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Where Balthazar and I did dine together.
Our dinner done, and he not coming thither,
I went to seek him: in the street I met him;
And in his company, that gentleman.

There did this perjur'd goldsmith swear me down,
That I this day of him receiv'd the chain,
Which, God he knows, I saw not: for the which,
He did arrest me with an officer.

I did obey; and sent my peasant home
For certain ducats: he with none return'd.
Then fairly I bespoke the officer,
To go in person with me to my
By the way we met

house.

My wife, her sister, and a rabble more
Of vile confederates; along with them

They brought one Pinch; a hungry lean-fac'd villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller ;
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man: this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer;
And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as 'twere, outfacing me,
Cries out I was possess'd: then altogether
They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence;
And in a dark and dankish vault at home
There left me and my man, both bound together;
Till gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder,
I gain'd my freedom, and immediately
Ran hither to your grace; whom I beseech
To give me ample satisfaction

For these deep shames and great indignities.
Ang. My lord, in truth, thus far I witness with him;
That he din'd not at home, but was lock'd out.
Duke. But had he such a chain of thee, or no?
Ang. He had, my lord: and when he ran in here,
These people saw the chain about his neck.

Mer. Besides I will be sworn, these ears of mine
Heard you confess, you had the chain of him,
After you first forswore it on the mart,
And, thereupon I drew my sword on you;
And then you fled into this abbey here,
From whence, I think, you are come by miracle.
Ant. E. I never came within these abbey walls,

Nor ever didst thou draw thy sword on me:
I never saw the chain, so help me heaven!
And this is false, you burden me withal.

Duke. Why, what an intricate impeach is this!
I think you all have drunk of Circe's cup.
If here you hous'd him, here he would have been;
If he were mad, he would not plead so coldly:-
You say, he dined at home; the goldsmith here
Denies that saying:-Sirrah, what say you?

Dro. E. Sir, he din'd with her there, at the Porcupine.

Cour. He did; and from my finger snatch'd that ring.

Ant. E. 'Tis true, my liege, this ring I had of her. Duke. Saw'st thou him enter at the abbey here? Cour. As sure, my liege, as I do see your grace. Duke. Why, this is strange :-Go, call the abbess hither;

I think, you are all mated, or stark mad.

[Erit an Attendant. Ege. Most mighty duke, vouchsafe me speak a a word;

Haply I see a friend will save my life,
And pay the sum that may deliver me.

Duke. Speak freely, Syracusan, what thou wilt. Ege. Is not your name, sir, call'd Antipholus? And is not your bondman Dromio?

Dro. E. Within this hour, I was his bondman, sir, But he, I thank him, gnaw'd in two my cords; Now am I Dromio, and his man, unbound.

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but as a living death,

So ded alive of life he drew the breath."

Sackville's Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates.

2 Mated is confounded. See note on Macbeth, Act vi. Sc. 1.

3 Deformed for deforming.

4 See note on Act ii. Sc. 1.

Ege. I am sure, you both of you remember me. Dro. E. Ourselves, we do remember, sir, by you; For lately we were bound as you are now. You are not Pinch's patient, are you, sir?

Ege. Why look you strange on me? you know me well.

Ant. E. I never saw you in my life, till now. Ege. Oh! grief hath chang'd me, since you saw me last;

And careful hours, with Time's deformed' hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face: But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice? Ant. E. Neither.

Ege.

Dromio, nor thou?
Dro. E. No, trust me, sir, nor I.
Ege.

I am sure, thou dost. Dro. E. Ay, sir? but I am sure, I do not; and whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him."

Ege. Not know my voice! O, time's extremity! Hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue, In seven short years, that here my only son Knows not my feeble key of untun'd cares?" Though now this grained' face of mine be hid In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow, And all the conduits of my blood froze up; Yet hath my night of life some memory, My wasting lamp some fading glimmer left, My dull deaf ears a little use to hear: All these old witnesses (I cannot err,) Tell me, thou art my son Antipholus.

Ant. E. I never saw my father in my life. Ege. But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy, Thou know'st, we parted: but, perhaps, my son, Thou sham'st to acknowledge me in misery.

Ant. E. The duke and all that know me in the

city,

Can witness with me that it is not so;
I ne'er saw Syracusa in my life.

Duke. I tell thee, Syracusan, twenty years
Have I been patron to Antipholus,
During which time he ne'er saw Syracusa :
I see, thy age and dangers make thee dote.
Enter the Abbess, with ANTIPHOLUS Syracusan,
and DROMIO Syracusan.

Abb. Most mighty duke, behold a wrong'd.

man much

[All gather to see him. Adr. I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me. Duke. One of these men is Genius to the other; And so of these: Which is the natural man, And which the spirit? Who deciphers them?

Dro. S. I, sir, am Dromio; command him away. Dro. E. I, sir, am Dromio; pray, let me stay. Ant. S. Egeon, art thou not? or else his ghost? Dro. S. O, my old master! who hath bound him here?

Abb. Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds, And gain a husband by his liberty: Speak, old geon, if thou be'st the man That hadst a wife once called Emilia, That bore thee at a burden two fair sons: O, if thou be'st the same Egeon, speak, And speak unto the same Æmilia!

Ege. If I dream not, thou art Æmilia;
If thou art she, tell me, where is that son
That floated with thee on the fatal raft?

Abb. By men of Epidamnum, he, and I
And the twin Dromio, all were taken up;
But, by and by, rude fishermen of Corinth
By force took Dromio and my son from them,
And me they left with those of Epidamnum :

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8 But if my frosty signs and chaps of age, Grave witnesses of true experience.'

Titus Andronicus, Sc. ult.

9 In the old copy this speech of Egeon, and the subsequent one of the abbess, follow the speech of the

5 Dromio delights in a quibble, and the word bound Duke. It is evident that they were transposed by mishas before been the subject of his mirth.

take.

What then became of them, I cannot tell;
I, to this fortune that you see me in.

Duke. Why, here begins this morning story right;
These two Antipholuses, these two so alike,
And these two Dromioes, one in semblance,
Besides her urging of her wreck at sea,-
These are the parents to these children,3
Which accidentally are met together.
Antipholus, thou cam'st from Corinth first.

Ant. S. No, sir, not I; I came from Syracuse.
Duke. Stay, stand apart; I know not which is
which.

Ant. E. I came from Corinth, my most gracious. lord.

Dro. E. And I with him.

Ant. E. Brought to this town with that most fa-
mous warrior

Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.
Adr. Which of you two did dine with me to-day?
Ant. S. I, gentle mistress.

Adr.

And are not you my husband?
Ant. E. No, I say nay to that.
Ant. S. And so do I, yet did she call me so;
And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,
Did call me brother:-What I told you then,
I hope, I shall have leisure to make good;
If this be not a dream I see and hear.

Ang. That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.
Ant. S. I think it be, sir; I deny it not.
Ant. E. And you, sir, for this chain arrested me.
Ang. I think I did, sir; I deny it not.

Adr. I sent you, money, sir, to be your bail,
By Dromio; but I think he brought it not.

Dro. E. No, none by me.

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Ant. S. This purse of ducats I receiv'd from you,
And Dromio my man did bring them me:
I see, we still did meet each other's man,
And I was ta'en for him, and he for me,
And thereupon these Errors are arose.

Ant. E. These ducats pawn I for my father here.
Duke. It shall not need, thy father hath his life.
Cour. Sir, I must have that diamond from you.
Ant. E. There, take it; and much thanks for my
good cheer.

Abb. Renowned duke, vouchsafe to take the pains
To with us into the abbey here,

go

And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes:--
And all that are assembled in this place,
That by this sympathized one day's error
Have suffer'd wrong, go, keep us company,
And we shall make full satisfaction.-
Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail
Of you, my sons, and till this present hour ;-

--

1 The morning story' is what Egeon tells the Duke in the first scene of this play.

2 Semblance is here a trisyllable. It appears probable that a line has been omitted here, the import of which may have been:

These circumstances all concur to prove
These are the parents,' &c.

If it began with the word these as well as the succeeding
one, the error would easily happen.

3 Children is here a trisyllable, it is often spelled as it was pronounced then, childeren.

4 The old copy reads, erroneously, thus:
Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail
Of you, my sons; and till this present hour
My heavy burthen are delivered.

My heavy burden here delivered.4
The duke, my husband, and my children both,
And you the calendars of their nativity,
Go to a gossip's feast, and go with me;
After so long grief, such nativtiy!

Duke. With all my heart, I'll gossip at this feast.
[Exeunt Duke, Abbess, EGEON, Courtezan,
Merchant, ANGELO, and Attendants.
Dro. S. Master, shall I fetch your stuff from ship-
board?

Ant. E. Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou em-
bark'd?

Dro. S. Your goods, that lay at host, sir, in the
Centaur.

Ant. S. He speaks to me; I am your master,
Dromio;

Come, go with us: we'll look to that anon:
Embrace thy brother there, rejoice with him.

[Exeunt ANT. S. and ANT. E. ADR. and Lec. Dro. S. There is a fat friend at your master's house,

That kitchen'd me for you to-day at dinner;
She now shall be my sister, not my wife.
Dro. E. Methinks you are my glass, and not my
brother:

I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth.
Will you walk in to see their gossiping?

Dro. S. Not I, sir; you are my elder.
Dro. E. That's a question: how shall we try it:
Dro. S. We will draw cuts for the senior: til
then, lead thou first.

Dro. E. Nay; then thus:

We came into the world, like brother and brother; And now let's go hand in hand, not one before [Exeunt.

another.

ON a careful revision of the foregoing scenes, I do not hesitate to pronounce them the composition of two very unequal writers. Shakspeare had undoubtedly a share in them; but that the entire play was no work of his, as an opinion which (as Benedict says) "fire cannot mes out of me; I will die in it at the stake." Thus, as we are informed by Aulus Gellius, Lib. III. Cap. 3, some plays were absolutely ascribed to Plautus, which in truth had only been (retractate et expolita) retouchard and polished by him.

In this comedy we find more intricacy of plot than des tinction of character; and our attention is less foreby engaged, because we can guess in great measure bev the denouement will be brought about. Yet the subjet appears to have been reluctantly dismissed, even in the last and unnecessary scene, where the same mistakes are continued, till the power of affording entertainment is entirely lost. STEEVENS.

Theobald corrected it in the following manner:

Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail
Of you, my sons; nor till this present hour
My heavy burdens are delivered.'
Malone, after much argument, gives it thus:

Of you, my sons; until this present hour
My heavy burden not delivered."

Thirty-three years are an evident error for twenty-five,
this was corrected by Theobald. The reader will choose
between the simple emendation which I have made a
the text, and those made by Theobald and Malone.

5 i. e. the two Dromioes. Antipholus of Syracuse bas already called one of them 'the almanack of my true date.' See note on Act 1. Sc. 2.

6 Heath thought that we should read, and joy with Warburton proposed gaud, but the old reading a probably right

me.'

МАСВЕТН

DR.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook
Unless the deed go with it.'

