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and Hamlet, iii. 2. 269; and iii. 2. 41, iii. 5. 1, of this play. 'Hecate's offerings' are offerings made to Hecate. They were made with certain rites, hence the use of the word 'celebrate.' See King Lear, ii. 1. 41, and compare act iii. scene 5 of the present play.

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53. Alarum'd. We have this participle in King Lear, ii. 1. 55: My best alarum'd spirits.' 'Alarum' is formed from the French alarme, Italian alarma, a new syllable being introduced between the two liquids. The original word was doubtless Italian, all' arme. Shakespeare uses the three forms, alarum,' 'larum,' and ' alarm.' Compare v. 2. 4.

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54. Whose bowl's his watch, who marks the periods of his night-watch by howling, as the sentinel by a cry.

55. Tarquin's ravishing strides.

Lucrece, line 365:

This is Pope's emendation. Compare

'Into the chamber wickedly he stalks.'

The folios here read sides,' which is adopted by Knight, He objects with Johnson that stride' is an action of violence, impetuosity, and tumult, like that of a savage rushing on his prey. But it is not so in Richard II. i. 3. 268: 'Every tedious stride I make

Will but remember me what a deal of world

I wander from the jewels that I love.'

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The adjective is transferred, poetically, from Tarquin' to 'strides,' as 'heavy' in line 6 of this scene.

57. my steps, which way they walk. For this construction, so common in Greek, compare King Lear, i. 1. 272: 'I know you, what you are.' See also Mark i. 24; Luke iv. 34. The reading of the text is Rowe's emendation for 'my steps, which they may walk,' the reading of the folios, 58. The very stones prate. Compare Luke xix 40, 'The stones would immediately cry out.' To Macbeth's guilty and fearful conscience his own footfall is interpreted thus. Compare Lucrece, 302-306:

The locks between her chamber and his will,
Each one by him enforced retires his ward;

But, as they open, they all rate his ill,

Which drives the creeping thief to some regard;

The threshold grates the door to have him heard.'

Ib. my whereabout. So where' is used as a substantive, King Lear, i. I. 264:

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"Thou losest here a better where to find.'

And why' and 'wherefore,' Comedy of Errors, ii. 2. 45: They say, every why hath a wherefore.'

59. the present horror, the silence which then prevailed, suiting the time in which so horrible a deed was to be done.

60. Whiles. See i. 5. 6.

Ib. threat, threaten. Used in King John, iii. I. 347, 'No more than he that threats,' and Richard II. iii. 3. 90.

61. Words... gives. In this construction there was nothing which would offend the ear of Shakespeare's contemporaries. There is here a double reason for it: first, the exigency of the rhyme; and secondly, the occurrence, between the nominative and verb, of two singular nouns, to which, as it were, the verb is attracted. See our note on Richard II. ii. 1. 158. But a general

sentiment, a truism indeed, seems feeble on such an occasion. Perhaps the line is an interpolation.

Scene II.

1. Lady Macbeth had had recourse to wine in order to support her courage. Her prayer to be unsexed' had been heard.

3, 4. the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night. The full significance of this passage, which seems hitherto to have escaped the notice of commentators, may be best shewn by comparing the following lines from Webster's Duchess of Malfi, act iv. sc. 2, where Bosola tells the Duchess : 'I am the common bellman,

That usually is sent to condemn'd persons

The night before they suffer.'

Here, of course, Duncan is the condemned person. Compare also Spenser's Fairy Queen, v. 6. 27, where the cock is called the native belman of the night.' The owl is again mentioned, line 15, and in 1 Henry VI. iv. 2. 15: Thou ominous and fearful owl of death.'

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5. grooms, menial servants of any kind. In Fairfax's Tasso, Bk. xiv. st. 49, 'grooms' are servants waiting at table, ministri in the original:

A hundred grooms, quick, diligent, and neat.'

This more general sense of the word is still traceable in the phrase 'groom of the chambers.' The word is supposed to be derived by a curious corruption from guma, a 'man,' in Anglo-Saxon, whence also bridegroom,' from bryd-guma. But there is in Dutch 'grom, a stripling, a groom' (Hexham's Dictionary), as also gromr in Icelandic, and it is probable that the form was used also in Anglo-Saxon, though not found in any extant literature.

6. possets. Malone quotes the following from Randle Holme's Academy of Armoury, Bk. iii. p. 84, 1688, Posset is hot milk poured on ale or sack, having sugar, grated bisket, eggs, with other ingredients boiled in it, which goes all to a curd.' See note on ii. I. 31.

