Enter MALCOLM and old SIWARD. SUV. This way, my lord ;-the castle's gently render'd: The tyrant's people on both sides do fight; And little is to do. MACB. Why should I play the Roman fool, and die On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes Do better upon them. MACD. Re-enter MACDUFF. Turn, hell-hound, turn. MACB. Of all men else I have avoided thee: But get thee back, my soul is too much charg'd With blood of thine already. MACD. I have no words, [They fight. My voice is in my sword; thou bloodier villain Масв. Thou losest labour: 3 Why should I play the ROMAN FOOL, and die On mine own sword?] Alluding, perhaps, to the suicide of Cato Uticensis, which our author must have read of in the old translation of Plutarch, as the same circumstance is mentioned again in Julius Cæsar: I did blame Cato for the death "Which he did give himself." STEEVENS. 4 I have no words, My voice is in my sword;] Thus Casca, in Julius Cæsar: "Speak hands for me." STEEVENS. As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed": Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life, which must not yield To one of woman born. MACD. Despair thy charm; And let the angel, whom thou still hast serv'd, Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb Untimely ripp'd. MACB. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, 5 As easy may'st thou the INTRENCHANT AIR With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed :] That is, air which cannot be cut. JOHNSON. Mr. M. Mason wishes to interpret the word intrenchant differently, and says that it may signify surrounding; but of a participle with such a meaning, I believe there is no example.-Shakspeare's indiscriminate use of active and passive participles has been frequently noticed. In Timon he has trenchant in an active sense, and in the line before us intrenchant is employed as passive. Milton, in his Paradise Lost, b. vi. seems to have imitated this passage: "Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound Receive, no more than can the fluid air." STEEVENS. So, in Hamlet: "For it is as the air invulnerable." MALone. 6 I bear a CHARMED life,] In the days of chivalry, the champions' arms being ceremoniously blessed, each took an oath that he used no charmed weapons. Macbeth, according to the law of arms, or perhaps only in allusion to this custom, tells Macduff of the security he had in the prediction of the spirit. To this likewise Posthumus alludes in Cymbeline, Act V.: "Could not find death." UPTON. So, in The Dumb Knight, 1633, by L. Machin : "Here you shall swear by hope, by heaven, by Jove, 66 Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. i. c. iv. : 66 he bears a charmed shield, "And eke enchaunted arms that none can pierce." STEEVENS. For it hath cow'd my better part of man: That keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope.-I'll not fight with thee. MACD. Then yield thee, coward, And live to be the show and gaze o' the time. We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted upon a pole; and underwrit, Here may you see the tyrant. I'll not yield, Масв. To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, And to be baited with the rabble's curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, And thou oppos'd, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the last: Before my body I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff; And damn'd be him that first cries, Hold, enough. [Exeunt, fighting. 7 PALTER with us in a double sense ;] That shuffle with ambiguous expressions. JOHNSON. So, in Marius and Sylla, 1594: "Now fortune, frown and palter, if thou please." Again, in Julius Cæsar: Romans, that have spoke the word, "And will not palter." STEEVENS. 8 We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted UPON A POLE;] That is, on cloth suspended on a pole. MALONE. 9- Hold, enough.] See Mr. Tollet's note on the words “To cry, hold, hold!" p. 66, n. 5. Again, in Stowe's Chronicle, one of the combatants was an esquire, and knighted after the battle, which the king terminated by crying Hoo, i. e. hold. Thus also, in the ancient MS. Romance of The Sowdon of Babyloyne, p. 33: "His bare guttis men myght see, STEEVENS. "To cry hold, is the word of yielding," says Carew's Survey of Cornwall, p. 74, i. e. when one of the combatants cries so. TOLLET. Retreat. Flourish. Re-enter, with Drum and Colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD, ROSSE, LENOX, ANGUS, CATHNess, Menteth, and Soldiers. MAL. I would, the friends we miss were safe arriv'd. SIW. Some must go off: and yet, by these I see, So great a day as this is cheaply bought. MAL. Macduff is missing, and your noble son. ROSSE. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt: He only liv'd but till he was a man ; The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd SIW. Then he is dead? ROSSE. Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow Must not be measur'd by his worth, for then It hath no end. SIW. Had he his hurts before? ROSSE. Ay, on the front. SIW. Why then, God's soldier be he! Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death: I Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death: And so his knell is knoll'd.] This incident is thus related from Henry of Huntingdon, by Camden, in his Remains, from which our author probably copied it. When Siward, the martial earl of Northumberland, understood that his son, whom he had sent in service against the Scotchmen, was slain, he demanded whether his wounds were in the fore part or hinder part of his body. When it was answered, in the fore part, he replied, "I am right glad; neither wish I any other death to me or mine." JOHNSON. Our author might have found the same incident recorded by Holinshed, in his Chronicle, vol. i. p. 192. MAlone. MAL. He's worth more sorrow, And that I'll spend for him. He's worth no more; SIW. 2 And so, God be with him!-Here comes newer comfort. Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH'S Head on a Pole 3. MACD. Hail, king! for so thou art: Behold, where stands The usurper's cursed head: the time is free: 2 So, God, &c.] The old copy redundantly reads-And so, God, &c. STEEVENS. 3-on a Pole.] These words I have added to the stage-direction, from the Chronicle: "Then cutting his head from his shoulders, he set it upon a pole, and brought it unto Malcolm." This explains the word stands in Macduff's speech. Many of the stage-directions appear to have been inserted by the players; and they are often very injudicious. In this scene, (as Mr. Steevens has observed,) according to their direction, Macbeth is slain on the stage, and Macduff immediately afterwards enters with Macbeth's head. MALONE. Our ancient players were not even skilful enough to prevent absurdity in those circumstances which fell immediately under their own management. No bad specimen of their want of common sense, on such occasions, may be found in Heywood's Golden Age, 1611 "Enter Sybilla lying in childbed, with her child lying by her," &c. STEEVENS. thy kingdom's PEARL,] This metaphorical expression was excluded by Mr. Rowe, after whom our modern editors were content to read-peers. The following passage from Ben Jonson's Entertainment of the Queen and Prince at Althorpe, may, however, countenance the old reading, which I have inserted in the text : 66 "Queen, prince, duke, and earls, Countesses, ye courtly pearls," &c. Again, in Shirley's Gentlemen of Venice: 66 he is the very pearl |