Macb. The rest is labour, which is not us❜d for I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful The hearing of my wife with your approach; So, humbly take my leave. you: Dun. My worthy Cawdor! Macb. The prince of Cumberland!-That is a step, On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, [Aside. For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. [Exit. Dun. True, worthy Banquo; he is full so valiant9; And in his commendations I am fed ; Let us after him, Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome: It is a banquet to me. It is a peerless kinsman. [Flourish. Exeunt. SCENE V. Inverness. A Room in Macbeth's Castle. Enter LADY MACBETH, reading a Letter. Lady M. They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report1, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves—air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me, Thane of Cawdor; by which 9 True, worthy Banquo,' &c. We must imagine that while Macbeth was uttering the six preceding lines, Duncan and Banquo had been conferring apart. Macbeth's conduct appears to have been their subject; and to some encomium supposed to have been bestowed on him by Banquo, the reply of Duncan refers. 1 The perfectest report is the best intelligence. 2 Missives, messengers. title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with, Hail, king that shalt be! This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness; that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell. Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promis'd:-Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness, To catch the nearest way: Thou would'st be great; Art not without ambition; but without The illness should attend it. What thou would'st highly, That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false, And yet would'st wrongly win; thou'dst have, great Glamis, That which cries, Thus thou must do, if thou have it ; 3 Thou would'st have that [i. e. the crown] which cries unto thee, thou must do thus, if thou would'st have it, and thou must do that which rather,' &c. The difficulty of this passage in Italics seems to have arisen from its not having been considered as all uttered by the object of Macbeth's ambition. Malone is the author of this regulation, and furnished the explanation. 4 That I may pour my spirits in thine ear.' So in Lord Sterline's Julius Cæsar, 1607: 'Thou in my bosom used to pour thy spright.' 5 Which fate and metaphysical aid,' &c.; i. e. supernatural aid. We find metaphysics explained things supernatural' in the old Enter an Attendant. Attend. The king comes here to-night. Thou'rt mad to say it: Is not thy master with him? who, wer't so, Attend. So please you, it is true; our thane is coming: One of my fellows had the speed of him; Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more Than would make up his message. Lady M. Give him tending, He brings great news. The raven himself is hoarse, [Exit Attendant. That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here; And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse; dictionaries. To have thee crown'd' is to desire that you should be crown'd. Thus in All's Well that Ends Well:our dearest friend Prejudicates the business, and would seem To have us make denial.' This phrase of Baret's :-'If all things be as ye would have them, or agreeable to your desire,' is a common mode of expression with old writers. 6 That tend on mortal thoughts.' Mortal and deadly were synonymous in Shakspeare's time. In another part of this play we have the mortal sword,' and 'mortal murders.' We have ' mortal war,' and mortal hatred.' In Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse is a particular description of these spirits, and of their office. The second kind of devils, which he most employeth, are those northern Martii, called the spirits of revenge, and the authors of massacres, and seedsmen of mischief; for they have commission to incense men to rapines, sacrilege, theft, murder, wrath, fury, and all manner of cruelties: and they command certain of the southern spirits to wait upon them, as also great Arioch, that is termed the spirit of revenge.' That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, 7 Lady Macbeth's purpose was to be effected by action. 'To keep peace between the effect and purpose,' means 'to delay the execution of her purpose, to prevent its proceeding to effect.' Sir Wm. Davenant's strange alteration of this play sometimes affords a reasonably good commentary upon it. Thus in the present instance : make thick My blood, stop all passage to remorse; Shake my design, nor make it fall before 8 To pall, from the Latin pallio, to wrap, to invest, to cover or hide as with a mantle or cloak. 9 Drayton, in his Mortimeriados, 1596, has an expression resembling this: 'The sullen night in mistie RUGGE is wrapp'd.' And in his Polyolbion, which was not published till 1612, we again find it : 'Thick vapours that like ruggs still hang the troubled air.' On this passage there is a long criticism in the Rambler, No. 168; to which Johnson in his notes refers the reader with much complacency. He however sets out with ascribing the speech to Macbeth; and the whole of it is a puerile cavil at the low words with which he is pleased to say it is disfigured. So uninstructed was the lexicographer in the language of Shakspeare's age, that he takes knife, in the literal sense, for an instrument used by butchers and cooks!' Whereas quotations without end might be adduced to show that it was then a common expression for a sword or dagger. The epithet dun he treats with utter contempt, and says that it is now seldom heard but in the stable.' He did not or would not know that it was the ancient synonyme of fuscus, ་ Enter MACBETH. Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter! 10 Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men But be the serpent under it. He that's coming Only look up clear; To alter favour 11 ever is to fear: [Exeunt. and meant no more than dark, obscure. Milton has represented Satan as flying'in the dun air sublime;' and in Comus we have 'dun shades.' At the expression 'blanket of the dark,' he says that he can scarce check his risibility! Surely this is outraging the squeamish finicalness of the French critics in their remarks upon the poet, and need only be mentioned to excite a smile. A serious reply to such criticism would now be superfluous. 10 i. e. beyond the present time, which is, according to the process of nature, ignorant of the future. 11 Favour is countenance. |