At the south entry:-retire we to our chamber: Hath left you unattended.-[Knocking.] Hark! more knocking: Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, MACB. To know my deed,-'twere best not know myself. 2 [Knock. Wake Duncan with thy knocking! Ay, 'would thou could'st!3 9 My hands are of your colour; but I shame [Exeunt. To wear a heart so white.] A similar antithesis is found in Marlowe's Lust's Dominion, written before 1593: "Your cheeks are black, let not your soul look white.” MALONE. To know my deed,-'twere best not know myself.] i. e. While I have the thoughts of this deed, it were best not know, or be lost to, myself. This is an answer to the lady's reproof: the be not lost So poorly in your thoughts. WARBURTON. * Wake Duncan with thy knocking!] Macbeth is addressing person who knocks at the outward gate.-Sir W. D'Avenant, in his alteration of this play, reads-(and intended probably to point) "Wake, Duncan, with this knocking!" conceiving that Macbeth called upon Duncan to awake. From the same misapprehension, I once thought his emendation right; but there is certainly no need of change. MALONE. See Mr. Malone's extract from Mr. Whately's Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakspeare, at the conclusion of this tragedy. STEevens. 3 Ay, 'would thou could'st!] The old copy has-I; but as ay, the affirmative particle, was thus written, I conceive it to have been designed here. Had Shakspeare meant to express "I would," he might, perhaps, only have given us-'Would, as on many other occasions.-The repentant exclamation of Macbeth, in my judgment, derives force from the present SCENE III.* The same. Enter a Porter. [Knocking within. PORTER. Here's a knocking, indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. [Knocking.] Knock, knock, knock: Who's there, i'the name of Belzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: Come in time; have napkins enough about you; here you'll sweat for't. [Knocking.] Knock, knock: Who's there, i'the other devil's name? 'Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in change; a change which has been repeatedly made in spelling this ancient substitute for the word of enforcement—ay, in the very play before us. If it be urged, that the line is roughen'd by the reading I would introduce, let not the following verse, in Act III. sc. vi. of this very tragedy, be forgotten: "Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too?" STEEVENS. * Scene III.] Though Shakspeare (see Sir J. Reynolds's excellent note on Act I. sc. vi. p. 72,) might have designed this scene as another instance of what is called the repose in painting, I cannot help regarding it in a different light. A glimpse of comedy was expected by our author's audience in the most serious drama; and where else could the merriment, which he himself was always struggling after, be so happily introduced? says, STEEVENS. she should have old turning the key.] i. e. frequent, more than enough. So, in King Henry IV. P. II. the Drawer "Then here will be old utis." See note on this passage. STEEVENS. -napkins enough- i. e. handkerchiefs. So, in Othello: "Your napkin is too little." STEEvens. both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator. [Knocking.] Knock, knock, knock: Who's there? "Faith, here's an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose: Come in, tailor; 7 here's an equivocator,-who committed treason enough for God's sake,] Meaning a Jesuit: an order so troublesome to the state in Queen Elizabeth and King James the First's time. The inventors of the execrable doctrine of equivocation. WARBURTON. 8 here's an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose:] The archness of the joke consists in this, that a French hose being very short and strait, a tailor must be master of his trade who could steal any thing from thence. WARBURTON. Dr. Warburton has said this at random. The French hose (according to Stubbs, in his Anatomie of Abuses,) were in the year 1595 much in fashion: " The Gallic hosen are made very large and wide, reaching down to their knees only, with three or foure gardes apeece laid down along either hose." Again, in The Ladies Privilege, 1640: 66 wear their long "Parisian breeches, with five points at knees, "Whose tags, concurring with their harmonious spurs, "Afford rare music; then have they doublets "So short i'th' waist, they seem as twere begot Upon their doublets by their cloaks, which to save stuff "Are but a year's growth longer than their skirts; "And all this magazine of device is furnish'd "By your French taylor." Again, in The Defence of Coneycatching, 1592: "Blest be the French sleeves and breech verdingales that grants them (the tailors) leave to coney-catch so mightily." STEEVENS. When Mr. Steevens censured Dr. Warburton in this place, he forgot the uncertainty of French fashions. In The Treasury of ancient and modern Times, 1613, we have an account (from Guyon, I suppose,) of the old French dresses: "Mens hose answered in length to their short-skirted doublets; being made close to their limbes, wherein they had no meanes for pockets.” And Withers, in his Satyr against Vanity, ridicules "the spruze, diminitive, neat, Frenchman's hose." FARMER. here you may roast your goose. [Knocking.] Knock, knock: Never at quiet! What are you?-But this place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire. [Knocking.] Anon, anon; I pray you, remember the porter. [Opens the gate. 9 Enter MACDUFF and LeNox. MACD. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, That you do lie so late? PORT. 'Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things. From the following passages in The Scornful Lady, by Beaumont and Fletcher, which appeared about the year 1613, it may be collected that large breeches were then in fashion: Saville. [an old steward.] "A comelier wear, I wis, than your dangling slops." Afterwards Young Loveless says to the steward,- "This is as plain as your old minikin breeches." MALONE. 9 — the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.] So, in Hamlet: "Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads." Again, in All's well that ends well: - the flowery way that leads &c. to the great fire." Chaucer also, in his Persone's Tale, calls idleness" the greene path-way to hell." STEEvens. 1 till the second cock:] Cockcrowing. So, in King Lear: "he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock." Again, in The Twelfth mery Ieste of the Widow Edith, 1573: "The time they pas merely til ten of the clok, "Yea, and I shall not lye, til after the first cok.” STEEVENS. It appears, from a passage in Romeo and Juliet, that Shakspeare means, that they were carousing till three o'clock: The second cock has crow'd; 66 "The curfew-bell has toll'd: 'tis three o'clock." MALONE. MACD. What three things does drink especially provoke ? PORT. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes: it provokes the desire,but it takes away the performance: Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to: in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep,2 and, giving him the lie, leaves him. MACD. I believe, drink gave thee the lie last night.3 2 in a sleep,] Surely we should read-into a sleep, or→→→ into sleep. M. MASON. The old reading is the true one. Our author frequently uses in for into. So, in King Richard III: 66 But, first, I'll turn yon' fellow in his Again, ibid: 66 grave." Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects." STEevens. * I believe, drink gave thee the lie last night.] It is not very easy to ascertain precisely the time when Duncan is murdered. The conversation that passes between Banquo and Macbeth, in the first scene of this Act, might lead us to suppose that when Banquo retired to rest it was not much after twelve o'clock: "Ban. How goes the night, boy? "Fle. The moon is down; I have not heard the clock. "Ban. And she goes down at twelve. "Fle. I take't 'tis later sir." The King was then "abed;" and immediately after Banquo retires Lady Macbeth strikes upon the bell, and Macbeth commits the murder. In a few minutes afterwards the knocking at the gate commences, (end of sc. ii.) and no time can be supposed to elapse between the second and the third scene, because the Porter gets up in consequence of the knocking: yet here Macduff talks of last night, and says that he was commanded to call timely on the King, and that he fears he has almost overpass'd the hour; and the Porter tells him "we were carousing till the second cock;" so that we must suppose it to be now at |