minds of men are full of a vague fear, and every idle rumour takes its shape from these fears, they feel certain of nothing; they have no sense of security in anything, but are like persons tossed about on the waves of a stormy sea, driven this way and that at the caprice of the billows." -F. A. M. 205. Line 34: Poor bird! thou'dst never fear the net nor LIME.-F. 2, F. 3, F. 4 read line. Doubtless a misprint, which only two editors, singularly enough, seem to have adopted into their text, Pope and Capell. 206. Line 59: Now, God help thee, poor MONKEY!-Monkey is not elsewhere used by Shakespeare as a term of endearment; but ape is thus used in two places, II. Henry IV. ii. 4. 234, and Romeo and Juliet, ii. 1. 16. 207. Line 83: Thou liest, thou SHAG-HAIR'D villain!— Ff. print shag-ear'd. The reading here, and generally, adopted is Steevens' conjecture, first used by Dyce. The expression is quite common in the dramatists of the time. Compare II. Henry VI. iii. 1. 367: "like a shag-hair'd crafty kern." Shag-hair'd occurs twice as a term of descriptive abuse in Cyril Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy, ii. 7. (Mermaid ed. p. 284): "In the meantime comes a shaghaired dog by;" and v. 2 (p. 335): “Down, you shag-haired cur" (spoken by D'Amville to the headsman). 208. Line 83: you egg!-Compare pigeon-egg, Love's Labour's Lost, v. 1. 78, and finch-egg, Troilus and Cressida, v. 1. 41. ACT IV. SCENE 3. This scene (down to line 139) follows Holinshed very closely, in many parts almost textually. It is indeed so close a transcript that it is unnecessary to give the prose at length. Perhaps the fact that Shakespeare has here merely turned prose into verse is the reason why the scene is (to my thinking, at least) so tame and artificial compared with the rest of the play. I can never feel that this interview between Malcolm and Macduff (of course I refer to the first 139 lines) has been treated by Shakespeare in a really convincing way; long before I was aware of its authority in Holinshed, I always felt as if I were reading a narrative, not overhearing a conversation. I think Shakespeare must have written it out of a sense of duty, or of historical fidelity, and that having no interest in it himself he was content to copy tamely. The incomparable latter part of the scene has no basis in Holinshed beyond the barest statement that "Makbeth most cruelly caused the wife and children of Macduffe, with all whom he found in that castell, to be slaine." 209. Line 4: birthdom.—This word is spelt birthdome in the Ff. It means of course "birthright," and is formed by analogy with the numerous English words ending in **-dom," such as "kingdom,' or the word used in i. 5. 71 above, "masterdom." 210. Line 15: deserve.-Ff. have discerne. Theobald altered this to deserve, which has been generally accepted. 211. Lines 19, 20: A good and virtuous nature may RECOIL In an imperial charge. Recoil is used in the same slightly irregular sense ("give way under," "swerve") in v. 2. 23 below, and in Cymbeline, i. 6. 128. "Perhaps," say the Clarendon Press edd., "Shakespeare had in mind the recoil of a gun, which suggested the use of the word 'charge,' though with a different signification." 212. Line 34: affeer'd.-F. 1, F. 2 have affear'd, F. 3 afear'd, F. 4 afeard. The spelling in the text was adopted by Steevens after Heath's conjecture. Affeer is a legal term meaning to assess, estimate, and also to confirm. We find in Cowell's Interpreter: "Affeers may probably bee thought to proceed from the french (afferatores, alias affidati) affier (i.e. confirmare, affirmare). It signifieth in our common law those that be appointed in Court-leets, &c. upon oath to mulct such as have committed faults arbitrably punishable, and have no expresse penalty set downe by statute" (edn. 1607, C. 1). Boyer (Fr. Dict.) has "To Affeer, v. a. (a Term used in the Exchequer, that is, to confirm by Oath)." 213. Line 59: Sudden.-Compare II. Henry IV. iv. 4. 34, 35: As humorous as winter, and as sudden As flaws congealed in the spring of day. 214. Line 71: CONVEY your pleasures in a spacious plenty.-Convey is once or twice used by Shakespeare with the meaning of conduct," "manage secretly," as in Lear, i. 2. 109: "I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal." 215. Line 86: summer-seeming -Various needless attempts have been made to amend this epithet, which requires no amendment. Lust is compared to the brief and passing heat of summer; avarice takes deeper root, and has no date or intermission. Compare Donne's Love is Alchemy: So, lovers dream a rich and long delight, But gett a Winter-seeminge Sommer's night. -Poems (Grosart's edn.), vol. i. p. 199. 