Know, Banquo was your enemy. 2 Mur.

True, my lord.

Macb. So is he mine: and in such bloody dis-
tance,1

That every minute of his being thrusts
Against my near'st of life: And though I could
With bare-fac'd power sweep him from my sight,
And bid my will avouch it; yet I must not,
For certain friends that are both his and mine,
Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall
Whom I myself struck down: and thence it is,
That I to your assistance do make love;
Masking the business from the common eye,
For sundry weighty reasons.
We shall, my lord,
Perform what you command us.

2 Mur.

1 Mur.

Though our lives

Mach. Your spirits shine through you. Within

this hour at most,

I will advise you where to plant yourselves:
Acquaint you with the perfect spy o' the time,2
The moment on't: for't must be done to-night,
And something from the palace; always thought,
That I require a clearness: And with him
(To leave no rubs, nor botches, in the work,)
Fleance his son, that keeps him company,
Whose absence is no less material to me
Than is his father's, must embrace the fate
Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart;
I'll come to you anon.
2 Mur.
We are resolv'd my lord.
Macb. I'll call upon you straight; abide within.
It is concluded:- -Banquo, thy soul's flight,
If it find heaven, must find it out to-night. [Eccunt.

SCENE II. The same. Another Room. Enter
LADY MACBETH, and a Servant.

Lady M. Is Banquo gone from court?
Serv. Ay, madam, but returns again to-night.
Lady M. Say to the king, I would attend his
leisure

For a few words.

1 Bloody distance' is mortal enmity.

[Erit.

Serv. Madam, I will.
Lady M.
Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
"Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.
Enter MACBETH.

How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making?
Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.

Macb. We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it;
She'll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.
But let the frame of things disjoint,

Both the worlds suffer,

Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams

That shake us nightly: Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstacy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further!

Lady M. Come on, gentle my lord;
Sleek o'er your rugged looks; be bright and jovial
Among your guests to-night.

Macb.

So shall I, love;
your remembrance
Apply to Banquo: present him eminence, both
With eye and tongue: unsafe, the while, that we
Must lave our honours in these flattering streams;
And make our faces vizards to our hearts,
Disguising what they are."
Lady M.
You must leave this.
Macb. O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.
Lady M. But in them nature's copy's" not eterne.
Macb. There's comfort yet; they are assailable;
Then be thou jocund: Ere the bat hath flown
His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's sum-

And so, I pray, be you: let

mons,

The shard-borne beetle,11 with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.

Lady M.

What's to be done? Macb. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest

chuck,

Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,
Skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;
And, with thy bloody and invisible hand,
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale!13-Light thickens; and the

crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood: 14

confirms this explanation. Many of Shakspeare's al

2 i. e. the exact time when you may look out or lie in lusions are to legal customs. wait for him.

Always remembering that I must stand clear of sus- outward covering, a case or sheath; as appears from the picion."

4 Sorriest, most melancholy.

following passage cited by him from Gower's Confessio
Amantis, b. vi. fol. 138:-

She sigh, her thought a dragon tho,
Whose sherdes shynen as the sonne.

5 The first folio reads peuce; the second folio place. 6 Ecstacy, in its general sense, signifies any violent emotion or alienation of the mind. The old dictionaries And again in book v. speaking of a serpent:render it a trance, a dampe, a crampe.

7 Remembrance is here employed as a quadrisyl. lable.

& Present him eminence, do him the highest honour. 9 The sense of this passage (though clouded by metaphor, and perhaps by omission) appears to be as fol lows:It is a sign that our royalty is unsafe, when it must descend to flattery, and stoop to dissimulation.' The present arrangement of the text is by Malone.

10 Ritson has justly observed, that Nature's copy' alludes to copyhold tenure, in which the tenant holds an estate for life, having nothing but the copy of the rolls of his lord's court to show for it. A life-hold tenure may well be said to be not eternal. The subsequent speech of Macbeth, in which he says,

'Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond.›

He was so sherded all about, It held all edge-tool without." 12 i. e. blinding: to seel up the eyes of a hawk was to close them by sewing the eyelids together. 13 So in Cymbeline:

Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray. 14 By the expression, light thickens, Shakspeare means that it is growing dark. Thus, in Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess :

'Fold your flocks up, for the air 'Gins to thicken, and the sun Already his great course hath run." Spenser, in the Shepherd's Calendar, has:the welkin thicks apace." Notwithstanding Mr. Steevens's ingenious attempts to explain the rooky wood otherwise, it surely means no

Fleance is 'scap'd.

