Sent forth great largess to your offices: By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up Macb. Being unprepar'd, Our will became the servant to defect; Ban. All's well. I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: Macb. I think not of them : Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, Ban. At your kind'st leisure. Macb. If you shall cleave to my consent,-when 'tis. It shall make honour for you." Ban. So I lose none, In seeking to augment it, but still keep My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear, I shall be counsel'd. Macb. Good repose, the while! Ban. Thanks, sir; the like to you! Macb. Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. [Exit BANQUO. [Exit Ser. me clutch Is this a dagger, which I see before me, I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. As this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; [5] Offices are rooms appropriated to servants and culinary purposes. STEEVENS. [6] Macbeth expresses his thought with affected obscurity; he does not mention the royalty, though he apparently had it in his mind. If you shall cleave to my con sent, if you shall concur with me when I determine to accept the crown, when 'tis, when that happens which the prediction promises, it shall make honour for you. JOHNSON. That Banquo was apprehensive of a design upon the crown, is evident from his reply, which affords Macbeth so little encouragement, that he drops the subject. RITSON 19. VOL. IV. N And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses, And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood, Thus to mine eyes.-Now o'er the one half world, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Dudgeon-the haft or handle of a dagger. STEEVENS. [8] Or drops, French. POPE. [A bell rings. Gouts is the technical term for the spots on some part of the plumage of a hawk: or perhaps Shakespeare used the word in allusion to a phrase in heraldry. STEEVENS. [9] That is, over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have ceased. This image, which is, perhaps, the most striking that poetry can produce, has been adopted by Dryden, in his Conquest of Mexico: All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead, And sleeping flow'rs beneath the night dews sweat, These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast between them and this passage of Shakespeare may be more accurately observed. Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of quiet, the other of perturbation. In the night of Dryden, all the disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakespeare, nothing but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake. He that reads Dryden, finds himself lulled with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation. He that peruses Shakespeare, looks around alarmed, and starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover; the other of a murderer. JOHNSON. [1] Probably Shakespeare wrote: The curtain'd sleeper. The folio spells the word sleepe. STEEVENS. Mr. S's emendation is entitled to a place in the text. It is clearly Shakespeare's own word. RITSON. [2] Macbeth would have nothing break through the universal silence that added such a horror to the night, as suited well with the bloody deed he was about to per form. Mr. Burke, in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, observes, that all general privations are great, because they are all terrible;" and, with other things, he gives silence as an instance, illustrating the whole by that remarkable passage in Virgil, where amidst all the images of terror that could be united, the circumstance of silence is particularly dwelt upon : "Dii quibus imperium est animarum, umbræque silentes, Et Chaos et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentiu late." STEEVENS. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven, or to hell. [Exit. Lady M. That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold: What hath quench'd them, hath given me fire :-Hark! -Peace! It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it: Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd their possets, 3 That death and nature do contend about them, Macb. [Within.] Who's there?- -what, ho! Lady M. Alack! I am afraid they have awak'd, And 'tis not done :-th' attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us :-Hark!-I laid their daggers ready, He could not miss them.-Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had don't. -My husband? Enter МАСВЕТН. 1 Macb. I have done the deed: a noise? -Didst thou not hear Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry. Did not you speak? Macb. When? Lady M. Now. Macb. As I descended ? -Lady M. Ay. Macb. Hark!-Who lies i' th' second chamber? Lady M. Donalbain. Macb. This is a sorry sight. [Looking on his hands. Lady M. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. [3] It appears from this passage, as well as from many others in our old dramatic performances, that it was the custom to eat possets just before bed-time. Mrs. Quickly promises Jack Rugby a posset at night. STEEVENS. [4] This is very artful. For, as the poet has drawn the lady and her husband, it would be thought the act should have been done by her. It is likewise highly just; for though ambition had subdued in her all the sentiments of nature towards present objects, yet the likeness of one past, which she had been accustomed to regard with reverence, made her unnatural passions, for a moment give way to the sentiments of Instinct and humanity WARBURTON Macb. There's one did laugh in his sleep, and one cried, murder! That they did wake each other; I stood and heard them : Lady M. There are two lodg'd together. Macb. One cry'd, God bless us! and, Amen, the other; As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands. Listening their fear, I could not say, Amen, When they did say, God bless us. Lady M. Consider it not so deeply. Macb. 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 After these ways; so, it will make us mad. 5. Macb. Methought, I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep; Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast ; Lady M. What do you mean? Macb. 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:-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. Macb. 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, [5] Sleave signifies the ravelled knotty part of the silk, which gives great trouble and embarrassment to the knitter or weaver. HEATH. Drayton, a poet of Shakespeare's age, has likewise alluded to sleave or ravelled silk, in his Quest of Cynthia: "At length I on a fountain light, Whose brim with pinks was platted, The banks with daffadillies dight, With grass, like sleave was matted." LANGTON. Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood, [Exit. Knocking within. Macb. Whence is that knocking? How is't with me, when every noise appals me? Making the green-one red. Re-enter Lady MACBETH. Lady M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white. [Knock.] 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.-[Knocking.] Hark! more Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, So poorly in your thoughts. Macb. To know my deed,-'twere best not know my self.9 [Knock. [Exeunt. Wake Duncan with thy knocking! Ay, 'would thou couldst ! [6]" Suscipit, o Gelli, quantum non ultima Tethys, Nec genitor nympharum abluit oceanus." Catul. in Gel. 83. STEEVENS. [7] To incarnardine is to stain any thing of a flesh colour, or red. Carnardine is the old term for Carnation. STEEVENS. The word may be exemplified from Carew's Obsequies to the Lady Anne Hay "One shall ensphere thine eyes; another shall Impearl thy teeth; a third, thy white and small [8] One red does not sound to my ear as the phraseology of the age of Elizabeth; and the green, for the green one, or for the green sea, is, I am persuaded, unexampled. MALONE. The expression" one red," may be justified by language more ancient than that of Shakespeare. In Genesis, ii. 24. and in several other places in scripture, we have-" one flesh." Again in our Liturgy: "be made one fold under one shepherd." STEEVENS. [9] 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. WARBURTON. |