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22. For way,' Johnson conjectured May,' which Steevens adopted in his edition of 1778, and so the passage is popularly quoted. Very probably Shakespeare wrote May,' but we have not inserted it in the text, remembering with what careless profusion our poet heaps metaphor on metaphor. This mixture of metaphors, however, is not justified by quoting, as the commentators do, passages from Shakespeare and other authors, to prove that way of life' is a mere periphrasis for life.' The objection to it is, that it is immediately followed by another and different metaphor. If we were to read May' we should have a sense exactly parallel to a passage in Richard II. iii. 4. 48, 49:

'He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring

Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.'

Sidney Walker, whose knowledge and taste were excellent guides, had no doubt that we ought to read May.'

28. deny, refuse. See iii. 4. 128.

35. moe. So the first and second folios; altered in the third to more. Shakespeare used both forms. See Richard II. ii. 1. 239, and The Merchant of Venice, i. I. 108.

Ib. skirr, scour. Rapid, hurried movement is implied. We have the same word used intransitively, Henry V. iv. 7. 64:

We will come to them,

And make them skirr away.'

In Beaumont and Fletcher, Bonduca, i. I:

The light shadows

That in a thought scur o'er the fields of corn,'

we have the same word differently spelt.

39. Cure her.

So the second folio. The first omits her.' Perhaps the

author wrote Make cure of that.'

42. We have the same figure in Hamlet, i. 5. 103:

Within the book and volume of my brain.'

43. oblivious, causing forgetfulness, like obliviosus in Latin:

'Oblivioso levia Massico

Ciboria exple.' (Horace, Odes, ii. 7. 21.)

Among the meanings which Cotgrave gives to the French oblivieux, is 'causing forgetfulnesse.'

44. stuff'd ... stuff. This can hardly be right. One or other of these words must be due to a mistake of transcriber or printer. Pope read 'full' for 'stuff'd.' Others have conjectured foul,'' clogg'd,'' fraught,'' press'd.' Others, retaining 'stuff'd,' would alter 'stuff' to 'grief,' or 'matter,' or slough,' or 'freight.'

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46. I'll none of it. The omission of the verb adds to the emphasis of the phrase. So Proverbs, i. 25: But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof.'

48. staff, the general's baton.

50. Come, sir, dispatch. These words are addressed to the attendant who is buckling on the armour. The agitation of the speaker's mind is marked by his turning from one to the other. No sooner is the armour put on than he bids the man pull it off, line 54, and then line 58, orders it to be brought after him.

52. Compare iii. 4. 76.

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55. senna. The first folio has cyme'; the second and third 'caeny'; the fourth 'senna.' As Mr. Dyce says, the cyme' of the first folio was doubtless a misprint for cynne,' one of the many ways of spelling senna.' In Cotgrave it is spelt sene' and senne,' and defined to be a little purgative shrub or plant. By caeny,' the editor of the second folio meant the same thing. In Lyte's New Herbal, 1595, P. 437, is a chapter headed Of Sene.' In it he says the 'leaues of sena ... scoure away fleume and choler, especially blacke choler and melancholie.'

58. it, i. e. some part of the armour.

59. bane.

Here used in the general sense of 'harm,'' evil,' ' ruin.' More

frequently found in the special sense of 'poison.'

Scene IV.

2. That, loosely used as a relative for in which.'

Ib. chambers will be safe. As we say 'every man's house will be his castle.' For chambers' see King John, v. 2. 147:

'Shall that victorious hand be feebled here,

That in your chambers gave you chastisement,'

i. e. which pursued you into your very houses and punished you there. Ib. nothing. See i. 3. 96.

5. shadow, and so conceal.

6. discovery, reconnoitering, the report of scouts. Compare King Lear, v. 1. 53:

'Here is the guess of their true strength and forces
By diligent discovery.'

8. For other' followed by 'but,' see Hamlet, ii. 2. 56:
'I doubt it is no other but the main.'

Ib. but, but that. So Coriolanus, i. 2. 18:

'We never yet made doubt but Rome was ready

To answer us.'

9, 10. endure Our setting down, stand a regular siege from us. For 'set' where we should say 'sit,' used intransitively, see Coriolanus, i. 2. 28: 'Let us alone to guard Corioli:

If they set down before 's,' &c.

