Macbeth was certainly one of Shakespeare’s latest Productions, and it might possibly have been suggested to him by a little performance on the same subject at Oxford, before King James, 1605. I will transcribe my notice of it from Wake’s _Rex Platonicus_: “Fabulæ ansam dedit antiqua de Regia prosapia historiola apud Scoto-Britannos celebrata, quæ narrat tres olim Sibyllas occurrisse duobus Scotiæ proceribus, Macbetho & Banchoni, & illum prædixisse Regem futurum, sed Regem nullum geniturum; hunc Regem non futurum, sed Reges geniturum multos. Vaticinii veritatem rerum eventus comprobavit. Banchonis enim e stirpe Potentissimus Jacobus oriundus.” p. 29. A stronger argument hath been brought from the Plot of _Hamlet_. Dr. Grey and Mr. Whalley assure us that for _this_ Shakespeare _must_ have read _Saxo Grammaticus_ in Latin, for no translation hath been made into any modern Language. But the truth is, he did not take it from _Saxo_ at all; a Novel called the _Hystorie of Hamblet_ was his original: a fragment of which, in _black Letter_, I have been favoured with by a very curious and intelligent Gentleman, to whom the lovers of Shakespeare will some time or other owe great obligations. It hath indeed been said that, “IF _such an history exists_, it is almost impossible that any poet unacquainted with the Latin language (supposing his perceptive faculties to have been ever so acute) could have caught the characteristical madness of Hamlet, described by _Saxo Grammaticus_, so happily as it is delineated by Shakespeare.”