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MACBETH.

ACT I.

SCENE I-An open Place. Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.

1 Witch.

WHEN shall we three meet again

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2 Witch. When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won :"

3 Witch. That will be ere set of sun.

1 Witch. Where the place?

2 Witch. Upon the heath:

3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. 1 Witch. I come, Graymalkin !2

All. Paddock calls :3-Anon.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair :

Hover through the fog and filthy air. [Witches vanish.

SCENE II.

A Camp near Fores. Alarum within. Enter King DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Soldier.

Dun. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

[1] i. e. the battle in which Macbeth was then engaged.

WARB.

Mr.

From a little black-letter book, entitled, Beware the Cat, 1584, I find it was permitted to a Witch "to take on her a cattes body nine times." Upton observes, that to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad. STE. [3] According to the late Dr. Goldsmith, and some other naturalists, a frog is called a paddock in the North. In Shakspeare, however, it certainly means a toad. The representation of St. James in the witches' house (one of the set of prints taken from the painter called Hellish Breugel, 1566,) exhibits witches flying up and down the chimney on brooms; and before the fire sit grimalkin and paddock, i. e. a cat, and a toad, with several baboons. There is a cauldron boiling, with a witch near it cutting out the tongue of a snake, as an ingredient for the charm. STEEV

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The newest state.

Mal. This is the serjeant,

Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought
'Gainst my captivity :-Hail, brave friend!
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil,
As thou didst leave it.

Sol. Doubtfully it stood;

As two spent swimmers, that do cling together, And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald (Worthy to be a rebel; for, to that,

The multiplying villainies of nature

Do swarm upon him,) from the western isles
Of Kernes and Gallowglasses is supplied ;4
And fortune on his damned quarrel smiling,

Show'd like a rebel's whore: But all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth, (well he deserves that name,)
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smok'd with bloody execution,

Like valour's minion,

Carv'd out his passage, till he fac'd the slave ;
And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, 5
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Dun. O, valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!
Sol. As whence the sun 'gins his reflexion 6
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break;

[4] Whether supplied of, for supplied from or with, was a kind of Grecism of Shakspeare's expression; or whether of be a corruption of the editors, who took Kernes and Gallowglasses, which were only light and heavy armed foot, to be the names of two of the western islands, I don't know. WARB. Of and with are indiscriminately used by our ancient writers. STEEV.

[5] We seldom hear of such terrible cross blows given and received but by giants and miscreants in Amadis de Gaule. Besides it must be a strange awk ward stroke that could rip him upwards from the navel to the chaps. But Shakspeare certainly wrote:

-he unseam'd him from the nape to the chaps,

i. e. cut his skull in two; which might be done by a Highlander's sword. This was a reasonable blow, and very naturally expressed, on supposing it given when the head of the wearied combatant was reclining downwards at the latter end of a long duel. For the nape is the hinder part of the neck, where the vertebre join to the bone of the skull. The word unseamed likewise becomes very proper, and alludes to the suture which goes across the crown of the head in that direction called the sutura sagittalis: and which consequently, must be opened by such a stroke. WARB.

[6] The thought is expressed with some obscurity, but the plain meaning is this: "As the same quarter, whence the blessing of day-light arises, sometimes sends us, by a dreadful reverse, the calamities of storms and tempests; so the glorious event of Macbeth's victory, which promised us the comforts of peace, was immediately succeeded by the alarming news of the Norweyan invasion."

STEEV.

So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come,
Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark :
No sooner justice had, with valour arm'd,

Compell'd these skipping Kernes to trust their heels,
But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms, and new supplies of men,
Began a fresh assault.

Dun. Dismay'd not this

Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo ?
Sol. Yes;

As sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion.
If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks;
So they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
Or memorize another Golgotha, 8

I cannot tell :

But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

Dun. So well thy words become thee, as thy wounds; They smack of honour both :-Go, get him surgeons. [Exit Soldier, attended.

Enter RosSE.

-Who comes here?

Mal. The worthy thane of Rosse.

Len. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look,

That seems to speak things strange.

Rosse. God save the king!

Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane?

Rosse. From Fife, great king,

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,

And fan our people cold.

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict:

Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,'
Confronted him with self-comparisons, 2

[8] i. e. or make another Golgotha, which should be celebrated and deliv ered down to posterity, with as frequent mention as the first. HEATH. [9] The banners may be poetically described as waving in mockery or de. fiance of the sky. STEEV.