In every feature we see a vigorous heroic age in the

JOHNSON thought it necessary to prefix to this threaten danger. However much we may abhor his play an apology for Shakspeare's magic;-in which actions, we cannot altogether refuse to sympathize with he says, "A poet who should now make the whole ac- the state of his mind; we lament the ruin of so many tion of his tragedy depend upon enchantinent, and pro- noble qualities; and, even in his last defence, we are duce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural compelled to admire in him the struggle of a brave will agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds with a cowardly conscience.-The poet wishes to show of probability, be banished from the theatre to the nur- that the conflict of good and evil in this world can only sery, and condemned to write fairy tales instead of tra- take place by the permission of Providence, which congedies. He then proceeds to defend this transgression verts the curse that individual mortals draw down on upon the ground of the credulity of the poet's age; when their heads into a blessing to others. Lady Macbeth, 'the scenes of enchantment, however they may be now who of all the human beings is the most guilty participator ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought in the murder of the king, falls, through the horrors of awful and affecting. By whom, or when (always ex- her conscience, into a state of incurable bodily and cepting French criticism,) these sublime conceptions mental disease; she dies, unlamented by her husband, were in danger of ridicule, he has not told us; and I with all the symptoms of reprobation. Macbeth is still sadly fear that this superfluous apology arose from the found worthy of dying the death of a hero on the field of misgivings of the great critic's mind. Schlegel has battle. Banquo atones for the ambitious curiosity which justly remarked that, Whether the age of Shakspeare prompted him to wish to know his glorious descendants still believed in witchcraft and ghosts, is a matter of per- by an early death, as he thereby rouses Macbeth's fect indifference for the justification of the use which, in jealousy; but he preserved his mind pure from the bubHamlet and Macbeth, he has made of preexisting trables of the witches; his name is blessed in his race, ditions. No superstition can ever be prevalent and destined to enjoy for a long succession of ages that royal widely diffused through ages and nations without having dignity which Macbeth could only hold during his own a foundation in human nature: on this foundation the life. In the progress of the action, this piece is altopoet builds; he calls up from their hidden abysses that gether the reverse of Hamlet: it strides forward with dread of the unknown, that presage of a dark side amazing rapidity from the first catastrophe (for Dunof nature, and a world of spirits which philosophy now can's murder may be called a catastrophe) to the last. imagines it has altogether exploded. In this manner Thought, and done! is the general motto; for, as Mache is in some degree both the portrayer and the philoso- beth says, pher of a superstition; that is, not the philosopher who denies and turns into ridicule, but, which is still more difficult, who distinctly exhibits its origin to us in apparently irrational and yet natural opinions.'-În another place the same admirable critic says- Since The Furies of Eschylus, nothing so grand and terrible has ever been composed: The Witches, it is true, are not divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be so; they are ignoble and vulgar instruments of hell. They discourse with one another like women of the very lowest class; for this was the class to which witches were supposed to belong. When, however, they address Macbeth, their tone assumes more elevation: their predictions have all the obscure brevity, the majestic solemnity, by which oracles have in all times contrived to inspire mortals with reverential awe. We here see that the witches are merely instruments; they are governed by an invisible spirit, or the operation of such great and dreadful events would be above their sphere.' Their agency was necessary; for natural motives alone would have seemed inadequate to effect such a change as takes place in the nature and dispositions of Macbeth. By this means the poet has exhibited a more sublime picture to us: an ambitious but noble hero, who yields to a deep laid hellish temptation: and all the crimes to which he is impelled by necessity, to secure the fruits of his first crime, cannot altogether eradicate in him the stamp of native heroism.' He has therefore given a threefold division to the guilt of that crime. The first idea comes from that being whose whole activity is guided by a lust of wickedness. The weird sisters surprise Macbeth in the moment of intoxication after his victory, when his love of glory has been gratified; they cheat his eyes by exhibiting to him as the work of fate what can only in reality be accomplished by his own deed, and gain credence for their words by the immediate fulAhnent of the first prediction. The opportunity for murdering the king immediately offers itself; Lady Macbeth conjures him not to let it slip; she urges him on with a fiery eloquence, which has all those sophisms at command that serve to throw a false grandeur over crime. Little more than the mere execution falls to the share of Macbeth; he is driven to it as it were in a state of commotion, in which his mind is bewildered. Repentance immediately follows; nay, even precedes the deed; and the stings of his conscience leave him no rest either night or day. But he is now fairly entangled in the snares of hell; it is truly frightful to behold that Macbeth, who once as a warrior could spurn at death, now that he dreads the prospect of the life to come, clinging with growing anxiety to his earthly existence, the more miserable it becomes, and pitilessly removing out of his way whatever to his dark and suspicious mind seems to

hardy North, which steels every nerve. The precise duration of the action cannot be ascertained,-years, perhaps, according to the story; but we know that to the imagination the most crowded time appears always the shortest. Here we can hardly conceive how so very much can be compressed into so narrow a space; not merely external events-the very innermost recesses of the minds of the persons of the drama are laid open to us. It is as if the drags were taken from the wheels of time, and they rolled along without interruption in their descent. Nothing can equal the power of this picture in the excitation of horror. We need only allude to the circumstance attending the murder of Duncan, the dagger that hovers before the eyes of Macbeth, the vision of Banquo at the feast, the madness of Lady Macbeth; what can we possibly say on the subject that will not rather weaken the impression? Such scenes stand alone, and are to be found only in this poet; otherwise the tragic muse might exchange her mask for the head of Medusa."*

