fatal moment. Once entered on their career of evil, they find no chance for turning back. Suspicions are aroused, and Macbeth feels himself forced to guard himself from the effects of the first. The ghosts of his victims haunt his guilty conscience; his wife dies heart-broken with remorse which comes too late; and he himself is killed in battle by his own rebellious countrymen.