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Enter Lady MACBETH.

Lady M. What's the business, That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley The sleepers of the house? speak, speak,'. Macd.

O, gentle lady,

'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 BANQuo.

Our royal master 's murder'd!

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Woe, alas!

Too cruel, any where.

Dear Duff, I pr'ythee, contradict thyself,

And say, it is not so.

charged the editors of the first folio with introducing stagedirections into their author's text, in support of his assertion, quotes the following line:

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My queen is murder'd:-ring the little bell."

a line that is not found in any edition of these plays that I have met with, nor, I believe, in any other book. Malone.

1 speak, speak, -] These words, which violate the metre, were probably added by the players, who were of opinion that-speak, in the following line, demanded such an introduc

tion Steevens.

8 The repetition, in a woman's ear,

Would murder as it fell.] So, in Hamlet:

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He would drown the stage with tears,

"And cleave the general ear with horrid speech."

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

• What, in our house?] This is very fine. Had she been innocent, nothing but the murder itself, and not any of its aggravating circumstances, would naturally have affected her. As it was, her business was to appear highly disordered at the news. Therefore, like one who has her thoughts about her, she seeks for an aggravating circumstance, that might be supposed most to affect her personally; not considering, that by placing it there, she discovered rather a concern for herself than for the king. On the contrary, her husband, who had repented the act, and was now labouring under the horrors of a recent murder, in his exclamation, gives all the marks of sorrow for the fact itself. Warburton.

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Re-enter MACBETH and LENOX.

Macb. Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time;1 for, from this instant, There's nothing serious in mortality:

All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
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,2
So were their daggers, which, unwip'd, we found
Upon their pillows:3

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

Macb. O, yet I do repent me of my fury,

That I did kill them.

Macd.

Wherefore did you so?

Macb. Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate, and fu

rious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:

The expedition of my violent love

1 Had I but died an hour before this chance,

I had liv'd a blessed time;] So, in The Winter's Tale:

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Undone, undone !

"If I might die within this hour, I have liv'd

"To die when I desire." Malone.

2 badg'd with blood,] I once thought that our author wrote bath'd; but badg'd is certainly right. So, in The Second Part of King Henry VI:

"With murder's crimson badge." Malone.

3 their daggers, which, unwip'd, we found

Upon their pillows:] This idea, perhaps, was taken from The Man of Lawes Tale, by Chaucer, 1. 5027, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit:

"And in the bed the blody knif he fond." See also the foregoing lines. Steevens.

Out-ran the pauser reason.-Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood;

And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature, For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,

-Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood;] Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of these lines, by substituting goary blood for golden blood; but it may be easily admitted that he, who could, on such an occasion, talk of lacing the silver skin, would lace it with golden blood. No amendment can be made to this line, of which every word is equally faulty, but by a ge

neral blot.

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 natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech, so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists entirely of antithesis and metaphor. Johnson.

His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood;] The allusion is to the decoration of the richest habits worn in the age of Shakspeare, when it was usual to lace cloth of silver with gold, and cloth of gold with silver. The second of these fashions is mentioned in Much Ado about Nothing, Act III, sc. iv: "Cloth of gold,-laced with silver."

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:

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we have gilt our Greekish arms

"With blood of our own nation."

Shakspeare repeats the image in King John:

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

Steevens.

We meet with the same antithesis in many other places. Thus, in Much Ado about Nothing:

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to see the fish

"Cut with her golden oars the silver stream.” Again, in The Comedy of Errors:

"Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs." Malone. The allusion is so ridiculous on such an occasion, that it discovers the declaimer not to be affected in the manner he would represent himself. The whole speech is an unnatural mixture of far-fetched and common-place thoughts, that shows him to be acting a part. Warburton.

5

a breach in nature,

For ruin's wasteful entrance:] This comparison occurs likebattering down the wise in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. III: “

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Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore : Who could refrain,

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wals of their armour, making breaches almost in every place, for troupes of wounds to enter.' Again, in A Herring's Tayle, a poem, 1598:

"A batter'd breach where troopes of wounds may enter in." Steevens.

6 Unmannerly breech'd with gore:] The expression may mean, that the daggers were covered with blood, quite to their breeches, i. e. their bilts 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-spring's weaken'd that holds up his cock, "He lies to be new breech'd.”

Again, in A Cure for a Cuckold, by Webster and Rowley:

"Unbreech his barrel, and discharge his bullets." Steevens. Mr. Warton has justly observed that the word unmannerly is here used adverbially. So friendly is used for friendily in King Henry IV, P. II, and faulty for faultily in As you Like it. A passage in the preceding scene, in which Macbeth's visionary dagger is described, strongly supports Mr. Steevens's interpretation:

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I see thee still;

"And on thy blade, and dudgeon [i. e. hilt or haft】 gouts of blood,

"Which was not so before."

The following lines in King Henry VI, P. III, may, perhaps, after all, form the best comment on these controverted words: "And full as oft came Edward to my side, "With purple faulchion, painted to the hilt "In blood of those that had encounter'd him."

So also, in The Mirrour for Magistrates, 1587:

66 a naked sword he had,

"That to the hilts with blood was all embrued."

The word unmannerly is again used adverbially in King Henry VIII:

"If I have us'd myself unmannerly,

So also, in Taylor the Water-poet, Works, 1630, p. 173: "These and more the like such pretty aspersions, the outcast rubbish of my company hath very liberally and unmannerly and ingratefully bestowed upon me."

Though so much has been written on this passage, the commentators have forgotten to account for the attendants of Duncan being furnished with daggers. The fact is, that in Shak speare's time a dagger was a common weapon, and was usually carried by servants and others, suspended at their backs. So, in Romeo and Juliet :

That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage, to make his love known?

Lady M.

Macd. Look to the lady.7

Mal.

Help me hence, ho!

Why do we hold our tongues,

That most may claim this argument for ours?

"Then I will lay the serving creature's dagger on your patę." Again, ibid:

"This dagger hath mista'en; for lo! his house

"Is empty on the back of Montague,

"And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom !"

Malone.

The sense is, in plain language, Daggers filthily—in a foul manner,-sheath'd with blood. A scabbard is called a pilche, a leather coat, in Romeo;-but you will ask, whence the allusion of breeches? Dr. Warburton and Dr. Johnson have well observed, that this speech 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, some dialogues of a dramatic cast, which, I am persuaded, our author read in the English; and from which he took, as he supposed, for his present purpose, this quaint expression. I will quote literatim from the 6th dialogue: “Boy! you do nothing but play tricks here, go fetch your master's silver-hatched daggers, you have not brushed their breeches, bring the brushes, and brush them before me."-Shakspeare was deceived by the pointing, and evidently supposes breeches to be a new and affected term for scabbards. 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 maistres, vous n'avez pas espousseté leur bâut-de-chausses,”—their breeches, in the common sense of the word: as in the next sentence bas-dechausses, stockings, and so on through all the articles of dress.

Farmer.

7 Look to the lady] Mr. Whateley, from whose ingenious remarks on this play I have already made a large extract, justly observes that, "on lady Macbeth's seeming to faint,-while Banquo and Macduff are solicitous about her, Macbeth, by his inconcern, betrays a consciousness that the fainting is feigned." I may add, that a bold and hardened villain would, from a refined policy, have assumed the appearance of being alarmed about her, lest this very imputation should arise against him: the irresolute Macbeth is not sufficiently at ease to aet such a part. Malone.

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