Macbeth

With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.

Macduff.

Despair thy charm;

And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

Macbeth. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!

And be these juggling fiends no more believed,

That palter with us in a double sense;

That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.
Macduff. Then yield thee, coward,

And live to be the show and gaze o' the time:
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,

Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,

'Here may you see the tyrant.'

Macbeth.

I will not yield,

ΙΟ

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries 'Hold, enough!'
[Exeunt, fighting. Alarums.

Retreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD, Ross, the other Thanes, and Soldiers.

Malcolm. I would the friends we miss were safe arrived. Siward. Some must go off: and yet, by these I see, So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

Malcolm. Macduff is missing, and your noble son.

Ross. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt:

He only lived but till he was a man;

The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd

In the unshrinking station where he fought,

But like a man he died.

Siward.

Then he is dead?

Ross. Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow Must not be measured by his worth, for then

It hath no end.

Siward.

Had he his hurts before?

Why then, God's soldier be he!

Ross. Ay, on the front.
Siward.

Had I as many sons as I have hairs,

I would not wish them to a fairer death:
And so his knell is knoll'd.

They say he parted well and paid his score:

And so God be with him! Here comes newer comfort.

Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH'S head.

Macduff. Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands The usurper's cursed head: the time is free:

I see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's pearl,
That speak my salutation in their minds;

Whose voices I desire aloud with mine:

Hail, King of Scotland!

All.

Hail, King of Scotland! [Flourish.

Malcolm. We shall not spend a large expense of time Before we reckon with your several loves, And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen, Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland In such an honour named. What's more to do, Which would be planted newly with the time, As calling home our exiled friends abroad

That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace
We will perform in measure, time and place:
So, thanks to all at once and to each one,
Whom we invite to see us crown'd at Scone.

[Flourish. Exeunt.

NOTES.

ACT I.

Scene I.

1. The folios put a note of interrogation after 'again.' Hanmer re

moved it.

2. burlyburly. We find in Cotgrave, 'Grabuge: f. A great coyle, stirre, garboyle, turmoyle, hurlyburly.' Shakespeare uses the word as an adjective I Henry IV. v. i. 78, 'hurlyburly innovation.' It is formed by onomatopœa from 'hurly,' which is also found in our author, 2 Henry IV. iii. 1. 25: "That with the hurly death itself awakes.'

So King John, iii. 4. 169:

'Methinks I see this hurly all on foot.'

'Hurly' is probably connected with the French burler, to howl or yell. The French word burluberlu meaning 'harum scarum,' is given by Littré as of unknown etymology. For many other examples of onomatopoea in English see Wheatley's Dictionary of Reduplicated Words, in the Transactions of the Philological Society, 1865. Familiar instances are 'hugger-mugger,' 'helter-skelter,' tittle-tattle,' all used by Shakespeare. Probably the modern hullabaloo' is a corruption of 'hurlyburly.' In speaking of Wat Tyler's rebellion, Holinshed (vol. ii. p. 1030) says: 'But euery where else the commons kept such like stur, so that it was rightly called the hurling time, there were such hurly burlyes kept in euery place, to ye great daunger of ouerthrowing the whole state of all good gouernment in this land.' And in Dido Queen of Carthage, written by Marlowe and Nash (p. 265, ed. Dyce, 1858),

'I think it was the Devil's revelling night,

There was such hurly burly in the heavens.'

3. Graymalkin, otherwise spelt Grimalkin, means a grey cat.

'Malkin

is a diminutive of Mary.' Maukin,' the same word, is still used in Scotland for a hare. The cat was supposed to be the form most commonly assumed by the familiar spirits of witches. Compare iv. I. I of this play:

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.'

5. the set of sun. Compare Richard III. v. 3. 19:

'The weary sun hath made a golden set.' We still use 'set' as a substantive in the compound sunset.'

9. Paddock, a toad. See Hamlet, iii. 4. 190:

For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide?'

So in Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, published in 1584: ‘Some say they [i. e. witches] can keepe divels and spirits in the likenesse of todes and cats.' Bk. i. ch. iv. In Cumberland 'toad-stools' are still called ' 'paddock-stools.' Cotgrave gives the word as equivalent to grenouille, a frog, and not to crapaud, a toad; and Chapman, in his Cæsar and Pompey, speaks of 'Paddockes, and todes and watersnakes.' Massinger also seems to use it for frog in A Very Woman, iii. I. In Anglo-Saxon a toad is pad or pada. Minsheu gives also 'Padde'='Bufo.' 'Paddock' is in its origin a diminutive from 'pad,' as 'hillock' from 'hill.'

There is some doubt as to the proper distribution of the dialogue here. The folios give the passage thus: 'All. Padock calls anon: faire is foule.... ayre,' which can scarcely be right, either in distribution or punctuation. 10. Anon, immediately. See I Henry IV. ii. 1. 5:

'First Carrier. What, ostler?

Ostler. Anon, anon."

II. The witches, whose moral sense is thoroughly perverted, who choose the devil for their master and do evil instead of good, love storm and rain as others love sunshine and calm.

Scene II.

A camp near Forres. This is Capell's designation of the place of Scene II. Rowe gave A Palace'; Theobald The Palace at Forres.' The folios have no indication of the place of each scene either in this or any other play. Holinshed mentions the appearance of the weird sisters to Macbeth as having taken place as he was on the road to join the king at Forres. See i. 3. 39.

In the stage direction the folios have a bleeding captaine,' but he is called a sergeant' in the third line of the scene. The word 'sergeant' is derived from the French sergent, Italian sergente, and they from Lat. serviens. So we have g for v in pioggia, abréger, alleggiare, alléger, &c. It originally meant a common foot-soldier. If 'sergeant' were pronounced as a trisyllable the metre of the line would be regular. But throughout this scene the measure is extremely irregular, owing doubtless in many cases to corruption of the text.

5. Here again the metre is imperfect.

6. Say to the king the knowledge, tell the king what you know. Sidney Walker proposed to read thy knowledge'; but this is not necessary.

Ib. broil would not now be used of a great battle. The word has degenerated in meaning since Shakespeare's time. Compare Othello, i. 3. 87: And little of this great world can I speak,

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle.'

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