Macb. A friend.

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

Ban. What, sir, not yet at rest? The king's a-bed: As this which now I draw.

He hath been in unusual pleasure, and
Sent forth great largess to your officers:
This diamond he greets your wife withal,

By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up3
In measureless content.

I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
To you they have show'd some truth.
Macb.
I think not of them:
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
Would spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.
Ban.
At
your kind'st leisure.
Macb. If you shall cleave to my consent,-when
'tis,

It shall make honour for you.
Ban.

So I lose none,
In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear,
I shall be counsel'd.

Good repose, the while!

Macb.
Ban. Thanks, sir; The like to you! [Exit BAN.
Macb. Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is
ready,

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.

[Exit Servant.

Is this a dagger, which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee:-

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind: a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

1 Largess, bounty.

2 The old copy reads offices. Officers of a household was the common term for servants in Shakspeare's time. He has before called the king's chamberlains his spongy officers."

3 Steevens has rightly explained to shut up,' by 'to conclude,' and the examples he has adduced are satisfactory; but Mr. Boswell supposed that it meant enclosed, and quoted a passage from Barrow to support his opinion. The authorities of the poet's time are against Mr. Boswell's interpretation.

4 Being unprepared, our will (or desire to entertain the king honourably) became the servant to defect (i. e. was constrained by defective means,) which else should free have wrought (i. e. otherwise our zeal should have been manifest by more liberal entertainments.) Which relates not to the last antecedent, defect, but to will.

Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still :
And on thy blade, and dudgeon," gouts" of blood,
Which was not so before;-There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business, which informs
Thus, to mine eyes.-Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleeper; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.10 -Thou sure and firm-

set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my where-about,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it."-Whiles I threat, he
lives;

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
[A bell rings.

I go, and it is done; the bell invites the.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

[Exit.

It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it:
The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd
their possets,

8 Dryden's well known lines in the Conquest of Mexico are here transcribed, that the reader may ob serve the contrast between them and this passage of Shakspeare:

In

All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead,
The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head,
The little birds in dreams their songs repeat,
And sleeping flow'rs beneath the night dews sweat,
Even lust and envy sleep!'

the second part of Marston's Antonio and Mellida, 1602, we have the following lines:

Tis yet the dead of night, yet all the earth is clutch'd
In the dull leaden hand of snoring sleep:
No breath disturbs the quiet of the air,
No spirit moves upon the breast of earth,
Save howling dogs, night-crows, and screeching owls,
Save meagre ghosts, Piero, and black thoughts
-I am great in blood,

Unequall'd in revenge :---you horrid scouts
That sentinel swart night, give loud applause
From your large palms.'

5 Consent is accord, agreement, a combination for a particular purpose. By if you shall cleave to my consent,' Macbeth means, if you shall adhere to me (i. e. agree or accord with my views,) when tis, (i. e. when events shall fall out as they are predicted,) it shall make honour for you' Macbeth mentally refers to the crown 9 The old copy has sleepe. The emendation was which he expected to obtain in consequence of the mur-proposed by Steevens, and is well worthy of a place in der that he was about to commit. We comprehend all the text; the word now having been formerly acmitted that passes in his mind; but Banquo is still in ignorance to complete the metre. of it. His reply is only that of a man who determines to 10 The old copy reads sides: Pope made the alteration. combat every possible temptation to do ill; and there- Johnson objects to the epithet ravishing strides. But fore expresses a resolve that, in spite of future com- Steevens has shown that a stride was not always an ac. binations of interest or struggles for power, he will at-tion of violence, impetuosity, or tumult. Thus in The tempt nothing that may obscure his present honours, Faerie Queene, b. iv. c. viii. alarm his conscience, or corrupt loyalty. Macbeth could never mean, while yet the success of his attack on the life of Duncan was uncertain, to afford Banquo the most dark or distant hint of his criminal designs on the crown. Had he acted thus incautiously, Banquo would naturally have become his accuser as soon as the mur. der had been discovered. Malone proposed to read content instead of consent; but his reasons are far from convincing, and there seems no necessity for change.

