To prick the sides of my intent, but only "For raging wind blows up incessant showers; Again, in our author's Venus and Adonis : "Even as the wind is hush'd before it raineth.” Again, in The Rape of Lucrece : STEEVENS. "This windy tempest, till it blow up rain Again, in Troilus and Cressida: "Where are my tears?—rain, rain to lay this wind." I have no SPUR TO PRICK the sides of my intent, but only MALONE. Vaulting AMBITION,] The spur of the occasion is a phrase used by Lord Bacon. STEEVENS. So, in the tragedy of Cæsar and Pompey, 1607 : 66 Why think you, lords, that 'tis ambition's spur, "That pricketh Cæsar to these high attempts?" MALONE. Again, in The First Part of The Tragicall Raigne of Selimus, &c. 4to. 1594: My sonnes whom now ambition ginnes to pricke." TODD. 2 And falls on the other.] Sir T. Hanmer has on this occasion added a word, and would read "And falls on the other side." Yet they who plead for the admission of this supplement, should consider, that the plural of it, but two lines before, had occurred. I, also, who once attempted to justify the omission of this word, ought to have understood that Shakspeare could never mean to describe the agitation of Macbeth's mind, by the assistance of a halting verse. The general image, though confusedly expressed, relates to a horse, who, overleaping himself, falls, and his rider under him. To complete the line we may therefore read "And falls upon the other." Thus, in The Taming of a Shrew: "How he left her with the horse upon her." Macbeth, as I apprehend, is meant for the rider, his intent for his horse, and his ambition for his spur; but, unluckily, as the words are arranged, the spur is said to over-leap itself. Such LADY M. He has almost supp'd; Why have you left the chamber? MACB. Hath he ask'd for me? hazardous things are long-drawn metaphors in the hands of careless writers. STEEVENS. I apprehend that there is not here one long-drawn metaphor, but two distinct ones. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent; I have nothing to stimulate me to the execution of my purpose but ambition, which is apt to overreach itself; this he expresses by the second image, of a person meaning to vault into his saddle, who, by taking too great a leap, will fall on the other side. It should be recollected that to vault upon horseback with ease and activity was reckoned a great accomplishment by the courtiers of that time. MALONE. 3 Enter Lady-] The arguments by which Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to commit the murder, afford a proof of Shakspeare's knowledge of human nature. She urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism Macbeth has for ever destroyed, by distinguishing true from false fortitude, in a line and a half; of which it may almost be said, that they ought to bestow immortality on the author, though all his other productions had been lost : "I dare do all that may become a man ; "Who dares do more, is none." This topick, which has been always employed with too much success, is used in this scene, with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman. Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier; and the reproach of cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great impatience. She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them: this argument Shakspeare, whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might easily have shown that a former obligation could not be vacated by a latter; that obligations, laid on us by a higher power, could not be over-ruled by obligations which we lay upon ourselves. JOHNSON. Part of Lady Macbeth's argument is derived from the translation of Hector Boethius. See Dr. Farmer's note, p. 38. MALONE. LADY M. Know you not, he has ? MACB. We will proceed no further in this busi ness: He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, LADY M. Was the hope drunk *, Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely? From this time, Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valour, Letting I dare not wait upon I would, Like the poor cat i' the adage? Масв. 5 Pr'ythee, peace: Was the hope drunk, &c.] The same expression is found in King John: "O, where hath our intelligence been drunk, Would'st thou HAVE that Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, AND live a coward in thine own esteem;] In this there seems to be no reasoning. I should read: "Or live a coward in thine own esteem;" Unless we choose rather: 66 Do you wish to obtain the crown, and yet would you remain such a coward in your own eyes all your life, as to suffer your paltry fears, which whisper, I dare not,' to controul your noble ambition, which cries out, I would?'" STEEVENS. Like the poor cat i' the adage?] The adage alluded to is, "The cat loves fish, but dares not wet her feet: Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas. It is among Heywood's Proverbs 1566, D. 2: JOHNSON. "The cat would eate fishe, and would not wet her feete." BOSWELL. 5 I dare do all that may become a man ; LADY M. What beast was't then, That made you break this enterprize to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man ; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place, Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck; and know 7 Pr'ythee, peace: &c.] A passage similar to this occurs in Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. II. : 66 be that you are, "That is, a woman: if you're more, you're none." The old copy, instead of " do more," reads "no more;" but the present reading is undoubtedly right. The correction (as Mr. Malone observes) was made by Mr. Rowe. STEEVENS. The same sentiment occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's Rollo : "My Rollo, tho' he dares as much as man, "Is tender of his yet untainted valour ; "So noble, that he dares do nothing basely." HENLEY. 8 Did then ADHERE,] Thus the old copy. Dr. Warburton would read-cohere, not improperly, but without necessity. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mrs. Ford says of Falstaff, that his words and actions "no more adhere and keep pace together, than" &c. Again, in The Winter's Tale : 66 a shepherd's daughter, "And what to her adheres." STEEVENS. So, in A Warning for Fair Women, 1599 : "Nor place consorted to my mind." MALONE. 9 I would, while it was smiling in my face,] Polyxo, in the fifth book of Statius's Thebais, has a similar sentiment of ferocity: In gremio (licet amplexu lachrimisque moretur) And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn Have done to this. Масв. LADY M. If we should fail, We fail 2! But screw your courage to the sticking-place3, 1 — had I so sWORN,] The latter word is here used as a dissyllable. The editor of the second folio, from his ignorance of our author's phraseology and metre, supposed the line defective, and reads had I but so sworn ; "which has been followed by all the subsequent editors. MALONE. My regulation of the metre renders it unnecessary to read sworn as a dissyllable, a pronunciation of which, I believe, there is no example. STEEVENS. 2 We fail!] I am by no means sure that this punctuation is the true one." If we fail, we fail," is a colloquial phrase still in frequent use. Macbeth having casually employed the former part of this sentence, his wife designedly completes it. “We fail," and thereby know the extent of our misfortune. Yet our success is certain, if you are resolute. Lady Macbeth is unwilling to afford her husband time to state any reasons for his doubt, or to expatiate on the obvious consequences of miscarriage in his undertaking. Such an interval for reflection to act in, might have proved unfavourable to her purposes. She therefore cuts him short with the remaining part of a common saying, to which his own words had offered an apt, though accidental introduction. This reply, at once cool and determined, is sufficiently characteristic of the speaker:-according to the old punctuation, she is represented as rejecting with contempt, (of which she had already manifested enough,) the very idea of failure. According to the mode of pointing now suggested, she admits a possibility of miscarriage, but at the same instant shows herself not afraid of the result. Her answer, therefore, communicates no discouragement to her husband."We fail!" is the hasty interruption of scornful impatience. "We fail," is the calm deduction of a mind which, having weighed all circumstances, is prepared, without loss of confidence in itself, for the worst that can happen. So Hotspur : "If we fall in, good night :-or sink, or swim." STEEVENS. 3 But screw your courage to the STICKING-PLACE,] This is a metaphor from an engine formed by mechanical complication. The sticking-place is the stop which suspends its powers, till they are discharged on their proper object; as in driving piles, &c. So, in Sir W. D'Avenant's Cruel Brother, 1630: |