Ross. Let not your ears despise my tongue for

ever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound

That ever yet they heard.

Macd.

Hum! I guess at it.

Ross. Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes

Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer,
To add the death of you.

Mal.

Merciful heaven! What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it

Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.

Macd. He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

216. "He has no children"; "he" is probably Malcolm, whose talk of comfort at such a moment is thus rebutted and explained. Macbeth lies wholly beyond the pale of such reproach.-C. H. H.

Mal. Dispute it like a man.
Macd.

I shall do so;

220

But I must also feel it as a man:

I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.

look on,

Did heaven

And would not take their part? Sinful Mac-
duff,

They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,
Not for their own demerits, but for mine,

Fell slaughter on their souls: heaven rest them
now!

Mal. Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it. Macd. O, I could play the woman with mine eyes, And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle heavens,

231

Cut short all intermission; front to front
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape,
Heaven forgive him too!

Mal.

This tune goes manly. Come, go we to the king; our power is ready; Our lack is nothing but our leave.

Macbeth Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above Put on their instruments.

you may;

Receive what cheer

The night is long that never finds the day. 240

[Exeunt.

235. "tune"; Rowe's emendation of Ff., "time.”—I. G.

ACT FIFTH

SCENE I

Dunsinane. Ante-room in the castle.

Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentle

woman.

Doct. I have two nights watched with you,
but
can perceive no truth in your report. When
was it she last walked?
Gent. Since his majesty went into the field, I
have seen her rise from her bed, throw her
nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take
forth paper, fold it, write upon 't, read it,
afterwards seal it, and again return to bed;
yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

Doct. A great perturbation in nature, to receive 10
at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects
of watching! In this slumbery agitation,
besides her walking and other actual per-
formances, what, at any time, have you
heard her say?

Gent. That, sir, which I will not report after her.

Doct. You may to me, and 'tis most meet you should.

Gent. Neither to you nor any one, having no 20 witness to confirm my speech.

Enter Lady Macbeth, with a taper.

Lo you, here she comes! This is her very
guise, and, upon my life, fast asleep. Ob-
serve her; stand close.

Doct. How came she by that light?

Gent. Why, it stood by her: she has light by

her continually; 'tis her command.

Doct. You see, her eyes are open.

Gent. Aye, but their sense is shut.

Doct. What is it she does now? Look, how 30 she rubs her hands.

Gent. It is an accustomed action with her, to

seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. Lady M. Yet here's a spot.

Doct. Hark! she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.

Lady M. Out, damned spot! out, I say! One: two: why, then 'tis time to do 't. Hell is 40 murky. Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Doct. Do you mark that?

29. "sense is shut"; Rowe's emendation of Ff., "sense are shut"; S. Walker conj., adopted by Dyce, "sense' are shut." The reading of the Folio probably gives the right reading, "sense” being taken as a plural.-I. G.

40. "Hell is murky"; of course Lady Macbeth dreams of being in talk with her husband; and, he having said through fear, "Hell is murky," she repeats his words, as in scorn of his cowardice.H. N. H.

Lady M. The thane of Fife had a wife; where

is she now? What, will these hands ne'er be clean? No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting. 50 Doct. Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.

Gent. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: heaven knows what she has known.

Lady M. Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!

Doct. What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.

60

50. “starting"; she is alluding to the terrors of Macbeth when the Ghost broke in on the festivity of the banquet.-H. N. H.

56-58. Upon this, the awfulest passage in this most awful scene, Mr. Verplanck has written in so high a style of criticism that we can not forbear to quote him. After remarking how fertile is the sens : of smell in the milder and gentler charms of poetry, he observes: "But the smell has never been successfully used as the means of impressing the imagination with terror, pity, or any of the deeper emotions, except in this dreadful sleep-walking of the guilty Queen, and in one parallel scene of the Greek drama, as wildly terrible as this. It is that passage of the Agamemnon of Æschylus, where the captive prophetess Cassandra, wrapt in visionary inspiration, scents first the smell of blood, and then the vapors of the tomb breathing from the palace of Atrides, as ominous of his approaching murder. These two stand alone in poetry; and Fuseli in his lectures informs us, that when, in the kindred art of painting, it has been attempted to produce tragic effect through the medium of ideas drawn from 'this squeamish sense,' even Raphael and Poussin have failed, and excited disgust instead of terror or compassion."-And Mrs. Siddons, after quoting Lady Macbeth's—“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand"— adds,— "How beautifully contrasted is the exclamation with the bolder image of Macbeth, in expressing the same feeling: 'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash the blood clean from this hand? And how appropriately either sex illustrates the same idea!”—H. N. H.