144-155. Time ... sights! This speech of course is spoken by Macbeth to himself. Lennox is supposed not to overhear it.

144. anticipatest, preventest. So contrariwise we have 'prevent' used in old authors where we should say 'anticipate.'

145. flighty, fleeting, swiftly passing. The word is not used by our author elsewhere. For the general sense, compare All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3. 40:

Ib. o'ertook.

For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees

The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
Steals ere we can effect them.'

See note on iii. 4. 109. This form of the participle is found in Hamlet, ii. 1. 58. 'O'erta'en' is used in All's Well that Ends Well, iii. 4. 24.

147. firstlings, earliest offspring. In Troilus and Cressida, Prologue 27, it is used metaphorically for the earliest incidents:

'The vaunt and firstlings of those broils.'

Here it is for the first conceptions of the heart and the first acts of the hand. 153. As this line has one foot too much, Johnson proposed to read: 'That trace his line,' which Steevens adopted.

Ib. trace him in his line. Trace' is used in the sense of follow in another's track,' as here, in Hamlet, v. 2. 125: His semblable is his mirror; and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.' So in I Henry IV. iii. 1. 47:

And bring him out that is but woman's son

Can trace me in the tedious ways of art.'

155. sights. Mr. Collier follows his MS. Corrector in reading 'flights.' Mr. R. G. White reads 'sprites.' To us the text seems unquestionably right.

Scene II.

The scene of the murder of Lady Macduff and her children is traditionally placed at Dunne-marle Castle, Culross, Perthshire.

7. bis titles, all that he had a title to; not merely the designations of his rank.

9. natural touch, natural sensibility, or feeling. Compare Tempest, v. i. 21: Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

is taken from the fits of an intermittent fever. It occurs again in Coriolanus, iii. 2. 33:

The violent fit o' the time craves it as physic

For the whole state.'

18, 19. when we are traitors And do not know ourselves, when we are held to be traitors and are yet unconscious of guilt.

19, 20. when we bold rumour From what we fear, &c. It is uncertain whether this very difficult expression means 'when we interpret rumour in accordance with our fear,' or 'when our reputation is derived from actions which our fear dictates,' as Lady Macduff has said in lines 3, 4:

'When our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors.'

Others would give to 'hold' the sense of 'receive,' 'believe.' A somewhat similar passage is found in King John, iv. 2. 145:

I find the people strangely fantasied;

Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams,

Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.'

6

'From ' is used for 'in consequence of' in iii. 6. 21: From broad words.' 22. Each way and move. Theobald conjectured that we should read, Each way and wave'; Capell,' And move each way'; Johnson, ‘Each way, and move'; Steevens, And each way move'; and Dr. Ingleby, Which way we move.' The passage, as it stands, is equally obscure whether we take 'move' as a verb or a substantive, and no one of the emendations suggested seems to us satisfactory. The following, which we put forward with some confidence, yields, by the change of two letters only, a good and forcible sense: 'Each way, and none.' That is, we are floating in every direction upon a violent sea of uncertainty, and yet make no way. We have a similar antithesis, The Merchant of Venice, i. 2. 65 (Globe ed.): He is every man in no man.' 23. Shall not, &c., i.e. I shall not, &c. Hanmer read 'I shall.' 29. I should disgrace my manhood by weeping, and distress you. Compare Henry V. iv. 6. 30:

But I had not so much of man in me,

And all my mother came into mine eyes,
And gave me up to tears.'

30. Sirrah, used to an inferior, iii. 1. 44, and here playfully to the child; as Leontes, in Winter's Tale, i. 2. 135, calls Mamilius 'sir page.' Compare 2 Henry IV. i. 2. I; and I Henry VI. i. 4. I.

32. with worms, on worms. Compare Richard II. iii. 2. 175:

'I live with bread like you.'

and I Henry IV. iii. 1. 162:

'I had rather live

With cheese and garlic in a windmill.'

See also v. 5. 13 of this play, and note.

34. lime, birdlime. Compare The Tempest, iv. i. 246: put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest.'

Monster, come,

35. gin, snare, trap. Compare Twelfth Night, ii. 5. 92: Now is the woodcock near the gin.' And Ps. cxl. 5: They have set gins for me.' The word is derived from the Lat. ingenium, whence engine,' anything wrought

36. It may be doubted whether the word 'they' refers to the various traps just mentioned, reading 'Poor birds' as the objective case following 'set for,' or whether it is a repetition of 'Poor birds,' taken as a nominative, as in iv. 3. 11, What you have spoke, it . . . In either case the emphasis is on 'Poor,' and the meaning is that in life traps are set not for the poor but for the rich. The boy's precocious intelligence enhances the pity of his early death.

47. swears and lies, swears allegiance and perjures himself. The boy, lines 51, 56-58, uses 'liars' and 'swearers' in the ordinary sense.

50. Traitors were hanged, drawn, and quartered.

56. enow, used with plural nouns, as 'enough' with singular. For the latter see 1. 43. Compare also ii. 3. 7, and note.

57. bang up them. So Romeo and Juliet, iv. 2. 41:

Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her.'

And Richard II. i. 3. 131:

i. e. set you on.

'With rival-hating envy set on you
To wake our peace.'

65. Though I am well acquainted with your rank and condition. For the expression state of honour,' compare Richard III. iii. 7. 120:

'Your state of fortune and your due of birth.'

And for 'perfect,' Winter's Tale, iii. 3. I:

'Thou art perfect then, our ship hath touch'd upon
The deserts of Bohemia.'

And I Henry IV. iii. 1. 203:

'That pretty Welsh

Which thou pour'st down from these swelling heavens
I am too perfect in.'

