Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away and beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers--the evidence of his guilt--the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is dramatic. In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is on his way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or whispers: "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell." Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at the gate, he cries: "Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst." Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks above the body of Cæsar he says: "You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on-- 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii: Look! In this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made! Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed, And as he plucked his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it." VII. THERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,--that the poem is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a subordinate. Of course Shakespeare made use of the work of others--and, we might almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others. The only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used, whether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the great structure of literature. Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts for themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of others with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the man who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and poetic form, throb and life,--is in the highest sense original. Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others, and was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The question is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but who chiseled the statue? We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in Pliny's _Natural History_, published in 1601, the following: "The sea Pontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea never retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw material, and out of it Shakespeare made the following: