ACT II. SCENE I. The same. Court within the Castle. Enter BANQUO and FLEANCE, and a Servant, with a Torch before them. Ban. How goes the night, boy? Fle. The moon is down: I have not heard the clock. Ban. And she goes down at twelve. Fle. I take't, 'tis later, sir. Ban. Hold, take my sword:-There's husbandry1 in heaven, Their candles are all out.-Take thee that too. And yet I would not sleep: Merciful powers! Enter MACBETH, and a Servant with a Torch. Who's there? Macb. A friend. Ban. What, sir, not yet at rest? The king's a-bed: 1 Husbandry here means thrift, frugality. In Romeo and Juliet we have a similar expression: 'Night's candles are burnt out.' 2 It is apparent from what Banquo says afterwards, that he had been solicited in a dream to attempt something in consequence of the prophecy of the witches, that his waking senses were shocked at; and Shakspeare has here most exquisitely contrasted his character with that of Macbeth. Banquo is praying against being tempted to encourage thoughts of guilt even in his sleep; while Macbeth is hurrying into temptation, and revolving in his mind every scheme, however flagitious, that may assist him to complete his purpose. The one is unwilling to sleep, lest the same phantoms should assail his resolution again, while the other is depriving himself of rest through impatience to commit the murder. He hath been in unusual pleasure, and By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up Macb. Being unprepar'd, Our will became the servant to defect; Ban. All's well. I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: To you they have show'd some truth. Macb. I think not of them: Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, If you would grant the time. Ban. At your kind'st leisure. Macb. If you shall cleave to 'tis, It shall make honour for you. 3 Largess, bounty. The old copy reads offices. Officers of a household was the common term for servants in Shakspeare's time. He has before called the king's chamberlains his spongy officers.' 5 Steevens has rightly explained 'to shut up' by 'to conclude,' and the examples he has adduced are satisfactory; but Mr. Boswell supposed that it meant enclosed, and quoted a passage from Barrow to support his opinion. The authorities of the poet's time are against Mr. Boswell's interpretation. 6 Being unprepared, our will (or desire to entertain the king honourably) became the servant to defect (i. e. was constrained by defective means), which else should free have wrought (i. e. otherwise our zeal should have been manifest by more liberal entertainments. Which relates not to the last antecedent, defect, but to will. 7 Consent is accord, agreement, a combination for a particular purpose. By if you shall cleave to my consent,' Macbeth means, if you shall adhere to me (i. e. agree or accord with my views), when 'tis (i. e. when events shall fall out as they are predicted), it shall make honour for you.' We have the word again in this sense in King Henry IV. Part II., where, speaking of Shallow and his servants, Falstaff says, 'they flock together Ban. So I lose none, In seeking to augment it, but still keep I shall be counsel'd. Macb. Good repose, the while! Ban. Thanks, sir; The like to you! [Exit BAN. Macb. Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. [Exit Servant. Is this a dagger, which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but in consent like so many wild geese.' So again in As You Like It, the usurping Duke says, after the flight of Rosalind and Celia : some villains of my court Are of consent and sufferance in this.' Sir William Davenant's paraphrase of this passage shows that he understood it as I have explained it : "If when the prophecy begins to look like, you will Macbeth mentally refers to the crown which he expected to obtain in consequence of the murder that he was about to commit. We comprehend all that passes in his mind; but Banquo is still in ignorance of it. His reply is only that of a man who determines to combat every possible temptation to do ill; and therefore expresses a resolve that, in spite of future combinations of interest or struggles for power, he will attempt nothing that may obscure his present honours, alarm his conscience, or corrupt loyalty. Macbeth could never mean, while yet the success of his attack on the life of Duncan was uncertain, to afford Banquo the most dark or distant hint of his criminal designs on the crown. Had he acted thus incautiously, Banquo would naturally have become his accuser as soon as the murder had been discovered. Malone proposed to read content instead of consent; but his reasons are far from convincing, and there seems no necessity for change. A dagger of the mind; a false creation, As this which now I draw. Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going; Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood, Which was not so before.-There's no such thing: It is the bloody business, which informs Thus to mine eyes.-Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead 10, and wicked dreams abuse 8 Dudgeon for handle; a dudgeon dagger is a dagger, whose handle is made of the root of box,' according to Bishop Wilkins in the dictionary subjoined to his Real Character. Dudgeon is the root of box. It has not been remarked that there is a peculiar propriety in giving the word to Macbeth, Pugnale alla scoccese, being a Scotch or dudgeon haft dagger,' according to Torriano. 9 Gouts, drops; from the French gouttes. 10 Dryden's well known lines in the Conquest of Mexico are here transcribed that the reader may observe the contrast between them and this passage of Shakspeare: 'All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead, The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head, The little birds in dreams their songs repeat, And sleeping flow'rs beneath the night dews sweat, In the second part of Marston's Antonio and Mellida, 1602, we have the following lines : 'Tis yet the dead of night, yet all the earth is clutch'd In the dull leaden hand of snoring sleep: No breath disturbs the quiet of the air, No spirit moves upon the breast of earth, Save howling dogs, night-crows, and screeching owls, Unequalled in revenge:-you horrid scouts The curtain'd sleeper 11; witchcraft celebrates Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, earth, Heat not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my where-about, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it 13.-Whiles I threat, he lives; 11 The old copy has sleepe. The emendation was proposed by Steevens, and is well worthy of a place in the text; the word now having been formerly admitted to complete the metre. 12 The old copy reads sides: Pope made the alteration. Johnson objects to the epithet ravishing strides. But Steevens has shown that a stride was not always an action of violence, impetuosity, or tumult. Thus in The Faerie Queene, b. iv. c. viii. 'With easy steps so soft as foot could stride.' And in other places we have an easy stride, a leisurable stride, &c. Warburton observes, that the justness of the similitude is not very obvious. But a stanza in Shakspeare's Tarquin and Lucrece will explain it : Now stole upon the time in dead of night, When heavy sleep had clos'd up mortal eyes; No noise but owls' and wolves' dead-boding cries; The silly lambs. Pure thoughts are dead and still, 13 Macbeth would have nothing break through the universal silence that added such horror to the night, as well suited with the bloody deed he was about to perform. Burke, in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, observes, that 'all general privations are great because they are terrible.' The poets of antiquity have many of them heightened their scenes of terror by dwelling on the silence which accompanied them:— 'Dii quibus imperium et animarum umbræque silentes, Et Chaos et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late.- Virgil. Statius, in describing the Lemnian massacre, notices the silence and solitude in a striking manner: 'Conticuere domus,' &c. |