216. Line 88: foisons; i.e. plenty, used generally in the singular harvest. Shakespeare employs it again in The Tempest, iv. 1. 110, 111: Earth's increase, foison plenty, 217. Line 108: And does BLASPHEME his breed. —Boyer, in his French Dictionary, has "To Blaspheme, to speak Evil of;" and Bacon, Advancement of Learning, i. 2. § 9, speaks of "blasphemy against learning." 218. Line 111: Died every day she liv'd.-This is probably derived from 1 Cor. xv. 31: "I die daily." [Note that in F. 1 liv'd is printed thus, and not lived as Dyce prints it. This is one of those minutiae of rhythm concerning which the Folio is generally trustworthy. Shakespeare could never have meant the final ed of lived to be pronounced here. The defective metre is supplied naturally by the speaker's pausing before he says Fare thee well.-F. A. M.] 219. Line 113: HAVE banish'd me.—Ff. print hath. The correction or modernization is Rowe's. 220. Line 118: trains; i.e. devices. Boyer (Fr. Dict.) has "Train (a trap or wheedle), Embuches, piege, amorce, ruse, attrapoire." The word is derived from the French Traine, "a plot, practise, conspiracie, deuise" (Cotgrave). It is only used as a noun in the present passage, but it occurs as a verb in Comedy of Errors, iii. 2. 45, &c. 221. Line 133: before thy here-approach. - F. 1 has they for thy. With here-approach compare my here-remain, line 148 below. 222. Line 134: Old Siward.-This famous warrior was, undoubtedly, a historical personage, although a great deal of tradition surrounds his origin. His grandfather was said to be a bear, not in a figurative but in a literal sense. According to Palgrave, referred to by French, Siward encouraged this fable as tending to enhance his fame. He was a successful general under Hardicanute, and afterwards under Edward the Confessor, when he defeated the rebel Earl Godwin and his sons. He was the uncle of Malcolm, and partly for that reason was selected to help that young prince in his effort to regain the throne which Macbeth had usurped. Siward's eldest son Osberne (the young Siward of this play) was killed in the action before Macbeth's castle. Earl Siward's wife was Elfreda, daughter of Aldred. By her he left a son Waltheof, who was beheaded by William the Conqueror, much to the sorrow of the English people, and was subsequently canonized as Saint Waldeve. One of Waltheof's daughters, Maud, married Prince David, youngest son of Malcolm Canmore, and two of their grandchildren became kings of Scotland as Malcolm IV. and William the Lion, while the third grandson, David (the Kenneth of Sir Walter Scott's Talisman), had two daughters, from whom sprang Balliol and Bruce: so that, as French justly observes, the warlike Siward had as good a claim as Banquo "to be called the ancestor of kings."—F. A. M. 223. Line 135: Already at a point.-Rowe prints all ready in two words. At a point means prepared. The Clarendon Press edd. quote an instance from Foxe's Acts and Monuments, ed. 1570, p. 2092: "The Register there sittyng by, beyng weery, belyke, of tarrying, or els perceauyng the constant Martyrs to be at a point, called vpon the chauncelour in hast to rid them out of the way and make an end." Florio has: "" Essere in punto, to be in a readinesse, to be at a point." 224 Lines 136, 137: the chance of goodness Be like our warranted quarrel. "Chance of goodness is equivalent to 'successful issue,' and like is also to be understood in connection with it: -may the issue correspond in goodness to our good, righteous cause. 'Chance of goodness' forms one idea like time of scorn,' Othello, iv. 2. 54" (Delius). The Clarendon Press edd. take the meaning to be "May the chance of success be as certain as the justice of our quarrel." 225. Lines 142, 143: their malady CONVINCES The great ASSAY of art. Convinces is used here, as in i. 7. 64, in the sense of "overpowers." Compare Cymbeline, i. 4. 103, 104: "Your Italy contains none so accomplish'd a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress." As for assay, Furness quotes Cotgrave: "Preuve: f. A proofe, tryall, essay, experiment, experience." 226. Line 146: 'Tis call'd THE EVIL.