All's well. BAN. I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: Масв. I think not of them: Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, Would spend it in some words upon that business, If you would grant the time. BAN. At your kind'st leisure. MACB. If you shall cleave to my consent,-when 3 'tis, It shall make honour for you. 2 All's well.] I suppose the poet originally wrote (that the preceding verse might be completed,)-" Sir, all is well." STEEVENS. 3 If you shall cleave to my CONSENT,-when 'tis,] Consent, for will. So that the sense of the line is, If you shall go into my measures when I have determined of them, or when the time comes that I want your assistance. WARBURTON. Macbeth expresses his thought with affected obscurity; he does not mention the royalty, though he apparently had it in his mind. "If you shall cleave to my consent," if you shall concur with me when I determine to accept the crown, "when 'tis," when that happens which the prediction promises, "it shall make honour for you." JOHNSON. Such another expression occurs in Lord Surrey's translation of the second book of Virgil's Æneid: "And if thy will stick unto mine, I shall "In wedlocke sure knit, and make her his own." Consent has sometimes the power of the Latin concentus. Both the verb and substantive, decidedly bearing this signification, occur in other plays of our author. Thus, in King Henry VI. Part I. Sc. I.: 66 scourge the bad revolting stars "That have consented to King Henry's death-." i. e. acted in concert so as to occasion it. Again, in King Henry IV. Part II. Act V. Sc. I.: "they (Justice Shallow's servants) flock together in consent, (i. e. in a party,) like so many wild geese." In both these instances the words are spelt erroneously, and should be written concent and concented. See Spenser, &c. as quoted in a note on the passage already adduced from King Henry VI. The meaning of Macbeth is then as follows:-" If you shall cleave to my consent-" i. e. if you shall stick, or adhere, to my BAN. So I lose none, In seeking to augment it, but still keep party-"when tis," i. e. at the time when such a party is formed, your conduct shall produce honour for you. That consent means participation, may be proved from a passage in the 50th Psalm. I cite the translation 1568: "When thou sawdest a thiefe, thou dydst consent unto hym, and hast been partaker with the adulterers." In both instances the particeps criminis is spoken of. Again, in our author's As You Like It, the usurping Duke says, after the flight of Rosalind and Celia 66 some villains of my court "Are of consent and sufferance in this." Again, in King Henry V.: "We carry not a heart with us from hence, "That grows not in a fair consent with ours." Macbeth mentally refers to the crown he expected to obtain in consequence of the murder he was about to commit. The commentator, indeed, (who is acquainted with what precedes and follows,) comprehends all that passes in the mind of the speaker; but Banquo is still in ignorance of it. His reply is only that of a man who determines to combat every possible temptation to do ill; and therefore expresses a resolve that in spite of future combinations of interest, or struggles for power, he will attempt nothing that may obscure his present honours, alarm his conscience, or corrupt his loyalty. Macbeth could never mean, while yet the success of his attack on the life of Duncan was uncertain, to afford Banquo the most dark or distant hint of his criminal designs on the crown. Had he acted thus incautiously, Banquo would naturally have become his accuser, as soon as the murder had been discovered. STEEVENS. The word consent has always appeared to me unintelligible in the first of these lines, and was, I am persuaded, a mere error of the press. A passage in The Tempest leads me to think that our author wrote-content. Antonio is counselling Sebastian to murder Gonsalo : "O, that you bore "The mind that I do; what a sleep were there 66 Seb. I think I do. "Ant. And how does your content "Tender your own good fortune?" In the same play we have-" Thy thoughts I cleave to," which differs but little from "I cleave to thy content." My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear, In The Comedy of Errors our author has again used this word in the same sense : 66 Sir, I commend you to your own content." Again, in All's Well That Ends Well: 66 Madam, the care I have taken to even your content-." i. e. says Dr. Johnson, to act up to your desires. Again, in King Richard III. : "God hold it to your honour's good content!" Again, in the Merry Wives of Windsor: "You shall hear how things go, and, I warrant, to your own content." The meaning then of the present difficult passage, thus corrected, will be: If you will closely adhere to my cause, if you will promote, as far as you can, what is likely to contribute to my satisfaction and content,-when 'tis, when the prophecy of the weird sisters is fulfilled, when I am seated on the throne, the event shall make honour for you. If Macbeth does not mean to allude darkly to his attainment of the crown, (I