Lady M. You lack the season sleep.

22 of all natures,

Macb. Come, we'll to sleep: My strange and

self-abuse

Is the initiate fear, that wants hard use:

We are yet but young in deed 23.

SCENE V. The Heath.

[Exeunt.

Thunder.

Enter HECATE1, meeting the three Witches. 1 Witch. Why, how now, Hecate? you look angerly.

Hec. Have I not reason, beldams, as you are, Saucy, and overbold? How did you dare

22 You lack the season of all nature's sleep.' Johnson explains this, You want sleep, which seasons or gives the relish to all natures.' Indiget somni vitæ condimenti. So in All's Well that Ends Well: 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in.' It has, however, been suggested that the meaning is, 'You stand in need of the time or season of sleep which all natures require.' I incline to the last interpretation.

23 The editions previous to Theobald's read :

The initiate fear is the fear that always attends the first initiation into guilt, before the mind becomes callous and insensible by hard use or frequent repetition of it.

1 Shakspeare has been unjustly censured for introducing Hecate among the vulgar witches, and consequently for confounding ancient with modern superstitions. But the poet has elsewhere shown himself well acquainted with the classical connexion which this deity had with witchcraft. Reginald Scot, in his Discovery, mentions it as the common opinion of all writers, that witches were supposed to have nightly meetings with Herodias and the Pagan gods,' and that in the night time they ride abroad with Diana, the goddess of the Pagans,' &c. Their dame or chief leader seems always to have been an old Pagan, as 'the Ladie Sibylla, Minerva, or Diana.' In Middleton's Witch, Hecate is the name of one of his witches, and she has a son a low buffoon. In Jonson's Sad Sheperd, Act ii. Sc. 3, Maudlin the witch calls Hecate the mistress of witches, Our dame Hecate.' Shakspeare no doubt knew that Diana was the name by which the goddess was invoked in modern times, but has preferred her VOL. IV. BB

To trade and traffick with Macbeth,
In riddles, and affairs of death;
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never call'd to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?

And, which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful, and wrathful; who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
But make amends now: Get you gone,
And at the pit of Acheron

Meet me i' the morning; thither he
Will come to know his destiny.
Your vessels, and your spells, provide,
Your charms, and every thing beside;
I am for the air; this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end.

Great business must be wrought ere noon:
Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound;

I'll catch it ere it come to ground:

former appellation. Our great poet is not alone in the illegitimate pronunciation of Hecate as a dissyllable. Marlowe, who was a scholar, has also thus used it in his Dr. Faustus:'Pluto's blew fire and Hecat's tree

With magick spells encompass thee.'

Jonson also, in the passage above cited, and even Milton, in his Comus, have taken the same liberty :

Stay thy cloudy ebon chair

Wherein thou rid'st with Hecat, and befriend us,' &c.

2 Steevens remarks that Shakspeare's mythological knowledge on this occasion appears to have deserted him; for as Hecate is only one of three names belonging to the same goddess, she could not properly be employed in one character to catch a drop that fell from her in another. In a Midsummer Night's Dream, however, the poet was sufficiently aware of her threefold capacity :fairies, that do run

·

By the triple Hecat's team.'

The vaporous drop profound seems to have been meant for the

And that, distill'd by magick slights3,
Shall raise such artificial sprights,
As, by the strength of their illusion,
Shall draw him on to his confusion:
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
And you all know, security

Is mortal's chiefest enemy.

Song. [Within.] Come away, come away, &c.* Hark, I am call'd; my little spirit, see,

Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.

[Exit.

1 Witch. Come, let's make haste; she'll soon be back again.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI. Fores. A Room in the Palace.

Enter LENOX and another Lord.

Len. My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,

Which can interpret further: only, I say,

Things have been strangely borne: The gracious
Duncan

Was pitied of Macbeth:-
:--marry, he was dead:-
And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late;
Whom, you may say, if it please you, Fleance kill'd,
For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.
Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous
It was for Malcolm, and for Donalbain,
To kill their gracious father? damned fact!

same as the virus lunare of the ancients, being a foam which the moon was supposed to shed on particular herbs, or other objects, when strongly solicited by enchantment. Lucan introduces Erictho using it, lib. vi. :—

Et virus large lunare ministrat.' 3 Slights are arts, subtle practices.

4 This song is to be found entire in The Witch, by Middleton. 1 Who cannot want the thought,' &c. The sense requires who can want the thought;' but it is, probably, a lapse of the poet's pen.

How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight, In pious rage, the two delinquents tear,

That were the slaves of drink, and thralls of sleep?
Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;
For 'twould have anger'd any heart alive,

To hear the men deny it. So that, I say,
He has borne all things well: and I do think,
That, had he Duncan's sons under his key,

(As, an't please heaven, he shall not), they should find What 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance. But, peace!-for from broad words, and 'cause he fail'd

His presence at the tyrant's feast, I hear,
Macduff lives in disgrace: Sir, can you tell
Where he bestows himself?

Lord.
The son of Duncan,
From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth,
Lives in the English court; and is receiv'd
Of the most pious Edward with such grace,
That the malevolence of fortune nothing
Takes from his high respect: Thither Macduff
Is gone to pray the holy king, upon his aid
To wake Northumberland, and warlike Siward:
That, by the help of these, (with Him above
To ratify the work), we may again

Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights;
Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives 2;
Do faithful homage, and receive free honours 3,
All which we pine for now: And this report

2 Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives.' The construction is:- Free our feasts and banquets from bloody knives.'

3 Johnson says, Free may be either honours freely bestowed, not purchased by crimes; or honours without slavery, without dread of a tyrant.' I have shown in a note on Twelfth Night, Actii. Sc. 4, p. 322, that free meant pure, chaste, consequently unspotted, which may be its meaning here. Free also meant noble. See note on the Second Part of King Henry VI. Act iii. Sc. 1.

4

Hath so exasperate the king, that he
Prepares for some attempt of war.

Len.

Sent he to Macduff?

Lord. He did: and with an absolute, Sir, not I, The cloudy messenger turns me his back,

And hums; as who should say, You'll rue the time That clogs me with this answer.

Len.
And that well might
Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance
His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel
Fly to the court of England, and unfold

His
message ere he come; that a swift blessing
May soon return to this our suffering country
Under a hand accurs'd 5!

Lord.

I'll send my prayers with him!

[Exeunt.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

A dark Cave. In the middle, a Cauldron boiling.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches1.

1 Witch. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd. 2 Witch. Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd2.

▲ Exasperate, for exasperated.

5

to this our suffering country

Under a hand accursed.'

The construction is 'to this our country, suffering under a hand accursed.'

1 Enter the three Witches.' Dr. Johnson has called the reader's attention to the judgment with which Shakspeare has selected all the circumstances of his infernal ceremonies, and how exactly he has conformed to common opinions and traditions.'

2 Thrice; and once the hedge-pig whin'd.' The urchin or hedgehog, like the toad, for its solitariness, the ugliness of its