a valiant warrior. In a single day he has routed two hostile armies, one of the Scotch rebels under Macdonwald, whom he has slain with his own hand, the other that of the invading Norwegians under Sweno. He has been assisted by another nobleman, Banquo, but the main glory of the victory is ascribed to Macbeth.

The scene is laid in the king's camp near Forres, a little town in the north of Scotland. Forres is really some ninety miles north of the county of Fife, in which Macbeth is supposed to be fighting, but Shakespeare, who knew little, and cared less, about Scotch geography, makes it within earshot of the battle. The phrase "alarum within," in the stage directions, indicates the noise of the battle; and as the king and his lords enter, they meet a wounded soldier who has just come from the front.

2. revolt. Duncan uses this word because he is thinking of the rebels with whom Macbeth is fighting. He knows nothing as yet of the foreign invaders.

3. sergeant a word of three syllables. In the old stage direction, retained in this edition, this character is called a captain. "Sergeant" in Shakespeare's day meant a member of the king's bodyguard; and this man is evidently a captain of that company.

5. my captivity. It is plain from this phrase that Malcolm, the king's son, had been in the battle, and would have been taken prisoner but for the bravery of this captain.

There is an unaccented syllable wanting in the fourth foot of this line. Its place is supplied by the brief pause in Malcolm's speech as he turns from his father to address the captain.

7. An accented syllable is wanting in the third foot of this line. The pause before the captain begins to speak takes its place. 9. choke their art, render their skill in swimming useless.

9. Macdonwald, the leader of the rebels.

10. for to that, because to that end, i.e. to be a rebel. "The multiplying villanies of nature" refer to the many evil qualities of Macdonwald which naturally fitted him to play the part of a rebel.

12. the western isles, the islands off the west coast of Scotland, including Ireland.

13. kerns and gallowglasses. Shakespeare got these unusual words from Holinshed's chronicle. A writer in Shakespeare's day,1 in speaking of the Irish soldiery, says that it consists of three parts, horsemen, the rear-guard, "whom they call gallowglasses," armed with axes, and light-armed foot-soldiers called kerns, who fought with thonged javelins and knives. Originally, at least, the gallowglasses were heavy-armed foreign soldiers, hired by the chief, and used as a reserve in battle; the kerns, on the other hand, were the badly armed peasantry of the country.

Note the peculiar idiom, "supplied of," instead of our “supplied with."

14. his damned quarrel, his accursed cause. See Textual Notes, page 247.

15. Show'd like a rebel's whore, appeared like the flattering mistress of a rebel.

18. execution, the termination -ion is here pronounced as two syllables.

20. the slave, Macdonwald. The word, of course, is not used literally, but only as a term of reproach.

21. Which. Possibly something has been omitted after the word "slave," for the text as it stands is somewhat obscure. "Which " is equivalent to our modern "who," and would naturally refer to "the slave," i.e. Macdonwald. But the sense seems to require that it refer to Macbeth. Compare i. 5. 36-37 for a somewhat similar construction.

The phrases "shook hands" and "bade farewell" have about the same meaning, equivalent to "left." The sense of the whole passage, then, is that Macbeth cut his way through the battle to Macdonwald and never left him until he had killed him.

24. cousin. According to Holinshed Macbeth was Duncan's first cousin.

1 Camden, Britannia, ed. 1590, p. 718.

27, 28. So... swells. Just as storms come from the east, where the sun rises, so trouble, i.e. a fresh battle, arises from the victory of Macbeth which seemed a source of comfort to his nation. 29. justice. . . with valour arm'd. The reference, of course, is to Macbeth.

31. Norweyan lord. Sweno, king of Norway, who is here for the first time alluded to.

31. surveying vantage, spying a good opportunity. Sweno thought it a good time to attack Macbeth when the former was wearied with his battle against the rebels.

32. furbish'd arms, the reference is to the bright arms of the fresh Norwegians as contrasted with the battered and blood-stained weapons of Macbeth and his men.

34. captains, probably pronounced as a word of three syllables. An old form of spelling, “capitain," shows this pronunciation. 34. Yes, spoken in irony.

