* * * * *
It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled
this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by
the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy
of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College,
Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's,
containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great
poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of
the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is
long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these,
fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring
inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New
Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning
towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of
Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at
the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed
by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of
Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an
impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to
transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough.
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