6 Dudgeon for handle; a dudgeon dagger is a dagger whose handle is made of the root of box,' according to Bishop Wilkins in the dictionary subjoined to his Real Character. Dudgeon is the root of box. It has not been remarked that there is a peculiar propriety in giving the word to Macbeth, Pugnale alla scoccese, being a Scotch or dudgeon haft dagger,' according to Tor

riano.

7 Gouts drops; from the French gouttes.

'With easy steps so soft as foot could stride.' And in other places we have an easy stride, a leisurable stride, &c. Warburton observes, that the justness of the similitude is not very obvious. But a stanza in Shakspeare's Tarquin and Lucrece will explain it :'Now stole upon the time in dead of night, When heavy sleep had clos'd up mortal eyes; No comfortable star did lend his light, No noise but owls' and wolves' dead-boding cries ; Now serves the season that they may surprise The silly lambs. Pure thoughts are dead and still, While lust and murder wake to stain und kill. 11 Macbeth would have nothing break through the universal silence that added such horror to the night, as well suited with the bloody deed he was about to perform. Burke, in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, observes, that all general privations are great becausé they are terrible.'

[Erit. Knocking within. Whence is that knocking? How is't with me, when every noise appals me? As I descended? What hands are here! Ha! they pluck out mine

4 Steevens observes that this triple menace, accomodated to the different titles of Macbeth, is too quaint to be received as the natural ebullition of a guilty mind; but Mr. Boswell thinks that there is no ground for his obJection. He thus explains the passage; Glamis hath 12 Here's a farmer that hanged himself on the exmurder'd sleep; and therefore my lately acquired dig-pectation of plenty.' So in Hall's Satires, b. iv. nity can afford no comfort to one who suffers the agony sat. 6:of remorse,-Cawdor shall sleep no more; nothing can 'Each muckworme will be rich with lawless gaine, restore me to that peace of mind which I enjoyed in a Altho' he smother up mowes of seven yeares graine, comparatively humble state; the once innocent Mar-Anthang'd himself when corne grows cheap aga ne beth shall sleep no more.

here's an English tailor come hither, for stealing
out of a French hose: Come in, tailor; here you
may roast your goose. [Knocking.] Knock, knock:
Never at quiet! What are you?-But this place is
too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter it no further: I
had thought to have let in some of all professions,
that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.
[Knocking.] Anon, anon; I pray you, remember
the porter.
[Opens the gate.

Enter MACDUFF and LENOX.

Macd. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, That you do lie so late?

Port. 'Faith, sir we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

Maed. What three things does drink especially provoke?

Port. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to: in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him. Mied. I believe, drink gave thee the lie, last night.

Port. That it did, sir, i' the very throat o' me: But I requited him for his lie: and, I think, being too strong for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast him.

Macd. Is thy master stirring?

Our knocking has awak'd him; here he comes.
Enter MACBETH.

Len. Good-morrow, noble sir!
Mich.

Good-morrow, both!
Macd. Is the king stirring, worthy thane?
Macb.

Not yet.

Macd. He did command me to call timely on him;
I have almost slipp'd the hour.
Mach.
I'll bring you to him.
Macd. I know, this is a joyful trouble to you;
But yet, 'tis one.

Macb. The labour, we delight in, physics pain.
This is the door.

Macd. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence
The life o' the building.
Macb.
What is't you say? the life?
Len. Mean you his majesty?
Macd. Approach the chamber, and destroy your
sight

With a new Gorgon :-Do not bid me speak;
See and then speak yourselves.-Awake! awake !--
[Exeunt MACBETH and LENOX.
Ring the alarum-bell:-Murder! and treason!
Banquo, and Donaibain! Malcolm! awake!
Shake off this drowsy sleep, death's counterfeit,
And look on death itself!-up, up, and see
The great doom's image!-
Malcolm! Banquo!
As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprights,
To countenance this horror!
[Bell rings.

