Macd. Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight With a new Gorgon:-Do not bid me speak; Enter LADY MACBETH. Lady M. Macd. What's the business, O, gentle lady, 'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak: The repetition, in a woman's ear, 11 Would murder as it fell11.O Banquo! Banquo! Dear Duff, I pr'ythee, contradict thyself, And say, it is not so. 11 'The repetition, in a woman's ear, Would murder as it fell.' So in Hamlet: He would drown the stage with tears, And cleave the general ear with horrid speech.' And in The Puritan, 1607 :- The punishments that shall follow you in this world would with horrour kill the ear, should hear them related.' Re-enter MACBETH and Lenox. Macb. Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant, There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead; Enter MALCOLM and DONALBAIN. Don. What is amiss? Macb. You are, and do not know it: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd. Macd. Your royal father's murder'd. Mal. O, by whom? Len. Those of his chamber, as it seem'd, had done't: Their hands and faces were all badg'd with blood, So were their daggers, which, unwip'd, we found Upon their pillows: They star'd, and were distracted; no man's life Macb. O, yet I do repent me of my fury, That I did kill them. Macd. Wherefore did you so? Macb. Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate, and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man: Outran the pauser reason.-Here lay Duncan, 12 His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood.' To gild with blood is a very common phrase in old plays. See also King John, Act ii. Sc. 2.-Johnson says, it is not improbable that Shakspeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth, as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature, For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore 13: Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage, to make his love known? Lady M. Macd. Look to the lady. Mal. Help me hence, ho! Why do we hold our tongues, That most may claim this argument for ours? Here, where our fate, hid in an augre-hole, Mal. Nor our strong sorrow Upon the foot of motion. Ban. Look to the lady: [LADY MACBETH is carried out. And when we have our naked frailties hid 14, And question this most bloody piece of work, show the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech, so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists of antithesis only.' 6 13 Breech'd with gore,' covered with blood to their hilts. 14 i. e. when we have clothed our half drest bodies, which may take cold from being exposed to the air. It is possible, as Steevens remarks that, in such a cloud of words, the meaning might escape the reader. The Porter had already said that this ' place is too cold for hell,' meaning the court-yard of the castle in which Banquo and the rest now are. So in Timon of Athens:Call the creatures Whose naked natures live in all the spight Against the undivulg'd pretence 15 I fight Macb. All. And so do I. So all. Macb. Let's briefly put on manly readiness, And meet i' the hall together. All. Well contented. [Exeunt all but MAL. and DON. Mal. What will you do? Let's not consort with them: To show an unfelt sorrow, is an office Which the false man does easy: I'll to England. Mal. 15 Pretence is here put for design or intention. It is so used again in The Winter's Tale: The pretence whereof being by circumstance partly laid open.' Thus again in this tragedy: 'What good could they pretend;' i. e. intend to themselves. Banquo's meaning is-'in our present state of doubt and uncertainty about this murder, I have nothing to do but to put myself under the direction of God; and, relying on his support, I here declare myself an eternal enemy to this treason, and to all its further designs that have not yet come to light.' the near in blood, The nearer bloody.' Meaning that he suspects Macbeth to be the murderer; for he was the nearest in blood to the two princes, being the cousingerman of Duncan. 17 The allusion of the unlighted shaft appears to be--the death of the king only could neither insure the crown to Macbeth, nor accomplish any other purpose, while his sons were yet living, who had therefore just reason to apprehend that they should be removed by the same means. Malcolm therefore means to say, The shaft has not yet done all its intended mischief; I and my brother are yet to be destroyed before it will light on the ground and do no more harm.' Is, to avoid the aim. Therefore, to horse; [Exeunt. SCENE IV. Without the Castle. Enter ROSSE and an Old Man. Old M. Threescore and ten I can remember well: Within the volume of which time, I have seen Hours dreadful, and things strange; but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings. Rosse. Ah, good father, Thou see'st, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, 'tis day, And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp : Is it night's predominance, or the day's shame, That darkness does the face of earth entomb, When living light should kiss it1? Old M. "Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last, A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place2, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at, and kill'd. 1 'After the murder of King Duffe,' says Holinshed, 'for the space of six months togither there appeared no sunne by daye, nor moone by night, in anie part of the realme; but still the sky was covered with continual clouds; and sometimes such outrageous winds arose, with lightenings and tempests, that the people were in great fear of present destruction.'-It is evident that Shakspeare had this passage in his thoughts. Most of the portents here mentioned are related by Holinshed, as accompanying King Duffe's death: there was a sparhawk strangled by an owl,' and 'horses of singular beauty and swiftness did eat their own flesh.' 2 A falcon tow'ring in her pride of place,' a technical phrase in falconry for soaring to the highest pitch. Faulcon haultain was the French term for a towering or high flying hawk. |