Macbeth
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.
Sc. 2
“Say to the King the knowledge of the broil.”
Here ‘the’ is evidently an error for thy.
“Doubtful it stood ***”
We might add, For the two armies were.
“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.
“Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage,
Till he fac’d the slave ***”
We might add, with Vengeance at his side.
“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.
“This oür captains, Macbeth and Banquo?—Yes.”
“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.
“Who comes here now?—The worthy thane of Rosse.”
“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.
“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.
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.
“Promis’d no less to them?—That trusted home.”
Beyond question we should read, with Malone, thrusted.
“Give me your favour; my dull brain was wrought.”
“I’ the interim having weigh’d it.”
The I’ is not absolutely necessary, but I think Shakespeare wrote it. See on Hamlet, iii. 1.
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.
Sc. 5
“That which cries “Thus must thou do, if thou’dst have it.”
“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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
“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.
“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.
“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.