And make our faces vizards to our hearts, Lady M. You must leave this. Macb. O, full of scorpions is my mind, 'dear wife! Thou know'st, that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. Lady M. But in them nature's copy's not eterne 7, Macb. There's comfort yet; they are assailable; Then be thou jocund: Ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight; ere, to black Hecate's summons, The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, 6 The sense of this passage (though clouded by metaphor, and perhaps by omission) appears to be as follows:- It is a sign that our royalty is unsafe, when it must descend to flattery, and stoop to dissimulation.' The present arrangement of the text is by Malone. 7 Ritson has justly observed that Nature's copy' alludes to copyhold tenure; in which the tenant holds an estate for life, having nothing but the copy of the rolls of his lord's court to show for it. A life-hold tenure may well be said to be not external. The subsequent speech of Macbeth, in which he says, Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond,' confirms this explanation. Many of Shakspeare's allusions are to legal customs. 8 That is the beetle borne along the air by its shards or scaly wings. Steevens had the merit of first showing that shard or sherd was the ancient word for a scale or outward covering, a case or sheath as appears from the following passage cited by him, from Gower's Confessio Amantis, b. vi. fol. 138: She sigh, her thought a dragon tho, Whose sherdes shynen as the sonne.' And again in book v. speaking of a serpent:- 'He was so sherded all about, It held all edge tool without.' In Cymbeline Shakspeare applies this epithet again to the beetle : The sharded beetle in a safer hold Than is the full-winged eagle.' A similar description of the beetle occurs in Chapman's Eugenia, 1614: the beetle there did raise With his Irate wings his most unweildie paise; Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note. Lady M. What's to be done? Macb. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, Skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day; And, with thy bloody and invisible hand, crow Makes wing to the rooky wood 11: Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; 9 i. e. blinding; to seel up the eyes of a hawk was to close them by sewing the eyelids together. 10 So in Cymbeline: "Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray.' 11 By the expression, light thickens, Shakspeare means that it is growing dark. Thus in Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess:'Fold your flocks up, for the air 'Gins to thicken, and the sun Already his great course hath run.' Spenser in the Shepherd's Calendar has : the welkin thicks apace.' Notwithstanding Mr. Steevens's ingenious attempts to explain the rooky wood otherwise; it surely means nothing more than the wood inhabited by rooks. The poet has shown himself a close observer of nature in marking the return of these birds to their nest trees when the day is drawing to a close. Virgil has a very natural description of the same circumstance: E pastu decedens agmine magno 12 See note on King Richard III. Act iv. Sc. 1. SCENE III. The same. A Park or Lawn, with a Gate leading to the Palace. Enter three Murderers. 1 Mur. But who did bid thee join with us? 3 Mur. Macbeth. 2 Mur. He needs not our mistrust; since he de livers Our offices, and what we have to do, To the direction just. 1 Mur. Then stand with us. The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day: Now spurs the lated traveller apace, To gain the timely inn; and near approaches The subject of our watch. 3 Mur. Hark! I hear horses. Then it is he; the rest Ban. [Within.] Give us a light there, ho! 2 Mur. That are within the note of expectation1, His horses go about. 1 Mur. 3 Mur. Almost a mile: but he does usually, So all men do, from hence to the palace gate Make it their walk. Enter BANQUO and FLEANCE, a Servant with a Torch preceding them. 1 i. e. they who are set down in the list of guests, and expected to supper. Ban. O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly; Thou may'st revenge. O slave! [Dies. Fleance and Servant escape 2. 3 Mur. Who did strike out the light? Was't not the way? 1 Mur. 3 Mur. There's but one down: the son is fled. 2 Mur. We have lost best half of our affair. 1 Mur. Well, let's away, and say how much is done. SCENE IV. A Room of State in the Palace. A Banquet prepared. Enter MACBETH, LADY MACBETH, ROSSE, LENOX, Lords, and Attendants. Macb. You know your own degrees, sit down: at first1 And last, the hearty welcome. Lords. Thanks to your majesty. Macb. Ourself will mingle with society, And play the humble host. Our hostess keeps her state; but, in best time, Lady M. Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our For my heart speaks, they are welcome. 2 Fleance, after the assassination of his father, fled into Wales, where, by the daughter of the prince of that country, he had a son named Walter, who afterwards became Lord High Steward of Scotland, and from thence assumed the name of Sir Walter Steward. From him, in a direct line, King James I. was descended; in compliment to whom Shakspeare has chosen to describe Banquo, who was equally concerned with Macbeth in the murder of Duncan, as innocent of that crime. 1 At first and last.' Johnson with great plausibility proposes to read 'To first and last.' 26 Keeps her state,' continues in her chair of state. A state was a royal chair with a canopy over it. Enter first Murderer, to the door. Macb. See, they encounter thee with their hearts' thanks: Both sides are even: Here I'll sit i'the midst: Macb. 'Tis better thee without, than he within 3. Is he despatch'd? Mur. My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him. Macb. Thou art the best o'the cut-throats: Yet he's good, That did the like for Fleance: if thou didst it, Mur. Most royal sir, Fleance is 'scap'd. Macb. Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect; Whole as the marble, founded as the rock; As broad, and general, as the casing air: But now, Macb. Thanks for that: There the grown serpent lies; the worm, that's fled, 3 "Tis better he without than thee within,' that is, I am better pleased that the blood of Banquo should be on thy face than in his body. He is put for him. 4 With twenty trenched gashes on his head.' From the French trancher, to cut. So in Arden of Feversham: Is deeply trenched on my blushing brow.' Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona : like a figure Trenched in ice.' |