'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak:
The repetition, in a woman's ear,
Would murder as it fell."—O Banquo! Banquo'
Enter BANQUuo.

Our royal master's murder'd!
What, in our house?
Lady M.

Woe, alas!

Ban.
Too cruel, any where,-
Dear Duff, I pr'ythee, contradict thyself,
And say, it is not so.

Re-enter MACBETH and LENOX.
Macb. Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality:
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
All is but toys: renown, and grace,
is dead;
Is left this vault to brag of.

Enter MALCOLM and DONALBAIN.
Don. What is amiss?
Macb.

You are, and do not know it:
The spring, the head, the fountain of
your blood
Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd.
Macd. Your royal father's murder'd.
Mal.
O, by whom?
Len. Those of his chamber, as it seem'd, had

done't:

Their hands and faces were all badg'd with blood,
So were their daggers, which unwip'd, we found
Upon their pillows:

They star'd, and were distracted; no man's life
Was to be trusted with them.

That I did kill them.
Macb. O, yet, I do repent me of my fury,

Macd.

Wherefore did you so? Macb. Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate, and

furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man :
The expedition of my violent love
His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood;"
Outran the pauser reason.-Here lay Duncan,
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature,
For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers

And in The Puritan, 1607: The punishments that
shall follow you in this world would with horrour kill the
ear should hear them related.'

8 His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood.' Tu gild with blood is a very common phrase in old plays See also King John, Act ii. Sc. 2.-Johnson says, it is not improbable that Shakspeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth, as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to show the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy and the natu ral outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech, su considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists of antithesis only.'

Unmannerly breech'd with gore: Who could re- Thou see'st, the heavens, as troubled with man's act,

frain,

That had a heart to love, and in that heart

Courage, to make his love known?
Lady M.

Macd. Look to the lady.
Mal.

Help me hence, ho!

Why do we hold our tongues,
That most may claim this argument for ours?
Don. What should be spoken,

Here, where our fate hid in an augre-hole,

May rush, and seize us? Let's away; our tears
Are not yet brew'd.

Mal.

Nor our strong sorrow

Upon the foot of motion.
Ban.

Look to the lady :-
[LADY MACBETH is carried out.
And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet,
And question this most bloody piece of work,
To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us:
In the great hand of God I stand; and, thence,
Against the undivulg'd pretence' I fight

Of treasonous malice.

Macb.

All.

Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp:
Is it night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?"
Old M.
'Tis unnatural,

Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,"
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at, and kill'd.
Rosse. And Duncan's horses (a thing most strange
and certain,)

Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.

Old M.
'Tis said, they ate each other.
Rosse. They did so; to the amazement of mine

eyes,

That look'd upon't. Here comes the good Mac

duff:

Enter MACDUFF.

goes the world, sir, now?

And so do I.

So all.

How
Macd.

To show an unfelt sorrow, is an office
Which the false man does easy: I'll to England.
Don. To Ireland, I; our separated fortune
Shall keep us both the safer: where we are,

There's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood,
The nearer bloody.

Mal.
This murderous shaft that's shot,
Hath not yet lighted; and our safest way
Is, to avoid the aim. Therefore, to horse;
And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,
But shift away: There's warrant in that theft
Which steals itself, when there's no mercy

left.
[Exeunt.
SCENE IV. Without the Castle. Enter ROSSE
and an Old Man.

Old M. Threescore and ten I can remember well:
Within the volume of which time, I have seen
Hours dreadful, and things strange; but this sore
night

Hath trifled former knowings.
Rosse.

Ah, good father,

1 'Breech'd with gore,' covered with blood to their hilts. 2 i. e. when we have clothed our half drest bodies, which may take cold from being exposed to the air. It is possible, as Steevens remarks, that in such a cloud of words, the meaning might escape the reader. The Porter had already said that this place is too cold for hell,' meaning the court-yard of the castle in which Banquo and the rest now are.