38. Doubly, etc. For remarks on this disputed line, see Textual Notes, page 247.

40. memorize another Golgotha, make the field of battle as famous for bloodshed as was Calvary.

41. I cannot tell, I do not know what to say.

45. For the scansion of this line, see Textual Notes, page 248. 45. thane, an old English title of rank. It meant, first of all, a servant, then a servant of the king, and finally a nobleman. The title was retained in Scotland after it had been exchanged in England for that of earl. In the last scene of Macbeth we find Malcolm promoting his thanes to be earls.

50. fan our people cold, strike the chill of fear into the hearts of our people.

54. Bellona's bridegroom, Macbeth, whose courage fitted him to be a mate for Bellona, the Goddess of War. lapp'd in proof, clad in proved armor.

55. Confronted him with self-comparisons. Macbeth met the Norse king in hand-to-hand fight, and proved a match for him.

56. rebellious. It is not exactly accurate to speak of Sweno's sword as "rebellious." He was an invader, not a rebel; but he was assisted by the rebel Cawdor, and so the adjective is not altogether inappropriate.

61. Saint Colme's inch, the "inch," or island, of St. Colme, or Columba, a little island in the Firth of Forth. We may imagine that the Norwegian ships were lying in the Firth, and that after Sweno's defeat he fled to them. Then, in order to secure the bodies of his dead warriors, he paid down ten thousand dollars at the abbey on the island.

64. Our bosom interest, our dear friendship. As Duncan's words in i. 4. 11–14 show, Cawdor had been completely trusted by the king.

ACT I. SCENE III

With this scene the real action of the play begins. The first scene brought the witches before us; the second gave us a noble picture of Macbeth. Now the two parties, the tempters and the tempted, meet, and from their meeting and the witches' prophecy proceed directly all the remaining events of the story. The witches awaken in Macbeth the passion of ambition, which henceforth is the mainspring of his action. But we must not think that they in any way enchant Macbeth or compel him to do their evil will. After the meeting, as before, he is a free man, and can act or refrain from action as he sees fit. This is shown, in part at least, by the fact that Banquo, although also greeted by the witches with prophecies of future honour for his house, is not led on to any crime to make good the prophecy. There is something in Macbeth's own heart that receives and answers the greeting of the witches. This is Shakespeare's way of writing tragedy; he makes the fate of his men and women depend upon their own characters, not upon chance or outside influences.

In the first thirty-seven lines of the scene, the witches recount to each other the evil deeds in which they have been engaged since

their last meeting.

It is worth noting that these deeds are petty and vulgar; but just as every good deed —even the giving of a cup of cold water, — is a blessed thing, so every evil deed - even the killing of swine is a delight to the powers of evil. This conversation, moreover, serves to identify the "weird sisters" of the play with the familiar witches of Elizabethan superstition.

2. Killing swine. One of the commonest charges brought against supposed witches in Shakespeare's day was that they maliciously killed by pestilence, or the evil eye, the domestic animals of those they had a grudge against.

6. rump-fed. There has been a good deal of dispute over the exact meaning of this phrase. The best interpretations are either "well-fed," "pampered," or "fat-rumped." I rather prefer the latter as being a coarse expression in keeping with the following 'ronyon," i.e. scab.

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7. Aleppo, a town in Syria, not on the sea-shore as might be imagined from this line, but some distance in the interior.

8. in a sieve. It was a common belief in Shakespeare's day, especially in Scotland, that witches possessed the power of sailing on the sea in a sieve.

9. like tail, in the shape of a rat without a tail. It was commonly believed that witches could assume the forms of animals. They could often, however, be detected by some physical defect.

10. I'll do, etc. The witch does not say what she will do. The threat gains in force from its very vagueness.

11. a wind. Witches were supposed to have control of the winds; they could either call up tempests or give sailors favouring breezes. 15. the ports they blow. The witch controls not only the winds, but the harbours they blow upon.

17. the shipman's card, either the card on which the points of the compass are marked, or a chart showing the direction of the prevailing winds along a coast.

20. pent-house lid, the eyelid. Properly speaking the eyebrow is the "pent-house," i.e. the projecting roof over the window of the eye.