But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 8 often signifies in these plays, to die. So, in All's Well That Ends Well: 66 'Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cease." I think, however, it is more probable that his is used for its, and that it relates to assassination. MALONE. 9 -SHOAL of time,] This is Theobald's emendation, undoubtedly right. The old edition has school, and Dr. Warburton shelve. JOHNSON. By the shoal of time, our author means the shallow ford of life, between us and the abyss of eternity. STEEVENS. We'd jump the life to come.] So, in Cymbeline, Act V. Sc. IV. : 66 or jump the after-inquiry on your own peril." STEEVENS. "We'd jump the life to come," certainly means, We'd hazard or run the risk of what might happen in a future state of being.' So, in Antony and Cleopatra : "To jump a body with a dangerous physick, See note on this passage, Act III. Sc. I. MALOne. 2 we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor:] So, in Bellenden's translation of Hector Boethius: "He [Macbeth] was led be wod furyis, as ye nature of all tyrannis is, quhilks conquessis landis or kingdomes be wrangus titil, ay full of hevy thocht and dredour, and traisting ilk man to do siclik crueltes to hym, as he did afore to othir." MALONE. 3 THIS even-handed justice - Mr. M. Mason observes, that we might more advantageously read "Thus even-handed justice," &c. STEEVENS. The old reading I believe to be the true one, because Shakspeare has very frequently used this mode of expression. So, a little lower : 66 Besides, this Duncan," &c. Again, in King Henry IV. Part I. : Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice "That this same child of honour and renown, 4 COMMENDS the ingredients-] Thus, in a subsequent scene of this play: "I wish your horses swift, and sure of foot, This verb has many shades of meaning. It seems here to signify-offers, or recommends. STEEVENS. our poison'd CHALICE To our own lips.] Our poet, apis Matinæ more modoque, would stoop to borrow a sweet from any flower, however humble in its situation. "The pricke of conscience (says Holinshed) caused him ever to feare, lest he should be served of the same cup as he had ministered to his predecessor." STEEVENS. 6 First, as I am HIS KINSMAN-] So, in The Rape of Lucrece : "But as he is my kinsman and dear friend, "The shame and fault finds no excuse nor end." MALONE. A soliloquy not unlike this occurs in Arden of Feversham, 1592: "Ah, harmeles Arden how, how hast thou misdone, "The many good turnes that thou hast done to me, "Now must I quitance with betraying thee. "I that should take the weapon in my hand, "And buckler thee from ill intending foes, "Do lead thee with a wicked fraudfull smile, "As unsuspected, to the slaughterhouse." 7 Hath borne his FACULTIES SO meek,] Faculties, for office, exercise of power, &c. WARBURTON. BOSWELL. "Duncan (says Holinshed) was soft and gentle of nature." And again: " Macbeth spoke much against the king's softness, and overmuch slackness in punishing offenders." STEEVENS. Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd That tears shall drown the wind'.-I have no spur 8 The DEEP DAMNATION] So, in A Dolfull Discourse of a Lord and a Ladie, by Churchyard, 1593: I should not have thought this little coincidence worth noting, had I not found it in a poem which it should seem, from other passages, that Shakspeare had read and remembered. STEEVENS. 9 or heaven's cherubin, hors'd Upon the sightless COURIERS of the air,] Courier is only runCouriers of air are winds, air in motion. Sightless is invisible. JOHNSON. ner. Again, in this play: "Wherever in your sightless substances," &c. Again, in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613: Again : "The flames of hell and Pluto's sightless fires." "Hath any sightless and infernal fire "Laid hold upon my flesh?" Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, b. ii. c. xi. : "The scouring winds that sightless in the sounding air do fly." So, in King Henry V. : "Borne with the invisible and creeping wind." Again, in our author's 51st Sonnet : STEEVENS. "Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind." Again, in the Prologue to King Henry IV. Part II.: 66 I, from the orient to the drooping west, "Making the wind my post-horse-." The thought of the cherubin (as has been somewhere observed) seems to have been borrowed from the eighteenth Psalm : "He rode upon the cherubins and did fly; he came flying upon the wings of the wind." Again, in the book of Job, xxx. 22: "Thou causest me to ride upon the wind." MALONE. 1 That tears shall drown the wind.] Alluding to the remission of the wind in a shower. JOHNSON. So, in King Henry VI. Part III.: To prick the sides of my intent, but only "For raging wind blows up incessant showers; And, when the rage allays, the rain begins." Again, in our author's Venus and Adonis : "Even as the wind is hush'd before it raineth.” Again, in The Rape of Lucrece : STEEVENS. "This windy tempest, till it blow up rain Again, in Troilus and Cressida: "Where are my tears?—rain, rain to lay this wind." I have no SPUR TO PRICK the sides of my intent, but only MALONE. Vaulting AMBITION,] The spur of the occasion is a phrase used by Lord Bacon. STEEVENS. So, in the tragedy of Cæsar and Pompey, 1607: 66 'Why think you, lords, that 'tis ambition's spur, "That pricketh Cæsar to these high attempts? MALONE. Again, in The First Part of The Tragicall Raigne of Selimus, &c. 4to. 1594: 66 My sonnes whom now ambition ginnes to pricke." TODD. 2 And falls on the other.] Sir T. Hanmer has on this occasion added a word, and would read "And falls on the other side." Yet they who plead for the admission of this supplement, should consider, that the plural of it, but two lines before, had occurred. I, also, who once attempted to justify the omission of this word, ought to have understood that Shakspeare could never mean to describe the agitation of Macbeth's mind, by the assistance of a halting verse. The general image, though confusedly expressed, relates to a horse, who, overleaping himself, falls, and his rider under him. To complete the line we may therefore read "And falls upon the other." Thus, in The Taming of a Shrew: "How he left her with the horse upon her." Macbeth, as I apprehend, is meant for the rider, his intent for his horse, and his ambition for his spur; but, unluckily, as the words are arranged, the spur is said to over-leap itself. Such Enter Lady Macbeth. LADY M. He has almost supp'd; Why have you left the chamber? MACB. Hath he ask'd for me? hazardous things are long-drawn metaphors in the hands of careless writers. STEEVENS. I apprehend that there is not here one long-drawn metaphor, but two distinct ones. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent; I have nothing to stimulate me to the execution of my purpose but ambition, which is apt to overreach itself; this he expresses by the second image, of a person meaning to vault into his saddle, who, by taking too great a leap, will fall on the other side. It should be recollected that to vault upon horseback with ease and activity was reckoned a great accomplishment by the courtiers of that time. MALONE. 3 Enter Lady-] The arguments by which Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to commit the murder, afford a proof of Shakspeare's knowledge of human nature. She urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the housebreaker, and sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism Macbeth has for ever destroyed, by distinguishing true from false fortitude, in a line and a half; of which it may almost be said, that they ought to bestow immortality on the author, though all his other productions had been lost : "I dare do all that may become a man ; "Who dares do more, is none." This topick, which has been always employed with too much success, is used in this scene, with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman. Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier; and the reproach of cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great impatience. She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them: this argument Shakspeare, whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might easily have shown that a former obligation could not be vacated by a latter; that obligations, laid on us by a higher power, could not be over-ruled by obligations which we lay upon ourselves. JOHNSON. Part of Lady Macbeth's argument is derived from the translation of Hector Boethius. See Dr. Farmer's note, p. 38. MALONE. |