MUR. My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him. MACB. Thou art the best o' the cut-throats: Yet he's good, That did the like for Fleance: if thou didst it, MUR. Fleance is 'scap'd. Most royal sir, MACB. Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect; Whole as the marble, founded as the rock; With twenty trenched gashes' on his head; Масв. Thanks for that:- There the grown serpent lies; the worm, that's fled, Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for the present.-Get thee gone; to morrow We'll hear, ourselves again. LADY M. [Exit Murderer. My royal lord, The author might mean, 'It is better that Banquo's blood were on thy face, than he in this room.' Expressions thus imperfect are common in his works. JOHNSON. I have no doubt that this last was the author's meaning. 7 — TRENCHED gashes -] Arden of Feversham, 1592: MALONE. Trancher, to cut. Fr. So, in "Is deeply trenched on my blushing brow." Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona : 66 like a figure "Trenched in ice." STEEVENS. 8 the WORM,] This term, in our author's time, was ap plied to all of the serpent kind. MALONE. You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold, From thence, the sauce to meat is ceremony; Масв. Sweet remembrancer! Now, good digestion wait on appetite 1, LEN. May it please your highness sit? [The Ghost of BANQUO rises, and sits in MACBETH'S place. MACB. Here had we now our country's honour roof'd, Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present; "the feast is 9- the feast is SOLD, &c.] Mr. Pope reads:cold," and not without plausibility. Such another phrase occurs in The Elder Brother of Beaumont and Fletcher: "You must be welcome too :-the feast is flat else." But the same expression as Shakspeare's is found in The Romaunt of the Rose: "Good dede done through praiere, "Is sold and bought to dere." STEEVENS. The meaning is,―That which is not given cheerfully, cannot be called a gift, it is something that must be paid for. JOHNSON. It is still common to say, that we pay dear for an entertainment, if the circumstances attending the participation of it prove irksome to us. HENLEY. Now, GOOD DIGESTION wait on appetite,] So, in King Henry VIII. : "A good digestion to you all." STEEVENS. 2 The Ghost of Banquo rises,] This circumstance of Banquo's ghost seems to be alluded to in The Puritan, first printed in 1607, and ridiculously ascribed to Shakspeare: "We'll ha' the ghost i' th' white sheet sit at upper end o' th' table." FARMER. 3 Than pity for mischance!] This is one of Shakspeare's touches of nature. Macbeth, by these words, discovers a consciousness of guilt: and this circumstance could not fail to be recollected by a nice observer on the assassination of Banquo Lays blame upon his promise. Please it your high ness To grace us with your royal company? MACB. The table's full. LEN. Масв. Here's a place reserv'd, sir. Where? LEN. Here, my good lord 1. What is't that moves your highness? MACB. Which of you have done this? LORDS. What, my good lord? MACB. Thou canst not say, I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me. ROSSE. Gentlemen, rise; his highness is not well. thus, And hath been from his youth: 'pray you, keep seat; The fit is momentary; upon a thought 5 being publickly known. Not being yet rendered sufficiently callous by "hard use," Macbeth betrays himself (as Mr. Whateley has observed) "by an over-acted regard for Banquo, of whose absence from the feast he affects to complain, that he may not be suspected of knowing the cause, though at the same time he very unguardedly drops an allusion to that cause." MALONE. These words do not seem to convey any consciousness of guilt on the part of Macbeth, or allusion to Banquo's murder, as Mr. Whateley supposes. Macbeth only means to say—“ I have more cause to accuse him of unkindness for his absence, than to pity him for any accident or mischance that may have occasioned it." DOUCE. 4 Here, my lord, &c.] The old copy-"my good lord;" an interpolation that spoils the metre. The compositor's eye had caught-good from the next speech but one. STEEVENS. Mr. Steevens makes Where? the commencement of this line. BOSWELL. 5 upon а THOUGHT -] i. e. as speedily as thought can be exerted. So, in King Henry IV. Part I.: " -and, with a thought, seven of the eleven I pay'd." Again, in Hamlet: 66 as swift "As meditation, or the thoughts of love." STEEVENS. He will again be well: If much you note him, Which might appal the devil. LADY M. O proper stuff?! This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said, Shame itself! 6 extend his passion;] Prolong his suffering; make his fit longer. JOHNSON. 7 O proper stuff!] This speech is rather too long for the circumstances in which it is spoken. It had begun better atShame itself! JOHNSON. Surely it required more than a few words, to argue Macbeth out of the horror that possessed him. M. MASON. 8 - O, these flaws, and starts, (IMPOSTORS TO true fear,) would well become, &c.] i. e. these flaws and starts, as they are indications of your needless fears, are the imitators or impostors only of those which arise from a fear well grounded. WARBURTON. Flaws are sudden gusts. So, in Coriolanus: JOHNSON. "Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw." STEEVENS. Again, in Venus and Adonis : "Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds." MALONE. Impostors to true fear," mean impostors when compared with true fear. Such is the force of the preposition to in this place. M. MASON. So, in King Henry VIII.: "Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves, and strong ones; these are but switches to them." STEEVENS. To may be used for of. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona we have an expression resembling this: "Thou counterfeit to thy true friend." MALONE. MACB. Pr'ythee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you?—— Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. If charnel-houses, and our graves, must send LADY M. [Ghost disappears. What! quite unmann'd in folly 1? MACB. If I stand here, I saw him. Fye, for shame! MACB. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time 2, 9 our MONUMENTS Shall be the maws of KITES.] The same thought occurs in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. ii. c. viii. : "Be not entombed in the raven or the kight." Thus also-inter nubes tenebrasque Lycophronis atri, v. 413: Πολλῶν γὰρ ἐν σπλάγχνοισι τυμβευθήσεται Νήριθμος ἐσμός. STEEVENS. In splendidissimum quemque captivum, non sine verborum contumelia, sæviit: ut quidem uni suppliciter sepulturam precanti respondisse dicatur, jam istam in volucrum fore potestatem. Sueton. in August. 13. So, in Kyd's Cornelia: "Where are our legions, where our men at arms? 66 Lyons and beares, are theyr best sepulchres." MALONE. What! quite unmann'd IN FOLLY?] Would not this question be forcible enough without the two last words, which overflow the metre, and consequently may be suspected as interpolations? STEEVENS. 2-i' the OLDEN time,] Mr. M. Mason proposes to read"the golden time," meaning the golden age: but the ancient reading may be justified by Holinshed, who, speaking of the Witches, says, they "resembled creatures of the elder world;" and in Twelfth-Night we have 66 dallies with the innocence of love, "Like the old age." Again, in Thystorie of Jacob and his Twelve Sones, bl. 1. printed by Wynkyn de Worde: "Of dedes done in the olde tyme." Again, in our Liturgy-" and in the old time before them." STEEVENS. |