Macb. Then comes my fit again: I had else been
perfect;

Whole as the marble, founded as the rock;
As broad and general as the casing air:
But now, I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo's safe?
Mur. Ay, my good lord: safe in a ditch he bides,
With twenty trenched' gashes on his head;
The leas: a death to nature.

Macb.
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

[Erit Murderer.

My royal lord,

You do not give the cheer: the feast is sold,
That is not often vouch'd while 'tis a making,

Enter BANQUO and FLEANCE, a Servant with a Tis given with welcome: To feed were best at

2 Mur.

3 Mur.

Torch preceding them.

A light, a light!

1 Mur. Stand to't.
Ban. It will be rain to-night.
1 Mur.

'Tis he.

Let it come down. [Assaults BANQUO. Ban. O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly;

Thou may'st revenge. O slave!

[Dies. Fleance and Servant escape.3 3 Mur. Who did strike out the light? 1 Mur.

Was't not the way?

3 Mur. There's but one down: the son is filed.

1 Mur. Well, let's away, and say how much is Lays blame upon his promise. Please it your highdone.

Macb. See, they encounter thee with their hearts' Banquo, who was equally concerned with Macbeth in thanks :

the murder of Duncan, as innocent of that crime.
4 At first and last. Johnson, with great plausibility,
proposes to read, To first and last.

thing more than the wood inhabited by rooks. The poet
has shown himself a close observer of nature, in mark-A
ing the return of these birds to their nest-trees when the
day is drawing to a close.

í See note on King Richard III. Act iv. Sc. 1.

2 i. e. they who are set down in the list of guests, and expected to supper.

& Fleance, after the assassination of his father, fled into Wales, where, by the daughter of the prince of that country, he had a son named Walter, who afterwards became Lord High Steward of Scotland, and from thence assumed the name of Sir Walter Steward. From him, in a direct line, King James I. was descended; in com. pliment to whom Shakspeare has chosen to describe

5 Keeps her state,' continues in her chair of state. state was a royal chair with a canopy over it. 6Tis better thee without than he within, that is, I am better pleased that the blood of Banque should be on thy face than in his body. He is put for him.

7 With twenty trenched gashes on his head.' From the French trancher, to cut.

8 Macbeth betrays himself by an overacted 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. May I seems to imply here a wish, not an assertion.

9 i, e. as speedily as thought can be exerted,

You shall offend him, and extend his passion;'
Feed, and regard him not.-Are you a man?
Macb. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
Which might appal the devil.

Lady M

O proper stuff!
This is the very painting of your fear:
This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,
Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts
(Impostors to true fear) would well become
A woman's story at a winter's fire,
Authoriz'd by her grandam. Shame itself!
Why do you make such faces? When all's done,
You look but on a stool.

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
Those that we bury,back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites.4 [Ghost disappears.
Lady M. What! quite unmanu'd in folly?
Mach. If I stand here, I saw him.
Lady M.
Fye, for shame!

Macb. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden
time,

Ere human statute purg'd the general weal;
Ay, and since, too, murders have been perform'd
Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end: but now, they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: This is more strange
Than such a murder is.

you.

Lady M.
My worthy lord,
Your noble friends do lack
Macb.
I do forget:-
Do not muse' at me, my most worthy friends;
I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing
To those that know me. Come, love and health to

all;

Then I'll sit down: -Give me some wine, fill full:
I'll drink to the general joy of the whole table,

Ghost rises.

And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss;
'Would, he were here! to all, and him, we thirst,
And all to all.

Lords.

Our duties, and the pledge.

Macb. Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth
hide thee!

Thy bones are marrowless, the blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!

Lady M.

Macb. What man dare, I dare:
Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger,*
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble: Or, be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword:
If trembling I inhabit then, protest me
The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!
[Ghost disappears.
Unreal mockery, hence!-Why, so ;-being gone,
I am a man again.-Pray you, sit stil.
Lady M. You have displac'd the mirth, broke the
good meeting,

With most admir'd disorder.

Mach.

Can such things be,
And overcome!" us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder? You make me strange
Even to the disposition that I owe,
When now I think you can behold such sights,12
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine are blanch'd with fear.

Rosse.

What sights, my lord? Lady M. I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;

Question enrages him: at once, good night:-
Stand not upon the order of your going,
But go at once.

Len.

Good night, and better health

Attend his majesty!
Lady M.

A kind good night to all! [Exeunt Lords and Attendants. Macb. It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood;

Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;

Augures and understood relations have,

By mago-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brough forth

The secret'st man of blood.-What is the night? Lady M. Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

Mach. How say'st thou,14 that Macduff denies
his person,
At our great bidding?