Shakspeare followed the chronicle of Holinshed, and Holinshed borrowed his narration from the chronicles of Scotland, translated by John Bellenden, from the Latin of Hector Boethius, and first published at Edinburgh in 1541.

Malcolm the Second, king of Scotland, had two daughters. The eldest was married to Crynin, the father of Duncan, Thane of the isles, and western parts of Scotland; and on the death of Malcolm without male issue Duncan succeeded to the throne. Malcolm's second daughter was married to Sinel, Thane of Glamis, the father of Macbeth. Duncan, who married the sister of Siward, Earl of Northumberland, was mur. dered by his cousin german Macbeth, in the castle of Inverness, about the year 1040 or 1045. Macbeth was himself slain by Macduff, according to Boethius in 1061, according to Buchanan in 1057, at which time Edward the Confessor reigned in England.

In the reign of Duncan, Banquo having been plundered by the people of Lochaber of some of the king's revenues, which he had collected, and being danger. ously wounded in the affray, the persons concerned in this outrage were summoned to appear at a certain day. But they slew the serjeant at arms who summoned them, and chose one Macdonwald as their captain. Macdonwald speedily collected a considerable body of

* Lectures on Dramatic Literature, by A. W. Schle. gel, translated by John Black, London, 1915, vol. ii. p. 200.

forces from Ireland and the Western Isles, and in one action gained a victory over the king's army. In this battle Malcolm, a Scottish nobleman (who was lieutenant to Duncan in Lochaber) was slain. Afterwards Macbeth and Banquo were appointed to the command of the army; and Macdonwald, being obliged to take refuge in a castle in Lochaber, first slew his wife and children, and then himself. Macbeth, on entering the castle, finding his dead body, ordered his head to be cut off and carried to the king, at the castle of Bertha, and his body to be hung on a high tree.

At a subsequent period, in the last year of Duncan's reign, Sueno, king of Norway, landed a powerful army in Fife, for the purpose of invading Scotland. Duncan immediately assembled an army to oppose him, and gave the coinmand of two divisions of it to Macbeth and Banquo, putting himself at the head of a third. Sueno was successful in one battle, but in a second was routed; and, after a great slaughter of his troops, he escaped with ten persons only, and fled back to Norway. Though there was an interval of time between the rebellion of Macdonwald and the invasion of Sueno, Shakspeare has woven these two actions together, and immediately after Sueno's defeat the present play com

mences.

aut Milesiis fabulis sunt aptiora quam historiæ, ea
omitto.'-Rerum Scot. Hist. Lib. vii.
Milton also enumerates the subject among those we
considered well suited for tragedy, but it appears that
he would have attempted to preserve the unity of time
by placing the relation of the murder of Duncan in the
mouth of his ghost.

Macbeth is one of the latest, and unquestionably one of the noblest efforts of Shakspeare's genius. Equally impressive in the closet and on the stage, where to witness its representation has been justly pronounced 'the first of all dramatic enjoyments. Malone places the date of its composition in 1606, and it has been supposed to convey a dexterous and delicate compliment to James the first, who derived his lineage from Banquo, and firs united the threefold sceptre of England, Scotland, and Ireland. At the same time the monarch's prejudices on the subject of demonology were flattered by the choice of the story.

It was once thought that Shakspeare derived some hints for his scenes of incantation from The Witch, a tragicomedy, by John Middleton, which, after lying long in manuscript, was published about thirty years since by Isaac Reed; but Malone has with considerable ingenuity shown that Middleton's drama was mod

It is remarkable that Buchanan has pointed out Mac-probably written subsequently to Macbeth. beth's history as a subject for the stage. 'Multa hic fabuloso quidam nostrorum affingunt; sed quia theatris

* See the chronological order of the plays in the late Variorum Edition, by Mr. Boswell, vol. ii. p. 420.

