179

45. The poor cat, etc. Johnson quotes the Low Latin form of the proverb: "Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas." In French it is "Le chat aime le poisson, mais il n'aime pas à mouiller ses pattes' (Peck). Boswell finds it among Heywood's Proverbs, 1566: "The cate would eate fishe, and would not wet her feete."

47. Do more. Rowe's emendation for the "no more" of the folios. Hunter would retain the old reading, and give the line to Lady Macbeth. What beast, etc. "If, as you imply, this enterprise be not the device of a man, what beast induced you to propose it?" (Elwin). The antithesis of beast and man seems natural enough, but Hunter would read "What was 't then,' ," and the Coll. MS. has "What boast was 't," which is defended by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine (Oct. 1853) quoted by Fur

ness.

Steevens cites M. for M. ii. 4. 134:

48. Break.

"Be that you are,

That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none."

Here followed by to, as it would be now, but often in S. by with; as in J. C. ii. 1. 150; Hen. VIII. v. I. 47 (see note in our ed. p. 197), etc.

50. To be. On the use of the infinitive, see Gr. 356. 52. Adhere. Cohere, "be in accordance" (Schmidt). 62 and T. N. iii. 4. 86.

66 6

Cf. M. W. ii. 1.

53. That their fitness. Abbott (Gr. 239) commenting on "that mouth of thine" (K. John, iii. 1. 299), remarks: This your mouth' requiring a forced and unnatural pause after 'this,' was somewhat more objectionable to S. than to the Latin style of Milton and Addison ;" and then adds, in a foot-note: "See, however, 'this our lofty scene,' J. C. ii. 1. 112." The present passage affords another example; and (if we adopt the reading of the Ist folio) yet another occurs in A. and C. ii. 3. 19: "that thy spirit which keeps thee."* See also ii. 2. 61 and iii. 6. 48 below.

58. The brains. As the C. P. ed. remarks, we should now say "its brains," but the is found not unfrequently for the possessive pronoun. Cf. the version of Lev. xxv. 5 in the Bishops' Bible: "That which groweth of the owne accord of thy harvest, thou shalt not reape;" and Bacon, Adv. of L. i. 4. I.: "For we see that it is the manner of men to scandalize and deprave that which retaineth the state and virtue."

59. We fail. The folio prints we faile?" Most eds. have "We fail!" but K., H., and Sr. (2d ed.), "We fail." K. says: "We prefer the quiet self-possession of the punctuation we have adopted." D. remarks: "Whether the words be pointed 'We fail!' or 'We fail?' (and I much prefer the former method), they can only be understood as an impatient and contemptuous repetition of Macbeth's 'we fail,-.' Any kind of admission on the part of Lady Macbeth that the attempt might prove unsuccessful appears to me quite inconsistent with all that she has previ ously said, and all that she afterwards says, in the present scene.

She

The 2d folio has "that's thy spirit," which is adopted by many editors, as the passage in North's Plutarch which S. evidently copied reads: "For thy demon, said he (that is to say, the good angel and spirit that keepeth thee), is afraid," tc.

hastily interrupts her husband, checking the very idea of failure as it rises in his mind."

Mrs. Jameson says: "In her impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Siddons adopted successively three different intonations in giving the words we fail. At first a quick contemptuous interrogation --we fail? Afterwards with the note of admiration—' we fail!' and an accent of indignant astonishment, laying the principal emphasis on the word we-we fail! Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced is the true reading-we fail.' with the simple period, modulating her voice to a deep, low, resolute tone, which settled the issue at once-as though she had said, 'if we fail, why then we fail, and all is over.' This is consistent with the dark fatalism of the character and the sense of the line following, and the effect was sublime, almost awful.”

Compare what Fletcher (see p. 24) says: "Her quiet reply, 'We fail,' is every way most characteristic of the speaker-expressing that moral firmness in herself which makes her quite prepared to endure the consequences of failure-and, at the same time, conveying the most decisive rebuke of such moral cowardice in her husband as can make him recede from a purpose merely on account of the possibility of defeat-a possibility which, up to the very completion of their design, seems never absent from her own mind, though she finds it necessary to banish it from that of her husband."