Lady M.
Did you send to him, sir?
Much. I hear it by the way; but I will send:
There's not a one of them, but in his house
I keep a servant fee'd. I will, to-morrow,
(And betimes I will,) to the weird sisters:
More shall they speak; for now I am bent to kner,
By the worst means, the worst: for mine own good,
All causes shall give way: I am in blood

Think of this, good peers, Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more,

But as a thing of custom: 'tis no other;
Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.

I i. e. prolong his suffering, make his fit longer. 2 Flaws are sudden gusts.

3 'Impostors to true fear.' Warburton's learning serves him not here; his explanation is erroneous. Ma lone idly suggests that to may be used for of. Mason has hit the meaning, though his way of accounting for it is wrong. It seems strange that none of the commentators should be aware that this was a form of elliptic expression, commonly used even at this day, in the phrase this is nothing to them,' i. e. in comparison to

them.

4 The same thought occurs in Spenser's Faerie Queene, b. ii. c. viii. :-

'Be not entombed in the raven or the kight. 5 Shakspeare uses to muse for to wonder, to be in

amaze.

6 That is, we desire to drink' all good wishes to all. 7 Thou hast no speculation in those eyes.' Bullokar, in his Expositor, 1616, explains Speculation, the inward knowledge or beholding of a thing.' Thus, in the 115th Psalm:-Eyes have they, but see not.'

8 Hyrcan for Hyrcanian was the mode of expression at that time.

9 Pope changed inhabit, the reading of the old copy, to inhibit, and Steevens altered then to thee, so that in

the late editions this line runs:

"If trembling I inhibit thee, protest me
The baby of a girl.'

To inhibit is to forbid, a meaning which will not suit
with the context of the passage. The original text is

Returning were as tedious as go o'er:

sufficiently plain, and much in Shakspeare's manner.
Dare me to the desert with thy sword; if then I do it
meet thee there; if trembling I stay in my castle, or any
habitation; if I then hide my head, or dwell in wy
place through fear, protest me the baby of a girl. Fa
had not been for the meddling of Pope and others, this
passage would have hardly required a note.
10 Overcome us,' pass over us without wonder, as a
casual summer's cloud passes unregarded.
11 i. e. possess.

12 You strike me with amazement, make me starre
know myself, now when I think that you can bebid
such sights unmoved,' &c.

13 i. e. auguries, divinations; formerly spelt augum. as appears by Florio in voce augurio. By understand relations, probably, connected circumstances relating to the crime are meant. I am inclined to think thai te passage should be pointed thus:

'Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak
Augures; and understood relations have,

By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood.”

In alt the modern editions we have it erroneously a
gurs. Magot-pie is the original name of the magr
stories such as Shakspeare alludes to are to be fou
Lupton's Thousand Notable Things, and in Goulan's
Admirable Histories.

14 i. e. what say'st thou to this circumstance? TA in Macbeth's address to his wife, on the first appearat of Banquo's ghost!

behold! look! lo! how say you

Is the initiate fear, that wants hard use:-
We are yet but young in deed.3

[Exeunt. SCENE V. The Heath. Thunder. Enter HECATE, meeting the three Witches.

1 Witch. Why, how now, Hecate? you look
angerly.

Hec. Have I not reason, beldames, as you are,
Saucy, and overbold? How did
you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth,
In riddles and affairs of death;
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never call'd to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?

And, which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful, and wrathful; who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
But make amends now: Get you gone,
And at the pit of Acheron

Meet me i'the morning; thither he
Will come to know his destiny.

Your vessels, and your spells, provide,
Your charms, and every thing beside;
I am for the air; this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end.

Great business must be wrought ere noon:
Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vaporous drop profound;"
I'll catch it ere it come to ground:
And that, distill'd by magic slights,
Shall raise such artificial sprights,
As, by the strength of their illusion,
Shall draw him on to his confusion:

He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
And you all know, security

Is mortal's chiefest enemy.

Song. [Within.] Come away, come away, &c."
Hark, I am call'd; my little spirit, see,

Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me. [Exit.
1 Witch. Come, let's make haste; she'll soon be
back again.
[Exeunt.
SCENE VI. Fores. A Room in the Palace.
Enter LENOX and another Lord.

