Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary se'nnights nine times nine

Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine:

20

22. se'nnights] Seu'nights Ff. seven-nights Steev. (1773, 1778, 1785), Rann, Dyce.

20. pent-house] MALONE. In Decker's Gull's Horne-book [p. 79 of the Reprint, 1812. CLARENDON]: The two eyes are the glasse windowes, at which light disperses itself into every roome, having goodlie pent-houses of haire to overshaddow them.' So in David and Goliah, by Drayton, 1. 373: His brows, like two steep penthouses, hung down Over his eyelids.'

HALLIWELL. Without money how is a man unman'd? How mellancholly doth he sit with his hat like a pent-house over the shop of his eyes.'-Poor Robin's Hue and Cry after Money, 1689.

CLARENDON. In the present passage the eyelid is so called without any reference to the eyebrow, simply because it slopes like the roof of a pent-house or lean-to. 'Pent-house' is a corruption of the French appentis, an appendage to a house, an out-house. So we have cray-fish' from écrevisse, and 'causeway' from chaussée. It is used in the sense of the Latin testudo in Fairfax's Tasso, Bk. xi, st. 33: 'And o'er their heads an iron penthouse vast They built by joining many a shield and targe.'

21. forbid] THEOBALD. As under a curse, an interdiction. So IV, iii, 107.

JOHNSON. To bid is originally to pray. As to forbid, therefore, implies to prohibit, in opposition to the word bid in its present sense, it signifies, by the same kind of opposition, to curse, when it is derived from the same word in its primitive meaning.

STEEVENS. A forbodin fellow, Scotticè, signifies an unhappy one.

SINGER. That is, forspoken, unhappy, charmed, or bewitched. Theobald's and Johnson's explanation is erroneous.

DYCE (Gloss.). Under a curse, forspoken, bewitched.

23. dwindle] STEEVENS. This mischief was supposed to be done by means of a waxen figure, representing the person to be consumed by slow degrees. In Webster's Duchess of Malfy, IV, i [p. 262, DYCE's ed. 1830]:

it wastes me more

Than wer't my picture, fashion'd out of wax,
Stuck with a magical needle, and then buried
In some foul dung-hill.'

[See Appendix, pp. 356, 357. ED.]

Make an image in his name, whom under the right arme-poke whereof

STAUNTON. In Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft there is 'A charme teaching how to hurt whom you list with images of wax, &c. you would hurt or kill, of new virgine wax; place a swallow's heart, and the liver under the left; then hang about the neck thereof a new thred in a new needle pricked into the member which you would have hurt, with the rehearsall of certain words,' &c.

23. pine] WHITE. Pining away, the disease now known as marasmus, was one of the evils most commonly attributed to witchcraft; because by the inferior pathological knowledge of the days when witches were believed in, it could be attributed to no physiological cause.

Though his bark cannot be lost,

Yet it shall be tempest-tost.

Look what I have.

Sec. Witch.

Show me, show me.

25

First Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb,

Wreck'd as homeward he did come.

Third Witch. A drum, a drum!

Macbeth doth come.

[Drum within.

30

32. weird] weird Theob. weyward Ff, Rowe, +. weyard Ktly.

CLARENDON. See Rich. III: III, iv, 70. We have 'peak' in Ham. II, ii, 594. 25. tempest-tost] STEEVENS. In Newes from Scotland, already quoted: 'Againe it is confessed, that the said christened cat was the cause of the Kinges Majesties shippe, at his coming forthe of Denmarke, had a contrarie winde to the rest of the shippes then beeing in his companie, which thing was most straunge and true, as the Kinges Majestie acknowledgeth, for when the rest of the shippes had a faire and good winde, then was the winde contrarie and altogether against his Majestie.'

32. The...hand] SEYMOUR. It has been suggested by Mr. Strutt that the play should properly begin here; and, indeed, all that has preceded might well be omitted. Rosse and Angus express everything material that is contained in the third scene; and as Macbeth is the great object of the witches, all that we hear of the sailor and his wife is rather ludicrous and impertinent than solemn and material. I strongly suspect it is spurious.

C. LOFFT. The play would certainly begin much more dramatically at this line, or preferably, I think, a line higher. Macbeth doth come!' uttered with solemn horror by one of the prophetic sisters, would immediately fix and appropriate the incantation, and give it an awful dignity by determining its reference to the great object of the play.

