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any intent or purpose; 3. or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of the grave, or the skin, bone, or any part of the dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, forcery, charm, or enchantment; 4. or shall use, practise, or exercise any fort of witchcraft, forcery, charm, or enchantment; 5. whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wafted, consumed, pined, or lamed in any part of the body; 6. That every fuch person being convicted shall fuffer death." This law was repealed in our own time.

Thus, in the time of Shakspeare, was the doctrine of witchcraft at once established by law and by the fashion, and it became not only unpolite, but criminal, to doubt it; and as prodigies are always seen in proportion as they are expected, witches were every day discovered, and multiplied fo faft in some places, that Bishop Hall mentions a village in Lancashire,* where their number was greater than that of the houses. The jesuits and sectaries took advantage of this universal error, and endeavoured to promote the interest of their parties by pretended cures of persons afflicted by evil spirits; but they were detected and exposed by the clergy of the established church.

Upon this general infatuation Shakspeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially fince he has followed with great exactness such histories as were then thought true; nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting. JOHNSON.

In the concluding paragraph of Dr. Johnson's admirable introduction to this play, he seems apprehenfive that the fame of Shakspeare's magic may be endangered by modern ridicule. I shall not, hefitate, however, to predict its security, till our national taste is wholly corrupted, and we no longer deserve the first of all dramatic enjoyments; for fuch, in my opinion at leaft, is the tragedy of Macbeth. STEEVENS.

Malcolm II. King of Scotland, had two daughters. The eldest was married to Crynin, the father of Duncan, Thane of the Ifles, and western parts of Scotland; and on the death of

* In Nashe's Lenten Stuff, 1599, it is faid, that no less than fix hundred witches were executed at one time: "-it is evident, by the confeffion of the fix hundred Scotch witches executed in Scotland at Bartholomew tide was twelve month, that in Yarmouth road they were all together in a plump on Christmas eve was two years, when the great flood was; and there stirred up fuch tornadoes and fúricanoes of tempefts, as will be spoken of there whilft any winds or ftorms and tempefts chafe and puff in the lower region."

REED.

МАСВЕТН.

ACT I. SCENE I.

An open Place.

Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches.

1 WITCH. When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2 WITCH. When the hurlyburly's done,1 When the battle's loft and won: 2

hurlyburly's-] However mean this word may seem to modern ears, it came recommended to Shakspeare by the authority of Henry Peacham, who, in the year 1577, published a book profeffing to treat of the ornaments of language. It is called The Garden of Eloquence, and has this passage: "Onomatopeia, when we invent, devise, fayne, and make a name intimating the sownd of that it fignifyeth, as hurliburly, for an uprore and tumultuous stirre." HENDERSON.

So, in a translation of Herodian, 12mo. 1635, p. 26:

there was a mighty hurlyburly in the campe," &c.

Again, p. 324: "great hurliburlies being in all parts of the empire," &c. REED.

2 When the battle's lost and won:] i. e. the battle, in which Macbeth was then engaged. WARBURTON.

So, in King Richard III:

"

while we reason here,

"A royal battle might be won and lost."

So also Speed, speaking of the battle of Towton: "-by which only stratagem, as it was conftantly averred, the battle and day was lost and won." Chronicle, 1611. MALONE.

:

3

3 WITCH. That will be ere set of fun.3

1 WITCH. Where the place ?

2 WITCH.

Upon the heath:

3 WITCH. There to meet with Macbeth.4

-ere Set of fun.) The old copy unnecessarily and

harshly reads

-ere the set of fun. STEEVENS.

4 There to meet with Macbeth.] Thus the old copy. Mr. Pope, and, after him, other editors:

There I go to meet Macbeth.

The infertion, however, seems to be injudicious. To meet with Macbeth was the final drift of all the Witches in going to the heath, and not the particular business or motive of any one of them in diftinction from the rest; as the interpolated words, I go, in the mouth of the third Witch, would most certainly imply.

Somewhat, however, (as the verse is evidently imperfect,) must have been left out by the tranfcriber or printer. Mr. Capell has therefore proposed to remedy this defect, by reading

There to meet with brave Macbeth.

But furely, to beings intent only on mischief, a foldier's bravery, in an honest cause, would have been no fubject of encomium.

Mr. Malone (omitting all previous remarks, &c. on this pafsage) affures us, that" There is here used as a dissyllable." I wish he had fupported his affertion by some example. Those, however, who can speak the line thus regulated, and suppose they are reciting a verse, may profit by the direction they have received.

"

The pronoun their," having two vowels together, may be split into two fyllables; but the adverb "there" can only be ufed as a monofyllable, unless pronounced as if it were written "the-re," a licence in which even Chaucer has not indulged himself.

It was convenient for Shakspeare's introductory scene, that his first Witch should appear uninftructed in her mission. Had she not required information, the audience must have remained ignorant of what it was neceffary for them to know. Her speeches, therefore, proceed in the form of interrogatories; but, all on a sudden, an answer is given to a question which had not been asked. Here seems to be a chasm, which I shall attempt

1 WITCH. I come, Graymalkin !5

ALL. Paddock calls: - Anon.6

to fupply by the introduction of a fingle pronoun, and by diftributing the hitherto mutilated line among the three speakers ;

3 Witch. There to meet with

1 Witch.

2 Witch.

Whom?

Macbeth.

Diftinct replies have now been afforded to the three neceffary enquiries-When-Where and Whom the Witches were to meet. Their conference receives no injury from my infertion and arrangement. On the contrary, the dialogue becomes more regular and confiftent, as each of the hags will now have spoken thrice (a magical number) before they join in utterance of the concluding words, which relate only to themselves.-I should add that, in the two prior instances, it is also the second Witch who furnishes decisive and material answers; and that I would give the words " I come, Graymalkin!" to the third. By affiftance from fuch of our author's plays as had been published in quarto, we have often detected more important errors in the folio 1623, which, unluckily, fupplies the most ancient copy of Macbeth, STEEVENS.

5 - Graymalkin!] From a little black-letter book, entitled, Beware the Cat, 1584, I find it was permitted to a Witch to take on her a cattes body nine times. Mr. Upton observes, that, to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad.

Again, in Newes from Scotland, &c. (a pamphlet of which the reader will find the entire title in a future note on this play): "Moreover the confessed, that at the time when his majestie was in Denmarke, shee beeing accompanied with the parties before specially mentioned, tooke a cat and christened it, and afterward bound to each part of that cat the cheefest part of a dead man, and several joyntes of his bodie, and that in the night following the faid cat was convayed into the middest of the fea by all these witches sayling in their riddles or cives as is aforesaid, and so left the faid cat right before the towne of Leith in Scotland. This donne, there did arise such a tempeft in the sea, as a greater hath not bene seene," &C. STEEVENS.

• Paddock calls :-&c.] This, with the two following lines, is given in the folio to the three Witches. Some preceding editors have appropriated the first of them to the second Witch.

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