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MACDUFF,

LENOX,

Rosse,

MENTEITH,

Noblemen of Scotland.

ANGUS,

CATHNESS,

FLEANCE, Son to Banquo.

SEYTON, an Officer attending on Macbeth.
Son to Macduff.

An English Doctor. A Scotch Doctor.
A Soldier. A Porter. An old Man.
LADY MACBETH,'

LADY MACDUFF.

Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth.
Hecate, and three Witches.2

Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers,

Attendants, and Messengers.

The Ghost of Banquo, and several other Apparitions.

SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, General of the SCENE, in the end of the Fourth Act, lies in Eng

English Forces.

YOUNG SIWARD, his Son.

ACT I.

SCENE I. An open Place. Thunder and Light-
ning. Enter three Witches.
1 Witch.

WHEN shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2 Witch. When the hurlyburly's done,

When the battle's lost and won.

3 Witch. That will be ere set of sun.
1 Witch. Where the place?

2 Witch.
Upon the heath:
3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth.
1 Witch. I come, Graymalkin!
All. Paddock calls:-Anon.4

1 Lady Macbeth's name was Gruach filia Bodhe, according to Lord Hailes. Andrew of Wintown, in his Cronykil, informs us that she was the widow of Duncan; a circumstance with which Shakspeare was of course unacquainted.

2 As the play now stands, in Act iv. Sc. 1, three other witches make their appearance.

3When the hurlyburly's done.' In Adagia Scotica, or A Collection of Scotch Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases; collected by R. B.; very useful and delightful. Lond. 12mo. 1668:

'Little kens the wife that sits by the fire

How the wind blows cold in hurle burle swyre.' i. e. in the tempestuous mountain-top,' says Mr. Todd, in a note on Spenser; to which Mr. Boswell gives his assent, and says, this sense seems agreeable to the witch's answer.' But Peacham, in his Garden of Eloquence, 1577, shows that this was not the ancient acceptation of the word among us: Onomatopeia, when

I

land; through the rest of the play, in Scotland; and chiefly at Macbeth's Castle.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

[Witches vanish. SCENE II. A Camp near Fores. Alarum within. Enter King DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Soldier.s

Dun. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

The newest state.

Mal.
This is the sergeant,*
Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought
'Gainst my captivity:-Hail, brave friend!
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil,
As thou didst leave it.

we invent, devise, fayne, and make a name imitating
the sound of that it signifyeth, as hurlyburly, for an up-
rore and tumultuous stirre. So in Baret's Alvearie,
1573:- But harke yonder: what hurlyburly or nose is
yonde: what sturre rufting or bruite is that? The
witches could not mean when the storm was done, but
when the tumult of the battle was over; for they are
to meet again in lightning, thunder, and rain: their ele-
ment was a storm.

4 Upton observes, that, to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad. A paddock most generally seems to have signified a food, though it sometimes means a frog. What we now call a toadstool was anciently called a paddock-stool. 5 The first folio reads captain.

6 Sergeants, in ancient times, were not the petty officers now distinguished by that title, but men perform ing one kind of feudal military service, in rank next to esquires.

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Like valour's minion,

Carv'd out his passage, till he fac'd the slave;
And' ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Dun. O, valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!
Sold. As whence the sun 'gins his reflection
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break;"
So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come,
Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark:
No sooner justice had, with valour arm'd,
Compell'd these skipping Kernes to trust their heels,
But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms, and new supplies of men,
Began a fresh assault.

Dun.

Dismay'd not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
Sold.

As

Yes; sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion. If I say sooth, I must report, they were

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks ;*
So they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
Or memorize another Golgotha,"

I cannot tell :

But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

Dun. So well thy words become thee, as thy

wounds;

Who comes here?
Mal.

Enter ROSSE.

The worthy thane of Rosse. Len. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look,

That seems to speak things strange, 10
Rosse.

God save the king!
Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane?
Rosse.
From Fife, great king.
Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,11
And fan our people cold.

