who all-hail'd me, Thane of Cawdor; by which 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 might'st 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; Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither, 2 "If thou would'st have that [i. e. the crown] which cries unto thee, thus thou must do, if thou would'st have it; and thou must do that which rather," &c. Mr. Hunter says:-" There should be a pause at that in the third line, the mind supplying 'is a thing.' 3 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." Which fate and metaphysical aid, &c.; i. e. supernatural aid. We find metaphysics explained things supernatural in the old dictionaries. To have thee crown'd is to desire that you should be erown'd. Thus in All's Well that Ends Well: Attend. The king comes here to-night. Thou'rt mad to say it: 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 Lady M. Give him tending, He brings great news. [Exit Attendant.] The raven himself is hoarse 5, That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits Stop up the access and passage to remorse; "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. The raven himself is hoarse. The following passage from Drayton's Barons' Wars, Book v. St. 42, may serve as an elucidation of the text: "The ominous raven with a dismal cheer, Through his hoarse beak of following horror tells." That tend on mortal thoughts. Mortal here is put for deadly. In another part of this play we have "the mortal sword," and "mortal murders." "Mortal war," and "mortal hatred," were current phrases. 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 The old copies have hit, the old form of the pronoun it, as Tooke has shown. 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 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 that in the text: "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." Coleridge has the following observation on this speech :-"Lady Macbeth, like all in Shakespeare, is a class individualized;—of high rank, left much alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences and the realities of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal agony. Her speech is that of one who had habitually familiarized her imagination to dreadful conceptions, and was trying to do so still more. Her invocations and requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind accustomed only hitherto to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough to throw the every-day sub Enter МАСВЕТН. Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter! Macb. Duncan comes here to-night. My dearest love, And when goes hence? O, never Macb. To-morrow, as he purposes. Lady M. Lady M. Shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men But be the serpent under it. He that's coming Lady M. To alter favour 11 ever is to fear: Leave all the rest to me. Only look up clear; [Exeunt. stances of life into shadow, but never as yet brought into direct contact with their own correspondent realities." 10 This ignorant present, i. e. beyond the present time, which is, according to the process of nature, ignorant of the future. 11 Favour is countenance. SCENE VI. The same. Before the Castle. Hautboys. Servants of Macbeth attending. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, BANQUO, LENOX, MACDUFF, ROSSE, ANGUS, and Attendants. Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. Ban. This guest of summer, Buttress, nor coigne of vantage1, but this bird 1 Buttress nor coigne of vantage. Coigne is a corner-stone; the finish of a building at the angle. So in Coriolanus, Act v. Sc. 4:"See you yon coigne o' the capitol ? yon corner-stone." 2 "This short dialogue," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "has always appeared to me a striking instance of what in painting is termed repose. The conversation very naturally turns upon the beauty of the castle's situation, and the pleasantness of the air; and Banquo, observing the martlet's nests in every recess of the cornice, remarks, that where those birds most breed and haunt the air is delicate. The subject of this quiet and easy conversation gives that repose so necessary to the mind after the tumultuous bustle of the preceding scenes, and perfectly contrasts the scene of horror that immediately succeeds. It seems as if Shakespeare asked himself, What is a prince likely to say to his attendants on such an occasion? Whereas the modern writers seem, on the contrary, to be always searching for new thoughts, such as would never occur to men in the situation which is represented. This also is frequently the practice of Homer, who, from the midst of battles and horrors relieves and refreshes the mind of the reader, by introducing some quiet rural image or picture of familiar domestic life." It is very incorrectly given in both the folios: where we have barlet for martlet, must for most, and absurd |