The vulgarity of the Porter's language, in the third scene of the second act, repelled Coleridge, who pronounced it to be an after-thought of some baser hand. "I dare pledge myself to demonstrate," said he, that it was an interpolation of the actors. Other critics have followed with the same feeling of condemnation. But only Shakspeare could have risen above such a conventional estimate, and have put this piece of solid consistency into that part of the tragedy which it strengthens: there it stays in the only place where Nature could have lent to it her justification. We can readily admit that the undisguised lechery of Pandarus in "Troilus and Cressida," and the brothel scenes in "Pericles," were subsequent additions to those plays by a pen that was accustomed to deal in broad effects without regard to the organic exaction of the other characters. Perhaps they were fragments of older plays left over by carelessness, or, what is much more likely, introduced as gags by the play-actors. But we can spare them out of the legacy of Shakspeare because they are not in the manner which he used when broadness served his purpose. When the gross details are hung over and fondled lewdly, recurred to morbidly, laid open with ingenious particularity till we detect the sickening odor of the dissecting-room which rises from slashed and naked subjects, we may determine at once that the scene preserves not one stroke of Shakspeare's pen. The lines seem suffocating in a close and tainted place. What a brisk draught ventilates the honest coarseness of the Porter! what a light, bantering touch hits off the vice which is needful to finish the portrait of Falstaff! Even Parolles, his prototype, only ventures far enough to make a scene coherent with Helena's unspoken thought.[8]
Let us see if Nature was not fortunate in finding the Porter at his post at an hour when he was needed as never before.
The air around the castle of Macbeth "nimbly and sweetly" recommended itself to Duncan's senses; and Banquo noticed that the swallow, most confiding and unsuspicious of birds, approves the place "by his lov'd mansionry." On every frieze, buttress, coigne of vantage, Nature had colonized this domestic wing, as if to hint to the wayfarer "a pleasant seat," peace and unviolated sleep within. But we remember that a raven had croaked the fatal entrance of Duncan into the castle. The swallows twittering in the delicate air cannot drown this omen of insecurity: as we enter with the unconscious Duncan, the weird sisters slip by us from their blasted heath, and the house darkens with a fated purpose.