Lady M. Who was it, that thus cried? Why, wor thy tirane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think Macb. I'll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on 't again, I dare not. Infirm of purpose! Lady M. Give me the daggers: The sleeping, and the dead, Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood, That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt. [Exit. Knocking within. 8 'tis the eye of childhood, 9 That fears a painted devil.] So, in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: "Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils." Steevens. gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt.] Could Shakspeare mean to play upon the similitude of gild and guilt? Johnson. This quibble too frequently occurs in the old plays. A few instances (for I could produce a dozen at least) may suffice: "Cand. You have a silver beaker of my wife's? "Flu. You say not true, 'tis gilt. "Cand. Then you say true:· "And being gilt, the guilt lies more on you." Again, in Middleton's comedy of A maa World my Masters 1608: "Though guilt condemns, 'tis gilt must make us glad.” And, lastly, from Shakspeare himself: "England shall double gild his treble guilt." Henry IV. P. II. Again, in King Henry V : "Have for the gilt of France, O guilt indeed!" Steevens: 1 Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blond &e,] Suscipit, ô Gelli, quantum non ultima Tethys, "Nec genitor nymphørum abluit oceanus.” Catullus in Gellium, 837 Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnardine,2 “ Οἶμαι γὰρ ἔτ αν Ιστρον ε' τε Φᾶσιν αν σε Νέψαι καθαρμῶ τηνδε την στέγην.” Sophoc. Oedip. Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quæ barbaris Again, in one of Hall's Satires: "If Trent or Thames-." &c. Steevens. "Non, si Neptuni fluctu renovare operam des; "Non, mare si totum velit eluere omnibus undis." Lucret. L. VI, v. 1074. H. White. So, in The Insatiate Countess, by Marston, 1613: "Aithough the waves of all the northern sea "Should flow for ever through these guilty hands, "Yet the sanguinolent stain would extant be." Malone. 2 The multitudinous seas incarnardine,] To incarnardine is to stain any thing of a flesh colour, or red. Carnardine is the old term for carnation. So, in a comedy called Any Thing for a quiet Life: 66 Grograms, sattins, velvet fine, "The rosy-colour'd carnardine." Steevens. Shakspeare's word may be exemplified from Carew's Obsequies to the Lady Anne Hay: "One shall ensphere thine eyes; another shall "Thy rosy cheek." Wakefield. By the multitudinous seas, perhaps, the poet meant, not the seas of every denomination, as the Caspian, &c. (as some have thought) nor the many-coloured seas, (as others contend) but the seas which swarm with myriads of inhabitants. Thus Homer: 6 Ποντον επ' ΙΧΘΥΟΕΝΤΑ φιλων απανευθε φερεσιν.” The word is used by Ben Jonson, and by Thomas Decker, in The Wonderful Year, 1603, in which we find the multitudinous spawn." It is objected, by Mr. Kenrick, that Macbeth, in his present disposition of mind, would hardly have adverted to a property of the sea, which has so little relation to the object immediately before him; and if Macbeth had really spoken this speech in his castle of Inverness, the remark would be just. But the critick should have remembered, that this speech is not the real effusion of a distempered mind, but the composition of Shakspeare; of that poet, who has put a circumstantial account of an apothecary's shop into the mouth of Romeo, the moment after he has heard the fatal news of his beloved Juliet's VOL. VII. Making the green-one red.3 death; and has made Othello, when in the anguish of his heart he determines to kill his wife, digress from the object which agitates his soul, to describe minutely the course of the Pontick sea. Mr. Steevens objects, in the following note, to this explanation, thinking it more probable that Shakspeare should refer "to some visible quality in the ocean," than "to its concealed inhabitants;" "to the waters that might admit of discoloration," than" to the fishes whose hue could suffer no change from the tinct of blood." But in what page of our author do we find his allusions thus curiously rounded, and complete in all their parts? Or, rather, does not every page of these volumes furnish us with images, crouded on each other, that are not naturally connected, and sometimes are even discordant? Hamlet's proposing to take up arms against a sea of troubles is a well-known example of this kind, and twenty others might be produced. Our author certainly alludes to the waters, which are capable of discoloration, and not to the fishes. His allusion to the waters is expressed by the word seas; to which, if he has added an epithet that has no very close connexion with the subject immediately before him, he has only followed his usual practice. If, however, no allusion was intended to the myriads of inhabitants with which the deep is peopled, I believe, by the multitu dinous seas, was meant, not the many-waved ocean, as is suggested, but the countless masses of waters wherever dispersed on the surface of the globe; the multitudes of seas, as Heywood has it, in a passage quoted below, that perhaps our author remembered: and, indeed, it must be