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In F. 1. the given, in both lines, is printed in the unelided form, and it certainly seems as if the double ending were intended in line 11; and for that reason, if for no other, we would not alter the text in spite of the repetition of the word given, which may seem awkward, but is quite Shakespearean. The meaning may be "where there is to be, i.e. where there must necessarily be given the advantage, i.e. opportunity of desertion, the more and less, that is to say the greater and the less (=probably, "the officers and private soldiers"), revolt from Macbeth. Macduff goes on to say, "none remain with him but those who are obliged to," which thoroughly agrees with what Macbeth says himself, line 49, in the preceding scene: "the thanes fly from me;" and again in the next scene (lines 5, 6) he says: Were they not forc'd (ie. reinforced) with those that should be ours, We might have met them dareful, beard to beard.

If Macbeth had elected to give battle to the enemy outside his castle, he would have been compelled to afford an opportunity to those who were disaffected to desert to Malcolm's side.-F. A. M.

259. Line 21: Towards which advance the war.-Steevens has an interesting note on the irregular endings of many of the scenes in Macbeth. "It has been understood that local rhymes were introduced in plays in order to afford an actor the advantage of a more pointed exit, or to close a scene with additional force. Yet, whatever might be Shakespeare's motive for continuing such a practice, it may be observed that he often seems immediately to repent of it; and, in the tragedy before us, has repeatedly counteracted it by hemistichs which destroy the effect, and consequently defeat the supposed purpose of the antecedent couplets." Compare in the present play, besides the instance here, the end of i. 5; iii. 2; iii. 4; iv. 1; v. 1;

V. 2.

ACT V. SCENE 5.

From here to the end of the play Shakespeare follows, in outline, the narrative in Holinshed, which, to avoid chopping it up into small pieces, I give here: "On the morow when Makbeth beheld them comming in this sort, hee first marueyled what the matter ment, but in the end remembred himselfe, that the prophecie which he had hearde long before that time, of the comming of Byrnane wood to Dunsinnane Castell, was likely to bee now fulfilled. Neuerthelesse, he brought his men in order of battell, and exhorted them to doe valiantly, howbeit his enimies had scarcely cast from them their boughes, when Makbeth perceiuing their numbers betook him streight to flight, whom Makduffe pursued with great hatred euen till he came vnto Lunfannain, where Makbeth perceiuing that Makduffe was hard at his back, leapt beside his horse, saying, thou traytor, what meaneth

it that thou shouldest thus in vaine follow me that am not appoynted to be slain by any creature that is borne of a woman, come on therefore, and receyue thy rewarde which thou hast deserued for thy paynes, and therewithall he lyfted vp his sworde thinking to haue slaine him. But Makduffe quickly auoyding from his horse, ere he came at him, answered (with his naked sworde in his hande) saying: it is true Makbeth, and now shall thine insatiable crueltie haue an ende, for I am euen he that thy wysards haue tolde the of, who was neuer borne of my mother, but ripped out of hir wombe: therewithall he stept vnto him, & slue him in the place. Then cutting his heade from the shoulders, hee set it vpon a poll, and brought it vnto Malcolme. This was the end of Makbeth, after he had raigned .xvij. yeares ouer the Scottishmen" (vol. v. pp. 276, 277).

260. Lines 11-13:

my FELL OF HAIR

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in't.

Coles, Latin Dictionary, has "Fell [skin], pellis." The
word is used again in Lear, v. 3. 24: "flesh and fell."
With these lines compare Hamlet, iii. 4. 121, 122:
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,

Starts up and stands on end.

261. Line 19: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. "It is not impossible," says Halliwell, "that Shakespeare may here have recollected a remarkable engraving in Barclay's Ship of Fooles, 1570, copied from that in the older Latin version of 1498:

They folowe the crowes crye to their great sorowe,
Cras, cras, cras, to-morrow we shall amende,
And if we mend not then, then shall we the next morowe,
Or els shortly after we shall no more offende;

Amende, mad foole, when God this grace doth sende.

