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275 By this great clatter, one of greatest note Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune! And more I beg not.

[Exit. Alarum.

Enter MALCOLM and old SIWARD.

Siw. This way, my lord ;-the castle 's gently render'd: The tyrant's people on both sides do fight;

280 The noble thanes do bravely in the war;

The day almost itself professes yours,

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Macb. Why should I play the Roman fool, and die 285 On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes Do better upon them.

Macd.

Re-enter MACDUFF.

Turn, hell-hound, turn.

Macb. Of all men else I have avoided thee:
But get thee back, my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.

Macd.

I have no words, 290 My voice is in my sword; thou bloodier villain

Than terms can give thee out.

Macb.

[They fight.

Thou loosest labour:
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;

295 I bear a charmed life, which must not yield

300

To one of woman born.

Macd.

Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

Macb. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!

And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,

305 And break it to our hope.-I'll not fight with thee.
Macd. Then yield thee, coward,

310

And live to be the show and gaze o' the time.
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole; and underwrit,

"Here may you see the tyrant."

I will not yield,

Macb.
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
315 Yet I will try the last: Before my body

I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff;
And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
[Exeunt fighting.

Retreat. Flourish. Re-enter, with drum and colours,
MALCOLM, old SIWARD, ROSSE, LENOX, ANGUS, CAITH-
NESS, MENTEITH, and Soldiers.

Mal. I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.
Siw. Some must go off; and yet, by these I

320 So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

Mal. Macduff is missing, and your noble son.

see,

Rosse. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt: He only lived but till he was a man;

The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd,

325 In the unshrinking station where he fought,

But like a man he died.

Siw.

Then he is dead?

Rosse. Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of

sorrow

Must not be measured by his worth, for then

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335 They say, he parted well, and paid his score:

And so, God be with him!-Here comes newer comfort.

Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH's head.

Macd. Hail, king! for so thou art: Behold, where
stands

The usurper's cursed head: the time is free:
I see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's pearl,
340 That speak my salutation in their minds;
Whose voices I desire aloud with mine,—
Hail, king of Scotland!

All.

Hail, king of Scotland! [Flourish. Mal. We shall not spend a large expense of time, Before we reckon with your several loves,

345 And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen,
Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland
In such an honour named. What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,-
As calling home our exiled friends abroad
350 That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
Producing forth the cruel ministers

Of this dead butcher, and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as 't is thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life;—this, and what needful else
355 That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,
We will perform in measure, time, and place:
So thanks to all at once, and to each one,
Whom we invite to see us crown'd at Scone.

[Flourish. Exeunt.

NOTES.

ACT I.

3. Hurly-burly, uproar, tumultuous stir. Both parts of this compound signify, by onomatopoeia, the noise produced by rapid motion. Hurly is from hurl, which is probably connected with whirl. Burly, Jamieson connects with birl, a diminutive from birr, to make a whirring or drilling noise. 6. Upon the heath.-Vide Scene iii. 8. Graymalkin, also Grimalkin. commentators have followed one another in assuming the word to refer to a cat. We are inclined rather to explain it to mean a hare; for while the cat was popularly believed to be the familiar of fortune-tellers, the same popular belief, or superstition, regarded the hare as a very witch. This, however, would go for little

an enclosure, corrupted from A.-S. pearroc a park.

9. Anon immediately! the answer to the call of Paddock. It is from A.-S. onan in one, at once.

13. As seemeth by his plight, an att. cl. introduced by the rel. as, and qualifying the statement that "he can report."

13. Plight, condition; from A.-S. plihtan, to pledge: Plight meansThe -(1.) the thing pledged, (2) something put in a state of risk, and hence the state of risk itself, or any unfortunate state.

if it were not supported by etymological

evidence. Malkin is used by Middleton in The Witch for a spirit, and by Shakespeare in Coriolanus for a maid-servant. Now, it is remarkable that the Sc. Maukin is also used in both of these senses; e.g. of the former,

"Wi' spells and cauntrips hellish rantin', Like maukins thro' the fields they're jauntin' ;"

and of the latter, "a lass and a maukin," ie., a serving-girl and an assistant. This places the identity of malkin and maukin beyond doubt. But maukin originally signified a hare, and is so used in Scotland to this day; from which we conclude that the words which coincide in two out of three meanings are most likely to be identical in the third meaning also. Jamieson derives maukin from the Celtic maigheach. The prefix gray is quite as applicable to the fur of a hare as to that of a cat; but it is also used metaphorically in Sc. for something bad; e.g, "You'll gang a gray gate;" i.e., you will go an evil road

9. Paddock, a toad; diminutive from A.-S. pad, Sc. puddock. This is the "Devil-toad" of Middleton. Paddock from pad is not to be confounded with paddock,

16. 'Gainst my captivity, i.e., against my being taken captive. Captivity is here equivalent to captivation in its primary sense of the act of captivating or making captive. It is now properly limited to the state of being a captive.

17. Say, narrate; from A.-S. sagan, to tell. Of cognate origin is saga, a Scandinavian legend or story.

19. As two spent swimmers, scil. stand. A forcible simile: the two armies are so closely locked in combat, that they have not room to fight.

21. To that, scil. degree or extent, adv. phr. to "do swarm." 24. Of, with. The noun "supply" is now followed by of; the verb, by with.