32. weird] THEOBALD. This word [wayward], in general, signifies perverse, froward, moody, &c., and is everywhere so used by Sh., as in Two Gent. of Ver., Love's Lab. Lost, and Macbeth. It is improbable the Witches would adopt this epithet to themselves in any of these senses. When I had the first suspicion of our author's being corrupt in this place, it brought to mind this passage in CHAUCER'S Troilus and Cresseide, iii, 618: But, O Fortune, executrix of wierdes,' which word the Glossaries expound to us by Fates or Destinies. My suspicion was soon confirmed by happening to dip into Heylin's Cosmography, where he makes a short recital of the story of Macbeth and Banquo: These two travelling together through a Forest were met by three Fairies, Witches, Wierds, the Scots call them,' &c. I presently recollected that this story must be recorded at more length by Holingshead, with whom I thought it was very probable that our author had traded for the materials of his tragedy, and therefore confirmation was to be fetch'd from this fountain. Accordingly, looking into his History of Scotland, I found the writer very prolix and express, from Hector Boethius, in this remarkable story; and in p. 170, speaking of these Witches, he uses this expression: “But afterwards the common opinion was, that these women were either the weird Sisters, that is, as ye would say, the

Posters of the sea and land,

Thus do go about, about:

Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine.

35. Thrice] Thice F.

35

Goddesses of Destiny,' &c. Again: The words of the three weird sisters also (of whom ye have heard) greatly encouraged him thereunto.' I believe by this time it is plain, beyond a doubt, that the word Wayward has obtain'd in Macbeth, where the witches are spoken of from the ignorance of the Copyists, and that in every passage where there is any relation to these Witches or Wizards my emendation must be embraced, and we must read weird.

STEEVENS. From the Saxon wyrd, fatum. Gawin Douglas translates Prohibent nam cetera parca Scire' (Æn. iii, 379) by The weird sisteris defendis that suld be wit.'-p. So.

MALONE. Be aventure Makbeth and Banquho were passand to Fores, quhair kyng Duncane hapnit to be for ye tyme, and met be ye gait thre women clothit in elrage and uncouth weid. They wer jugit be the pepill to be weird sisters.'-Bellenden's trans. of Hector Boethius.

NARES. In The Birth of Saint George' it means a witch or enchantress: To the weird lady of the woods.'-Percy's Rel. iii, p. 221.

KNIGHT. We cannot agree with TIECK that the word is wayward-wilful. The word is written weyward in the original to mark that it consists of two syllables. DYCE (Remarks, &c.). In Ortus Vocabulorum, 1514, we find: 'Cloto...anglice, one of the thre wyrde systers.

HUNTER (New Illus.' ii, 162). There is no just pretence for supplanting 'wayward' and substituting 'weird.' 'Weird' may be the more proper-the more scientific term; it may come nearer the etymological root, it may be the derivative of some ancient root of word, as fatum of for, and wayward' may suggest an erroneous origin and a wrong meaning, since we have the word 'wayward' in a wellknown sense; but notwithstanding this, an editor ought not to think himself at liberty to print weird,' the author having written wayward, to the manifest injury of the verse, though the facts just named would form a very proper subject for a note, in which we were to be informed who and what the wayward sisters were, and why they were so designated. Sh. is by no means peculiar in writing wayward.' Heywood, in his The Late Witches of Lancashire, has, You look like one of the Scottish wayward sisters.'

WHITE. This word should be pronounced wayrd (ei as in 'obeisance,' 'freight,' 'weight,' ' either,' 'neither') and not weerd, as it usually is.

CLARENDON. Weird' is given in Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary as a verb, to determine or assign as one's fate, also to predict. He gives also 'weirdly,' i. e. happy, and weirdless,' i. e. unhappy.

34. Thus...nine] CLARENDON. They here take hold of hands and dance round in a ring nine times, three rounds for each witch. Multiples of three and nine were specially affected by witches ancient and modern. See Ovid, Metam. xiv, 58: 'Ter novies carmen magico demurmurat ore,' and vii, 189–191: 'Ter se convertit; ter sumptis flumine crinem Irroravit aquis; ternis ululatibus ora Solvit.'

36. KNIGHT. There really appears no foundation for Steevens's supposition that this scene was uniformly metrical. It is a mixture of blank-verse with the

Peace! the charm's wound up.

Enter MACBETH and BANQUO.

Macb. So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Ban. How far is't call'd to Forres? What are these

So wither'd, and so wild in their attire,

40

That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,

And yet are on't?-Live you? or are you aught

That man may question? You seem to understand me,

By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

37. Banquo.] Banquo, with Soldiers and other Attendants. Rowe, +. Banquo, journeying; Soldiers, and Others, at a Distance. Cap.