-This passage about touching for the evil, that is to say scrofula or the king's evil, as it was commonly called, is supposed to have been inserted out of compliment to James I. Edward the Confessor was the first king who was said to have had this power, as Shakespeare might have learned from Holinshed's Chronicles, in the Eighth Book of the History of England, where we are told: "He vsed to helpe those that were vexed with the disease, commonlie called the kings euill, and left that vertue as it were a portion of inheritance vnto his successors the kings of this realme" (vol. i. p. 754). Many of the subsequent kings of England claimed and exercised this power. Andrew Borde, who wrote in the time of Henry VIII., mentions it: "The kinges of England by the power that god hath gyuen to the, doth make sicke me whole of a sycknes called the kynges euyll" (Reprint, C. 1. r). The same miraculous power was claimed for the kings of France. James I. was fond of exercising this supposed power, and so was his son. Charles II. touched for the king's evil when in exile, and also after the Restoration. In his case the virtue of his touch must have been certainly inherited from some very remote ancestor. Everyone who has read Boswell's Life of Johnson will remember that the great doctor recollected being taken, "when but thirty months old," to be touched by Queen Anne in 1712. This touch, however, was without any effect (Boswell's Life, ed. 1874, vol. i. p. 15). It was also the custom to hang some gold coin about the sufferer's neck (see below, line 153); but this additional consolation was certainly not administered by Edward the Confessor. When Charles II. touched in exile, from motives of economy he dispensed with the coin; but when he came to the throne, a special medal was struck called a touch-piece. The Clarendon Press edn. tell us that the identical touch-piece, hung round the neck of Samuel Johnson by Queen Anne, has been preserved in the British Museum.—F. A. M. 227. Line 168: Where sighs and groans and shrieks that RENT the air. --Rent, the reading of the Ff., was an alternative form of rend. It does not seem worth while to modernize it. This form occurs in Shakespeare in five other places, viz. in Midsum. Night's Dream, iii. 2. 215; III. Henry VI. iii. 2. 175; Richard III. i. 2. 126 (where the Qq. have rend); and in Titus Andronicus, iii. 1. 261, and Lover's Complaint, 55, both works of doubtful authenticity. 228. Lines 169, 170: where violent sorrow seems A MODERN ECSTASY. Modern is used in a number of places in the sense of trite and commonplace. Compare As You Like It, ii. 7. 156: Full of wise saws and modern instances. Ecstasy was used for any commotion of mind, pleasur able or the reverse. Compare iii. 2. 22 above. In Hamlet, iii. 1. 168, in Ophelia's beautiful speech, and elsewhere, it is used for "madness." 230. Line 195: Where hearing should not LATCH them. --Furness (New Var. Ed. p. 247) quotes Wedgewood's Dictionary: "Latch. To catch. Anglosaxon, læccan, gelæccan, to catch, to seize; Gael., glac, catch." Compare Sonnet, cxiii. 5, 6: For it no form delivers to the heart Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch; also Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2. 36, and see note 175 of that play. owner. 231. Line 196: a fee-grief; i.e. a grief that has a single "It must, I think, be allowed that the attorney has been guilty of a flat trespass on the poet" (Steevens). Compare Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2. 54: “a kiss in feefarm." 232. Line 210: Whispers the o'er-fraught heart.—"Whispers is often used without a preposition before a personal object. Rarely as here, or in Much Ado, iii. 1. 4 ['Whisper her ear']" (Abbott, Sh. Grammar, § 200). 233. Line 235: This TUNE goes manly.-All the Folios have time, which seems to be a manifest misprint; in fact, one so very obvious that, for that very reason, it may have escaped correction. It is quite clear how very easily the two words may be mistaken for one another. The emendation was first made by Rowe, and is followed by most editors; and, as Malone remarks, it is supported by a previous passage in the same play, i. 3. 88: "To the selfsame tune and words." Gifford in one of his wonderful "bow-wow"1 notes to The Roman Actor of Massinger, act ii. scene 1, sneers at this emendation, and says: “Time, however, was the more ancient and common term: nor was it till long after the age of Massinger, that the use of it, in the sense of harmony, was entirely superseded by that of tune" (ed. 1805, p. 356). Unfortunately for this extremely cocksure statement, there is no proof that time was ever used for tune at all. If Gifford had said that tone and tune were the same words, there would have been some sense in it; but no two words can well be more distinct in their meaning than time and tune; the former always referring to the measure or rhythm of music, and the latter to the air or melody. There is one well-known passage in Hamlet, iii. 1. 166: Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh, where the same misprint occurs-at least in Qq., for FI. have tune-and where the reading may be doubtful; but that of the Ff. is generally preferred.-F. A. M. 234. Line 239: PUT ON their instruments.