do not say to his forcible or unjust acquisition of it, but to his attainment of it,) what meaning can be drawn from the words, "If you shall cleave," &c. whether we read consent, or the word now proposed? In the preceding speech, though he affects not to think of it, he yet clearly marks out to Banquo what it is that is the object of the mysterious words which we are now considering : "Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, "We would spend it in some words upon that business ;" i. e. " upon the prophecy of the weird sisters, [that I should be thane of Cawdor, and afterwards king,] which, as you observe, has been in part fulfilled, and which by the kindness of fortune may at some future time be in the whole accomplished." I do not suppose that Macbeth means to give Banquo the most distant hint of his having any intention to murder Duncan; but merely to state to him, that if he will strenuously endeavour to promote his satisfaction or content, if he will espouse his cause, and support him against all adversaries, whenever he shall be seated on the throne of Scotland, by whatever mysterious operation of fate that event may be brought about, such a conduct shall be rewarded, shall make honour for Banquo. The word content admits of this interpretation, and is supported by several other passages in our author's plays; the word consent, in my apprehension, affords here no meaning whatsoever. Consent or concent may certainly signify harmony, and, in a metaphorical sense, that union which binds to each other a party or number of men, leagued together for a particular purpose; Масв. Good repose, the while! BAN. Thanks, sir; The like to you! [Exit BANQUO. MACB. Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready*, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. [Exit Servant. Is this a dagger, which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but but it can no more signify, as I conceive, the party, or body of men so combined together, or the cause for which they are united, than the harmony produced by a number of musical instruments can signify the instruments themselves, or the musicians that play upon them. When Fairfax, in his translation of Tasso, says "Birds, winds, and waters, sing with sweet concent," we must surely understand by the word concent, not a party, or a cause, but harmony, or union; and in the latter sense, I apprehend, Justice Shallow's servants are said to flock together in concent, in The Second Part of King Henry IV. If this correction be just, "In seeking to augment it," in Banquo's reply, may perhaps relate, not to his own honour, but to Macbeth's content. "On condition that I lose no honour, in seeking to increase your satisfaction, or content,-to gratify your wishes," &c. The words, however, may be equally commodiously interpreted," Provided that in seeking an increase of honour, 1 lose none," &c. Sir William D'Avenant's paraphrase on this obscure passage is as follows: "If when the prophecy begins to look like, you will "Adhere to me, it shall make honour for you." MALONE. 4 when my drink is ready,] See note on "their possets," in the next scene, p. 103. STEevens. Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going; Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood", Which was not so before.-There's no such thing: It is the bloody business, which informs Thus to mine eyes.-Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 5 And on thy blade, and DUDGEON, GOUTS OF blood,] Though dudgeon sometimes signifies a dagger, it more properly means the haft or handle of a dagger, and is used for that particular sort of handle which has some ornament carved on the top of it. Junius explains the dudgeon, i. e. haft, by the Latin expression, manubrium apiatum, which means a handle of wood with a grain rough as if the seeds of parsley were strown over it. Thus, in the concluding page of the Dedication to Stanyhurst's Virgil, 1583: "Well fare thee haft with thee dudgeon dagger!" Again, in Lyly's comedy of Mother Bombie, 1594: "then have at the bag with the dudgeon hafte, that is, at the dudgeon dagger that hangs by his tantony pouch." In Soliman and Perseda is the following passage: 66 Typhon me no Typhons, "But swear upon my dudgeon dagger." Again, in Decker's Satiromastix: "I am too well ranked, Asinius, to be stabb'd with his dudgeon wit." Again, in Skialetheia, a collection of Epigrams, Satires, &c. 1598: "A dudgin dagger that's new scowr'd and glast." STEEVENS. Gascoigne confirms this: "The most knottie piece of box may be wrought to a fayre doogen hafte." Gouts, for drops, is frequent in old English. FARMER. 66 - gouts of blood." Or drops, French. POPE. Gouts is the technical term for the spots on some part of the plumage of a hawk: or perhaps Shakspeare used the word in allusion to a phrase in heraldry. When a field is charged or sprinkled with red drops, it is said to be gutty of gules, or gutty de sang. The same word occurs also in The Art of Good Lyving and Good Deyng, 1503: "Befor the jugement all herbys shal sweyt read goutys of water, as blood." STEEVens. |