24 Kernes and gallowglasses, Irish footsoldiers. Both words are used by Holinshed, § 3. The kernes were armed with a short sword and target; the gallowglasses were partly clad in mail. Shakespeare uses kerne contemptuously, 1. 44; v. 271

27. That name, rather that attribute,"brave."

28. With his brandish'd steel, adv. phr. of instrument, to "carv'd out." Like valour's minion is an adv phr. of manner; i.e., as if he were the special favourite of valour.

32. And ne'er shook hands, etc. The reading of the folio is, "Which ne'er shook hands;" but as that connects the clause with "slave" rather than with Macbeth, the reading in the text is preferable. In either case, ne'er till (33) is equivalent to not. . . ere. Till properly indi

89

cates merely the postponing of one action, till another has been performed. Here, and elsewhere in Shakespeare, it signifies an indefinite postponement.

37. Shipwracking; Wrack (108), wreck and wreak, are all from the same root, A.-S. wræcan, to revenge, whence wræcca, an exile, a wretch. Ascham says, he is an un

happy Master" that is made cunning by many Shipwracks." These lines must be thus construed:-"As shipwracking storms and direful thunders break (from the place) whence the sun 'gins his reflection; so discomfort swells from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come." It is an improving exercise to turn a simile like this into a metaphor. The above as a metaphor would be rendered, "The sunshine and the storms of life often spring from the same source."

The indiscriminate use of the present and past tenses, in this and the preceding speech, indicates well the excited state of mind of a wounded soldier fresh from the field.

42. The Norweyan lord, Sweyn or Sueno, brother of Canute, king of England.-Vide Holinshed, §§ 6-9. It will be observed that, in the chronicle, the rebellion of Macdonwald terminating in his suicide, the first invasion of the Danes, which ended in the destruction of their fleet, and the second invasion of the Danes, which ended in the tombs of Inchcolm, are mentioned as three separate events. Shakespeare's purpose is better served by their being thrown into one, his genius building out of them a "new concrete," and giving them a new unity, in harmony with the leading action of the plot.

48. Overcharged with double cracks; a forcible redundancy, quite in keeping, as is" doubly redoubled" in the next line, with the soldier's excited mode of speech. Such a legalized redundancy is called, in rhetoric, a Pleonasm.

50. To bathe; middle voice, scil. themselves. The meaning of the sentence, which is abruptly broken off by the soldier's faintness, is:-"I cannot tell (what they meant), except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, or memorize another Golgotha."

54. Become, are befitting, Lat. decet. This word must be distinguished from to become to come to be, Lat. fieri. It becomes (decet), Ger. bequemen, is the A.-S. GE-cweman, to be suitable. It becomes (fit) is from A.-S. BE-cuman, to happen. The ge- of the former is the A.-8. augment, represented in old English by y-, as yclept. 56. Thane, from A.-S. thegen (from thiegan, to receive), (1.) a servant, (2.) a particular attendant, the servant of the king, who was at the same time a lord in his own domain.

The highest A.-S. nobles were called Ealdormen, i.e., Older-men, großúrigos, patriarchs; hence Eng. Aldermen. Earl is from the Danish Jarl (Elder), A.-S. Eorl, a title which in Britain was first used in Kent. 58. Seems to speak, seems about speak.

62. Flout, insult or mock; from A.-S. flitan, to scold, Sc. flite.

65. Assisted by that most disloyal traitor, etc.; another instance of Shakespeare's power of adaptation. The hint in Holinshed is a very slender one (§ 16). The particular act of treason is devised by Shakespeare so as to fit into the texture of his plot.

66. Cawdor, modern Calder, still vulgarly pronounced Ca'der, a parish in Scotland,

cos. Nairn and Inverness.

67. Bellona's bridegroom, Macbeth. Bellona was the Roman goddess of war. Comp. Virgil,

"Et scissâ gaudens vadit Discordia pallâ ; Quam cum sanguineo sequitur Bellona flagello.""-En. viii. 702.

72. That now, so that now, subordinating the clause to "the victory fell on us."

74. At Saint Colmes' inch, now Inchcolm, a small island in the Firth of Forth, about two miles from the Fife coast. The island was named after St. Columba, to whom a monastery was dedicated upon it by Alexander III, about eighty years after the events here referred to. Comp. Holinshed, § 14.

79. I'll see it done. "It" direct object; "done," indirect object, after see; i.e., I'll see that it is done.

80. What he hath lost, n. cl., object to "hath won.' "9

85. Mounch'd, or munch'd, i.e., chewed, probably connected with the Fr. manger,

to eat.

86. Aroint thee, witch! so in Lear, iii. 4,—

"Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee."

This word Aroint is of doubtful etymology, and is of rare occurrence. It is found in no old author besides Shakespeare, and he uses it only in the two passages quoted above. The connexion at once suggests the meaning to be "begone." Mr. Knight, on the authority of Mr. Thomas Rodd, derives it from Goth. ar, or aer, to go, and hynt, behind. It would thus mean literally "go behind," a derivation somewhat too perfect to be natural. Aer, moreover, in Gothic languages, signifies going, only in connexion with being before; it is in fact our English ere, and forms the root of errand (ærend). Jamieson traces Aroint to Sc. runt, to bounce. Richardson takes it

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