11, 12. This passage, as it stands, is not capable of any satisfactory explanation. Capell's reading, which nearly coincides with Johnson's conjecture, is as follows:

'For where there is advantage to be gone

Both more and less,' &c.

But we should have expected' was' rather than 'is,' unless indeed, 'where' be taken in the sense of 'wherever.'

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The meaning is, where they had

a favourable opportunity for deserting.' Steevens conjectured:

Where there is advantage to be got,'

which Mr. Collier's MS. Corrector adopted, changing only 'got' to gotten.' Lord Chedworth guessed taken,' and Sidney Walker ta'en,' for given.' But we rather incline to think that the word 'given' would not have been used in the second line, if it had not been already used in the

first, a play upon words very much in our author's manner. first line should stand thus:

or,

For where there is advantage given to flee,'
For where there is advantage to 'em given.'

Perhaps the

12. more and less, great and small. See 2 Henry IV. i. 1. 209: 'And more and less do flock to follow him.'

14, 15. Let our just censures Attend the true event. The meaning of this obscurely worded sentence must be: In order that our opinions may be just, let them await the event which will test their truth. The editor of the second folio introduced here a strange conjectural emendation which is more obscure than the original:

'Let our best censures

Before the true event.'

Rowe changed 'let' to 'set':

'Set our best censures

Before the true event,'

which gives indeed a sense, but scarcely that which is required.

15. the true event, the actual result, whose certainty is contrasted with the vagueness of the information received, insufficient, as Macduff says, for forming a just judgement.

15, 16. To put on soldiership' is on of armour. Compare ii. 3. 115.

metaphor suggested by the putting

18. owe is here used in the ordinary modern sense, opposed to have.' Siward says that the issue of a decisive battle will enable them to balance their accounts, as it were.

19. relate, give utterance to, tell.

20. arbitrate elsewhere in Shakespeare is followed by an accusative indicating not the issue' but the quarrel, as Richard II. i. 1. 50, 2c0, and King John, i. 1. 38.

Scene V.

5. forced, strengthened, reinforced. In Troilus and Cressida, v. 1. 64, "Wit larded with malice and malice forced with wit,' the word is used, as 'farced' elsewhere, in a culinary sense.

6. dareful does not occur again in Shakespeare.

8. Exit. This was inserted by Dyce. The folio has no stage direction here, nor at line 15, where Dyce, whom we have followed, put Re-enter Seyton.' Perhaps Seyton should not leave the stage, but an attendant should come and whisper the news of the Queen's death to him.

10. cool'd.

Malone and Collier think 'cool'd' too feeble a word for the sense required; the former proposes 'coil'd,' i.e. recoiled, the latter' quail'd.' But 'cool' is sometimes found in a sense stronger than that which it bears in modern language, as King John, ii. 1. 479:

'Lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath

Of soft petitions, pity and remorse,

Cool and congeal again to what it was.'

II. To hear a night-shriek. Delius supposes that he refers especially to the night of Duncan's murder, ii. 2. 58:

'Hów is't with me when every noise appals me?'

But the following words seem to imply that he is referring to still earlier days, when his feelings were unblunted and his conscience unburdened with guilt.

Ib. my fell of hair, the skin with the hair on. Cotgrave has, 'Peau : a skin; fell, hide, or pelt.' Florio (Ital. Dict.) gives: Vello, a fleece, a fell or skin that hath wooll on.' We find the word in King Lear, v. 3. 24: 'flesh and fell.' It is still extant in the word 'fell-monger.' 12. treatise, story, as in Much Ado about Nothing, i. 1. 317: 'But lest my liking might too sudden seem,

I would have salved it with a longer treatise.'

Ib. rouse, intransitive, as in iii. 2. 53.

13. As, as if. Compare King Lear, iii. 4. 15:

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to 't?'

For the sense of the passage compare Hamlet, iii. 4. 121:
'Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,

Starts up, and stands an end.'

Ib. supp'd full with horrors. With' here must be joined in construction not to 'full' but supp'd.' It is used as in iv. 2. 32, where see note. Compare also Measure for Measure, iv. 3. 159: 'I am fain to dine and sup with water and bran.'