3 Pretence is here put for design or intention. It is so used again in the Winter's Tale :- The pretence whereof being by circumstance partly laid open. Thus again in this tragedy :

'What good could they pretend? i. e. intend to themselves. Banquo's meaning is in our present state of doubt and uncertainty about this murder, I have nothing to do but to put myself under the direction of God; and, relying on his support, I here declare myself an eternal enemy to this treason, and to all its further designs that have not yet come to light. the near in blood,

4 The nearer bloody.' Meaning that he suspects Macbeth to be the murderer; for he was the nearest in blood to the two princes, being the cousin-german of Duncan.

Why, see you not?

Rosse. Is't known who did this more than bloody

deed?

has not yet done all its intended mischief; I and my brother are yet to be destroyed before it will light on the ground and do no more harm.'

6 After the murder of King Duffe,' says Holinshed, for the space of six months togither there appeared no sunne by daye, nor moon by night in anie part of the realme; but still the sky was covered with continual clouds; and sometimes such outrageous winds arose, with lightenings and tempests, that the people were in great fear of present destruction.It is evident that Shakspeare had this passage in his thoughts. the portents here mentioned are related by Hohusted, as accompanying King Duffe's death: there was a sparhawk strangled by an owl,' and horses of singular beauty and swiftness did eat their own flesh.'

Most of

7 A falcon tow'ring in her pride of place, a techni cal phrase in falconry for soaring to the highest pitch. Faulcon haultain was the French term for a towering or high flying hawk.

8 Pretend, in the sense of the Latin prætendo, 19 design, or lay for a thing before it come,' as the old dictionaries explain it.

mother of Macbeth.-Holinshed.

9 Macbeth, by his birth, stood next in succession to the crown, after the sons of Duncan. King Malcolm. Duacan's predecessor, had two daughters, the eldest of The allusion of the unlighted shaft appears to be--whom was the mother of Duncan, the younger the the death of the king only could neither insure the crown to Macbeth, nor accomplish any other purpose, while his sons were yet living, who had therefore just reason to apprehend that they should be removed by the same means. Malcolm therefore means to say, 'The shaft

10 Colme-kill is the famous Iona, one of the western isles mentioned by Holinshed, as the burial place of many ancient kings of Scotland. Colme-kill means the cell of chapel of St. Columbo.

But to be safely thus :-Our fears in Banquo SCENE I. Fores. A Room in the Palace. Enter Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature

Reigns that, which would be fear'd: 'Tis much he
dares ;

And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety. There is none, but he
Whose being I do fear: and, under him,
My genius is rebuk'd; as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters,
When first they put the name of King upon me,
And bade them speak to him; then, prophetlike,
They hail'd him father to a line of kings:
Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding. If it be so,
For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd;
Put rancours in the vessel of my peace
Only for them; and mine eternal jewel
Given to the common enemy of man,"

To make them kings; the seed of Banquo kings!
Rather than so, come, fate, into the list,
And champion me to the utterance !

7 The common enemy of man.' Shakspeare repeats the phrase in Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4:-Defy the devil: consider, he's an enemy to mankind, The phrase was common among his contemporaries; the word fend, Johnson remarks, signifies enemy.

Re-enter Attendant, with two Murderers.
Now go to the door, and stay there till we call.
[Exit Attendant.
Was it not yesterday we spoke together?
1 Mur. It was, so please your highness.
Macb.
Well then, now
Have you considered of my speeches? Know,
That it was he, in the times past, which held you
So under fortune; which, you thought, had been
Our innocent self: this I made good to you
In our last conference, pass'd in probation with you,
How you were borne in hand;1o how cross'd; the

8 To the utterance.' This phrase which is found in writers who preceded Shakspeare, is borrowed from the French; se battre a l'outrance, to fight desperately or to extremity, even to death. The sense therefore is :