Enter MACBETH. Mach. I've done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise? Lady M. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Macb. [Looking on his hands.] This is a sorry sight. Macb. There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them: But they did say their prayers, and address'd 17 them Again to sleep. Lady M. There are two lodged together. Mach. One cried God bless us! and Amen! the other, As they had seen me with these hangman's hands,18 Lady M. Consider it not so deeply. Mach. But wherefore could not I pronounce Amen? I had most need of blessing, and Amen Stuck in my throat. Lady M. These deeds must not be thought invocation to the "murdering ministers," her milk continues to be milk. And what a suggestive contrast it makes to the terrible audacity of thought and speech she has just displayed! 17 Address'd for composed or prepared. See page 36, note 10. 18 "As if they had seen me with these butcher's hands." As for as if is very frequent. - Hangman was used for executioner in general, whether the work was done with rope or steel: hence, when beheading was common, the word contracted the sense of butcher. After these ways: so, it will make us mad. Macb. Methought I heard a voice cry Sleep no more! Lady M. What do you mean? Mach. Still it cried Sleep no more! to all the house : Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more! Lady M. Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of things.20 Go get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there: go carry them, and smear The sleepy grooms with blood. Mach. I'll go no more : I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not. Lady M. Infirm of purpose, Give me the daggers! the sleeping and the dead 19 Sleave is an old name for soft floss silk, such as is used for weaving. So in Drayton's Muses' Elysium: "Grass as soft as sleave or sarcenet ever was." So that to "knit up the ravell'd sleave of care," is to compose and put in trim for use the soft silk that care has ravelled out or discomposed. 20 Brainsickly is insanely, crazily. Hamlet has brainish in the same sense. — To think is equivalent to in thinking; an instance of the infinitive used gerundively, or like the Latin gerund. 21 With her firm self-control, this bold woman, when awake, was to be moved by nothing but facts: when her powers of self-control were unknit by sleep, then was the time for her to see things that were not, save in her own conscience. I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal; For it must seem their guilt.22 Macb. [Exit. Knocking within. Whence is that knocking? How is't with me, when every noise appals me? What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes! Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather Making the green one red.23 Re-enter Lady MACBETH. Lady M. My hands are of your colour, but I shame To wear a heart so white. [Knocking within.] I hear a knocking At the south entry: retire we to our chamber. A little water clears us of this deed: How easy is it, then! Your constancy Hath left you unattended.24 [Knocking within.] Hark! more knocking. Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, So poorly in your thoughts. Macb. To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself.25. [Knocking within. 22 Here we have a seeming quibble between gild and guilt. But I suspect the Poet did not mean it so. This use of to gild was very common, and so might slip in unconsciously. 28 Making the green water all red. So in Milton's Comus. "And makes one blot of all the air." - To incarnadine is to colour red. 24 That is, "Your firmness hath forsaken you, doth not attend you." 25 This is said in answer to Lady Macbeth's "Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts"; and the meaning is, "While thinking of what I have done, it were best I should be lost to myself, or should not know myself as the doer of it." Macbeth is now burnt with the conscience of his deed, and would fain lose the memory of it. To know is another gerundial infinitive, and so has the force of in or while knowing. See note 20. Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst ! Enter a Porter. Knocking within. [Exeunt. Port. Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old 26 turning the key. [Knocking.] Knock, knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name of Beelzebub? Here's a farmer that hang'd himself on the expectation of plenty. Come in time; have napkins 27 enough about you; here you'll sweat for't. [Knocking.] Knock, knock ! Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to Heaven.28 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.29 Come in, tailor; here. you may roast your goose.30 [Knocking.] Knock, knock; 25 Old was a common intensive or augmentative, used much as huge is now. The Porter now proceeds to hold a dialogue with several imaginary persons at the door, who are supposed to be knocking for admission to a warmer place. Coleridge and several others think this part of the scene could not have been written by Shakespeare. My thinking is decidedly different. I am sure it is like him. Its broad drollery serves as a proper foil to the antecedent horrors, and its very discordance with the surrounding matter imparts an air of verisimilitude to the whole. 27 In the old dictionaries sudarium is explained “napkin or handkerchief, wherewith we wipe away the sweat."—"Come in time" probably means "you are welcome." 23 "Could not equivocate himself into Heaven," or could not win Heaven by equivocating, is the meaning. — To "swear in both the scales against either scale" is to commit direct and manifest perjury. Hose was used for what we call trousers. Warburton says, "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." Others say, perhaps more truly, that the allusion is to a French fashion, which made the hose very large and wide, and so with more cloth to be stolen. A tailor's goose is the heavy "flat-iron" with which he smoothes and 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.31 [Knocking.] Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter. [Opens the gate. Enter MACDUFF and LENNOX. 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. 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, and, giving him the lie, leaves him. Macd. I believe drink gave thee the lie last night. Port. That it did, sir, i' the very throat on me: but I requited him for his lie; and, I think, being too strong for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast him. Macd. Is thy master stirring? Our knocking has awaked him; here he comes. presses his work; so called because the handle bore some resemblance to the neck of a goose. 31 A bonfire at that date is invariably given in Latin Dictionaries as equivalent to pyra or rogus; it was the fire for consuming the human body after death: and the hell-fire differed from the earth-fire only in being everlasting. This use of a word so remarkably descriptive in a double meaning is intensely Shakespearian.- FLEAY. |