66. I doubt, I fear. See King John, iv. 1. 19:

'But that I doubt

My uncle practises more harm to me.'

See also Richard II. iii. 4. 69, and our note on that passage.

69. fright, frighten, affright. Frequent in Shakespeare, e. g. Richard II. i. 3. 137:

'Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace.'

70. He would do worse' to her if he refrained from warning her of the approaching danger. For worse' Hanmer and Capell read less,' Warburton 'worship.'

Ib. fell. This word is said to have a Celtic origin. It is fello in Italian, fel in Old French and Provençal. Florio gives, in his Italian Dictionary, 'Fello, fell, cruel, moodie, inexorable, fellonious, murderous.' Hence 'fellone,' a felon. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 1. 22:

'And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.'

75. sometime and 'sometimes' are used indifferently either signification, not distinguished as in our time. Richard II. i. 2. 54: Thy sometimes brother's wife.' iv. 1. 169:

by Shakespeare, with Compare i. 6. 11, and Again, in Richard II.

82. sbag-bair'd. This is Steevens's conjectural emendation for 'shag-ear'd,' which is the reading of the folio, and it is a more suitable epithet for the stage murderer, whose features are almost concealed under his shock of wild hair. We have the same epithet in 2 Henry VI. iii. 1. 367:

'Like a shag-hair'd crafty kern.'

Ib. you egg! Compare Love's Labour's Lost, v. I. 78, where Costard calls little Moth thou pigeon-egg of discretion.' Thersites, in Troilus and Cressida, v. 1. 41, applies to Patroclus the term 'finch-egg,' expressive of his utter insignificance, moral smallness. He had just spoken of such waterflies, diminutives of nature.'

84. fry. A change of metaphor, suggested by the preceding egg.' Compare Pericles, ii. I. 34: A' [i. e. the whale] plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful.'

Scene III.

6

Before the King's palace. So Dyce. Former editors generally gave A room in the King's Palace.' The words in line 140, Comes the king forth, I pray you?' seem to support the change. As usual there is no indication of place in the folio. The scene which follows is grounded on Holinshed. See the passage printed at length in the Preface. The poet no doubt felt that it was needed to supplement the meagre parts assigned to Malcolm and Macduff.

3. mortal, deadly. See King John, iii. 1. 259:

France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue,
The chafed lion by the mortal paw,

A fasting tiger safer by the tooth,

Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.'

Ib. good men, brave men.

See Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. 197:

'I knew thy grandsire,

And once fought with him: he was a soldier good.'

4. birthdom, spelt 'birthdome' in the folios, whence Johnson conjectured 'birth-dame.' Pope printed birth-doom.' 'Birthdom' is formed on the analogy of kingdom,' ' earldom,' 'masterdom,' i. 5. 68, with this difference that king,'earl,' 'master,' designate persons, and birth' a condition. the termination-dom' is connected with 'doom,' and 'kingdom' signifies the extent of a king's jurisdiction. It loses its original force when joined to adjectives, as in freedom,' wisdom,' &c., and is then equivalent to the German -beit, in Weisheit, Freiheit, our '-hood.' 'Birthdom' here does not, as we think, signify 'birthright,' but the land of our birth,' now struck down and prostrate beneath the usurper's feet. Compare 2 Henry IV. i. 1. 207, where the Archbishop of York, urging the people to deliver their country from Henry's tyranny,

Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,
Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke.'

6. Strike heaven on the face. A somewhat similar hyperbole occurs in The

Tempest, i. 2. 4:

But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,

Dashes the fire out.'

Again, The Merchant of Venice, ii. 7. 45:

'The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head
Spits in the face of heaven.'

We have also the face of heaven' in Richard III. iv. 4. 239; the cloudy
cheeks of heaven' in Richard II. iii. 3. 57.
heaven' in i. 3. 275, and the searching eye

same play.

Ib. that.

Compare 2. 58; i. 7. 8.

The sun is called 'the eye of of heaven' in iii. 2. 37, of the

8. syllable. Pope changed this to 'syllables,' unnecessarily. A single cry, the expression of grief of each new widow and orphan is in each case reechoed by heaven.

Ib. dolour, frequently used by Shakespeare. See, for example, Richard II. i. 3. 257:

To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.'

10. As I shall find the time to friend. 1. 143:

Compare Julius Cæsar, iii.

'I know that we shall have him well to friend,'

and All's Well that Ends Well, v. 3. 182:

'Sir, for my thoughts, you have them ill to friend
Till your deeds gain them.'

For the construction see The Tempest, iii. 3. 54:

So we find

'take,' &c.

'Destiny

That hath to instrument this lower world.'

frequently in the Bible to wife' with the verbs have,' give,' The verb is used in Henry V. iv. 5. 17:

'Disorder, that hath spoil'd us, friend us now!' The phrase 'at friend' occurs in Winter's Tale, v. I. 140: 'Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,

Can send his brother.'

11. What you have spoke, it. So Richard II. v. 5. 18:
'Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot.'

And King John, v. 7. 60: Heaven, he knows.' And 2 Henry IV. i. 1. 199 :
This word, rebellion, it had froze them up.'

12. whose sole name, whose mere name, whose name alone. So in Comedy of Errors, iii. 2. 64: My sole earth's heaven,' where' sole' really qualifies 'heaven,' not 'earth,' which it immediately precedes. Compare the phrase in the Collect for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity: of whose only gift it cometh,' &c.

Ib. blisters our tongues. Compare Romeo and Juliet, iii. 2. 90:
Blister'd be thy tongue

For such a wish!'

Compare also Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 335; and Winter's Tale, ii. 2. 33. The very name of the tyrant, once thought honest and proved to be so much the contrary, blisters the tongue that utters it as if it were in itself a lie.