[1] Lapt in proof, is, defended by armour of proof.

STEEV.

[2] i.e. gave him as good as he brought, shew'd he was his equal. WARB.

Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm,
Curbing his lavish spirit: And, to conclude,
The victory fell on us ;

Dun. Great happiness!

Rosse. That now

Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition;
Nor would we deign him burial of his men,
Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes' inch, 3

Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

Dun. No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest :-Go, pronounce his death, And with his former title greet Macbeth.

Rosse. I'll see it done.

Dun. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.

SCENE III.

[Exeunt.

A Heath. Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

1 Witch. Where hast thou been, sister?

2 Witch. Killing swine.

3 Witch. Sister, where thou?

1 Witch. A sailor's wife had chesnuts in her lap, And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd :

me, quoth I:

-Give

Aroint thee, witch !4 the rump-fed ronyons cries.

[3] Colmes'-inch, now called Inchcomb, is a small island lying in the Firth of Edinburgh, with an abbey upon it, dedicated to St. Columb. Inch, or Inshe, in the Irish and Erse languages, signifies an island. STEEV.

POPE.

[4] Arvint, or avaunt, be gone. In one of the folio editions the reading is-Anoint thee, in a sense very con. sistent with the common account of witches, who are related to perform many supernatural acts, by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the places where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense, anoint thee, witch, will mean, away, witch, to your infernal assembly. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word aroint in no other author; till looking into Hearne's Collections, I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting the devils into great confusion by his presence, of whom one, that is driving the damned before him with a prong, has a label issuing out of his mouth with these words Out out arongt, of which the last is evidently the same with arcint, and used in the same sense as in this passage. JOHNS. Dr. Johnson's memory, on the present occasion, appears to have deceived him in more than a single instance. The subject of the above-mentioned drawing is ascertained by a label affixed to it in Gothick letters. Iesus Chris tus resurgens a mortuis spoliat infernum My predecessor, indeed, might have been misled by an uncouth abbreviation in the Sacred Name. The words-Out out arcngt, are addressed to our Redeemer by Satan, who, the better to enforce them, accompanies them with a blast of the horn he holds in his right hand. Tartareum intendit cornu. Satan is not "driving the damned before him ;" nor is any other dæmon present to undertake that

Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,6

And, like a rat without a tail?
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.

2 Witch. I'll give thee a wind.
1 Witch. Thou art kind.

3 Witch. And I another.

1 Witch. I myself have all the other; And the very ports they blow,

All the quarters that they know
I' the shipman's card.

I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall, neither night nor day,
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid : 8
Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine :9
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd.
Look what I have.

2 Witch. Show me, show me.

1 Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wreck'd, as homeward he did come. 3 Witch. A drum, a drum; Macbeth doth come.

[Drum within.

office. Redemption not punishment is the subject of the piece. 66 Rynt you, witch, quoth Besse Locket to her mother," is a north country proverb.

STEEV.

[5] i. e. Scabby or mangy woman Fr. rogneux, royne, scurf. STEEV. The chief cooks in noblemen's families, colleges, religious houses, hospitals, &c. anciently claimed the emoluments or kitchen fees of kidneys, fat, trotters, rumps. &e. which they sold to the poor. The weird sister in this scene, as an insul: on the poverty of the woman who had called her witch, reproaches her poor abject state, as not being able to procure better provision than offals, which are considered as the refuse of the tables of others. COLEPEPER. [6] Reginald Scott, in his Discovery of Witchcraft. 1584, says it was believed that witches "could sail in an egg shell, a cockie or muscle shell, through and under the tempestuous seas.' STEEV.

[7] It should be remembered, (as it was the belief of the times,) that though a witch could assume the form of any animal she pleased. the tail would still be wanting The reason given by some old writers, for this deficiency, is, that though the hands and feet, by an easy change, might be converted into the four paws of a beast, there was still no part about a woman which corresponded with the length of tail common to almost all four-footed creatures. STEEV.

[8] i. e. as one under a curse, an interdiction. So, among the Romans, an outlaw's sentence was Aqua & Ignis interdictio; i. e. he was forbid the use of water and fire, which implied the necessity of banishment. THEO.

[9] This mischief was supposed to be put in execution by means of a waxen figure, which represented the person who was to be consumed by slow degrees. STEEV.

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