Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present; Rosse. His absence, sir, Lays blame upon his promise. Please it your high ness To grace us with your royal company? Macb. The table 's full. Len. Macb. Where? Here is a place reserv'd, sir. Len. Here, my lord. What is 't that moves your Lords. What, my good lord? Macb. Thou canst not say, I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me. Rosse. Gentlemen, rise; his highness is not well. Lady M. Sit, worthy friends:-my lord is often thus, And hath been from his youth: 'pray you, keep seat; The fit is momentary; upon a thought9 1607, and ridiculously ascribed to Shakspeare: "We'll ha' the gbost i' th' white sheet sit at upper end o' th' table." Farmer. 7 Than pity for mischance!] This is one of Shakspeare's touches of nature. Macbeth, by these words, discovers a consciousness of guilt; and this circumstance could not fail to be recollected by a nice observer on the assassination of Banquo being publickly known. Not being rendered sufficiently callous by "hard use," Macbeth betrays himself (as Mr. Whateley has observed)" by an over-acted regard for Banquo, of whose absence from the feast he affects to complain, that he may not be suspected of knowing the cause, though at the same time he very unguardedly drops an allusion to that cause." Malone. These words do not seem to convey any consciousness of guilt on the part of Macbeth, or allusion to Banquo's murder, as Mr. Whateley supposes. Macbeth only means to say-" I have more cause to accuse him of unkindness for his absence, than to pity him for any accident or mischance that may have occasioned it." Douce. • Here, my lord. &c.] The old copy-my good lord; an Interpolation that spoils the metre. The compositor's eye had caught-good from the next speech but one. Steevens. 9 upon a thought - i. e. as speedily as thought can be exerted. So, in King Henry IV, P. I:" and, with a thought seven of the eleven I pay'd." Again, in Hamlet : He will again be well: If much you note him, Lady M. O proper stuff!* This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said, Authoriz'd by her grandam. Shame itself! Macb. Pr'ythee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you? Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.— If charnel-houses, and our graves, must send Those that we bury, back, our monuments 1 as swift "As meditation, or the thoughts of love." Steevens. ·extend his passion;] Prolong his suffering; make his fit longer. Johnson. 2 O proper stuff!] This speech is rather too long for the cir cumstances in which it is spoken. It had better begun atSbame itself! Johnson. Surely it required more than a few words, to argue Macbeth out of the horror that possessed him. M. Mason. 3- O, these flaws, and starts, (Impostors to true fear) would well become &c.] i.e. these flaws and starts, as they are indications of your needless fears, are the imitators or impostors only of those which arise from fear well grounded. Warburton. Flaws are sudden gusts. Johnson. So, in Coriolanus: "Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw." Steevens. Again, in Venus and Adonis : "Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds." Malone. Impostors to true fear, mean impostors when compared with true fear. Such is the force of the preposition to in this place. M. Mason. So, in King Henry VIII: "Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves, and strong ones; these are switches to them." Steevens. To may be used for of. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona we have an expression resembling this ; “Thou counterfeit to thy true friend." Malone, Shall be the maws of kites.4 Lady M. [Ghost disappears. What! quite unmann'd in folly ?5 Macb. If I stand here, I saw him. Lady M. Fy, for shame! Macb. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,6. Ere human statute purg'd the gentle weal ;7 With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, Lady M. My worthy lord, Your noble friends do lack you. 4 Shall be the maws of kites.] The same thought occurs in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. II, c. viii: "Be not entombed in the raven or the kight." Steevens. "In splendidissimum quemque captivum, non sine verborum contumelia, sæviit: ut quidem uni suppliciter sepulturam precanti respondisse dicatur, jam istam in volucrum fore potestatem." Sueton. in August. 13. Malone. 5 What! quite unmann'd in folly?] Would not this question be forcible enough without the two last words, which overflow the metre, and consequently may be suspected as interpolations? Steevens. 