Enter a Servant. SCENE II. The Country near Dunsinane. Enter, with Drum and Colours, MENTETH, CATHNESS, The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon !" ANGUS, LENOx, and Soldiers. Ment. The English power is near, led on by His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff. Ang. Near Birnam wood Len. For certain, sir, he is not: I have a file Ment. Now does he feel Ang. Ment. Who then shall blame To give obedience where 'tis truly ow'd: Len. Or so much as it needs, [Exeunt, marching. SCENE III. Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle. Enter MACBETH, Doctor, and Attendants. Macb. Bring me no more reports; let them fly all; Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane, And mingle with the English epicures: Where gott'st thou that goose look? Macb. Serv. Geese, villain? Macb. Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, Serv. The English force, so please you. When I behold-Seyton, I say!-This push 1 Duncan had two sons by his wife, who was the daughter of Siward, Earl of Northumberland.-Holinshed. 2 By the mortified man is meant a religious man; one who has mortified his passions, is dead to the world, has abandoned it, and all the affairs of it; an ascetic. 3 And many unrough youths. This odd expression means smooth-faced, unbearded. How does your patient, doctor? Doct. Not so sick, my lord, Macb. it: Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff:- 9 Putch, an appellation of contempt, signifying fool or low wretch. 10 i. e. they infect others who see them with cowardice. In King Henry V. the King says to the conspi rators, 'Your cheeks are paper.' 11 Sear is dry, withered. We have the same exprassion and sentiment in Spenser's Pastorals: Also my lustful leaf is drie and seare. For way of life' Johnston would read May of life in which he was followed by Steevens and others. War burton contended for the original reading, and was 4 i. e. when all the faculties of the mind are employ-lowed by Mason. At a subsequent period Steevens ed in self-condemnation. 5 The medecin, the physician. In the Winter's Tale, Camillo is called by Perdita the medecin of our house, 6 Shakspeare derived this thought from Holinshed: -The Scottish people before had no knowledge of nor understanding of fine fare or riotous surfeit; yet after they had once tasted the sweet poisoned bait thereof,' &c. those superfluities which came into the realme of Scotland with Englishmen.'-Hist. of Scotland, p. 179. 7 To sag, or swag, is to hang down by its own weight, or by an overload. 8cream-fac'd loon.' This word, which signifies a base abject fellow, is now only used in Scotland; it was formerly common in England, but spelt lown, and is justly considered by Horne Tooke as the past parti. ciple of to low or abase. Lowt has the same origin. acquiesced in the propriety of the old reading, was life, which he interprets, with his predecessors, courag or progress. Malone followed the same tract. The fact is that these ingenious writers have mistaken the phrase, which is neither more nor less than a simple periphrasis for life. 12 i. e. scour the country round. 13 The following very remarkable passage in the Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso, which bears a striking resen blance to the words of Macbeth, was first pointed out in Mr. Weber's edition of Ford : 'Ma chi puote con erbe, od argomenti Cant. xxxvi. St. St. 14 To cast the water was the empiric phrase for find ing out disorders by the inspection of urine. 1 1 1 Bring it after me.——— I will not be afraid of death and bane, Mal. Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand Ment. We doubt it nothing. The wood of Birnam. Sold. It shall be done. Sey. It is the cry of women, my good lord. Enter a Messenger. Thou com'st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly. I But know not how to do it. Macb. Well, say, sir. Mess. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, Siw. We learn no other, but the confident tyrant The wood began to move. Mal. [Exeunt, marching. Liar and slave!!! Macb. If thou speak'st false, To doubt the equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth: Fear not, till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane ;—and now a wood Comes toward Dunsinane.-Arm, arm, and out!--- And wish the estate o' the world were now undone. SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the Castle. En-Ring the alarum-bell :-Blow, wind! come, wrack! ter, with Drums and Colours, MACBETH, SEY-At least we'll die with harness on our back. TON, and Soldiers. Macb. Hang out our banners on the outward walls; What rhubarb, senna.' The old copy reads cyme. 2 A similar incident is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in his Northern History, lib. vii. cap. xx. De Strategeinate Hachonis per Frondes. 3 For where there is advantage to be given.' Dr. Johnson thought that we should read: where there is a vantage to be gone.' i. e. where there is an opportunity to be gone, all ranks desert him. We might perhaps read : where there is advantage to be gained;' and the sense would be nearly similar, with less violence to the text of the old copy. 4 i. e. Greater and less, or high and low, those of all SCENE VI. The same. A Plain before the Cas- Mal. Now near enough; your leavy screens stroy the effect, and defeat the supposed purpose of the antecedent couplets. 8- my fell of hair,' my hairy part, my capilititium. Fell is skin, properly a sheep's skin with the wool on it. 9 There would have been a time for such a word.' Macbeth might mean that there would have been a more convenient time for such a word, for such intelligence. By a word certainly more than a single one was meant. 10 The last sylle of recorded time' seems to sig. nify the utmost period fixed in the decrees of heaven for the period of life. The record of futurity is indeed no accurate expression; but as we only know transactions, past or present, the language of men affords no term for the volumes of prescience in which future events may be supposed to be written. 