So should he look that seems to speak things strange.

Rosse. God save the king!

Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane?
Rosse. From Fife, great king,

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,
And fan our people cold.

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict:
Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons,

Point against point, rebellious arm 'gainst arm,b Curbing his lavish spirit: And, to conclude,

The victory fell on us;—

Dun.

Rosse. That now

Great happiness!

Bellona's bridegroom is here undoubtedly Macbeth; but Henley and Steevens, fancying that the God of War was meant, chuckle over Shakspere's ignorance in not knowing that Mars was not the husband of Bellona.

This is the original punctuation, which we think, with Tieck, is better than

"Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm." Without the slightest ceremony Steevens omits the emphatic word present, as " injurious to metre."

• Arvint thee.-See King Lear; Illustration of Act III., Scene IV.

Ronyon.-See As You Like It; Note on

Act

II.,

Scene II.

2 Witch. I'll give thee a wind.

1 Witch. Th' art kind.

3 Witch. And I another.

1 Witch. I myself have all the other;
And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters that they know
I' the shipman's card.

I'll drain him dry as hay: 2
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid :
Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd.
Look what I have.

2 Witch. Show me, show me.

1 Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wrack'd, as homeward he did come.

3 Witch. A drum, a drum : Macbeth doth come.

[Drum within.

All. The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land,

Steevens says, "As I cannot help supposing this scene to have been uniformly metrical when our author wrote it, in its present state I suspect it to be clogged with interpolations, or mutilated by omissions." There really appears no foundation for the supposition that the scene was uniformly metrical. It is a mixture of blank-verse with the sevensyllable rhyme, producing, from its variety, a wild and solemn effect which no regularity could have achieved. "Where hast thou been, sister?

is a line of blank verse:

Killing swine;"

"Sister, where thou ?"

is a ten-syllable line, rhyming with the following one of seven syllables. The editors have destroyed this metrical arrangement, by changing "Th' art kind" into "Thou art kind and " I'll drain him dry as hay" into "I will drain him dry as day;" and then they suspect " interpolations" and omissions."

b Weird.-There can be no doubt that this term is derived from the Anglo-Saxon wyrd, word spoken; and in the same way that the word fate is anything spoken, weird and fatal are synonymous, and equally applicable to such mysterious beings as Macbeth's witches. We cannot therefore agree with Tieck that the word is wayward-wilful. He says that it is written wayward in the original; but this is not so: it is written weyward, which Steevens says is a blunder of the transcriber or printer. We doubt this; for the word is thus written weyward, to mark that it consists of two syllables. For example, in the second act, Banquo says

"I dreamt last night of the three weyward sisters." But it is also written weyard:

"As the weyard women promis'd, and I fear." Here the word is one syllable, by elision. When the poet uses the word wayward in the sense of wilful, the editors of the original do not confound the words. Thus, in the third act, Hecate says

"And which is worse, all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son."

Enter ROSSE and ANGUS.

Rosse. The king hath happily receiv'd, Mac-
beth,

The news of thy success: and when he reads
Thy personal venture in the rebels' fight,
His wonders and his praises do contend,
Which should be thine, or his: Silenc'd with
that,

In viewing o'er the rest o' the self-same day,
He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,
Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,
Strange images of death, as thick as tale
Can post with post; and every one did bear
Thy praises in his kingdom's great defence,
And pour'd them down before him.
We are sent,

Ang.

с

To give thee, from our royal master, thanks; Only to herald thee into his sight, not pay thee.d

• On.-The modern editors substitute of; but why should we reject an ancient idiom in our rage for modernizing?

Henbane is called insana in an old book of medicine, which Shakspere might have consulted.

• We print this passage as in the original. The ordinary reading is,

"He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,
Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,
Strange images of death. As thick as tale,
Came post with post."

The passage is somewhat obscure; but the meaning is as evident under the old reading as the new.

d Steevens omits only; by which he weakens the sense and destroys the harmony of the line.

.

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill; cannot be good:-If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:

My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not.
Ban.

Look, how our partner's rapt.

• We follow the metrical arrangement of the original;not a perfect one, certainly, but better than the modern text.

Ban.

Very gladly. Macb. Till then, enough.-Come, friends. [Exeunt. SCENE IV.-Forres. A Room in the Palace.

Flourish. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBain, Lenox, and Attendants.

Dun. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not Those in commission yet return'd?