6 - i'the olden time,] Mr. M. Mason proposes to read"the golden time," meaning the golden age: but the ancient reading may be justified by Holinshed, who, speaking of the Witches, says, they "resembled creatures of the elder world," and in Twelfth Night we have .66 dallies with the innocence of love, "Like the old age." Again, in Thystorye of Facob and his twelve Sones, bl. 1 printed by Wynkyn de Worde: "Of dedes done in the olde tyme." Again, in our Liturgy and in the old time before them." Steevens. Ere human statute purg'd the gentle weal] The gentle veal, is, the peaceable community, the state made quiet and safe by buman statutes. "Mollia securæ peragebant otia gentes." Johnson. In my opinion it means "That state of innocence which did not require the aid of human laws to render it quiet and secure." M. Mason Macb. I do forget! Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends; I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that know me. Come, love and health to all; Then I'll sit down: Give me some wine, fill full: I drink to the general joy of the whole table, Ghost rises. And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss; Lords. Our duties, and the pledge. Macb. Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes? Lady M. Think of this, good peers, But as a thing of custom: 'tis no other; Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, Do not muse at me,] To muse anciently signified to wonder, to be in amaze. So, in King Henry IV, P. II, Act IV "I muse, you make so slight a question." ·Again, in All's Well that Ends Well: "And rather muse, than ask, why I intreat you." Steevens. to all, and him, we thirst,] We thirst, I suppose, means we desire to drink. So, in Julius Cæsar, Cassius says, when Brutus drinks to him, to bury all unkindness 66 My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge." M. Mason. 1 And all to all.] i. e. all good wishes to all; such as he had pamed above, love, health, and joy. Warburton. I once thought it should be bail to all, but I now think that the present reading is right. Johnson. Timon uses nearly the same expression to his guests, Act I; "All to you." Again, in King Henry VIII, more intelligibly: "And to you all good health." Steevens. 2 no speculation in those eyes Psalm: " -eyes have they, but see not." So, in the 115th Steevens. Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves -S 4. the Hyrcan tiger,] Theobald chooses to read, in oppo sition to the old copy Hyrcanian tiger; but the alteration was unnecessary, as Dr. Philemon Holland, in his translation of Pliny's Natural History, p. 122, mentions the Hyrcane sea. Tollet. Alteration certainly might be spared: in Riche's Second Part of Simonides, 4to. 1584, sign. C 1, we have-"Contrariewise these souldiers, like to Hircan tygers, revenge themselves on their own bowelles; some parricides, some fratricides, all homicides." Reed. Sir William D'Avenant unnecessarily altered this to Hircanian tiger, which was followed by Theobald, and others. Hircan tigers are mentioned by Daniel, our author's contemporary, in his Sonnets, 1594: 66 restore thy fierce and cruel mind "To Hircan tygers, and to ruthless beares." Malone. If trembling I inhibit-] Inhabit is the original reading, which Mr. Pope changed to inbibit, which inhibit Dr. Warbur ton interprets refuse. The old reading may stand, at least as well as the emendation. Johnson. Inbibit seems more likely to have been the poet's own word, as he uses it frequently in the sense required in this passage. Othello, Act I, sc. vii: 66 a practiser "Of arts inhibited." Hamlet, Act II, sc. vi: "I think their inhibition comes of the late innovation." To inhibit is to forbid. Steevens. I have not the least doubt that " inhibit thee," is the true reading. In All's Well that Ends Well, we find, in the second, and all the subsequent folios-“which is the most inhabited sin of the canon," instead of inhibited. The same error is found in Stowe's Survey of London, 4to. 1618, p. 772: "Also Robert Fabian writeth, that in the year 1506, the one and twentieth of Henry the Seventh, the said stew-houses in Southwarke were for a season inhabited, and the doores closed up, but it was not long, saith he, ere the houses there were set open again, so many as were permitted."-The passage is not in the printed copy of Fabian, but that writer left in manuscript a continuation of his Chronicle from the accession of King Henry VII to near the time of his own death, (1512) which was in Stowe's possession in the year 1600, but I believe is now lost. |