Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is, BAN. 6 Look, how our partner's rapt. MACB. If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir. BAN. New honours come upon him situation of Macbeth, is meditating a murder, dares not communicate his thoughts, and consequently derives neither spirit, nor advantage, from the countenance, or sagacity, of others. This state of man may properly be styled single, solitary, or defenceless, as it excludes the benefits of participation, and has no resources but in itself. It should be observed, however, that double and single anciently signified strong and weak, when applied to liquors, and perhaps to other objects. In this sense the former word may be employed by Brabantio: 66 a voice potential, "As double as the duke's;" and the latter, by the Chief Justice, speaking to Falstaff: "Is not your wit single?" The single state of Macbeth may therefore signify his weak and debile state of mind. STEEVENS. -function Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is, But what is not.] All powers of action are oppressed and crushed by one overwhelming image in the mind, and nothing is present to me but that which is really future. Of things now about me I have no perception, being intent wholly on that which has yet no existence. JOHNSON. Surmise, is speculation, conjecture concerning the future. MALONE. Shakspeare has somewhat like this sentiment in The Merchant of Venice: "Where, every something being blent together, Again, in King Richard II: 66 is nought but shadows "Of what it is not.' "" STEEVENS. BAN. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your lei sure. 8 7 Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.] "By this, I confess I do not, with his two last commentators, imagine is meant either the tautology of time and the hour, or an allusion to time painted with an hour-glass, or an exhortation to time to hasten forward, but rather to say tempus et hora, time and occasion, will carry the thing through, and bring it to some determined point and end, let its nature be what it will." This note is taken from an Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakspeare, &c. by Mrs. Montagu. So, in the Lyfe of Saynt Radegunda, printed by Pynson, 4to. no date : "How they dispend the tyme, the day, the houre." Such tautology is common to Shakspeare. "The very head and front of my offending," is little less reprehensible. Time and the hour, is Time with his hours. STEEVENS. The same expression is used by a writer nearly contemporary with Shakspeare: "Neither can there be any thing in the world more acceptable to me than death, whose hower and time if they were as certayne," &c. Fenton's Tragical Discourses, 1579. Again, in Davison's Poems, 1621 : "Time's young howres attend her still." Again, in our author's 126th Sonnet: "O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power MALONE. we stay upon your leisure.] The same phraseology occurs in the Paston Letters, Vol. III. p. 80: "—sent late to me a man ye which wuld abydin uppon my leysir," &c. STEEVENS. favour :-my dull brain MACB. Give me your favour :9 was wrought With things forgotten.' Kind gentlemen, your pains The leaf to read them.2-Let us toward the king.- BAN. 3 Very gladly. MACB. Till then, enough.-Come, friends. [Exeunt. -favour:] i. e. indulgence, pardon. STEEVENS. my dull brain was wrought With things forgotten.] My head was worked, agitated, put into commotion. JOHNSON. So, in Othello: "Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought, 66 Perplex'd in the extreme." -where every day I turn STEEVENS. The leaf to read them.] He means, as Mr. Upton has observed, that they are registered in the table-book of his heart. So Hamlet speaks of the table of his memory. MALONE. The interim having weigh'd it,] This intervening portion of time is also personified: it is represented as a cool impartial judge; as the pauser Reason. Or, perhaps, we should readI' th' interim. STEEVENS. I believe the interim is used adverbially: "you having weighed it in the interim." MALONE. Flourish. SCENE IV. Fores. A Room in the Palace. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, and Attendants. DUN. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not1 Those in commission yet return'd? MAL. My liege, They are not yet come back. But I have spoke With one that saw him die: who did report, That very frankly he confess'd his treasons; Implor'd your highness' pardon; and set forth A deep repentance: nothing in his life Became him, like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death," Are not-] The old copy reads-Or not. emendation was made by the editor of the second folio. The MALONE. With one that saw him die:] The behaviour of the thane of Cawdor corresponds, in almost every circumstance, with that of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, as related by Stowe, p. 793. His asking the Queen's forgiveness, his confession, repentance, and concern about behaving with propriety on the scaffold, are minutely described by that historian. Such an allusion could not fail of having the desired effect on an audience, many of whom were eye-witnesses to the severity of that justice which deprived the age of one of its greatest ornaments, and Southampton, Shakspeare's patron, of his dearest friend. STEEVENS. studied in his death,] Instructed in the art of dying. It was usual to say studied, for learned in science. JOHNSON. His own profession furnished our author with this phrase. To be studied in a part, or to have studied it, is yet the technical term of the theatre. MALONE. To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd, DUN. There's no art, 7 To find the mind's construction in the face :" An absolute trust.-O worthiest cousin! Enter MACBETH, BANQUO, ROSSE, and ANGUS. The sin of my ingratitude even now To overtake thee. 'Would thou hadst less deserv'd; So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: "Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study." The same phrase occurs in Hamlet. STEEVENS. To find the mind's construction in the face:] The construction of the mind is, I believe, a phrase peculiar to Shakspeare it implies the frame or disposition of the mind, by which it is determined to good or ill. JOHNSON.. Dr. Johnson seems to have understood the word construction in this place, in the sense of frame or structure; but the schoolterm was, I believe, intended by Shakspeare. The meaning is-We cannot construe or discover the disposition of the mind by the lineaments of the face. So, in King Henry IV. P. II : "Construe the times to their necessities." In Hamlet we meet with a kindred phrase: 66 These profound heaves "You must translate; 'tis fit we understand them." Our author again alludes to his grammar, in Troilus and Cressida: "I'll decline the whole question." In his 93d Sonnet, however, we find a contrary sentiment asserted: "In many's looks the false heart's history |