262. Line 23: dusty death.-It is scarcely to be believed that commentators have seriously exercised themselves over this incomparably appropriate epithet, one unfortunate person conjecturing that we should read dusky for dusty, and other unfortunate persons finding it plausible and convincing.

263. Line 37: Within this three mile.-This is precisely what a working-man would say to-day; in Shakespeare's time such constructions were not the vulgarisms they now are. Compare I. Henry IV. iii. 3. 54: "this two and thirty years."

264. Line 39: Upon the next tree SHALT thou hang alive. -F. 1 has shall.

265. Line 40: Till famine CLING thee.-Cling is from Anglo-Saxon clingan, to shrink up. Compare Piers Ploughman, 9010, 9011:

Or whan thou clomsest for cold Or dyngest for dry.

Cling, in some districts, appears to have a similar meaning to the more familiar clem or clam, meaning pinched with cold or starved with hunger.

266. Line 42: I pull in resolution.-So Ff., with the meaning, evidently, of pulling-in a horse, checking. Johnson conjectured "I pall in resolution,' and the Clarendon Press edd. suggest "I pale in resolution."

ACT V. SCENE 6.

267. Line 1: LEAVY screens.-Leavy is Shakespeare's only form of the word now spelt leafy. It occurs again in Much Ado, ii. 3. 75 (rhyming with "heavy") and in Pericles, v. 1. 51. Coles (Lat. Dict.) has “Leavy, frondusus;” Boyer, "Leavy, A. (or full of leaves) Feuillu, plein de feuilles." Neither gives Leafy.

268. Line 4: Lead our first BATTLE.-Battle is used here, as in III. Henry VI. i. 1. 8; Henry V. iv. 3. 69; Julius Cæsar, v. 1. 4, and v. 3. 108, for a division of an army. The old English word bataille, like the French bataille, had the secondary sense of battalion. Cotgrave has: “Bataille: f. A battel, or fight between two Armies; also, a battell, or maine battell; the middle battallion, or squadron of an Army, wherein the Prince, or generall, most commonly marcheth; any squadron, battallion, or part, thereof."

269. Lines 1, 2:

ACT V. SCENE 7.

They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the COURSE.

Course was the technical name for a single onset of dogs at a bear-baiting. The word is used again in Lear, iii. 7. 54. Steevens quotes Brome, The Antipodes, 1638: “Also you shall see two ten-dog courses at the great bear."

270. Line 12: But SWORDS I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn.-Daniel conjectures that swords should be words, as in Henry V. iii. 2. 33: "a' breaks words, and keeps whole weapons."

271. Line 17: kerns.-See i. 2. 13. The word is here used in the general sense of boors, as in the passage quoted by Dyce from The Tragedie of Claudius Tiberius Nero, 1607, sig. C 3 verso:

And these rude Germaine kernes not yet subdued.

ACT V. SCENE 8.

272. Line 9: the INTRENCHANT air.-The word intrenchant does not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare, trenchant only in Timon of Athens, iv. 3. 115. Intrenchant, which should properly mean "not cutting," is here used for "not to be cut," as in "the air, invulnerable," Hamlet, i. 1. 145; "the woundless air," ib. iv. 1. 44.

273. Line 13: DESPAIR thy charm.-Compare Ben Jonson's lines to Shakespeare, prefixed to the First Folio: Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide, or cheere the drooping stage; Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despaires day, but for thy volumes light.

274. Line 20: That PALTER with us in a double sense.Compare Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 11. 61-63:

Now I must

To the young man send humble treaties, dodge
And palter in the shifts of lowness.

Cotgrave has "Harceler... to haggle, hucke, hedge, or paulter long, in the buying of a commoditie." I copy this from the edition before me, that of 1650. The Clarendon Press edd., in quoting the passage, give it as "haggle,

hucke, dodge." I suppose hedge is a misprint that has crept in with the revision.