-For this use of put on compare Hamlet, iv. 7. 132: We'll put on those shall praise your excellence. 1"I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!" -Merchant of Venice, i. 1. 93. 94. Schmidt, in both places, explains the phrase as="set to work." ACT V. SCENE 1. 235. Line 4: Since his majesty WENT INTO THE FIELD.Steevens considered this statement to be an oversight on the part of Shakespeare. "He forgot that he had shut up Macbeth in Dunsinane, and surrounded him with besiegers." But we may well suppose that Macbeth had taken the field before he was compelled to retreat into his castle. Ross, in the preceding scene, had said that he had seen "the tyrant's power afoot." Macbeth was not yet aware of the advance of the English auxiliaries. 236. Line 29: Ay, but their sense ARE shut.-This is the reading of Ff. and it is strongly supported, I think, by a passage in Sonnet cxii. 10, 11: that my adder's sense To critic and to flatterer stopped are. Abbott points out in his Shakespearean Grammar (sec. 471) that: "The plural and possessive cases of nouns in which the singular ends in 8, se, ss, ce, and ge, are frequently written, and still more frequently pronounced, without the additional syllable" (p. 356). Horse is frequently used for the plural; compare ii. 4. 14 above: And Duncan's horses-a thing most strange and certainwhere horses should be pronounced if not written horse; and compare Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 7. 8, 9: If we should serve with horse and mares together, A good reason for not adopting what was originally Davenant's alteration of "sense is shut," is because we thus avoid the very cacophonous conjunction of sibilants. -F. A. M. 237. Line 40: Hell is murky.-Steevens printed this sentence with a note of exclamation, and says: "She certainly imagines herself here talking to Macbeth, who (she supposes) had just said, Hell is murky, (ie. hell is a dismal place to go to in consequence of such a deed,) and repeats his words in contempt of his cowardice." I believe this to be the completest misapprehension of the spirit of the passage. The words bubble up from a conscience never so much at ease as she tries to suppose, and they come, in this unconscious self-revelation, with the most poignant effect between words that are resolute (" why, then 't is time to do 't") and words that are contemptuous of irresolution in another ("Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard?"). This little sentence, though it passes and is forgotten, is said with an accent and shudder of the deepest conviction. 238. Line 84: Remove from her the means of all ANNOYANCE.—Annoyance, in the sense of "injury" (here, means of annoyance = means of suicide), occurs several times in Shakespeare. Compare Richard II. iii. 2. 15, 16: And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way, 239. Line 86: My mind she has MATED, and amaz'd my sight.-Mated, in the sense of confounded, confused, occurs several times in Shakespeare. See Comedy of Errors, notes 82 and 137. ACT V. SCENE 2. 240. Line 5: the MORTIFIED man.—This has generally been understood to mean the man who has " mortified the flesh," the ascetic; compare Love's Labour's Lost, i. 1. 28: My loving lord, Dumain is mortified. The Clarendon Press edd. suggest that mortified should be taken in its literal sense of dead; as in Erasmus on the Creed, Eng. tr. fol. 81a: "Christ was mortified and killed in dede as touchynge to his fleshe: but was quickened in spirite. 241. Line 10: And many UNROUGH youths. — Ff. spell the word unruffe. It is not elsewhere used by Shakespeare, though rough in the opposite sense occurs in The Tempest, ii. 1. 249, 250: Till new-born chins Be rough and razorable. 242. Lines 15, 16: He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause Compare for the obese metaphor Troilus and Cressida, ii. 2. 30-32: son. And buckle in a waist most fathomless S. Walker suggested that for cause we should read course, and his hint was taken by Singer, Dyce, Collier, and HudThe change is, to say the least, quite unnecessary. Cause, symbolized as a distempered or disordered body, stands for the party belonging to Macbeth. The comparison is one often employed by Shakespeare. 243. Line 23: His PESTER'D senses.-Pester was not in Shakespeare's time quite so undignified a term as it is now, and it occurs several times, very seriously, in the sense of "annoy," "hamper." Compare Hamlet, i. 2. 22: "to pester us with message." 244. Lines 27, 28: Meet we the MEDICINE of the sickly weal, It is evident from the him of the second line that medicine, whether literally or figuratively, is meant rather for the physician (Fr. médecin) than for the physic. Florio has: "Medico: a medicine, a phisition, a leach;" but this sense was not usual. Compare All's Well, ii. 1. 