11 [Striking him] says the stage direction in the margin of all the modern editions: but this stage direc. tion is not in the old copies: it was first interpolated by Rowe; and is now omitted on the suggestion of the late Mr. Kemble. See his Essay on Macbeth and King Richard III. Lond. 1817, p. 111. 12 To cling, in the northern counties, signifies to shrivel, wither, or dry up. Clung-wood is wood of which the sap is entirely uried or spent. The same idea is well expressed by Pope in his version of the nineteenth Iliad, 166: Clung with dry famine, and with toils declin'd.' 13 Harness, armour. And show like those you are:-You, worthy uncle, Siw. Macd. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death. [Exeunt. Alarums continued. SCENE VII. The same. Another part of the Plain. Enter MACBETH. Macb. They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, But, bearlike, I must fight the course.2-What's he, That was not born of woman? Such a one Am I to fear, or none. More hateful to mine ear. No, nor more fearful. Macb. I'll prove the lie thou speak'st. Alarums. Enter MACDUFF. Macd. That way the noise is:-Tyrant show thy face: If thou be'st slain, and with no stroke of mine, The tyrant's people on both sides do fight; And little is to do. Re-enter MACBETH. [They fight. Thou losest labour: As easy mayst thou the intrenchant airs With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed: Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; 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. I Macb. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, And live to be the show and gaze o' the time. Macb. I'll not yield 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, throw my warlike shield; lay on, Macduff; Yet I will try the last: Before my body I And damn'd be him that first cries, Hold, enough, [Exeunt, fighting. 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. 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: Siw. 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! Macb. Why should I play the Roman fool, and Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death:10 9 To cry hold! was the word of yielding (according to Carew's Survey of Cornwall, p. 74,) that is whea one of the combatants cries so. To cry heid! whea persons were fighting, was an authoritative way of sepAl-arating them, according to the old military laws This is shown by the following passage produced by Mr. Tollet: it declares it to be a capital offence Whosoever shall strike stroke at his adversary, either in the heat or otherwise, if a third do cry hold, to the intent to part them.'-Bellay's Instructions for the Wars, 1599. 6 The intrenchant air, the air which cannot be cut. 7 'I bear a charmed life. In the days of chivalry, the champion's arms being ceremoniously blessed, each took an oath that he used no charmed weapons. Macbeth, in allusion to this custom, tells Macduff of the security he had in the prediction of the spirit. 8 That palter with us in a double sense.' shuffle with ambiguous expressions. That 10When Siward, the martial Earl of Northumber land, understood that his son, whom he had sent 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."-Camden's Remaines. Mal. He's worth more sorrow, | Which would be planted newly with the time,-- And that I'll spend for him. Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH's Head on a Pole.' Macd. Hail, king! for so thou art; Behold, The usurper's cursed head: the time is free: Hail, king of Scotland! Before we reckon with your several loves, men, Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland 1 These words, on a pole,' Mr. Steevens added to the stage direction from the Chronicle. The stage directions of the players are often incorrect, and sometimes ludicrous. 2 Thy kingdom's pearl,' thy kingdom's wealth or ornament. Rowe altered this to peers, without authority. 3 To spend an expense of time is, it is true, an awk. ward expression, yet it is probably correct; for, in the Comedy of Errors, Act iii. Sc. 1, Antipholus of Ephesus says This jest shall cost me some expense.' Of this dead butcher, and his fiendlike queen; THIS play is deservedly celebrated for the propriety of its fictions, and solemnity, grandeur, and variety of its action; but it has no nice discriminations of character: the events are too great to admit the influence of particular dispositions, and the course of the action necessarily determines the conduct of the agents. The danger of ambition is well described; and I know not whether it may not be said, in defence of some parts which now seem improbable, that in Shakspeare's time it was necessary to warn credulity against vain and illusive predictions. The passions are directed to their true end. Lady Macbeth is merely detested; and though the courage of Macbeth preserves some esteem, yet every reader rejoices at his fall. JOHNSON. 4 Malcolm, immediately after his coronation, called a parliament at Forfair; in the which he rewarded them with lands and livings that had assisted him against Macbeth. Manie of them that were before thones were at this time made earles; as Fife, Menteith, Atholl, Levenox, Murrey, Caithness, Rosse, and Angus.-Holinshed's History of Scotland, p. 176. KING JOHN. