p. 490.

p. 492.

p. 493.

would have read, "summer-teeming;" Blackstone, "summer-seeding;" and Steevens understood the text as meaning, "lust that seems as hot as summer."

"Scotland hath foisons" :- Foison' means plenty, abundance. It is rarely found in the plural.

"Bounty, perseverance":- Here 'perseverance' is accented on the second syllable.

"Did every day she liv'd":— I give this line as it is printed in the folio, lacking one unaccented syllable, because I believe this to be more in accordance with Shakespeare's free versification than it would be to make lived' a dissyllable, as most editors do. At the same time I cannot agree with any part of Mr. Sidney Walker's objection to the latter arrangement, that "Shakespeare would as soon have made died' a dissyllable" as lived.' He and his contemporaries made both these words dissyllables or monosyllables, as occasion required.

overcomes.

their malady convinces," &c. :- - i. e., subdues, - The malady referred to, it need hardly be remarked, is the scrofula, or king's evil, for which it is said Edward the Confessor was the first British monarch, as Queen Anne was, I believe, the last, who touched.

"A modern ecstasy":- i. e., a slight nervousness. See the Note on "a modern invocation," King John, Act III. Sc. 4, p. 125.

66

should not latch them": i. e., catch them. A door-latch is so called because it catches the door. on the quarry of these murther'd deer": 'Quarry' meant, in hunting phrase, a heap of dead game. Dispute it like a man":- i. e., Contend with it like

་་

a man.

This tune goes manly":- -The folio, "This time," &c., which Rowe corrected. See the Notes on 66 yet the note was very untimeable,' As You Like It, Act V. Sc. 3, p. 383, and "some better time," King John, Act III. Sc. 3, p. 123.

p. 497.

ACT FIFTH.

SCENE I.

but their sense is shut":- The folio, "Their sense are shut." From Shakespeare's use of sense elsewhere, it would seem that the reading of the folio is

p. 498.

p. 499.

a misprint, due, perhaps, to a compositor's mistaking
'sense' for a plural noun.
Malone retained the old text;
and Mr. Dyce prints, "Their sense' are shut," as if there
were an elision of s.

"God, God, forgive," &c. : - It is more than probable that Shakespeare wrote, "Good God," &c.

66

My mind she has mated": i. e., astounded, over-
Shakespeare uses it elsewhere in the same sense.

come.

66

SCENE II.

'Excite the mortified man":— i. e., the man who has mortified his flesh, the ascetic. The wrongs of Malcolm, Siward, and Macduff would provoke a saint.'

p. 500.

64

p. 501.

6

SCENE III.

the English epicures": - To the Scotch, who made of their necessary abstemiousness a virtue, the wellfeeding English were gluttonous and dainty. Shakespeare found this noticed in Holinshed's Chronicle of Scotland, thus: For manie of the people abhorring the riotous manners and superfluous gormandizing brought in among them by the Englishmen were willing inough to receive this Donald for their king, trusting (bicause he had beene brought up in the Isles with the old customes and maners of their ancient nation, without tast of English likerous delicats)," &c. Ed. 1587, p. 180.

"What soldiers, patch?"— i. e., rascal. See the Notes on The Tempest, Act III. Sc. 2; Comedy of Errors, Act III. Sc. 1; and A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act III. Sc. 2.

"Will chair me ever":

The folio, "Will cheere me," &c. a mere phonographic irregularity of spelling. Chair' is pronounced cheer even now by some old-fashioned folk, Mother Goose among them :

"She went to the Ale house

To fetch him some Beer,

And when she came back

The Dog sat on a chair."

my way of life":- It is perhaps necessary to mention Dr. Johnson's proposal to read, "my May of life," which is a step prose-ward, although speciously poetic.

44

Cure her of that" :- The folio omits 'her' by obvious mischance. It was supplied in the folio of 1632.

p. 502.

p. 503.

p. 504.

p. 505.

"

p. 507.

"Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff" :— Of this kind of verbal repetition this play affords several examples, as, for instance,

"Whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace." Act III. Sc. 2. And see the Variorum of 1821, ad l., for similar instances from other plays, (and scores more might be cited,) and Mr. Dyce's Few Notes, &c., p. 128, for a formidable array of quotations of examples of the usage by various Elizabethan writers. · Mr. Collier's folio of 1632 somewhat

plausibly reads, "of that perilous grief."

"What rhubarb, senna" :-The folio misprints, “syme.”

SCENE IV.

"For where there is advantage to be given":- Given' seems wrong, for obvious reasons; and we not improbably should read, as Mr. Singer first suggested, "to be gain'd," — ' given' having been caught from the line below. But I am not sufficiently sure upon the point to make a change in the old text.

SCENE V.

"Were they not forc'd," &c. :- i. e., were they not strengthened, had they not received an accession of force. my fell of hair" :-i. e., my scalp or head of hair, all my hair. See the Note on "a lion-fell," A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

Till famine cling thee": Clung' is a provincial word for pinched, shrunk; and so pinched or shrunk with hunger. But neither the etymology nor the meaning of the word is satisfactorily settled. See Nares' Glossary and Holloway's Provincial Dictionary.

"I pull in resolution":· :- Not a very happy phrase; but there seems no reason to suspect a corruption. In King John, Act III. Sc. 1, we have, "profound respects do pull you on." But Dr. Johnson's conjecture that we should read, "I pall in resolution," although it is one of the obvious kind, is very plausible.

SCENE VII.

at wretched kernes":- See the Note Act I. Sc. 2 of this play. But here the word seems to be used as a general term for the lowest order of mercenary soldiers.

C

p. 509.

p. 510.

"Exeunt, fighting":- In the folio the stage direction is, "Exeunt fighting. Alarums. Enter fighting, and Macbeth slaine. Retreat, and Flourish. Enter with Drumme and Colours, Malcolm," &c. It is possible that Shakespeare, or the stage manager of his company, did not deny the audience the satisfaction of seeing the usurper meet his doom, and that in the subsequent 'retreat' his body was dragged off the stage for its supposed decapitation. For in the folio also we have the direction, "Enter Macduffe; with Macbeth's head."

thy kingdom's peers":" -The folio, "thy kingdom's Pearle," which Rowe changed, very properly, I think, to the reading of the text. A man may be called a pearl, and many men pearls, par excellence; but to call a crowd of noblemen the pearl of a kingdom is an anomalous and ungraceful use of language.

END OF VOL. X.