75, and Winter's Tale, iv. 4. 598, where medicine is used somewhat, though more playfully, in the same sense. 245. Line 30: To DEW the sovereign flower-Dew as a verb occurs in II. Henry VI. iii. 2. 340: "dew it with my mournful tears." ACT V. SCENE 3. 246. Line 3: I cannot TAINT with fear.-Taint as an intransitive verb is only used by Shakespeare here and in Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 145: "lest the device take air and taint." 247. Line 8: the English epicures.- Compare Holinshed: "For manie of the people abhorring the riotous maners and superfluous gormandizing brought in among them by the Englyshemen, were willing inough to re ceiue this Donald for their king, trusting (bicause he had beene brought up in the Iles, with old customes and maners of their ancient nation, without tast of the English likerous delicats) they should by his seuere order in gouernement recouer againe the former temperance of their old progenitors" (Reprint, vol. v. p. 284). 248. Line 10: Shall never SAG with doubt.-Sag is still used in some provincial dialects, as it is currently in America, for "droop,” “give way," "become overloaded." Halliwell quotes Pierce Pennilesse, 1592: "Sir Rowland Russetcoat their dad, goes sagging every day in his round gascoynes of white cotton." The word often occurs in Walt Whitman. Compare "Out of the Cradle endlessly rocking" (Leaves of Grass, 1884, p. 200): The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching. 249. Line 11: loon.-This Scotch word is used only here, very appropriately in a drama whose scene is Scotland. Lown, however, which is practically the same word, occurs in Othello, ii. 3. 95, and Pericles, iv. 6. 19. 250. Line 15: patch.-It has generally been said that Patch was the name of the fool who belonged to Cardinal Wolsey; but it appears that it was rather a nickname given to the household fool before Wolsey's time; and that it may have been so used, either as an allusion to their dress of coloured patches, or it may have been connected with the Italian. pazzo, which Florio explains as "a fool," also "foolish." Douce in his Illustrations of Shakespeare (pp. 158, 159) gives a long and interesting note on this subject.-F. A. M. 251. Line 16: those LINEN cheeks of thine. - Compare Henry V. ii. 2. 73, 74: Look ye, how they change! Their cheeks are paper. Will CHEER me ever, or DIS-EASE me now. This passage has been a famous battle-ground for commentators. Dyce adopted the curious conjecture of Bishop Percy: Will chair me ever or disseat me now. F. 1 has dis-eate, but the three other Folios all read disease. First, with regard to chair: although chair is used frequently in Shakespeare for the "chair of state," the throne," for instance in II. Henry IV. iv. 5. 95, where the king, addressing his son, says: Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair! and in several other passages in the historical plays, yet it is never misspelt cheere. F. 1, F. 2 have, in the passage in our text, cheere; F. 3, F. 4 cheer, and I think that it has been most clearly proved by Mr. Ellis in his communication to the Athenæum of January 25, 1868, and quoted at length by Furness (pp. 267, 268), that it is quite impossible to regard cheere or cheer as a phonetic spelling of chair. I find that amongst the quotations given under chair, in Richardson's Dictionary, from old writers before the time of Shakespeare, it is spelt variously chare, chaire, chaiere (once in Wicliff), chayere (once in Gower, while he spells the word chare in another passage), and, finally, chayre (in Sir T. Elyot's Governour). I have examined the passages in which it occurs in F. 1, in the sense of a throne, where it seems invariably to be spelt chayre, or chaire. As to adopting the reading disseat I think that the authority of F. 1 is quite insufficient, for it is much more probable that dis-eate was a misprint for dis-ease than that it was meant to represent dis-seat, a word which seems only to be used in The Two Noble Kinsmen, act v. scene 4 (I take the quotation from my own copy of the Quarto, 1634); speaking of a horse Pirithous says (p. 87): seekes all foule meanes Of boystrous and rough Iadrie, to dis-seate And it will be observed that dis-seat is printed there with the two ss, as we should certainly expect to find it in F. 1, in this passage, if that were the true reading. If dis-eate were a misprint, is it not more probable that the syllable eate is a mistake for ease, rather than for seate? So far, as regards the literal and etymological aspect of this question. Next as to the sense. Is not the antithesis of cheer and dis-ease quite as complete, and more poetic than that of chair and dis-seat? We have a passage in Hamlet which almost seems to guide us in deciding on the reading here (iii. 2. 