Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue : look like the innocent flower, Must be provided for: and you shall put To alter favour ever is to fear :* Leave all the rest to me. Only look up clear; [Exeunt. SCENE VI. The same. Before the Castle. Hautboys. Servants of MACBETH attending. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, BANQUO, LENOX, MACDUFF, ROSSE, ANGUS, and Attendants. Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat;m the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. Ban. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his lov❜d mansionry, that the heaven's breath, To alter favour ever is to fear:] i. e. To change countenance always creates alarm and suspicion.-SEYMOUR. 1 The following short dialogue between Duncan and Banquo, whilst they are approaching the gates of Macbeth's castle, has always appeared to me a striking instance of what in painting is termed repose. Their conversation very naturally turns upon the beauty of its situation, and the pleasantness of the air; and Banquo observing the martlets' nests in every recess of the cornice, remarks, that where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is delicate. The subject of this quiet and easy conversation gives that repose so necessary to the mind after the tumultuous bustle of the preceding scenes, and perfectly contrasts the scene of horror that immediately succeeds. It seems as if Shakspeare asked himself, What is a prince likely to say to his attendants on such an occasion? Whereas the modern writers seem, on the contrary, to be always searching for new thoughts, such as would never occur to men in the situation which is represented. This also is frequently the practice of Homer, who, from the midst of battles and horrors, relieves and refreshes the mind of the reader, by introducing some quiet rural image, or picture of familiar domestic life. Sir J. REYNOLDS. Smells wooingly here: no jutty,'frieze, Buttress, nor coigne of vantage," but this bird Dun. Enter Lady MAСВЕТИ. See, see! our honour'd hostess ! The love that follows us, sometime is our trouble, All our service We rest your hermits.P Dun. Where's the thane of Cawdor? We cours'd him at the heels, and had a purpose And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him We are your guest to-night. Lady M. Your servants ever Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt, Still to return your own. Dun.. Give me your hand: Conduct me to mine host; we love him highly, n coigne of vantage,] Convenient corner. [Exeunt. God yield us- i. e. God bless, or reward us. The sense of the whole passage is, that the love which induced any one to follow another, as that of Duncan had Macbeth, is sometimes a trouble to the object of it, though he overlooks the trouble; or rather receives it thankfully, on account of the attachment that it evinces. In stating this, Duncan says, that he teaches Lady Macbeth, why she should bid God yield him, i. e. pray to God to bless him, for the pains which his visit is giving her. hermits.] i. e. Beadsmen, who will always pray for you. The same. Hautboys and torches. SCENE VII. A Room in the Castle. Enter, and pass over the stage, a Sewer, and divers Servants with dishes and service. enter MACBETH. Then Macb. If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly: If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, And pity, like a naked new-born babe, r Enter ―a Sewer,] A sewer was as an officer so called from his placing the dishes upon the table. Asseour, French; from asseoir, to place. S t trammel up-] i. e. Confine, tie up. his surcease,] i. e. Cessation. I think Mr. M. Mason is right in supposing these words to allude to the death of Duncan, and not to the completion of the assassination, as is generally conceived. " Commends-] i. e. Offers, holds out. "The pricke of conscience," says Holinshed, "caused Macbeth ever to feare, lest he should be served of the same cup as he had ministered to his predecessor." faculties so meek,] Faculties, for exercise of power; meek, for meekly. sightless couriers of the air,] i. e. The invisible winds. in every eye,] Ought we not to read, in every ear? That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur And falls on the other."-How now, what news? Enter Lady MACBETH. Lady M. He has almost supp'd; Why have you left the chamber? Macb. Hath he ask'd for me? Know you not, he has? Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Lady M. Was the hope drunk, Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since? At what it did so freely? Such I account thy love. From this time, Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valour, As thou art in desire? Would'st thou have that a - falls on the other.] Sir Thomas Hanmer completed this defective line, by adding the word side. This was probably the word which Macbeth was on the point of uttering, but he starts at the sudden interruption caused by his wife's entrance, and leaves his sentence unconcluded. b Enter Lady-] The arguments by which lady Macbeth persuades her husband to commit the murder, afford a proof of Shakspeare's knowledge of human nature. She urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism Macbeth has for ever destroyed, by distinguishing true from false fortitude in a line and a half; of which it may almost be said, that they ought to bestow immortality on the author, though all his other productions had been lost : I dare do all that may become a man, Who dares do more, is none. This topick, which has been always employed with too much success, is used in this scene, with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman. Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier; and the reproach of cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great impatience. She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan ; another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them this argument Shakspeare, whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might easily have shewn that a former obligation could not be vacated by a latter; that obligations, laid on us by a higher power, could not be overruled by obligations which we lay upon ourselves.-Johnson. ; Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, Macb. Pr'ythee, peace; I dare do all that may become a man; What beast was it then, Lady M. That made you break this enterprize to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man ; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place, Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck; and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn, as you Have done to this. Macb. Lady M. If we should fail, We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking place, < Like the poor cat i' the adage?] The adage alluded to is, The cat loves fish, but dares not wet her feet: "Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas."-JOHNSON. d sticking place,] i. e. The place from which it is not to move. Shakspeare took his metaphor from the screwing up the chords of string instruments to their proper degree of tension, when the key remains fast in the sticking place. STEEVENS. e Will I with wine and wassal so convince, &c.] To convince is, in Shakspeare, to overpower, or subdue. What was anciently called was-haile, (as appears from Selden's notes on the ninth song of Drayton's Polyolbion) was an annual custom observed in the country on the vigil of the new year; and had its beginning, as some say, from the words which Ronix, daughter of Hengist, used, when she drank to Vortigern, loverd king was-heil; he answering her, by di-rection of an interpreter, drinc-heile. Afterwards, it appears that was-haile, and drinc-heil, were the usual phrases of quaffing among the English; but wassel is sometimes used for general riot, intemperance, or festivity. On the present occasion I believe it means intemperance.—STEEVENS. warder-] i. e. Guard, sentinel. |