38. SCENE IV. Pope, +.

45

+. Soris Ff, Rowe. Fores Coll. (MS). 41. the inhabitants o' the] inhabitants of Pope, Han.

44. choppy] chappy Coll. Dyce, Glo. White.

39. Forres] H. Rowe. Foris Pope, seven-syllable rhyme, producing from its variety a wild and solemn effect which no regularity could have achieved. 'Where...swine' [lines 1 and 2] is a line of blank verse; line 3 is a dramatic hemistich. We have then four lines of blank verse before the lyrical movement, But in a sieve,' &c. 'I'll...another' [11-13] is a ten-syllable line rhyming with the following octo-syllabic line. So, in the same manner, I' the...hay: is a ten-syllable line, rhyming with the following one of seven syllables.

38. foul and fair] ELWIN. Foul with regard to the weather, and fair with reference to his victory.

DELIUS. Macbeth enters engaged in talking with Banquo about the varying fortune of the day of battle which they had just experienced. Day' as equivalent to 'day of battle' was frequently used.

CLARENDON. A day changing so suddenly from fine to stormy, the storm being the work of witchcraft.

39. Forres] CLARENDON. Forres is near the Moray Frith, about halfway between Elgin and Nairn.

40. wither'd] DAVIES (ii, 75). When James I. asked Sir John Harrington, 'Why the devil did work more with ancient women than others?' Sir John replied: 'We were taught hereof in Scripture, where, it is told, that the devil walketh in dry places.'

43. question] JOHNSON. Are ye any beings with which man is permitted to hold converse, or of whom it is lawful to ask questions?

HUNTER. To me it appears to mean, Are you beings capable of hearing questions put to you, and of returning answers? And with this meaning what Banquo next says is more congruous.

45. should] See I, ii, 46.

46. beards] STAUNTON. Witches, according to the popular belief, were always bearded. So in The Honest Man's Fortune,' II, i: ‘————— and the wom.en that Come to us, for disguises must wear beards; And that's to say, a token of a witch.'

That you are so.
Macb.

Speak, if you can: what are you?

First Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis ! Sec. Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!

Third Witch. All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter! Ban. Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?-I' the name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

51

Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner

You greet with present grace and great prediction
Of noble having, and of royal hope,

That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not:

50. that shalt] thou shalt H. Rowe, Glo.

52.

[To the Witches. Rowe, +.

57.

rapt] Pope. wrapt Ff.

55

48. Glamis] SEYMOUR. This is, in Scotland, always pronounced as a monosyllable, with the open sound of the first vowel, as in alms. The four lines [I, v, 13, I, v, 52, II, ii, 42, and III, i, 1] appear to exhibit the word as a dissyllable, a mistake somewhat similar to that by which, in Ireland, James and Charles are so extendedJames and Charlès.

STEEVENS. The thaneship of Glamis was the ancient inheritance of Macbeth's family. The castle where they lived is still standing. See a particular description of it in Gray's letter to Dr. Wharton, dated from Glames Castle.

53. fantastical] JOHNSON. That is, creatures of fantasy or imagination. [See Holinshed. Appendix, p. 363. ED.]

53. ye] ABBOTT, 8 236. In the original form of the language ye is nominative, you accusative. This distinction, however, though observed in our version of the Bible, was disregarded by Elizabethan authors, and ye seems to be generally used in questions, entreaties, and rhetorical appeals. Ben Jonson says: The second person plural is for reverence sake to some singular thing.' See lines 54, 55, 57, 58.

55. present grace] HUNTER. There is here a skilful reference to the thrice repeated Hail' of the witches. 'Thane of Glamis' he was; that is the 'present grace;' but Thane of Cawdor' was only predicted; this is the noble having;' the prospect of royalty is only hope,' of royal hope.'

56. having] STEEVENS. That is, estate, possession, fortune. See Twelfth N. III, iv, 379. Merry Wives, III, ii, 73.

CLARENDON. In IV, iii, 81, where we read my more-having,' so hyphened in the folio, having' is not a substantive.

UPTON (p. 300) gives this as an instance of Sh.'s knowledge of Greek, in that it is equivalent to Exela, habentia. FARMER (p. 19, ed. 2) contradicts, and shows that it was common language of Sh.'s time. ED.

57. rapt] STEEVENS. That is, rapturously affected, extra se raptus.

CLARENDON. F, is by no means consistent in the spelling of this word. In Timon, I, i, 19, it has rapt.' Of course from its etymology, rapere, raptus, it should be spelt rapt,' but the wrong spelling was used even by Locke (as quoted by Johnson).