275. Line 34.-Stage-direction. After this line we have apparently two rather conflicting stage-directions in F. 1: Exeunt fighting. Alarums, and Enter Fighting, and Maebeth slaine. Then immediately Retreat, and Flourish, Enter with Drumme and Colours, Malcolm, Seyward, Rosse, Thanes, and Soldiers, and below, after line 53: Enter Macduffe, with Macbeths head. It seems to me that unnecessary trouble has been made about this stagedirection. It is quite possible that, as the last scene was played in Shakespeare's time, Macduff and Macbeth, after one driving the other off the scene, returned fighting after a brief interval, when Macbeth was killed; and that after Macduff had killed him close to what we call the "wing" or "side entrance," he dragged the body off the stage; as he could not well pretend to cut off the head before the audience; Siward and the rest would appear upon the "upper stage," as they are supposed to have entered the castle before in the last scene, or rather, as it stands in the Folio, at the beginning of this scene, there being no eighth scene in the Folio. As the attack was made on Macbeth when in his castle, he must have been compelled by the besiegers to make a desperate sally; it is not likely that he got very far from the castle walls, and the fight between him and Macduff was supposed to take place on the ground in front of the castle. I really can see no reason to suppose, with the Clarendon editors, that Shakespeare's share of the play ended here, line 34; for if the slight episode of the death of Siward's son was Shakespeare's work, I think it is only natural that he should make those, on whose side he was fighting, take some notice of that brave young soldier's death. -F. A. M.

276 Lines 39-53.-The incident of the death of young Siward is taken from Holinshed's History of England: "It is recorded also, that in the foresaid battayle, in which Earle Siwarde vanquished the Scottes, one of Siwardes sonnes chaunced to be slayne, whereof, though the father had good cause to be sorrowfull, yet when he heard that he dyed of a wound which he had receyued in fighting stoutely in the forepart of his body, and that with his face towarde the enimie, hee greatly reioyced thereat, te heare that he died so manfully. But here is to be noted, yt not now, but a little before, (as Henry Hunt. saith,) ye Earle Siward, wente into Scotlande himselfe in person, hee sent his sonne with an army to conquere yt land, whose hap was ther to be slaine: and when his father heard ye newes, he demaunded whether he receiuved the wound wherof he died, in ye fore parte of the body, or in the hinder part: and when it was tolde him yt he receyued it in the foreparte, I reioyce (saith he) euen with all my harte, for I woulde not wishe eyther to my sonne nor to my selfe, any other kind of death" (vol. i. p. 749).

277. Line 41: The which no sooner had his PROWESS confirm'd.-Prowess must be slurred over in pronunci. ation, so as to make it practically one syllable only. Walker (Shakespeare's Versification, p. 119) cites Greene, Alphonsus, iii. 1 (ed. Dyce, ii. 27):

Whose prowess alone has been the only cause.

This line. too, gives an example of such pleonasm as that in the preceding line of the text:

He only liv'd but till he was a man.

278. Lines 54, 55:

behold, where stands

The usurper's cursed head.

Holinshed says: "Then cutting his [Macbeth's] head from his shoulders, he [Macduff] set it vpon a pole, and brought it vnto Malcolme" (see above note at beginning of this scene). It is on the authority of this passage that Malone added the words "on a pole" to the stage-direction of the Ff.

279. Line 56: I see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's pearl.-Compassed with a pearl is a rather curious ex

pression, but there is very likely an allusion, as the Clarendon Press edd. say, to the row of pearls that usually encircle a crown. Pearl is no doubt used here as a collective term. The word was a common synonym for "treasure," "ornament," as in Florio's Dedication to Lord Southampton of his World of Words: "Brave Earle, bright Pearle of Pearles."

280. Line 70: by self and violent hands. - Compare Richard II. iii. 2. 166:

Infusing him with self and vain conceit.

281. Line 72: by the grace of Grace.-Compare All's Well, ii. 1. 163: "The great'st Grace lending grace;" Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. 1. 145, 146:

While I, their king, that hither them impórtune,
Do curse the Grace that with such grace hath bless'd them.

WORDS OCCURRING ONLY IN MACBETH.

NOTE. The addition of sub. adj. verb, adv. in brackets immediately after a word indicates that the word is used as a substantive, adjective, verb, or adverb, only in the passage or passages cited.

The compound words marked with an asterisk (*) are printed as two separate words in F. 1.

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