Dear Duff, I pr'ythee, contradict thyself, 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 ferious in mortality: All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead; He would drown the ftage with tears, "And cleave the general ear with horrid fpeech." Again, in The Puritan, 1607: "The punishments that shall follow you in this word, would with horrour kill the ear should hear them related." MALONE. 8 What, in our houfe?] This is very fine. Had he been innocent, nothing `but the murder itself, and not any of its aggravating. circumftauces, would naturally have affected her. As it was, her bufinefs was to appear highly difordered at the news. Therefore, like one who has her thoughts about her, fhe feeks for an aggravating circumftance, that might be fuppofed most to affect her perfonally, not confidering, that by placing it there, the difcovered rather a concern for herself than for the king. On the contrary, her husband, who had repented the a&, and was now labouring under the horrors of a recent murder, in his exclamation, gives all the marks of forrow for the fact itself. WARBURTON. 9 Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time;] So, in The Winter's Tale: "If I might die within this hour, I have liv'd The fpring, the head, the fountain of your blood MAL. O, by whom? LEN. Thofe of his chamber, as it feem'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: 9 They ftar'd, and were distracted; no man's life Was to be trufled with them. MACB. O, yet I do repent me of my fury, That I did kill them. MACD. Wherefore did you fo? MACB. Who can be wife, amaz'd, temperate, and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man: badg'd with blood, I once thought that our author wrote bath'd; but badg'd is certainly right. So, in the fecond part of K. Henry IV. 9 "With murder's crimfon badge." MALONE. their daggers, which, unwip'd, we found Upon their pillows:] This idea, perhaps, was taken from The Man of Lawes Tale, by Chaucer, l. 5027, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit : "And in the bed the blody knif he fond." See also the foregoing lines. STEEVENS. Out-ran the paufer reafon.-Here lay Duncan, And his gafh'd ftabs look'd like a breach in nature, Here lay Duncan, His filver fkin lac'd with his golden blood ;] Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of thefe lines by fubftituting goary blood for golden blood; but it may easily be admitted that he, who could on fuch an occafion talk of lacing the filver fkin, would lace it with golden blood. No amendment can be made to this line, of which every word is equally faulty, but by a general blot. It is not improbable, that Shakspeare put thefe forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth as a mark of artifice and diffimulation, to fhow the difference between the ftudied language of hypocrify, and the natural outcries of fudden paffion. This whole speech, so confidered, is a remarkable inftance of judgement, as it confifts entirely of antithefis and metaphor. ( JOHNSON. To gild any thing, with blood is a very common phrase in the old plays. So Heywood, in the second part of his Iron Age, 1632: we have gilt our Greekish arms "With blood of our own nation." Shakspeare repeats the image in K. John: "Their armours that inarch'd hence so filver bright, STEEVENS, His filver Jkin lac'd with his golden blood;] The allufion is to the decoration of the richeft habits worn in the age of Shakspeare, when it was ufual to lace cloth of filver with gold, and cloth of gold with filver. The fecond of thefe fashions is mentioned in Much ado about Nothing, A& III. sc. iv; Cloth of gold,-laced with filver." STEEVENS. We meet with the fame antithefis in many, other places. Thus, in Much ado about Nothing: "Cut with her golden oars the filver fiream." Again, in The Comedy of Errors: Spread o'er the filver waves thy golden hairs." MALONE, The allufion is fo ridiculous on fuch an occafion, that it difco vers the declaimer not to be affeded in the manner he would re prefent himself. The whole fpeech is an unnatural mixture of farfetch'd and common-place thoughts, that shows him to be ading a part. WARBURTON. For ruin's wafteful entrance: 3 there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore: Who could refrain, 4 1 For ruin's wasteful entrance:] This comparison occars likewife in A Herring's Tayle, a poem, 1598: "A batter'd breach where troopes of wounds may enter in." STEEVENS. 4 Unmannerly breech'd with gore:] The expreffion may mean, that the daggers were covered with blood, quite to their breeches, i. e. their hilts or handles. The lower end of a cannon is called the breech of it; and it is known that both to breech and to unbreech a gun are common terms. So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Custom of the Country; "The main fpring's weaken'd that holds up his cock, "He lies to be new breech'd.' Again, in A Cure for a Cuckold, by Webfter and Rowley: "Unbreech bis barrel, and discharge his bullets. STEEVENS. Mr. Warton has justly observed that the word unmannerly is here ufed adverbially. So friendly is used for friendlily in K Henry IV. PII. and faulty for faultily in As you like it. A paffage in the preceding fcene, in which Macbeth's viliouary dagger is described, rongly fupports Mr. Steevens's interpretation: I fee thee ftill; "And on thy blade, and dudgeon, [i. e. hilt or haft] gouts of blood, "Which was not fo before." The following lines in King Henry VI. P. II. may perhaps, after all, form the beft comment on thefe controverted words: And full as oft came Edward to my fide, So alfo, in The Mirrour for Magiftrates, 1587: แ a naked fword he had, "That to the hilts with blood was all embrued." The word unman erly is again ufed adverbially in K. Henry VIII: "Thefe So alfo Taylor the Water-poet, Works, 1630, p. 173: and more the like fuch pretty afperfions, the outcaft rubbish of my company hath very liberally and unmannerly and ingratefully be, ftowed upon me." That had a heart to love, and in that heart LADY M. Help me hence, ho! MACD. Look to the lady. 5 Though fo much has been written on this paffage, the commentators have forgotten to account for the attendants of Duncan being furnished with daggers. The fact is, that in Shakspeare's time a dagger was a common weapon, and was ufually carried by fervants and others, fufpended at their backs. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "Then I will lay the ferving creature's dagger on your pate. Again, ibid: "This dagger hath mifta'en; for lo! his houfe “And is misheathed in my daughter's bosom!" MALONE. The fenfe is, in plain language, Daggers filthily-in a foul manner, -fheath'd with blood. A fcabbard is called a pilche, a leather coat, in Romeo;- -but you will afk, whence the allufion to breeches ? Dr. Warburton and Dr. Johnson have well obferved, that this fpeech of Macbeth is very artfully made up of unnatural thoughts and language: in 1605 (the year in which the play appears to have been written a book was published by Peter Erondell (with commendatory poems by Daniel, and other wits of the time,) called The French Garden, or a Summer Dayes Labour, containing, among other matters, fome dialogues of a dramatick caft, which, I am perfuaded, our author had read in the English; and from which he took, as he fuppofed, for his present purpose, this quaint expreffion. I will quote literatim from the 6th dialogue: "Boy! you do nothing but play tricks there, go fetch your mafter's filver-hatched daggers, you have not brushed their breeches, bring the brushes, and brush them before me.”—Shakspeare was deceived by the pointing, and evidently fuppofes breeches to be a new and affected term for fcabbards. But had he been able to have read the French on the other page, even as a learner, he must have been set right at once. Garçon, vous ne faites que badiner, allez querir les poignards argentez de vos maiftres, vous n'avez pas efpouffeté leur hâut-de-chauffes," their breeches, in the common fenfe of the word: as in the next fentence bas-de-chauffes, flockings, and so on through all the articles of drefs. FARMER. 66 Look to the lady.] Mr. Wheatley, from whofe ingenious remarks on this play I have already made a large extract, juftly observes that " on Lady Macbeth's feeming to faint,-while Banquo |