174): you are so sick of late, So far from cheer and from your former state. The word dis-ease is an extremely characteristic one. It occurs frequently in old writers, and especially in the earlier versions of the Bible, where it means "to grieve," "to render uneasy or unhappy;" and surely if we accept it here in its double sense, that is to say in its older one, already mentioned, and in the general sense "to render sick or diseased," is it not a most forcible word? Does not the reading which we have adopted in common with Mr. Furness-who, I believe, was the first to print the verb dis-ease with the hyphen, thereby reconciling the reading of F. 1 and F. 2-is not this reading much more in accordance with the whole sentiment of the passage? Macbeth is not thinking of the throne, of his royal honours; what weighs upon his mind throughout this scene is his unhappy friendless position, old age is before him, but none of its consolations. Just two lines above he has said "I am sick at heart." His mind is diseased (see line 40 below); and he goes on to ask the doctor if he could not find the disease of his land (line 51), could purge out the enemies who are thronging against him; then he would applaud him "to the very echo." The idea of sickness and disease seems present in his thoughts throughout this scene. As to adopting the course taken by the Cambridge edd. and others, that is to say of retaining cheer and of altering the dis-eate of F. 1 into the prosaic disseat, that seems to me a course which is almost indefensible upon any grounds whatever; for it sacrifices the beauty of the passage without even having the merit of retaining the exact reading of the earliest text that has come down to us. For if dis-ease, in its double and pregnant sense, is not to be adopted, surely dis-ceise= to dispossess, a word which is a thoroughly old English word and used by Spenser, Hall, Holland, and Drayton, would be preferable. As to push there is no real difficulty; this word being used frequently by Shakespeare, in a figurative sense, of a sudden violent attack.-F. A. M. 253. Lines 22, 23: my WAY OF LIFE Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf. Steevens (after Johnson's conjecture) read May of life, which yields an excellent sense, literally more exact than the Ff. reading, which yet seems to me entirely natural and probable. Compare Pericles, i. 1. 54: "ready for the way of life or death;" and Massinger, The Roman Actor, : If that when I was mistress of myself -Works (ed. Gifford), ii. 334 I think, too, that " my way" has a much better sound than the too close alliteration of "my May." 254. Line 35: SKIRR the country round.-This word is used again, but intransitively, in Henry V. iv. 7. 63, 64: we will come to them, And make them skirr away. Steevens quotes Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure, or The Martial Maid, act ii. scene 2: Whilst I, with this and this, well mounted, scurr'd -Works, ed. Dyce, vol. ix. p. 136. [Sympson and other editors print skirr'd, but according to Dyce the first Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher reads scurr'd.-F. A. M.] 255. Line 39: Cure her of that.-So F. 2, F. 3, F. 4. F. 1 omits her. 256. Line 55: What rhubarb, SENNA, or what purgative drug.-F. 1 has Cyme; F. 2, F. 3 Cany; F. 4 senna. "The F.2," says Hunter, "correctly represents the pronunciation of the name of the drug now called senna in Shakespeare's time, and is still the pronunciation of it by the common people. Thus, in The Treasurie of Hidden Secrets, 1627, Take the Seene of Alexandria one ounce,' &c. Cotgrave spells the word sene and senne, and explains it as "a little purgative shrub or plant." Dyce supposes the Cyme of F. 1 to be a misprint for Cynne, one of the ways of spelling senna. 257. Lines 4-7: ACT V. SCENE 4. Let every soldier hew him down a bough, And bear't before him: thereby shall we shadow Holinshed says: "Malcome folowing hastily after Makbeth, came the night before the battaile vnto Byrnan wood, and when his armie had rested a while there to refreshe them, hee commaunded euerye man to get a bough of some tree or other of that wood in his hand, as bigge as he might beare, and to march forth therwith in such wise, that on the next morow they might come closely and without sight in thys manner within viewe of hys enimies." 258. Lines 11, 12: For where there is ADVANTAGE to be GIVEN, So Ff. Many emendations have been proposed; perhaps |
