Book 1. When his wife enters, he tells her he is refolved to proceed no further in this fatal affair; and upon her calling him coward, he makes this fine reflection, I dare do all that may become a man ; Who dares do more is none. But what is will and refolution, when people's opinions are what the philofopher calls RKHPINAI ΥΠΟΛΗΨΕΙΣ? How does every honeft fuggeftion vanish, and resolution melt like wax before the fun, coming in competition with his ambition? For her fake (powerful phantom!) honour, honefty, all is facrificed. Macbeth is now king, and his wife a queen, in enjoyment of their utmost wishes. How dear the purchase, will foon appear. When he murders his royal hoft, he comes out with the bloody daggers. This circumftance, little as it feems, paints the hurry and agitation of his mind, ftronger than a thousand verfes. But Shakespeare is full of thefe true touches of nature. Methought I heard a voice cry, 9 Sleep no more, Macbeth doth murder fleep, the innocent fleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell'd fleeve of care, The death of each day's life, &c. 8 Epic. L. III. c. XVI. 9 Again, The repetition here-fleep no more, Macbeth doth murder fleep, the innocent fleep, &c. has fomething in it ele gantly Again looking on his hands, What bands are bere? bab! they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my band • ? 'Tis gantly pathetic.-fleep that knits up the ravell'd fleeve of care. The allufion is to fleav'd filk ravell'd: the allufion perhaps may appear trifling, but Shakespeare knows how to give trifles a new grace and dignity. 10 Shakespeare had this from his brother tragedians. So Hercules in Seneca : Artoum licet Maeotis in me gelida transfundet mare, Haerebit altum facinus. Hercul. Fur. Ac. V. 'Tis faid of Oedipus, in Sophocles, that neither the waters of the Danube, or Phafis can wash him and his house clean. Οἶμαι γὰρ ἔτ ̓ ἂν Ἴσρον ἔτε φᾶσιν ἂν In allufion to their expiatory washings in the fea or rivers. Various were the ceremonies of washing among the Jews, as well as Gentiles; particularly that of the hands. Homer, II. '. 266. Χερσὶ δ ̓ ἀνίπλοισιν Διὶ λείβειν αἴθιπα Γοῖνον Άζομαι D Hence "Tis much happier for a man never to have known what honefty is, than once knowing it, after to forfake it. Macbeth begins now to fee, at a distance, that virtue which he had forfaken; he fees the beauty of it, and repines at its lofs. Jealoufie, miftruft, and all the tyrannic paffions now wholly poffefs him. He grows chiefly jealous of Banquo, becaufe his pofterity had been promifed the crown. For Banquo's ifjue bave I fil'd my mind: For them, the gracious Duncan have I murther3d. * * To make them kings: the feed of Banquo kings: 12 And Hence came the proverb of doing things with unwashed hands; i. e. impudently, without any regard to decency or religion. Henry IV. A& III. Falft. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doft, and de it with unwashed hands too. 11 The place fhould thus be pointed, To make them kings. The feed of Banquo kings! to be spoken with irony and contempt, which gives a spirit to the sentence. 12 Alluding to the words of the champion at the coronation. So Holingshed: "Whoever fhall fay, that king "Richard is not lawful king, I will fight with him at the UTTERANCE," 66 And to have any virtue is caufe fufficient of a tyrant's hatred; hence vengeance is vowed as gainst Macduff. σε I am in blood Stept in fo far, that should I wade no more, 13 " UTTERANCE." . e. to the uttermoft, to the laft extremity." A outrance, à toute ontrance. adv. L'un et l'autre "eft bon, et fignifie à la rigueur, avec violence. [pour suivre quelqu'un à toute outrance. Ceftar. Ce vous eût été peu "de gloire de mener à outrance un homme déja outré. "Voi. 1. 52." RICHELET. Douglafs in his tranflation of Virgil. Aen. V, 197. Olli certamine fumma Procumbunt. With all thare face than at the utesauce. And Aen. X, 430. Et vos, O Graiis imperdita corpora, Teucri. Wnd ze also feil bodyis of Trojanis, That war not put by Greikis to uterante. The gloffary thus explains it: "terance. Chaud, Outrance, deftruction: to the uttermost of their Power. a F. "Oultrance, extremity, excefs; combatre a oultrance, to fight it out, or to the uttermoft, not to spare one another "in fighting: and that from the adv. oultre, ultra. q. d. "ultrantia. 13 i. e. as to go o'er. 'Tis very common for our poet and his contemporaries to omit [to] the fign of the infinitive mood. Book I. This is one of the great morals inculcated in the play, that wickedness draws on wickedness, such is it's deceitful nature. And how poetically is the whole managed, to make all the incidents produce each the other neceffarily and in order till the measure of their iniquity being full, they both miferably perifh?. And thus the fatal effects of ambition are defcribed, and the story is one. The episodes, or under-actions, are so interwoven with the fabric of the ftory, that they are really parts of it, though feemingly but adornings. Thus, for inftance, it being proper to fhew the terrors of Macbeth for his murder of Banquo; the poet makes him haunted with 14 his apparition. And as wicked men are often superftitious, as well as inquifitive and jealous, to draw this character in him more strongly, he fends him to enquire his destiny of the three witches. But every thing falls out to encrease his misfortunes. There is fuch a caft of 14 antiquity, and fomething fo horridly folemn in this infernal ceremony of the witches, that I never 14 The Greek rhetoricians call this, alaoia and idwhomolía. One of the finest inftances of this kind is in the Oreftes of Euripides. 15 If the reader has a mind to compare Shakespeare with the ancients, I would refer him to Ovid's Circe and Medaea, : i |