7. That, so that.

See i. 2. 58, i. 7. 25, and ii. 2. 23.

8. Macbeth fancies that he hears some noise (see line 14) and in his nervous excitement has not sufficient control over himself to keep silence. The word 'within' was added by Steevens. The folios make Macbeth enter before speaking, but it is clear that Lady Macbeth is alone while speaking the following lines.

IO, II. To attempt and not to succeed would ruin us. see The Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. 278:

'So keen and greedy to confound a man.'

For confound,'

12, 13. This touch of remorse, awakened by the recollection of her father, whom she had loved in the days of her early innocence, is well introduced, to make us feel that she is a woman still and not a monster.

20. a sorry sight, a sad sight. 'Sorry,' from the Anglo-Saxon sárig, is frequently attributed to inanimate things, as in 2 Henry VI. i. 4. 79. 'A sorry breakfast.' The stage direction 'looking on his hands' is not in the folios. It was added by Pope. See line 27.

24. address'd them, prepared themselves. Compare The Merchant of Venice, ii. 9. 19: And so have I address'd me.'

27. As, as if. Compare King Lear, iii. 4. 15:

" Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to 't?'

And Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 13. 85: As it rain'd kisses.'

Ib. bangman, executioner.

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125: The hangman's axe.'

Compare The Merchant of Venice, iv. 1.

28. Listening. This verb is used transitively, Julius Cæsar, iv. I. 41: Listen great things."

Ib. fear, expression of fear, cry of alarm.

32. thought. Hanmer read thought on,' perhaps rightly.

34-39. From the printing of the folios it is impossible to say where the ' voice' was to end, there being no inverted commas or other such device used in them. Rowe and Pope left the passage equally ambiguous. Hanmer printed all in italics to 'feast,' attributing the whole to the voice.' Johnson first gave the arrangement in the text. It seems more natural to suppose that the innocent sleep, &c.' is a comment made by Macbeth upon the words he imagined he had heard.

36. ravell'd, tangled. Compare Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. 2. 52 (where the verb is neuter):

Therefore as you unwind her love from him,
Lest it should ravel and be good to none,
You must provide to bottom it on me.'

To'ravel out' is to unravel, as in Richard II. iv. 1. 228.
Ib. sleave, or sleave-silk, is the same as floss-silk. Cotgrave has 'Soye
flosche. Sleaue silke.' Florio has Bauella, any kind of sleaue or raw silke,'
and Bauellare: to rauell as raw silke.' Compare Troilus and Cressida, v.
1. 35 Thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk,' where the quarto has
'sleive,' the folio 'sleyd.' Wedgwood says that it is doubtful whether the
radical meaning of the word is "ravelled, tangled," or whether it signifies that
which has to be unravelled or separated; from Anglo-Saxon slifan, to cleave
or split.'

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Ib. Pope put this line in the margin, doubtless taking 'sleave' in the sense of our sleeve,' and thinking that the metaphor was too homely for the occasion.

Ib. With the general sense of the whole passage compare Ovid, Metam. xi. 624, 625, where the poet addresses 'somnus':

'Pax animi, quem cura fugit, qui corda diurnis
Fessa ministeriis mulces reparasque labori.'

And Seneca, Hercules Furens, 1068 sqq.

37. death.

Warburton altered this to birth,' unnecessarily. Compare Tempest, iv. I. 157:

'Our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.'

39. nourisher. Steevens quotes from Chaucer's Squire's Tale (Cant. Tales, line 10661),

The norice of digestioun, the sleep.'

41, 42. Here again the printing of the folios is no guide as to the words of the voice.' Johnson supposed that the voice only said Glamis hath murder'd sleep,' the rest being Macbeth's own comment. As the 'voice'

itself is after all but the cry of conscience, it is not easy to separate the one from the other.

45. brainsickly, madly. The adverb is not found elsewhere in ShakeThe adjective is however found five times. See 2 Henry VI. v.

speare. 1. 163:

'Thou mad misleader of thy brain-sick son.'

45, 46. These words recur to the mind of Lady Macbeth when she walks in her sleep, v. I. 61, ' Wash your hands; put on your nightgown; look not so pale.'

46. witness, evidence. Used now only of the person who gives evidence. Compare The Merchant of Venice, i. 3. 100:

'An evil soul producing holy witness

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek.'