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. THIS historical play was founded on a former drama, I do the deed, and the sententious brevity of the close, entitled 'The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of manifest that consummate skill and wonderful knowEngland, with the Discoverie of King Richard Cordelion's base Son, vulgarly named the Bastard Fawconbridge: also the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. As it was (sundry times) publikely acted by the Queenes Majesties Players in the honourable Cittie of London." This piece, which was in two parts, was printed at London for Sampson Clarke, 1591,' without the author's name: was again republished in 1611, with the letters W. Sh. in the title-page; and afterwards, in 1622, with the name of William Shakspeare at length. It may be found by the curious reader among the Six Old Plays on which Shakspeare founded,' &c. published by Mr. Steevens and Mr. Nichols some years since. Shakspeare has followed the old play in the conduct of its plot, and has even adopted some of its lines. The number of quotations from Horace, and similar scraps of learning scattered over this motley piece, ascertain it to have been the work of a scholar. It contains likewise a quantity of rhyming Latin and ballad metre; and, in a scene where the Bastard is represented as plundering a monastery, there are strokes of humour which, from their particular turn, were most evidently produced by another hand than that of Shakspeare. Pope attributes the old play to Shakspeare and Rowley conjointly; but we know not on what foundation. Dr. Farmer thinks there is no doubt that Rowley wrote the old play; and when Shakspeare's play was called for, and could not be procured from the players, a piratical bookseller reprinted the old one under his name. Though, as Johnson observes, King John is not written with the utmost power of Shakspeare,' yet it has parts of preeminent pathos and beauty, and charac. ters highly interesting drawn with great force and truth. The scene between John and Hubert is perhaps one of the most masterly and striking which our poet ever penned. The secret workings of the dark and turbulent soul of the usurper, ever shrinking from the full developement of his own bloody purpose, the artful expressions of grateful attachment by which he wins Hubert to ledge of human character which are to be found in Shakspeare alone. But what shall we say of that heart-rending scene between Hubert and Arthur? a scene so deeply affecting the soul with terror and pity, that even the sternest bosom must melt into tears; it would perhaps be too overpowering for the feelings, were it not for the alleviating influence of the innocence and artless eloquence of the poor child.' His death afterwards, when he throws himself from the prison walls, excites the deepest commiseration for his hapless fate. The maternal grief of Constance, moving the haughty unbending soul of a proud queen and affectionate mother to the very confines of the most hopeless despair, bordering on madness, is no less finely conceived, than sustained by language of the most impassioned and vehement eloquence. How exquisitely beautiful are the following lines: 'Grief fills the room up of my absent child; Lies in his bed; walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then have I reason to be fond of grief.' Shakspeare has judiciously preserved the character of the Bastard Faulconbridge, which was furnished him by the old play, to alleviate by his comic humour the poignant grief excited by the too painful events of the tragic part of the play. Faulconbridge is a favourite with every one: he is not only a man of wit, but an heroic soldier; and we lean toward him from the first for the good humour he displays in his litigation with his brother respecting the succession to his supposed father: 'He hath a trick of Cœur de Lion's face, The very spirit of Plantagenet!' This bespeaks our favour toward him his courage, his wit, and his frankness secure it. Schlegel has remarked that, in this play, the political and warlike events are dressed out with solemn pomp, for the very reason that they possess but little fortune by similar means, and wishes rather to being true grandeur. The falsehood and selfishness of the monarch are evident in the style of the manifesto; conventional diguity is most indispensable when personal dignity is wanting. Faulconbridge ridicules the secret springs of politics without disapproving them, but frankly confesses that he is endeavouring to make his to the deceivers than the deceived. Our commiseration KING JOHN: PERSONS REPRESENTED. PRINCE HENRY, his Son; afterwards King Henry III. WILLIAM LONGSWORD, Earl of Salisbury. HUBERT DE BURGH, Chamberlain to the King. PHILIP FAULCONBRIDGE, his Half-brother, Bas- JAMES GURNEY, Servant to Lady Faulconbridge. PHILIP, King of France. ACT I. SCENE I. Northampton. A Room of State in King John. Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us? In my behaviour,' to the majesty, Eli. A strange beginning ;-borrow'd majesty! Chat. Philip of France, in right and true behalf To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine: K. John. What follows, if we disallow of this? war, To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld. K. John. Here have we war for war, and blood for blood, Controlment for controlment: so answer France. Chat. Then take my king's defiance from my mouth, The furthest limit of my embassy. So, hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath, [Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE. K. John. Our strong possession, and our right Eli. Your strong possession, much more than Or else it must go wrong with you, and me: Essex. My liege, here is the strangest contro- Come from the country to be judg'd by you, This expedition's charge.-What men are you? K. John. Bear mine to him, and so depart in Born in Northamptonshire; and eldest son, peace: Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; 1 In my behaviour probably means 'In the words and action I am now going to use." 2 Control here means constraint or compulsion. 3 i. e. gloomy, dismal. 4 i. e. conduct, administration. 5 Shakspeare in adopting the character of Philip Faulconbridge from the old play, proceeded on the following slight hint : Next them a bastard of the king's deceas'd, As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge; ages. 'Sub illius temporis curriculo Falcasius de Brente, Neusteriensis, et spurius ex parte matris, atque Bastardus, qui in vili jumento manticato ad Regis paulo ante clientelam descenderat.' Mathew Paris.-Holinshed says that Richard I. had a natural son named Philip, who, in the year following, killed the Viscount de Limoges to revenge the death of his father. Perhaps the name of Faulconbridge was suggested by the fol lowing passage in the continuation of Harding's Chro nicle, 1543, fol. 24, 6:- One Faulconbridge, th' eris of Kent his bastarde, a stoute-hearted man." |