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor
The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict:
Till that Bellona's bridegroom,12 lapp'd in proof
Confronted him with self-comparisons,13
Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm,
Curbing his lavish spirit: And, to conclude,
The victory fell on us ;-

Dun.

Great happiness!

Rosse. That now
Sweno,14 the Norways' king, craves composition;
Nor would we deign him burial of his men,
Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes' Inch,is
Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

15

Dun. No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest:-Go, pronounce his present death,

And with his former title greet Macbeth.
Rosse. I'll see it done.

Dun. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath
[Exeunt.

won.

Thunder. Enter the

SCENE III. A Heath,
three Witches.

1 Witch. Where hast thou been, sister?
2 Witch. Killing swine.

3 Witch. Sister, where thou?

And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd:1 Witch. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, Give me, quoth I:

They smack of honour both:-Go, get him sur-Aroint thee, 16 witch! the rump-fed ronyon1" cries. [Exit Soldier, attended.

geons.

1 Vide Tyrwhitt's Glossary to Chaucer, v. for; and Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, p. 205. For to that means no more than for that, or cause that. The late editions erroneously point this passage, and as erroneously explain it. I follow the punctuation of the first folio.

Of

2 i. e. supplied with armed troops so named. and with are indiscriminately used by our ancient writers. Gallowglasses were heavy-armed foot-soldiers of Ireland and the western isles: Kernes were the lighter armed troops.

3But fortune on his damned quarry smiling.'-Thus the old copies. It was altered at Johnson's suggestion to quarrel, which is approved and defended by Steevens and Malone. But the old copy needs no alteration. Quarry means the squadron, escadre, or square body, nto which Macdonwald's troops were formed, better to receive the charge; through which Macbeth carved out his passage till he faced the slave.'

4 The meaning is, that Fortune, while she smiled on him, deceived him.

5 The old copy reads which.

6 Sir W. D'Avenant's reading of this passage, in his alteration of the play, is a tolerable comment on it :'But then this daybreak of our victory

Serv'd but to light us into other dangers,

That spring from whence our hopes did seem to rise. Break is not in the first folio.

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Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,18

into the text by mistake, and that the line originally stood

That now the Norway's king craves composition.' It was surely not necessary for Rosse to tell Duncan the name of his old enemy, the king of Norway. 15 Colmes' is here a dissyllable. Colmes' Inch, now called Inchcomb, is a small island, lying in the Firth of Edinburgh, with an abbey upon it dedicated to St. Columb. Inch or inse, in Erse, signifies an island.

16 The etymology of this imprecation is yet to seek. Rynt ye, for out with ye! stand off! is still used in Cheshire, where there is also a proverbial saying, Rynt ye, witch, quoth Besse Locket to her mother. Tooke thought it was from roynous, and might signify a scab or scale on thee! Others have derived it from the rowan-tree, or witch-hazle, the wood of which was believed to be a powerful charm against witchcraft; and every careful housewife had a churn-staff made of it. This superstition is as old as Pliny's time, who asserts that a serpent will rather creep into the fire than over a twig of ash. The French have a phrase of somewhat similar sound and import-Arry-avant, away there, ho-Mr. Douce thinks that aroint thee' will be found to have a Saxon origin.

17 Rump-fed ronyon,' a scabby or mangy woman, fed on offals; the rumps being formerly part of the emoluments or kitchen fees of the cooks in great houses Is In The Discovery of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scott, 1584, he says it was believed that witches could sail in

9 i. e. make another Golgotha as memorable as the an egg-shell, a cockle, or muscle-shell, through and

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under the tempestuous seas.' And in another pamphlet, 'Declaring the damnable Life of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer, who was buried at Edenborough in Januarie last, 1591,'- All they together went to sea, each one in a riddle or cive, and went in the same very substantially, with flaggons of wine making merrie, and drinking by the way in the same riddles or cives,' &c.

Sir W. D'Avenant, in his Albovine, 1629, says'He sits like a witch sailing in a sieve.' It was the belief of the times, that though a witch could assume the form of any animal she pleased, the tail would still be wanting.

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