Mal.
My liege,
They are not yet come back. But I have spoke
With one that saw him die: who did report,
That very frankly he confess'd his treasons;
Implor'd your highness' pardon; and set forth
A deep repentance: nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died
As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,
As 'twere a careless trifle.b

Dun.
There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.-O worthiest cousin!

Enter MACBETH, BANQUO, ROSSE, and ANGUS.
The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy on me: Thou art so far before,
That swiftest wing of recompense is slow
To overtake thee. 'Would thou hadst less
deserv'd;

To get rid of the two hemistichs these five lines are made four in all modern editions.

The metrical arrangement of this speech is decidedly improved in the modern text; but the improvement is not, as in the cases where we have rejected changes, produced by the determination to effect an absurd uniformity. The same remark applies to Macbeth's answer to the king.

There if I grow,

The harvest is your own.
Dun.
My plenteous joys,
Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow.-Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know,
We will establish our estate upon
Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter
The prince of Cumberland: which honour must
Not, unaccompanied, invest him only,

But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers.-From hence to Inverness,
And bind us further to you.

Macb. The rest is labour, which is not us'd

for you:

I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful
The hearing of my wife with your approach;
So humbly take my leave.

Dun.
My worthy Cawdor!
Macb. The prince of Cumberland!—That is a
step

On which I must fall down, or else o'er-leap,

[Aside.

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

[Exit.

• Sir William Blackstone interprets the word safe as saved, conceiving that the whole speech is an allusion to feudal homage: "The oath of allegiance, or liege homage, to the king, was absolute, and without any exception; but simple homage, when done to a subject for lands holden of him, was always with a saving of the allegiance (the love and honour) due to the sovereign. Sauf la foy que jeo doy a nostre seignor le roy,' as it is in Littleton.' According to this interpretation, then, Macbeth only professes a qualified homage to the king's throne and state, as if the king's love and honour were something higher than his power and dignity. We cannot understand this. Surely it is easier to receive the words in their plain acceptation-our duties are called upon to do everything which they can do safely, as regards the love and honour we bear you.

Dun. True, worthy Banquo; he is full so valiant;

And in his commendations I am fed ;
It is a banquet to me. Let's after him,
Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome :
It is a peerless kinsman. [Flourish. Exeunt.

SCENE V.-Inverness. A Room in Macbeth's

Castle.

Enter Lady MACBETH, reading a letter.

Lady M. They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me, "Thane of Cawdor;" by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with, "Hail, king that shalt be!" This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness; that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.'

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promis'd:-Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,
To catch the nearest way: Thou wouldst be

а

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under battlements. Come, you spirits my That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here; And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood, Stop up the access and to remorse; passage That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect, and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell! That my keen knife see not the wound it makes; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men May read strange matters:-To beguile the time,

Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under it. He that's coming

If there be any one who does not feel the sublimity of the pause after "battlements," we can only say that he has yet to study Shakspere. None of the modern editors have felt it; and they destroy the magnificence of the passage by the childish repetition of the word come.

If fear, compassion, or any other compunctious visitings, stand between a cruel purpose and its realization, they may be said to keep peace between them, as one who interferes between a violent man and the object of his wrath keeps peace. It is spelt hit in the original, and Tieck proposes to retain hit. The passage appears to us to be rendered more obscure by this reading, whilst this mode of spelling it was by no means unfrequent.

SCENE VI.-The same. Before the Castle.

Hautboys. Servants of Macbeth attending. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, BANQUO, LENOX, MACDUFF, ROSSE, ANGUS, and Attendants.

Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. Ban.

This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle :

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd,

We request our readers to repeat these celebrated lines as we have printed them. Our text is a literal copy of the original. Is not the harmony perfect? Would they venture to displace a syllable? And yet, let them open any popular edition of Shakspere, and they will find it thus remodelled by the master-hand of Steevens, without the slightest explanation or apology:

"This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress,
Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made
His pendent bed, and procreant cradle: where they
Most breed and haunt, I have observ'd, the air
Is delicate."

b We have restored the old familiar expression God-eyld, as suiting better with the playfulness of Duncan's speech than the God yield us of the modern text. Malone and Steevens each give a very long paraphrase of the passage. There is great refinement in the sentiment, but the meaning is tolerably clear. The love which follows us is sometimes troublesome; so we give you trouble, but look you only at the love we bear to you, and so bless us and thank