Things have been strangely borne: The gracious
Duncan

Was pitied of Macbeth :-marry, he was dead:-
And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late;
Whom you may say, if it please you, Fleance
kill'd,
For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.
Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous
It was for Malcolm, and Donalbain,
To kill their gracious father? damned fact !
How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight,
In pious rage, the two delinquents tear,
That were the slaves of drink, and thralls of sleep?
Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;
For, 'twould have anger'd any heart alive,
To hear the men deny it. So that, I say,
He has borne all things well: and I do think,
That, had he Duncan's sons under his key,
(As, an't please heaven, he shall not,) they should
find

What 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.
But, peace!-for from broad words, and 'cause he
fail'd

His presence at the tyrant's feast, I hear,
Macduff lives in disgrace: Sir, can you tell
Where he bestows himself?

The son of Duncan,

Lord.
From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth,
Lives in the English court; and is receiv'd
Of the most pious Edward with such grace,
That the malevolence of fortune nothing
Takes from his high respect: Thither Macduff
Is gone to pray the holy king, upon his aid
To wake Northumberland, and warlike Siward:
That, by the help of these, (with Him above
To ratify the work,) we may again

Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights;
Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives;"
Do faithful homage, and receive free honours,10
All which we pine for now: And this report
Hath so exasperate the king, that he
Prepares for some attempt of war.

Len.
Sent he to Macduff?
Lord. He did: and with an absolute, Sir, not I,
The cloudy messenger turns me his back,
And hums; as who should say, You'll rue the time
That clogs me with this answer.

Len.

And that well might
Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance
His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel
Fly to the court of England, and unfold
His message ere he come; that a swift blessing
May soon return to this our suffering country

Len. My former speeches have but hit your Under a hand accurs'd!12
thoughts,

Which can interpret further: only, I say,

1 i. e. examined nicely.

2 'You lack the season of all natures, sleep.' Johnson explains this, You want sleep, which seasons or gives the relish to all natures. Indiget somni vitæ condimenti. So in All's Well that Ends Well: 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in.' It has, however, been suggested that the meaning is, You stand in need of the time or season of sleep which all natures require.' I incline to the last interpretation. 3 The editions previous to Theobald's read:

'We're but young indeed.

The initiate fear is the fear that always attends the first initiation into guilt, before the mind becomes callous and insensible by hard use or frequent repetition of it.

4 Shakspeare has been unjustly censured for introdu. cing Hecate among the vulgar witches, and consequent ly for confounding ancient with modern superstitions. But the poet has elsewhere shown himself well acquainted with the classical connexion which this deity had with witchcraft. Reginald Scot, in his discovery, mentions it as the common opinion of all writers, that witches were supposed to have nightly meetings with Herodias and the Pagan gods,' and that in the night time they ride abroad with Diana, the goddess of the Pagans, &c. Their dame or chief leader seems always to have been an old Pagan, as 'the Ladie Sibylla, Minerva, or Diana.'

5 Steevens remarks that Shakspeare's mythological knowledge on this occasion appears to have deserted hire; for as Hecate is only one of the three names be.

Lord. I'll send my prayers with him! [Exeunt.

longing to the same goddess, she could not properly be employed in one character to catch a drop that fell from her in another. In a Midsummer Night's Dream, how ever, the poet was sufficiently aware of her threefold capacity:

-fairies, that do run

By the triple Hecat's team.' The raporous drop profound seems to have been meant for the same as the virus lunare of the ancients, being a foam which the moon was supposed to shed on particu lar herbs, or other objects, when strongly solicited by enchantment.

6 Slights are arts, subtle practices.

7 This song is to be found entire in The Witch, by Middleton.

8 Who cannot want the thought;' &c. The sense requires who can want the thought; but it is probably a lapse of the poet's pen.

9 Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives.' The construction is:-Free our feasts and banquets from bloody knives.'

10 Johnson says, 'Free may be either honours freely bestowed, not purchased by crimes; or honours without slavery, without dread of a tyrant. I have shown in a note on Twelfth Night, Act ii. Sc. 4. that free meant pure, chaste, consequently unspotted, which may be its meaning here. Free also meant noble. See note on the Second Part of King Henry VI. Act iii. Sc. 1. 11 Exasperate, for exasperated.

12 The construction is, to this our country, suffering under a hand accursed.

7 To ravin according to Minshew is to devour, to eat greedily. Ravin'd, therefore, may be glutted with 18 The armed head represents symbolically Macprey. Unless, with Malone, we suppose that Shak-beth's head cut off and brought to Malcolm by Macduf speare used ravin'd for ravenous, the passive participle for the adjective. In Horman's Vulgaria, 1519, occurs "Thou art a ravenar of delycatis.'