53, 54. 'tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. So in Webster, The White Devil, p. 22, ed. Dyce, 1857, Vittoria says:

55. gild.

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Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils.'

Used of blood in King John, ii. 1. 316:

Their armours, that march'd hence so silver-bright,
Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen's blood.'

56. guilt. By making Lady Macbeth jest, the author doubtless intended to enhance the horror of the scene. A play of fancy here is like a gleam of ghastly sunshine striking across a stormy landscape, as in some pictures of Ruysdael. Compare, for the pun, 2 Henry IV. iv. 5. 129:

England shall double gild his treble guilt.'

61. The multitudinous seas. Shakespeare may have had in mind a passage from Heywood's Robert Earl of Huntingdon (1601), quoted by Steevens: 'The multitudes of seas dyed red with blood.' 'Multitudinous' can have no reference here to the multitudes of creatures which inhabit the sea.

Ib. incarnadine. The word Incarnadin is found both as a substantive and adjective in Cotgrave's French Dictionary, and is translated 'carnation.' The Italian is incarnadino, and the meaning flesh colour.' 'Incarnadine,' we believe, is not found either as a verb, substantive, or adjective in any English author earlier than, or contemporary with, Shakespeare. It is used as a verb by Carew, Obsequies to the Lady Anne Hay:

Thy rosy cheek.'

'Incarnadine

Carew very likely had this passage in his mind.

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62. Making the green one red, converting the green into one uniform red. We should have thought it unnecessary to make a note on this passage, if some editors following the early folios, had not printed it thus: Making the green one, red,' which yields a tame, not to say ludicrous, sense; (with Rowe they had read sea,' for seas,' in the previous line). Johnson seems to have misunderstood it, for he printed green, one red -,' as if the sentence were interrupted by Lady Macbeth's speech. For the phrase 'one red,' compare Hamlet, ii. 2. 479: Now is he total gules.' And, for the general sense, The Two Noble Kinsmen, v. I:

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Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast turn'd
Green Neptune into purple.'

63. shame, am ashamed. See Winter's Tale, ii. 1. 91:

'One that knows

What she should shame to know herself.'

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64. a beart so white. Compare iv. I. 85, pale-hearted fear.'
67. constancy, firmness. See Julius Cæsar, ii. 1. 299:
I have made strong proof of my constancy,
Giving myself a voluntary wound.'

Your constancy which used to attend you has left you.

69. nightgown, as we should say, a dressing-gown, which one hastily summoned from bed would put on. Their being fully clothed would prove that they had not been in bed at all.

71. poorly, meanly, unworthily. Compare Richard II. iii. 3. 128: We do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not,

To look so poorly and to speak so fair?'

And King Lear, iv. 1. 10: 'My father poorly led.'

72. Macbeth answers to his wife's reproach, that he is lost in his thoughts, and therefore unable to take the steps which circumstances required, If I must look my deed in the face, it were better for me to lose consciousness altogether.' An easier sense might be arrived at by a slight change in punctuation: To know my deed? 'Twere best not know myself.'

Scene III.

The commencement of this scene, down to 'Is thy master stirring?' line 22, was put in the margin by Pope, who thought it either spurious or unworthy of its author. Coleridge also was convinced that the Porter's speech was the production of some player, which Shakespeare tolerated, and, reading it over, inserted the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.' Probably Coleridge would not have made even this exception unless he had remembered Hamlet, i. 3. 50,

The primrose path of dalliance.'

To us this comic scene, not of a high class of comedy at best, seems strangely out of place amidst the tragic horrors which surround it, and is quite different in effect from the comic passages which Shakespeare has introduced into other tragedies. See our remarks in the Preface.

2. old, used by Shakespeare as a colloquial intensive, as in The Merchant of Venice, iv. 2. 16:

We shall have old swearing.'

5. The expectation of plenty brought with it low prices. Compare Hall's Satires, iv. 6 (ed. 1597), quoted by Malone :

Ech Muck-worme will be rich with lawlesse gaine,

Altho he smother vp mowes of seuen yeares graine,
And hang'd himself when corne grows cheap again.'

8. equivocator. Warburton suggested that Shakespeare here had in his mind the equivocation with which the Jesuits were charged. In the account of the proceedings at Garnet's trial, published in 1606, we read (sig. V 3), 'Fourthly, They were allowed and taught by the Iesuites, to equiuocate vpon othe, saluation or otherwise, and how then should it be discouered?' Malone founds upon this an argument for placing the composition of the play in the

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