15. once. See iv. 3. 167, and note.

Ib. start, startle. So All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3. 232: Every feather starts you.'

17. The complete calmness and apparent indifference with which Macbeth receives the news of his wife's death prove that his crimes and desperation had made him as incapable of feeling grief as fear.

18. for such a word, such a phrase as the Queen is dead.' Compare Richard II. i. 3. 152:

The hopeless word of "never to return."'

20. Creeps. Capell proposed to read 'Creep,' but Shakespeare frequently uses the singular verb with more than one nominative (see our note on i. 3. 147, of this play), and in this particular case the singular seems more suitable to the sense, each to-morrow creeps,' &c.

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22. fools. Hunter suggests foules,' i. e. crowds. But Macbeth is misanthropist enough to call all mankind' fools.'

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23. dusty. So the first folio. The subsequent folios, by a curious error, have study.' Hanmer adopted Theobald's very plausible conjecture, 'dusky,' which keeps up the metaphor. But dusky' seems too feeble an epithet to describe the darkness of the grave, and we should moreover, as we have before said, be very chary of making alterations in the text on account of any apparent confusion of metaphor. The epithet dusty' is suggested by such familiar phrases as the dust of death,'' dust to dust,' &c. The poet laureate was probably thinking of this passage when he wrote: The dusty crypt

Of bygone forms and faces.'

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24-26. Other references to the stage may be found, i. 3. 128, and ii. 4. 5,6, of this play. Compare also Troilus and Cressida, i. 3. 153: Like a strutting player.'

25. frets, chafes. Used, as here, intransitively in 3 Henry VI. i. 4. 91 : 'Stamp, rave, and fret,' where the word is also applied to the simulated passion of an actor.

30. Gracious my lord. 33. stand my watch.

See note, iii. 2. 27.

Watch' is here used as a cognate accusative.

'As

I stood and kept my watch.' We still say to stand sentinel,' 'to stand guard,' and also 'to stand one's ground.'

37. this three mile. We have the singular pronoun used with a numeral, even when the substantive which follows is put in the plural, as I Henry IV. iii. 3. 54 this two and thirty years.' For the singular 'mile,' see Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3. 17: 'I have known when he would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour.'

40. cling, wither, shrivel, from Anglo-Saxon clingan, generally used as an intransitive verb. Compare Vision of Piers Ploughman, 9011:

6 Or whan thou clomsest for cold

Or clyngest for drye.'

Miege (Fr. Dict. 1688) has, Clung with hunger, maigre, sec, elancé, comme une personne affamée;' and ' To clung, as wood will do being laid up after it is cut, secher, devenir sec.' Moor, in his Suffolk Words, gives: Clung: shrunk, dried, shrivelled; said of apples, turnips, carrots,' &c. Compare Atkinson's Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect, s. v. ' Clung.'

Ib. sooth, truth, true. See i. 2. 36.

42. pull in, check, rein in. Compare Fletcher's Sea Voyage [Act iii. Sc. 1], quoted by Monck Mason:

'All my spirits,

As if they had heard my passing-bell go for me,

Pull in their powers and give me up to destiny.'

Johnson proposed to read ‘I pall in resolution.' This, or I pale in resolution,' better expresses the required sense, involuntary loss of heart and hope. Besides, as the text stands, we must emphasize 'in,' contrary to the rhythm of the verse.

47. avouches, guarantees as true. This, the more usual sense of the word, comes easily from its original signification, for which see note on iii. 1. 119.

49. 'gin, begin. See i. 2. 25.

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Ib. aweary. So The Merchant of Venice, i. 2. 2: My little body is aweary of this great world.' A writer in Notes and Queries has called attention to the fact that there is a reference to this passage in Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, part i. § 41: Methinks I have outlived myself, and begin to be weary of the sun.'

50. the estate of the world, the world's settled order. for estate,' which means the same thing.

i. 3. 140.

Compare

Pope read ' state state of man,' in

51. wrack is almost always spelt with an 'a' in the old editions, as doubtless it was pronounced. In i. 3. 114, the word is spelt wracke' in the first folio.

52. barness, armour.

So I Kings xxii. 34: A certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness.'