Bounty, perséverance, mercy, lowliness, Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, Uproar the universal peace, confound All unity on earth 1. MACD. O Scotland! Scotland! MAL. If such a one be fit to govern, speak: I am as I have spoken. MACD. Fit to govern! No, not to live.-O nation miserable, With an untitled tyrant 2 bloody-scepter'd, By his own interdiction stands accurs'd, And does blaspheme his breed?-Thy royal father Was a most sainted king: the queen, that bore thee, I - Nay, had I power, I should POUR THE SWEET MILK OF CONCORD INTO HELL, All unity on earth.] Malcolm, I think, means to say, that if he had ability, he would pour all that milk of human kindness, which is so beneficial to mankind, into the abyss, so as to leave the earth without any portion of it; and that by thus depriving mankind of those humane affections which are so necessary to their mutual happiness, he will throw the whole world into confusion. MALONE. I believe, all that Malcolm designs to say is,-that, if he had power, he would even annihilate the gentle source or principle of peace pour the soft milk by which it is nourished, among the flames of hell, which could not fail to dry it up. Lady Macbeth has already observed that her husband was 66 too full of the milk of human kindness." STEEVENS Oftner upon her knees than on her feet, Have banish'd me from Scotland.-O, my breast, MAL. Macduff, this noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wip'd the black scruples, reconcil'd my thoughts No less in truth, than life: my first false speaking Is thine, and my poor country's, to command: 3 Died every day she lived.] The expression is borrowed from the sacred writings: "I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus, I die daily." MALONE. J. Davies, of Hereford, in his Epigram on-A proud lying Dyer, has the same allusion: "Yet (like the mortifide) he dyes to live." To die unto sin, and to live unto righteousness, are phrases employed in our Liturgy. STEEVENS. 4 From over-credulous haste:] From over-hasty credulity. MALONE. THY here-approach,] The old copy has-they here. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. * All ready at a point, was setting forth; Now we'll together; And the chance, of goodness, Be like our warranted quarrel', Why are you silent? MACD. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once, "Tis hard to reconcile. Enter a Doctor. MAL, Well; more anon.-Comes the king forth, I pray you ? Docr. Ay, sir: there are a crew of wretched souls, * First folio, Already. ten thousand warlike men, All ready AT A POINT,] At a point, may mean 'all ready at a time;' but Shakspeare meant more: he meant both time and place, and certainly wrote: "All ready at appoint." i. e. at the place appointed, at the rendezvous. WARBUrton. There is no need of change. JOHNSON. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. i. c. ii.: 7 "A faithlesse Sarazin all arm'd to point." MALOne. And the CHANCE OF GOODNESS Be like our warranted quarrel!] The chance of goodness, as it is commonly read, conveys no sense. If there be not some more important error in the passage, it should at least be pointed thus: 66 " and the chance, of goodness, That is, may the event be, of the goodness of heaven, [pro justicia divina, answerable to the cause. Mr. Heath conceives the sense of the passage to be rather this: And may the success of that goodness, which is about to exert itself in my behalf be such as may be equal to the justice of my quarrel.' But I am inclined to believe that Shakspeare wrote: and the chanee, O goodness, 66 "Be like our warranted quarrel!—” This some of his transcribers wrote with a small o, which another imagined to mean of. If we adopt this reading, the sense will be: And O thou sovereign goodness, to whom we now appeal, may our fortune answer to our cause.' JOHNSON. That stay his cure: their malady convinces MAL. 8 I thank you, doctor. [Exit Doctor. MACD. What's the disease he means? "Tis call'd the evil : A most miraculous work in this good king; 1 8 convinces - i. e. overpowers, subdues. See p. 85, 9 The mere despair of surgery, he cures ;] Dr. Percy, in his notes on The Northumberland Houshold Book, says, that our ancient kings even in those dark times of superstition, do not seem to have affected the cure of the king's evil.-This miraculous gift was left to be claimed by the Stuarts: our ancient Plantagenets were humbly content to cure the cramp." In this assertion, however, the learned editor of the above curious volume has been betrayed into a mistake, by relying too implicitly on the authority of Mr. Anstis. The power of curing the king's evil was claimed by many of the Plantagenets. Dr. Borde, who wrote in the time of Henry the VIIIth, says, "The kynges of England by the power that God hath given to them dothe make sicke men whole of a sycknes called the Kynge's Evyll." In Laneham's Account of the Entertainment at Kenelworth Castle, it is said, 66 and also by her highness (Q. Elizabeth] accustomed mercy and charitee, nyne cured of the peynful and dangerous diseaz called the King's Evil, for that kings and queens of this realm without oother medsin, (save only by handling and prayer,) only doo it." Polydore Virgil asserts the same; and Will. Tooker, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, published a book on this subject, an account of which is to be seen in Dr. Douglas's treatise, entitled, The Criterion, p. 191. See Dodsley's Collection of old Plays, vol. xii. p. 428, edit. 1780. REED. 11 a golden stamp, &c.] This was the coin called an angel. So, Shakspeare, in The Merchant of Venice: Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, tue, With this strange vir He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy; And sundry blessings hang about his throne, “A coin that bears the figure of an angel 66 Stamped in gold, but that's insculp'd upon." The value of the coin was ten shillings. STEEVENS. and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction.] It must be owned, that Shakspeare is often guilty of strange absurdities in point of history and chronology. Yet here he has artfully avoided one. He had a mind to hint, that the cure of the evil was to descend to the successors in the royal line, in compliment to James the First. But the Confessor was the first who pretended to the gift: How then could it be at that time generally spoken of, that the gift was hereditary? This he has solved by telling us that Edward had the gift of prophecy along with it. WARBURTON. Dr. Warburton here invents an objection, in order to solve it. "The Confessor (says he) was the first who pretended to this gift: how then could it be at that time generally spoken of, that the gift was hereditary? This he [Shakspeare] has solved, by telling us that Edward had the gift of prophecy along with it." But Shakspeare does not say, that it was hereditary in Edward, or, in other words, that he had inherited this extraordinary power from his ancestors; but that "it was generally spoken, that he leaves the healing benediction to succeeding kings: and such a rumour there might be in the time of Edward the Confessor, (supposing he had such a gift,) without his having the gift of prophecy along with it. Shakspeare has merely transcribed what he found in Holinshed, without the conceit which Dr. Warburton has imputed to him : "As hath beene thought, he was inspired with the gift of prophesie, and also to have had the gift of healing infirmities and diseases. He used to helpe those that were vexed with the disease commonlie called the King's Evil, and left that virtue as it were a portion of inheritance unto his successors, the kings of this realme." Holinshed, vol. i. p. 195. MALONE. |