SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the castle.

Enter Macbeth, SEYTON, and Soldiers, with
drum and colours,

Macbeth. Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still 'They come': our castle's strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up:
Were they not forced with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home. [A cry of women within.

What is that noise?

Seyton. It is the cry of women, my good lord. '[Exit.

Macbeth, I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd 10

To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.

Re-enter SEYTON.

Wherefore was that cry?

Seyton. The queen, my lord, is dead.

Macbeth. She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day so

To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Enter a Messenger.

Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

Messenger. Gracious my lord, 30

I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.

Macbeth. Well, say, sir.

Messenger. As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.

Macbeth. Liar and slave!

Messenger. Let me endure your wrath, if t be not so: Within this three mile may you see it coming; I say, a moving grove.

Macbeth. If thou speak'st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth, 40

I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I 'gin to be aweary of the sun,

And wish the estate o' the world were now undone. 50
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back. [Exeunt.

SCENE VI. Dunsinane. Before the castle.

Drum and colours. Enter MALCOLM, old SlWARD, MACDUFF, and their Army, with boughs.

Malcolm. Now near enough: your leavy screens throw down, . And show like those you are. You, worthy uncle,

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:

11. 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

9. choke their art, i. e. drown each other by rendering their skill in swimming useless. 'Choke' was anciently used of suffocation by water as well as by other means. See Mark v. 13: 'The herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea ... and were choked in the sea.'

Ib. Macdonwald. So the first folio. The other folios have 'Macdonnell.' He is called by Holinshed Macdowald.'

IO. to that, to that end.

13. Of, altered by Hanmer to 'With.' He and other editors, Pope especially, thought themselves justified in changing whatever was not sanctioned by the usage of their own day. Compare Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Bk. ii. 22. § 15: He is invested of a precedent disposition.' We should now say 'invested with.'

Ib. kerns and gallowglasses. This is from Holinshed. Kerns were lightarmed troops, having only darts, daggers or knives; the gallowglasses had helmet, coat of mail, long sword and axe. See our note on Richard II. ii. I.

6

156. The two are mentioned together in 2 Henry VI. iv. 9. 26:

'A puissant and a mighty power

Of gallowglasses and stout kerns.'

14. quarrel. This is an emendation first adopted in the text by Hanmer, and suggested independently by Warburton and Johnson. The folios have quarry,' which Knight retains, explaining damned quarry' to mean 'doomed prey'; i. e. the army of Macdonwald, on which fortune smiled deceitfully while betraying them, like Delilah, to their enemies. Fairfax, in his Translation of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, uses 'quarry' as well as 'quarrel,' for the square-headed bolt of a cross-bow. The word 'quarrel' occurs in Holinshed's account, and is doubtless the right word here.

15. Show'd, appeared. See Merchant of Venice, iv. 1. 196: 'And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.'

See also i. 3. 54 of this play.

Ib. all's too weak. We should have expected all was too weak.' The abbreviation 's for 'was' is not used elsewhere by Shakespeare, nor does the use of the historic present, preceded and followed by past tenses, seem at all probable. Pope cut the knot by reading 'all too weak.'

19. minion, i. e. mignon, darling. See Tempest, iv. 1. 98: 'Mars's hot minion is return'd again,'

and King John, ii. 1. 392:

'Fortune shall cull forth

Out of one side her happy minion.'

So Fairfax, Tasso, Bk. ix. st. 81:

A gentle page

The soldan's minion, darling and delight.'

And Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Bk. i. 4. § 4: 'Adonis, Venus' minion.' 20, 21. Till be faced the slave; Which ne'er, &c. There is some incurable corruption of the text here. For 'Which' Pope reads Who,' Capell 'And.'

sense, compare Lyly's Euphues, p. 75, ed. Arber: 'You haue made so large profer of your seruice, and so faire promises of fidelytie, that were I not ouer charie of mine honestie, you woulde inueigle me to shake bandes with chastitie'. But it is probable that some words are omitted, and that ‘Macbeth' is the antecedent to Which.' " It is scarcely necessary to remark that by Shakespeare and his contemporaries which' is frequently used with a masculine or feminine antecedent.

22. nave is, so far as we know, not found in any other passage for 'navel.' Though the two words are etymologically connected, their distinctive difference of meaning seems to have been preserved from very early times, nafu being Anglo-Saxon for the one and nafel for the other. Hanmer, on Warburton's suggestion, read 'nape' for 'nave'; but a passage quoted by Steevens, from Dido Queen of Carthage, gives great support to the old reading:

'Then from the navel to the throat at once
He ript old Priam.'

(Act ii. p. 258, ed. Dyce, 1858.)

24. Cousin. Macbeth and Duncan were first cousins, being both grandsons of King Malcolm.

25. As thunder and storm sometimes come from the East, the quarter from which men expect the sunrise, so out of victory a new danger springs. Ib. 'gins, begins. See v. 5. 49.

27. spring, source.

28. Discomfort swells. So the folios. Pope reads Discomfort swell'd'; Johnson, Discomforts well'd'; Capell, Discomfort wells.' 'Swells' seems the best word, indicating that, instead of a fertilizing stream, a desolating flood had poured from the spring.

30. skipping is an epithet appropriate enough to the rapid movements of the light-armed kerns.

31. Norweyan. So the folio. The spelling is the same i. 3. 95. In Holinshed it is Norwaygian.'

31. surveying vantage. We have the same phrase, in a somewhat different sense, in Richard III. v. 3. 15:

'Let us survey the vantage of the field.'

In the present passage' surveying' must be equivalent to 'perceiving.'

33, 34. This speech of Duncan's is printed as prose in the folio. The verse may be made regular by pronouncing captains' capitains,' as in 3 Henry VI. iv. 7. 30:

'A wise stout captain, and soon persuaded.'

Sidney Walker proposed Our captains twain.'

36. sooth, truth. So v. 5. 40, and Henry V. iii. 6. 151, 'To say the sooth.' 37. So they in the folios begins the next line. It seems more harmonious to make it end line 37. In either case we must have an Alexandrine. 37. overcharged with cracks is an awkward phrase, such as grammarians dignify with the title metonymy. The effect is put for the cause,

cracks' for charges.'