But that myself should be the root, and father And set me up in hope? But, hush; no more. Senet sounded. Enter MACBETH, as King; Lady MACBETH, as Queen; LENOX, Rosse, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants. MACB. Here's our chief guest. LADY M. If he had been forgotten, It had been as a gap in our great feast, MACB. To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir, And I'll request your presence. 2 3 * (As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine,)-] Shine, for prosper. WARBURTON. Shine, for appear with all the lustre of conspicuous truth. JOHNSON. I rather incline to Dr. Warburton's interpretation. So, in King Henry VI. P. I. sc. ii : "Heaven, and our lady gracious, hath it pleased "To shine on my contemptible estate." STEEVENS. And I'll request your presence.] I cannot help suspecting this passage to be corrupt, and would wish to read: And I request your presence. Macbeth is speaking of the present, not of any future, time. Sir W. D'Avenant reads: And all request your presence. The same mistake has happened in King Richard III. Act I. sc. iii. where we find in the folio: "O Buckingham, I'll kiss thy princely hand,-" instead of-I kiss-the reading of the quarto. In Timon of Athens the same error is found more than once. MALONE. BAN. Let your highness Command upon me; to the which, my duties Are with a most indissoluble tie For ever knit.5 MACB. Ride you this afternoon? BAN. Ay, my good lord. MACB. We should have else desir'd your good advice Which still hath been both grave and prosperous,) In this day's council; but we'll take to-morrow. Is't far you ride? The old reading is, I believe, the true one. So, in King John: "I'll tell thee, Hubert, half my power" &c. • Let your highness STEEVENS. Command upon me;] Thus the old copy, and perhaps rightly, though modern editors have been content to read-Lay your highness &c. Every uncouth phrase in an ancient author should not be suspected of corruption. In As you like it an expression somewhat similar occurs: "And take upon command what help we have." STEEVENS. The change was suggested by Sir W. D'Avenant's alteration of this play: it was made by Mr. Rowe. MALone. I should rather read lay, or set your command upon me, than let: for unless command is used as a noun, there is nothing to which the following words-to the which-can possibly refer. M. MASON. to the which, my duties Are with a most indissoluble tie For ever knit.] So, in our author's Dedication of his Rape of Lucrece, to Lord Southampton, 1594: "What I have done worth is yours, being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my greater, my duty would show greater; mean time as it is, it is bound to your lordship." MALONE. 6 ཉ་ ་ ་ -we'll take to-morrow.] Thus the old copy, and, in my opinion, rightly. Mr. Malone would read VOL. X. we'll talk to-morrow. STeevéns. L BAN. As far, my lord, as will fill up the time I proposed this emendation some time ago, and having since met with two other passages in which the same mistake has happened, I trust I shall be pardoned for giving it a place in my text. In King Henry V. edit. 1623, we find, "For I can take [talke] for Pistol's cock is up." Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1623, p. 31: "It is no matter for that, so she sleep not in her take." [instead of talke, the old spelling of talk.] On the other hand, in the first scene of Hamlet, we find in the folio, 1623: 06 then no planet strikes, "No fairy talkes So again, in the play before us: "The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak Again, Macbeth says to his wife: We will speak further." Again, in a subsequent scene between Macbeth and the assassins: "Was it not yesterday we spoke together?" In Othello we have almost the same sense, expressed in other .words: To-morrow, with the earliest, "Let me have speech with you." Had Shakspeare written take, he would surely have said"but we'll take't to-morrow." So, in the first scene of the second Act, Fleance says to his father: "I take't, 'tis later, sir." MALONE. I do not perceive the necessity of change. The poet's meaning could not be misunderstood. His end was answered, if his language was intelligible to his audience. He little supposed the time would arrive, when his words were to abide the strictest scrutiny of verbal criticism. With the ease of conversation, therefore, he copied its incorrectness. To take, is to use, to employ. To take time is a common phrase; and where is the impropriety of saying "we'll take to-morrow?" i. e. we will make use of to-morrow. So, in King Henry VI. P. III. Act V. sc. i: "Come, Warwick, take the time.” Banquo," without a prompter," must have understood, by this familiar expression, that Macbeth would employ to-morrow, as he wished to have employed to-day. When Pistol says" I can take"-he means, he can kindle, or lay hold, as fire does on its object.-So, Dryden, speaking of flames: "At first they warm, then scorch, and then they take.” 'Twixt this and supper: go not my horse the better,' I must become a borrower of the night, For a dark hour, or twain. MACB. Fail not our feast. Again, in Froissart's Chronicle, Vol. II. cap. C.xcii. fol. CCxliii. b. “—he put one of the torches that his servauntes helde, so nere, that the heate of the fyre entred into the flaxe (wherein if fyre take, there is no remedy)," &c. That the words talk and take may occasionally have been printed for each other, is a fact which no man conversant with the press will deny; and yet the bare possibility of a similar mistake in the present instance, ought to have little weight in opposition to an old reading sufficiently intelligible. The word take is employed in quite a different sense by Fleance, and means-to understand in any particular sense or manner. So, Bacon: "I take it, that iron brass, called white brass, hath some mixture of tin." Again in King Henry VIII: "They may, cum privilegio, wear away "The lag end of their lewdness." STEEVENS. go not my horse the better,] i, e. if he does not go well. Shakspeare often uses the comparative for the positive and su perlative. So, in King Lear: 66 - her smiles and tears Again, in Macbeth: 66 it hath cow'd my better part of man." Again, in King John: "Nay, but make haste; the better foot before." Again, in P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. B. IX. c. xlvi: "Many are caught out of their fellowes hands, if they bestirre not themselves the better." Thus also Virgil: 66 oblitos famæ melioris amantes." It may, however, mean, If my horse does not go the better for the haste I shall be in to avoid the night. STEEVENS. Mr. Steevens's first interpretation is, I believe, the true one. It is supported by the following passage in Stowe's Survey of London, 1603: "—and hee that hit it not full, if he rid not the faster, had a sound blow in his neck, with a bag full of sand hanged on the other end." MALONE. BAN. My lord, I will not. MACB. We hear, our bloody cousins are bestow'd In England, and in Ireland; not confessing Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers With strange invention: But of that to-morrow; When, therewithal, we shall have cause of state, Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse: Adieu, Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you? BAN. Ay, my good lord: our time does call upon us. 8 MACB. I wish your horses swift, and sure of foot; And so I do commend you to their backs. Farewell. [Exit BANQUO. Let every man be master of his time And so I do commend you to their backs.] In old language one of the senses of to commend was to commit, and such is the meaning here. So, in King Richard II: And now he doth commend his arms to rust."' So, in Milton's Comus, v. 831: MALONE. "Commended her fair innocence to the flood." Commend, however, in the present instance, may only be a civil term, signifying-send. Thus, in King Henry VIII: "The king's majesty commends his good opinion to you." Thus also, in Chapman's version of the eighteenth Book of Homer's Odyssey : "The others other wealthy gifts commended "To her fair hand." What Macbeth, therefore, after expressing his friendly wish relative to their horses, appears to mean, is-so I send (or dismiss) you to mount them. STEEVens. 9 Sirrah, a word: &c.] The old copy reads Sirrah, a word with you: Attend those men our pleasure? |