If you will take a homely man's advice, Be not found here; hence, with your little ones. Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you! L. Macd. Wherefore should I fly? I've done no harm. But I remember now Enter Murderers. What are these faces? I Mur. Where is your husband? L. Macd. I hope, in no place so unsanctified Where such as thou mayst find him. I Mur. Son. Thou liest, thou shag-hair'd 16 villain! 1 Mur. [Stabbing him.] [Exit. He's a traitor. What, you egg! Son. He has kill'd me, mother: pray you! 17 [Dies. Young fry of treachery ! [Exit Lady MACDUFF, crying Murder! and pursued by the Murderers. 15" To fright you" for in frightening you. See page 84, note 20. 16 Shag-hair'd was a common term of abuse. In Lodge's Incarnate Devils of this Age, 1596, we have “shag-heard slave." 17 "This scene," says Coleridge, “"dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as associated with the only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Mac SCENE III. — England. Before the King's Palace. Enter MALCOLM and MACDUFF. Mal. Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there Weep our sad bosoms empty. Macd. Let us rather Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men Bestride our down-fall'n birthdom.1 Each new morn As if it felt with Scotland, and yell'd out Like syllable of dolour. Mal. What I believe, I'll wail; What know, believe; and what I can redress, What you have spoke, it may be so perchance. This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, Was once thought honest: you have loved him well; He hath not touch'd you yet. I'm young; but something T' appease an angry god.2 duff and her child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep tragedy of their assassination. Shakespeare's fondness for children is everywhere shown:-in Prince Arthur in King John; in the sweet scene in The Winter's Tale between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest Evans' examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy." 1 Birthdom, for the place of our birth, our native land. To bestride one that was down in battle was a special bravery of friendship. - Good here means brave. Often so used. 2 "You may purchase or secure his favour by sacrificing me to his malice; and to do so would be an act of worldly wisdom on your part, as I have no power to punish you for it." Macd. I am not treacherous. Mal. But Macbeth is. A good and virtuous nature may recoil In an imperial charge.3 But I shall crave your pardon; Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, Macd. I've lost my hopes. Mal. Perchance even there where I did find my Let not my jealousies be your dishonours, But mine own safeties: you may be rightly just, Macd. doubts. Bleed, bleed, poor country!. Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, For goodness dare not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs, Thy title is affeer'd !7— Fare thee well, lord: 3 May recede or fall away from goodness and virtue under the tempta tions of a man so powerful to resent or to reward. 4 Transpose for interpret or translate. Not so elsewhere, I think. 5 That is, though all bad things should counterfeit the looks of goodness, yet goodness must still wear its own looks. Would for should. 6 Macduff claims to have fled his home to avoid the tyrant's blow; yet he has left his wife and children in the tyrant's power: this makes the Prince distrust his purpose, and suspect him of being a secret agent of Macbeth. And so, when he says, "I've lost my hopes," the Prince replies, "Perhaps the cause which has destroyed your hopes is the very same that leads me to distrust you; that is, perhaps you have hoped to betray me; which is just what I fear." 7 Ritson, a lawyer, explains this rightly, no doubt: "To affeer is to assess, or reduce to certainty. All amerciaments are, by Magna Charta, to be affeered by lawful men, sworn and impartial. This is the ordinary prac I would not be the villain that thou think'st For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp, Mal. Be not offended: I speak not as in absolute fear of you. I think our country sinks beneath the yoke ; Macd. What should he be? Mal. It is myself I mean; in whom I know All the particulars of vice so grafted That, when they shall be open'd, black Macbeth Will seem as pure as snow; and the poor State With my confineless 9 harms. Macd. Not in the legions Of horrid Hell can come a devil more damn'd In evils to top 10 Macbeth. tice of a Court Leet, with which Shakespeare seems to have been intimately acquainted." — In wear thou thy wrongs," the meaning probably is, wrongs as opposed to rights; or, perhaps, place and honours gained by wrong. 8 Edward the Confessor, who was then King of England. 9 Confineless for boundless, or numberless. Not so elsewhere. 10 To top is, in old English, to surpass. See Hamlet, page 110, note 49. Mal. I grant him bloody, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin That has a name : but there's no bottom, none, All continent11 impediments would o'erbear That did oppose my will. Than such an one to reign. Macd. Better Macbeth Boundless intemperance In nature is a tyranny; it hath been Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne, As will to greatness dedicate themselves, Mal. With this, there grows, In my most ill-composed affection, such I should cut off the nobles for their lands; 13 Desire his jewels, and this other's house : 11 Continent for restraining or holding in; one of its Latin senses. 12 To convey was sometimes used for to manage or carry through a thing artfully and secretly. So the Poet has it several times. 13 One man's jewels and another man's house, is the meaning. |