My friends, Poetry gives a body to the bodiless. The Stage of Shakspeare was rude, and gross. In my boyhood, I saw the Ghosts appear to John Kemble in Richard III. Now they may be abolished with Banquo. So may be Queen Katherine's Angels. But Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about one person's seeing what another does not--or one's _not_ seeing, rather, that which another does. Nor had Homer, when Achilles alone, in the Quarrel Scene, sees Minerva. Shakspeare and his Audience had no difficulty about the bodily representation of Thoughts--the inward by the outward. Shakspeare and the Great Old Poets leave vague, shadowy, mist-shrouded, and indeterminate the boundaries between the Thought and the Existent--the Real and the Unreal. I am able to believe with you, Talboys, that Banquo's Ghost was understood by Shakspeare, the Poet, to be the Phantasm of the murderer's guilt-and-fear-shaken soul; but was required by Shakspeare, the Manager of the Globe Theatre, to rise up through a trap-door, mealy-faced and blood-boultered, and so make "the Table full." BULLER. Seward, do bid him speak of Lady Macbeth. SEWARD. Oblige me, sir--don't now--after dinner, if you will. NORTH. I shall merely allude now, as exceedingly poetical treatment, to the discretion throughout used in the SHOWING of Lady Macbeth. You might almost say that she never takes a step on the stage, that does not _thrill the Theatre_. Not a waste word, gesture, or look. All at the studied fulness of sublime tragical power--yet all wonderfully tempered and governed. I doubt if Shakspeare could have given a good account of everything that he makes Macbeth say--but of all that She says he could. TALBOYS. As far as I am able to judge, she but once in the whole Play loses her perfect self-mastery--when the servant surprises her by announcing the King's coming. She answers, 'thou'rt mad to say it;' which is a manner of speaking used by those who cannot, or can hardly believe tidings that fill them with exceeding joy. It is not the manner of a Lady to her servant who unexpectedly announces the arrival of a high--of the highest visitor. She recovers herself instantly. 'Is not thy master with him, who, wer't so, would have informed for preparation?' This is a turn colouring her exclamation, and is spoken in the most self-possessed, argumentative, demonstrative tone. The preceding words had been torn from her; now she has passed, with inimitable dexterity, from the dreamed Queen, to the usual mistress of her household--_to the huswife_. NORTH.