60. But screw your courage, etc. "A metaphor perhaps taken from the screwing up the chords of stringed instruments" (Steevens). Cf. Cor. i. 8. 11: "Wrench up thy power to the highest ;" T. N. v. 1. 125: "And that I partly know the instrument

That screws me from my true place in your favour."

The C. P. ed. remarks that, as a wrest is an instrument for tuning a harp, this last passage favours Steevens's interpretation of the metaphor.*

64. Wassail. Cf. L. L. L. v. 2. 318: "At wakes and wassails;" Ham. i. 4. 9: "keeps wassail," etc. For the origin of the word, see Wb. Milton has wassailers in Comus, 179: "such late wassailers."

Convince. Overcome (Lat. convincere); as in iv. 3. 142 below. See also Oth. iv. I. 28. On the literal use of Greek and Latin derivatives in the Elizabethan writers, see Gr. p. 12.

65-67. The C. P. ed. remarks: "By the old anatomists (Vigo, fol. 6 b. ed. 1586) the brain was divided into three ventricles, in the hindermost of which they placed the memory. That this division was not unknown to Shakespeare we learn from L. L. L. iv. 2. 70: A foolish, extravagant

Mr. Neil, in his ed. of Macbeth (Edinburgh, 1876), has the following curious note on this passage: "sticking place-fixed point, with a covert allusion to the death-dealing spot chosen by the butcher. So [sic] in the Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventors, 1578: 'Which flowre out of my hande shall never passe, But in my harte shall have a sticking place.'"

spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory.' The third ventricle is the cerebellum, by which the brain is connected with the spinal marrow and the rest of the body; the memory is posted in the cerebellum like a warder or sentinel to warn the reason against attack, when the memory is converted by intoxication into a mere fume (cf. Temt. v. I. 67: 'The ignorant fumes that mantle Their clearer reason'),

then it fills the brain itself, the receipt or receptacle of reason, which thus becomes like an alembic or cap of a still. For fume, cf. Cymb. iv. 2. 301: 'A bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,

Which the brain makes of fumes.

And Dryden's Aurengzebe:

'Power like new wine does your weak brain surprise,

And its mad fumes in hot discourses rise.'

See also A. and C. ii. 1. 24:

66

Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts,
Keep his brain fuming.'

999

66. Receipt. 'Receptacle" (Schmidt); the only instance of this meaning in S. Cf. Matt. ix. 9: "the receipt of custom.' The C. P. ed. quotes Bacon, Essay 46: "a faire receipt of water" (the basin of a fountain).

67. Limbeck. Alembic. See Wb. Cf. Milton, P. L. iii. 605 : “Drain'd through a limbec."

68. A death. "The article may be used because it is only a kind of death, a sleep, which is meant " (Č. P. ed.). Cf. W. T. iv. 2. 3.

66

71. Spongy. Imbibing like a sponge" (Schmidt).

2. 12: "More spongy to suck in the sense of fear."

Cf. T. and C. ii.

72. Quell. Murder; a euphemism, according to Schmidt. Quell in Old English kill, which is originally the same word. See Wb. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. ii. 7, 40:

"and well could weld

That cursed weapon, when his cruell foes he queld;

and Id. v. 10, 36:

"he did him quell,

And, hewing off his head, he it presented
Before the feete of the faire Pastorell."

Man-queller (=manslayer, murderer) occurs in 2 Hen. IV. ii. 1. 58. The C. P. ed. says that the same compound is used by Wiclif for "executioner" in translating Mark, vi. 27, and for "murderer," Acts, xxviii. 4. According to Nares, the redoubtable "Jack" was formerly called “the giant-queller," instead of the more modern "giant-killer."

73. Mettie. and mettle.

In the early eds. no distinction is made between metal See Rich. II. p. 157, note on That metal.