owned, that his having the plural, seas, seems to countenance such an interpretation; for the singular, sea, is equally suited to the epithet multitudinous, in the sense of evra, and would certainly have corresponded better with the subsequent line. Malone. I believe that Shakspeare referred to some visible quality in the ocean, rather than to its concealed inhabitants; to the waters that might admit of discoloration, and not to the fishes, whose hue could suffer no change from the tinct of blood. Waves appearing over waves are no unapt symbol of a croud. "A sea of heads" is a phrase employed by one of our ligitimate poets, but by which of them I do not at present recollect. Blackmore, in his Job, has swelled the same idea to a ridiculous bulk: "A waving sea of heads was round me spread, "And still fresh streams the gazing deluge fed." He who beholds an audience from the stage, or any other multitude gazing on any particular object, must perceive that their heads are raised over each other, velut unda supervenit undam. If, therefore, our author, by the "multitudinous sea" does not Re-enter Lady MACBETH. Lady M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame mean the aggregate of seas, he must be understood to design the multitude of waves, or the waves that have the appearance of a multitude. In Coriolanus we have—" the many-headed multitude." Steevens. 3 Making the green-one red.] The same thought occurs in The Downfal of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601: Again: "He made the green sea red with Turkish blood." "The multitudes of seas died red with blood." Another, not unlike it, is found in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. II, c. x, st. 48: "The whiles with blood they all the shore did stain, Again, in the 19th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion: "And the vast greenish sea discolour'd like to blood." Steevens. The same thought is also found in The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher, 1634: "Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast turn'd The present passage is one of those alluded to in a note at the end of As you Like it, Vol. V, in which, I apprehend, our author's words have been refined into a sense that he never thought of. The other is in Othello: "Put out the light, and then put out the light." The line before us, on the suggestion of the ingenious author of The Gray's-Inn Journal, has been printed in some late editions in the following manner. Making the green-one red. The Every part of this line, as thus regulated, appears to me exceptionable. One red does not sound to my ear as the phraseology of the age of Elizabeth; and the green, for the green one, or for the green sea, is, I am persuaded, unexampled. quaintness introduced by such a regulation seems of an entirely different colour from the quaintnesses of Shakspeare. He would have written, I have no doubt, " Making the green sea, red," (So, in The Tempest: "And 'twixt the green sea and the azure vault 66 the if he had not used the word seas in the preceding line, which forced him to employ another word here As, to prevent the ear being offended, we have, in the passage before us, green one, ," instead of "the green sea," so we have in King Henry VIII, Act I, sc. ii: "lame ones," to avoid a similar repetition: "They have all new legs, and lame ones." Again, in The Merchant of Venice: To wear a heart so white. [Knock ] I hear a knocking Hath left you unattended.-[Knocking.] Hark! more knocking: Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, So poorly in your thoughts. Macb. To know my deed-'twere best not know myself.5 [Knock. Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! Ay, 'would thou could'st!? [Exeunt "A stage where every man must play a part, Though the punctuation of the old copy is very often faulty, yet in all doubtful cases it ought, when supported by more decisive circumstances, to have some little weight. In the present instance, the line is pointed as in my text: Making the green one, red. Malone. If the new punctuation be dismissed, we must correct the foregoing line, and read-" the multitudinous sea; for how will the plural-seas, accord with the green one?" Besides, the sense conveyed by the arrangement which Mr. Malone would reject, is countenanced by a passage in Hamlet: "Hath now his dread and black complexion smear'd i. e. one red. The expression-" one red," may also be justified by language yet more ancient than that of Shakspeare. In Genesis, ii, 24, (and several other places in scripture) we have— "one flesh." Again, in our Liturgy: “ be made one fold under one shepherd." Again, in Milton's Comus, v. 133: "And makes one blot of all the air." But, setting aside examples, are there not many unique phrases in our author? Steevens. 4 My bands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white.] A similar antithesis is found in Marlowe's Lust's Dominion, written before 1593: "Your cheeks are black, let not your soul look white." Malone. 5 To know my deed,—'twere best not know myself] i. e. While I have the thoughts of this deed, it were best not know, or be lost to myself. This is an answer to the lady's reproof: be not lost So poorly in your thoughts. Warburton. |