MACB. Whence is that knocking? How is't with me, when every noise appals me? What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes! Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood" Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnardine 7, Making the green one, red. 6 Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood, &c.] Suscipit, ô Gelli quantum non ultima Tethys, Nec genitor nympharum abluit oceanus. Catullus in Gellium, 83. Οἶμαι γὰρ ἔτ ἀν Ιστρον ἔ τε Φάσιν αν Νίψαι καθαρμῶ τηνδε τὴν στέγην. Sophoc. Oedip. Again, in one of Hall's Satires: "If Trent or Thames-" &c. STEEVENS. Non, si Neptuni fluctu renovare operam des ; HOLT White. So, in The Insatiate Countess, by Marston, 1613: 66 "Should flow for ever through these guilty hands, "Yet the sanguinolent stain would extant be." MALONE. 7 The MULTITUDINOUS seas INCARNARDINE,] To incarnardine is to stain any thing of a flesh colour, or red. Carnardine is the old term for carnation. So, in a comedy called Any Thing for a Quiet Life: "Grograms, sattins, velvet fine, "The rosy-colour'd carnardine." STEEVENS. Shakspeare's word may be exemplified from Carew's Obsequies to the Lady Anne Hay: "One shall ensphere thine eyes; another shall 66 Impearl thy teeth; a third, thy white and small "Hand shall besnow; a fourth, incarnardine By the multitudinous seas, perhaps, the poet meant, not the seas of every denomination, as the Caspian, &c. (as some have Re-enter LADY MACBeth. LADY M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame thought,) nor the many-coloured seas, (as others contend,) but the seas which swarm with myriads of inhabitants. Thus Homer: Πόντον ἐπ ̓ ΙΧΘΥΟΕΝΤΑ φίλων ἀπάνευθε φέρεσιν. The word is used by Ben Jonson, and by Thomas Decker, in The Wonderful Year, 1603, in which we find “the multitudinous spawn." It is objected, by Mr. Kenrick, that Macbeth, in his present disposition of mind, would hardly have adverted to a property of the sea, which has so little relation to the object immediately before him; and if Macbeth had really spoken this speech in his castle of Inverness, the remark would be just. But the critick should have remembered, that this speech is not the real effusion of a distempered mind, but the composition of Shakspeare; of that poet, who has put a circumstantial account of an apothecary's shop into the mouth of Romeo, the moment after he has heard the fatal news of his beloved Juliet's death; and has made Othello, when in the anguish of his heart he determines to kill his wife, digress from the object which agitates his soul, to describe minutely the course of the Pontick sea. Mr. Steevens objects, in the following note, to this explanation, thinking it more probable that Shakspeare should refer “to some visible quality in the ocean," than "to its concealed inhabitants;" "to the waters that might admit of discoloration," than "to the fishes whose hue could suffer no change from the tinct of blood." But in what page of our author do we find his allusions thus curiously rounded, and complete in all their parts? Or, rather, does not every page of these volumes furnish us with images, crouded on each other, that are not naturally connected, and sometimes are even discordant? Hamlet's proposing to take up arms against a sea of troubles is a well known example of this kind, and twenty others might be produced. Our author certainly alludes to the waters, which are capable of discoloration, and not to the fishes. His allusion to the waters is expressed by the word seas; to which, if he has added an epithet that has no very close connection with the subject immediately before him, he has only followed his usual practice. If, however, no allusion was intended to the myriads of inhabitants with which the deep is peopled, I believe, by the multitu dinous seas, was meant, not the many-waved ocean, as is suggested, but "the countless masses of waters wherever dispersed on the surface of the globe; " the multitudes of seas, as Heywood has it, in a passage quoted below, that perhaps our author re To wear a heart so white. [Knock.] I hear a knocking membered and, indeed, it must be owned, that his having the plural, seas, seems to countenance such an interpretation; for the singular, sea, is equally suited to the epithet multitudinous, in the sense of xuоevra, and would certainly have corresponded better with the subsequent line. MALONE. I believe that Shakspeare referred to some visible quality in the ocean, rather than to its concealed inhabitants; to the waters that might admit of discoloration, and not to the fishes, whose hue could suffer no change from the tinct of blood. Waves appearing over waves are no unapt symbol of a croud. "A sea of heads" is a phrase employed by one of our legitimate poets, but by which of them I do not at present recollect. Blackmore, in his Job, has swelled the same idea to a ridiculous bulk: "A waving sea of heads was round me spread, "And still fresh streams the gazing deluge fed." He who beholds an audience from the stage, or any other multitude gazing on any particular object, must perceive that their heads are raised over each other, velut unda supervenit undam. If, therefore, our author, by the " multitudinous sea," does not mean the aggregate of seas, he must be understood to design the "multitude of waves," or "the waves that have the appearance of a multitude." In Coriolanus we have-" the many-headed multitude." STEEVENS. 8 Making the green-one red.] The same thought occurs in The Downfal of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601: "He made the green sea red with Turkish blood." Again: "The multitudes of seas died red with blood." Another, not unlike it, is found in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. ii. c. x. st. 48: "The whiles with blood they all the shore did stain, Again, in the 19th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion : "And the vast greenish sea discolour'd like to blood." STEEVENS. The same thought is also found in The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher, 1634: "Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast turn'd The present passage is one of those alluded to in a note at the end of As You Like It, vol. vi. on the word quintaine, in which, I apprehend, our author's words have been refined into a sense that he never thought of. The other is in Othello: "Put out the light, and then put out the light." At the south entry:-retire we to our chamber: The line before us, on the suggestion of the ingenious author of The Gray's-Inn Journal, has been printed in some late editions in the following manner : 66 Making the green-one red." Every part of this line, as thus regulated, appears to me exceptionable. 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. The quaintness introduced by such a regulation seems of an entirely different colour from the quaintnesses of Shakspeare. He would have written, I have no doubt, Making the green sea, red," (So, in The Tempest: "And 'twixt the green sea and the azure vault "Set roaring war.") if he had not used the word seas in the preceding line, which forced him to employ another word here. As, to prevent the ear being offended, we have, in the passage before us, "the green one," instead of " the green sea," so we have in King Henry VIII. Act I. Sc. II." lame ones," to avoid a similar repetition: "They have all new legs, and lame ones." Again, in The Merchant of Venice: "A stage where every man must play a part, Though the punctuation of the old copy is very often faulty, yet in all doubtful cases it ought, when supported by more decisive circumstances, to have some little weight. In the present instance, the line is pointed as in my text: "Making the green one, red." MALONE. If the new punctuation be dismissed, we must correct the foregoing line, and read-" the multitudinous sea; for how will the plural-seas, accord with the-green one?" Besides, the sense conveyed by the arrangement which Mr. Malone would reject, is countenanced by a passage in Hamlet: "Hath now his dread and black complexion smear'd i. e. one red. The expression-" one red," may also be justified by language yet more ancient than that of Shakspeare. In Genesis, ii. 24, (and several other places in scripture) we haveone flesh." Again, in our Liturgy: - be made one fold 66 under one Shepherd." Again, in Milton's Comus, v. 133: "And makes one blot of all the air." But, setting aside examples, are there not many unique phrases in our author? STEEVENS. How easy is it then? Your constancy Hath left you unattended.-[Knocking.] 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 1. [Knock. Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou 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: 66 '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: "So poorly in your thoughts." WARBURTON. 2 Wake Duncan with thy knocking!] Macbeth is addressing the 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. Whateley'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-1; 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 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. |