74. Receiv'd.

Accepted as true, believed. Cf. M. for M. i. 3. 16:
"For so I have strew'd it in the common ear,

And so it is receiv'd;"

T. G. of V. v. 4. 78: "And once again I do receive thee honest."

77. Other.

Otherwise. See Gr. 12.

79. Bend up.

Strain, like a bow.

Cf. Hen. V. iii. 1. 16:

"Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height."

80. Each corporal agent. All my bodily powers.
81. Mock the time. See on i. 5. 61.

SCENE I.-The old stage direction says nothing about ". a servant with a torch," as in many modern eds. ; though, as D. remarks, "a Torch" sometimes means a torch-bearer, as a Trumpet" means a trumpeter.

4. Hold, take my sword, etc. Flathe, to whose opinion of the character of Banquo we have already referred (p. 165 above), comments on this speech as follows:

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Banquo enters with his son Fleance, who holds a torch. Will not the man do something at last for his king, take some measures to prevent a cruel crime? Everything combines to enjoin the most careful watchfulness upon him, if duty and honour are yet quick within his breast; and here we come to a speech of Banquo's to his son to which we must pay special heed, since upon it the earlier English commentators, Steevens among them, have based their ridiculous theory that in this tragedy Banquo, in contrast to Macbeth, who is led astray, represents the man

unseduced by evil. Steevens says that this passage shows that Banquo too is tempted by the witches in his dreams to do something in aid of the fulfilment of his hopes, and that in his waking hours he holds himself aloof from all such suggestions, and hence his prayer to be spared the 'cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose.'

"A stranger or more forced explanation of this passage can hardly be imagined. As he has already done, Banquo here endeavours as far as possible to assert his own innocence to himself, while, for the sake of his future advantage, he intends to oppose no obstacle to the sweep of Macbeth's sword. It is, therefore, necessary that he should pretend to himself that here in Macbeth's castle no danger can threaten Duncan nor any one else. Therefore his sword need not rest by his side this night, and he gives it to his son. He must be able to say to himself, in the event of any fearful catastrophe, 'I never thought of or imagined any danger, and so I laid aside my arms.

"And yet, try as he may, he cannot away with the stifling sensation of a tempest in the air, a storm-cloud destined to burst over Duncan's head this very night. He cannot but acknowledge to himself that a certain restless anxiety in his brain is urging him, in spite of his weariness, to remain awake during the remaining hours of the night. But this mood, these sensations, must not last, or it might seem a sacred duty either to hasten to the chamber of King Duncan or to watch it closely, that its occupant may be shielded from murderous wiles. To avoid this, Banquo denounces the thoughts of Macbeth that arise in his mind as 'cursed thoughts.' So detestably false are they that a merciful Power must be entreated to restrain them during sleep, when the mind is not to be completely controlled.

“With every change in the aspect of affairs Banquo's self-deceit appears in some new form. Banquo here banishes his thoughts from his mind, or rather maintains to himself that he has banished them, or that he must banish them because they do injustice to noble Macbeth, whom, nevertheless, he has thought it necessary to warn against the devil." Husbandry. Thrift, economy. Cf. Ham. i. 3. 77: borrowing dulls

the edge of husbandry.”

5. Their. S. several times uses heaven as plural. Cf. Rich. II. i. 2. 7:

"Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven:
Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth,
Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads;'

and see note in our ed. p. 157.

For the metaphor, cf. M. of V. v. I. 220: "these blessed candles of the night;" R. and J. iii. 5. 9: Night's candles are burnt out ;" and Sonn. 21. 12: "those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air."

Take thee that too. Probably a dirk or dagger. Elwin says: "Banque has put from him his several weapons of defence from horror at the particular use his dreams have prompted him to make of them." More likely, as the C. P. ed. suggests, it was because in a friend's house he felt perfectly secure.

Abbott (Gr. 212) considers that thee is a dative here.

6. Heavy.

Drowsy, sleepy" (Schmidt); as often. Cf. R. of L. 121,