SCENE II. Fife. A Room in MACDUFF'S Castle. Enter Lady MACDUFF, her Son, and Rosse. L. MACD. What had he done, to make him fly the land? ROSSE. You must have patience, madam. He had none : L. MACD. His flight was madness: When our actions do not, Our fears do make us traitors 7. ROSSE. You know not, Whether it was his wisdom, or his fear. L. MACD. Wisdom! to leave his wife, to leave his babes, His mansion, and his titles, in a place From whence himself does fly? He loves us not; He wants the natural touch: for the poor wren, The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl. As little is the wisdom, where the flight So runs against all reason. 7 Our fears do make us traitors.] i. e. our flight is considered as an evidence of our treason. STEEVENS. 8 natural touch :] Natural sensibility. He is not touched with natural affection. JOHNSON. So, in an ancient MS. play, intitled The Second Maiden's Tragedy: 9 66 How she's beguil'd in him! "There's no such natural touch, search all his bosom." STEEVENS. the poor wren, &c.] The same thought occurs in The Third Part of King Henry Vl.: 66 doves will peck in safeguard of their brood. "Who hath not seen them (even with those wings "Which sometimes they have us'd in fearful flight) "Make war with him that climb'd unto their nest, 66 Offering their own lives in their young's defence?" ROSSE. My dearest coz', I pray you, school yourself: But, for your husband, He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows The fits o' the season 1. I dare not speak much further: But cruel are the times, when we are traitors, mour From what we fear3, yet know not what we fear; The fits o' the season.] The fits of the season should appear to be, from the following passage in Coriolanus, the violent disorders of the season, its convulsions : but that "The violent fit o' th' times craves it as physick." STEEVENS. Perhaps the meaning is,-what is most fitting to be done in every conjuncture. ANONYMOUS. 2-when we are traitors, And do not KNOW ourselves;] i. e. we think ourselves innocent, the government thinks us traitors; therefore we are ignorant of ourselves. This is the ironical argument. The Oxford editor alters it to "And do not know't ourselves : But sure they did know what they said, that the state esteemed them traitors. WARBURton. Rather, when we are considered by the state as traitors, while at the same time we are unconscious of guilt; when we appear to others so different from what we really are, that we seem not to know ourselves. MALONE. 3 - when we hold rumour From what we fear,] To "hold rumour," signifies to be governed by the authority of rumour. WARBURTON. I rather think to hold means, in this place, to believe, as we say, "I hold such a thing to be true, i. e. I take it, I believe it to be so." Thus, in King Henry VIII. : 66 Did you not of late days hear, &c. "1 Gen. Yes, but held it not." The sense of the whole passage will then be: "The times are cruel when our fears induce us to believe, or take for granted, what we hear rumoured or reported abroad; and yet at the same time, as we live under a tyrannical government where will is substituted for law, we know not what we have to fear, because we know not when we offend." Or; "When we are led by our But float upon a wild and violent sea, Each way, and move.-I take my leave of you: Shall not be long but I'll be here again: Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward To what they were before.-My pretty cousin, L. MACD. Father'd he is, and yet he's fatherless. L. MACD. [Exit Rosse. Sirrah, your father's dead3: And what will you do now? How will you live? SON. As birds do, mother. L. MACD What, with worms and flies? SON. With what I get, I mean; and so do they. L. MACD. Poor bird! thou'dst never fear the net, nor lime, The pit-fall, nor the gin. fears to believe every rumour of danger we hear, yet are not conscious to ourselves of any crime for which we should be disturbed with those fears." A passage like this occurs in King John: "Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams, "Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear." This is the best I can make of the passage. STEEVENS. 4 Each way, and move.-] Perhaps the poet wrote—“ And each way move." If they floated each way, it was needless to inform us that they moved. The words may have been casually transposed, and erroneously pointed. STEEVENS. Perhaps Shakspeare used it as a substantive: as a man in quitting a room is familiarly said to "make a move," or as we say he "makes a move," at chess or backgammon. ANONYMOUS. 5 SIRRAH, your father's dead ;] Sirrah, in our author's time, was not always a term of reproach, but sometimes used by masters to servants, parents to children, &c. So before, in this play, Macbeth says to his servant, 66 Sirrah, a word with you: attend those men "Our pleasure?" So Gabriel Harvey writes to Spenser: "But hoe I pray you, gentle sirra, a word with you more." MALONE. SON. Why should I, mother? Poor birds they are not set for. My father is not dead, for all your saying. L. MACD. Yes, he is dead; how wilt thou do for a father? SON. Nay, how will you do for a husband? L. MACD. Why, I can buy me twenty at any market. SON. Then you'll buy 'em to sell again. L. MACD. Thou speak'st with all thy wit; and yet i' faith, With wit enough for thee. SON. Was my father a traitor, mother? SON. What is a traitor? L. MACD. Why, one that swears and lies. L. MACD. Every one that does so, is a traitor, and must be hanged. SON. And must they all be hanged, that swear and lie? L. MACD. Every one. SON. Who must hang them? L. MACD. Why, the honest men. SON. Then the liars and swearers are fools: for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men, and hang up them. L. MACD. Now God help thee, poor monkey! But how wilt thou do for a father? SON. If he were dead, you'd weep for him: if you would not, it were a good sign that I should quickly have a new father. L. MACD. Poor prattler! how thou talk'st. Enter a Messenger. MESS. Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known, Though in your state of honour I am perfect". Be not found here; hence, with your little ones. you! I dare abide no longer. L. MACD. I have done no harm. Heaven preserve [Exit Messenger. Whither should I fly? But I remember now I am in this earthly world; where, to do harm, To say, I have done no harm ?--What are these faces ? 6 Enter Murderers. MUR. Where is your husband? - in your state of honour I am PERFECT.] i. e. I am perfectly acquainted with your rank of honour. So, in the old book that treateth of the Lyfe of Virgil, &c. bl. 1. no date: "—which when Virgil saw, he looked in his boke of negromancy, wherein he was perfit." Again, in The Play of the four P's, 1569: "Pot. Then tell me this: Are you perfit in drinking? 7 To do worse to you, were fell cruelty.] To do worse is to let her and her children be destroyed without warning. JOHNSON. Mr. Edwards explains these words differently. "To do worse to you (says he) signifies,-to fright you more, by relating all the circumstances of your danger; which would detain you so long that you could not avoid it." The meaning, however, may be, "To do worse to you," not to disclose to you the perilous situation you are in, from a foolish apprehension of alarming you, would be fell cruelty. Or the Messenger may only mean, to do more than alarm you by this disagreeable intelligence,-to do you any actual and bodily harm, were fell cruelty. MALONE. If to fright you thus seem savage, how fell must be the cruelty of those who seek your destruction. BOSWELL. |