Thunder. 1 Apparition, of an armed Head17. 1 Witch. He knows thy thought; Hear his speech, but say thou nought 18. App. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Beware the thane of Fife.-Dismiss me :-Enough 19. [Descends. Macb. Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks; Thou hast harp'd my fear aright: But one word more: 1 Witch. He will not be commanded: Here's an other, More potent than the first. Thunder. 2 Apparition, of a bloody Child. App. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Macb. Had I three ears, I'd hear thee 20. App. Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn 17 "The armed head represents symbolically Macbeth's head cut off and brought to Malcolm by Macduff. The bloody child is Macduff, untimely ripped from his mother's womb. The child, with a crown on his head and a bough in his hand, is the royal Malcolm, who ordered his soldiers to hew them down a bough, and bear it before them to Dunsinane."-Upton. 16 Silence was necessary during all incantations. So in Dr. Faustus: "Your grace demand no questions, But in dumb silence let them come and go." And in The Tempest: "Be mute, or else our spell is marr'd." 19 Spirits thus evoked were supposed to be impatient of being questioned. The spirit in the Second Part of King Henry the VIth, Act iv. Sc. 1, says:— "Ask what thou wilt:-That I had said and done." 20 Haa I three ears, I'd hear thee. This singular expression probably means no more than, I will listen to thee with all at tention. The power of man, for none of woman born [Descends. Macb. Then live, Macduff; What need I fear of thee? But yet I'll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live; Thunder. 3 Apparition, of a Child crowned, with a That rises like the issue of a king; What is this, And wears upon his baby brow the round All. Listen, but speak not to't. App. Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are ; Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill 23 21 For none of woman born shall harm Macbeth. So Holinshed:-"And surely hereupon he had put Macduff to death, but that a certeine witch, whom he had in great trust, had told him, that he should never be slaine with man borne of anie woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Bernane came to the castle of Dunsinane. This prophecy put all fear out of his heart." 22 The round is that part of a crown which encircles the head: the top is the ornament which rises above it. 23 The present accent of Dunsinane is right. In every subsequent instance the accent is misplaced. Thus in Hervey's Life of King Robert Bruce 1729, which Ritson thinks a good authority: "Whose deeds let Birnam and Dunsinnan tell, When Canmore battled and the villain fell." Andrew of Wyntoun uses both accents. Prophecies of apparent impossibilities were common in Scotland; such as the removal of one place to another, &c. Thus Sir D. Lindsay: "Quhen the Bas and the Isle of May Shall come against him. [Descends. That will never be; Who can impress the forest 24; bid the tree Of Birnam rise, and our high-plac'd Macbeth All. Seek to know no more. Macb. I will be satisfied: deny me this, And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know:Why sinks that cauldron? and what noise 26 is this? [Hautboys. 1 Witch. Show! 2 Witch. Show! 3 Witch. Show! All. Show his eyes, and grieve his heart 27; Come like shadows, so depart. A show of Eight Kings, and BANQUO last, with a Glass in his Hand. Macb. Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo; down! Quhen the Lowmound beside Falkland Be liftit to Northumberland." 24 i. e. command it to serve him like a soldier impressed. 25 The old copy has Rebellious dead. Theobald changed dead to head; but this was only a partial cure of the corruption: it is quite evident that we should read Rebellion's head, the conspirers mentioned by the apparition. "Let Rebellion never raise its head till the wood of Birnam rise, and Macbeth shall live the lease of nature." The personification adds much to the effect of the passage. 26 Noise in our old poets is often literally synonymous for music. Vide a note on the Second Part of King Henry IV. Act ii. Sc. 4. "And the man of thine, 27 Show his eyes, and grieve his heart. Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs :—And thy hair, For the blood-bolter'd 31 Banquo smiles upon me, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart."-1 Samuel ii. 33. 28 i. e. the dissolution of nature. synonymous. Crack and crash were formerly 29 This method of juggling prophecy is referred to in Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 8: "And like a prophet Looks in a glass, and shows me future evils." In an extract from the Penal Laws against witches, it is said "they do answer either by voice, or else set before their eyes in glasses, chrystal stones, &c. the pictures or images of the persons or things sought for." Spenser has given a circumstantial account of the glass which Merlin made for King Ryence.-Faerie Queene, b. iii. c. 2. A mirror of the same kind was presented to Cambuscan, in the Squire's Tale of Chaucer: and we are told that a certaine philosopher did the like to Pompey, the which shewed him in a glasse the order of his enemies march."-Boisteau's Theatrum Mundi, translated by John Alday, b. l. no date. 66 30 That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry. This was intended as a compliment to James the First: he first united the two islands and the three kingdoms under one head, whose house too was said to be descended from Banquo, who is therefore represented not only as innocent, but as a noble character; whereas, according to history, he was confederate with Macbeth in the murder of Duncan. 31 "In Warwickshire," says Malone, " when a horse, sheep, or other animal, perspires much, and any of the hair or wool, in consequence of such perspiration, or any redundant humour, becomes matted into tufts with grime and sweat, he is said to be boltered; and whenever the blood issues out and coagulates, forming the locks into hard clotted bunches, the beast is said to be bloodboltered. When a boy has a broken head, so that his hair is And points at them for his.—What! is this so? Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprights 32, [Musick. The Witches dance, and vanish. Macb. Where are they? Gone?-Let this pernicious hour Stand aye accursed in the calendar! Come in, without there! Macb. Came they not by you? Len. No, indeed, my lord. Macb. Infected be the air whereon they ride; And damn'd all those that trust them!—I did hear The galloping of horse: Who was't came by? Len. 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word, Macduff is fled to England. Macb. Len. Ay, my good lord. Fled to England? Macb. Time, thou anticipat'st 33 my dread exploits : matted together with blood, his head is said to be boltered [pronounced baltered.]" It is therefore applicable to Banquo, who had "twenty trenched gashes on his head.” 32 Sprights, i. e. spirits. It would seem that spirits was almost always pronounced sprights or sprites by Shakespeare's cotemporaries. 33 Anticipat'st, i. e. preventest them, by taking away the oppor |