Chapter CXXXIV: Act I

SC. 1. "_1 W._ I come, Graymalkin.--_2 W._ Paddock calls.--_3 W._
Anon."

I adopt this arrangement of Mr. Hunter's instead of that of the folio, usually followed.

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SC. 2. "Say to the King the knowledge of the broil."

Here 'the' is evidently an error for _thy_.

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"Doubtful it stood * * *"

We might add, _For the two armies were_.

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"And Fortune on his damned quarry smiling."

Holinshed, treating of this very matter, says, "to assist him in that rebellious _quarrel_." Hence the usual correction of _quarrel_ for 'quarry' seems to be justified. In the old writers _quarrel_ in the sense of cause, party, is frequent. It was in ordinary use at that time, alike in French and English.

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"Like Valour's minion, carv'd out his passage,
Till he fac'd the slave * * *"

We might add, _with Vengeance at his side_.

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"Shipwrecking storms, and direful thunders _break_."

So Pope, from _breaking_ of the 2nd folio.

"Like _tempests
Broke_ from the raging North."
Fletch. Hum. Lieut. i. 1.

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"This oür captains, Macbeth and Banquo?--Yes."

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"As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks, so they."

We might, but not so well perhaps, read 'o'ercharg'd' (see on M. N. D. ii. 1). 'They so,' though it makes a rime, would give energy.

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"Who comes here _now_?--The worthy thane of Rosse."

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"So should he look that seems to speak great things."

Collier's folio, I think rightly, reads _comes_ for 'seems' (see on All's Well, ii. 3). We can hardly take 'to speak' in the sense of about to speak.

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"From Fife, great king, where the Norweyan banners
_Did_ flout the air, and fan our people cold.
Norway himself with terrible numbers _there_."

Both sense and metre require _Did_. The battle was over, and the enemy defeated.

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SC. 3. "As thick as tale
Came post with post," etc.

Though 'tale' makes good sense, it might be better to read, with Rowe, _hail_, of which Mr. Dyce gives many examples. _Came_ is Rowe's correction for 'Can' of the folio.

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"Promis'd no less to them?--That trusted home."

Beyond question we should read, with Malone, _thrusted_.

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"Give _me_ your favour; my dull brain was wrought."

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"_I'_ the interim having weigh'd it."

The _I'_ is not absolutely necessary, but I think Shakespeare wrote it. See on Hamlet, iii. 1.

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SC. 4. "Is execution done on Cawdor? or not
Those in commission yet returned?"

There is every reason to suppose that the poet wrote '_are_ not,' the reading of the 2nd folio.

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SC. 5. "That which cries "Thus must thou do, if thou'_dst_ have it."

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"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal enterance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come you spirits."

It is strange that our critics have not seen that the raven is figurative, and means the man. I find that the German Delius had also perceived it. In the third line I think we should read 'spirits of _evil_'; for a foot is wanting, and good as well as evil spirits 'tend on mortal thoughts.' The ordinary correction, 'Come, _come_,' is a mere make-shift, and is tame and feeble.

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"And take my milk for gall."

Perhaps we should read _with_ for 'for,' taking 'take' in the sense of tinge, infect, a sense it often bears.

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"Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark."

The word 'blanket' certainly seems too familiar and even vulgar an expression, especially as the more dignified 'pall thee' had just been used. Malone quotes from Drayton's Mortemeriados, 1596, "The sullen night in misty _rug_ is wrapp'd." But even this is not so low as 'blanket.' Collier's folio reads _blankness_, but that surely is whiteness. Perhaps we might venture to read _blackness_, as in Ant. and Cleop. (i. 4) we have "Night's _blackness_." At that time 'peep' was to gaze earnestly and steadily at anything; not furtively, as now. 'To cry' in the next line may be crying. See Introd. p. 70.

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SC. 6. "By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird _on't_
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle."

The second line here is short by a foot; and as it does not end a paragraph, there must be something wrong. The defect, however, is easily remedied; we have only to read,

"By his lov'd mansiönry that the heaven's
Breath smells wooingly here."

The structure of the last line is like that of "Thy knee bussing the stones" (Cor. iii. 1). "The mind is its own place" (Par. Lost, i. 254), and similar places. There can be little doubt, I think, that _on't_ was effaced at the end of the third line; for the poet could hardly, even in his most careless moment, have termed solid parts of a building 'pendent nests,' etc. Wordsworth, with this very place in his mind, wrote: "_On_ coigns of vantage _hang_ their nests of clay" (Misc. Son. 34). It is also in favour of this reading that it throws the metric accent on _this_, thereby adding force. 'Coign of vantage' would seem to be _coin d'avantage_, Fr., and denoting a projection of some kind.

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SC. 7. "If it were done when 'tis done then 'twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his success surcease; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here;
But here--upon this bank and shoal of time--
We'd jump the life to come.... But in these cases," etc.

So the passage should be pointed. The first 'done' in the first line is, finished, ended; from 'If' in the second line to 'life to come' in the seventh is one sentence, with the same idea repeated in three several forms, and not completed; common sense dictates the transposition of 'surcease' and 'success,' the latter signifying accomplishment; 'but' in lines four and six is, only; 'the life to come' is not the future state but the remaining years of his own life, as is manifest from what follows. In scene 5 we have had, "Which shall to all our _nights and days to come_." We also meet with, "True swains in love shall in the _world to come_" (Tr. and Cr. iii. 2). "Thus all his _life to come_ is loss and shame." Cowley, Davideis, ii. 616.

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"Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other _side_.--How now! what news?"

Hanmer also supplied _side_, which metre and sense demand alike. He had completed what he intended to say, and was pausing when his wife entered.

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"At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love."

A line or more must have been lost between these lines.

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"I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none."

For 'do' in the second line, the correction of Southern and Rowe, generally adopted, the folio has _no_, which Mr. Hunter retains, giving the line to Lady Macbeth. But her reply, "What _beast_ was it then?" shows that _do_ was the poet's word.