DOCT. What is it she does now? Look, how 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. 8 DOCT. Hark, she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. 9 LADY M. Out, damned spot! out, I say!One; Two; Why, then 'tis time to do't:Hell is murky!'-Fye, my lord, fye! a soldier, and "In so profound abysm I throw all care "To critick and to flatterer stopped are." MALOne. In the Sonnet our author was compelled to sacrifice grammar to the convenience of rhyme. In the passage before us, he was free from such constraint. What, therefore, should forbid us to read, with the present text? Ay, but their sense is shut. STEEvens. Yet here's a spot.] A passage somewhat similar occurs in Webster's Vittoria Corombona, &c. 1612: Here's a white hand! "Can blood so soon be wash'd out?" Webster's play was published in 1612. Shakspeare's in 1623. STEEVENS. 9- One; Two;] Macbeth does not, previously to the murder, mention the hour at which Lady Macbeth is to strike upon the bell, which was to be the signal for his going into Duncan's chamber to execute his wicked purpose; but it seems that Lady Macbeth is now thinking of the moment when she rang the bell; and that two o'clock was the hour when the deed was perpetrated. This agrees with the scene that immediately precedes the murder, but not with that which follows it. See p. 124, n. 3. MALONE. 1 1- Hell is murky!] Murky is dark. So, in The Tempest, Act IV. sc. i: afear'd? 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?2 DOCT. Do you mark that? 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." DOCT. Go to, go to; you have known what you should not. "The most opportune place," &c. Lady Macbeth is acting over, in a dream, the business of the murder of Duncan, and encouraging her husband as when awake. She, therefore, would not have even hinted the terrors of hell to one whose conscience she saw was too much alarmed already for her purpose. She certainly imagines herself here talking to Macbeth, who, (she supposes,) had just said, Hell is murky, (i. e. hell is a dismal place to go to in consequence of such a deed,) and repeats his words in contempt of his cowardice. Hell is murky!-Fye, my lord, fye! a soldier, and afear'd? This explanation, I think, gives a spirit to the passage, which has hitherto appeared languid, being perhaps misapprehended by those who placed a full point at the conclusion of it. STEEVENS. who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?] Statius, in a passage already quoted, speaking of the sword by which an old man was slain, calls it egentem sanguinis ensem; and Ovid, [Met. L. VII.] describing a wound inflicted on a superannuated ram, has the same cir cumstance: 66 guttura cultro "Fodit, et exiguo maculavit sanguine ferrum." STEEVENS. you mar all with this starting.] Alluding to the terrors of Macbeth, when the Ghost broke in on the festivity of the banquet. STEEVENS. 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. GENT. I would not have such a heart in my bosom, for the dignity of the whole body. DOCT. Well, well, well, GENT. 'Pray God, it be, sir. DOCT. This disease is beyond my practice: Yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds. LADY M. Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale:-I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out of his grave. DOCT. Even so? LADY M. To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand; What's done, cannot be undone: To bed, to bed, to bed. [Exit Lady MACBETH. DOCT. Will she go now to bed? GENT. Directly. DOCT. Foul whisperings are abroad: Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: Infected minds To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate.] Lady Macbeth, in her sleep, is talking of Duncan's murder, and recalls to her mind the circumstance of the knocking at the gate just after it. A. C. VOL. X. S More needs she the divine, than the physician.God, God, forgive us all! Look after her; Remove from her the means of all annoyance, And still keep eyes upon her :-So, good night: My mind she has mated, and amaz'd my sight: I think, but dare not speak. GENT. Good night, good doctor, [Exeunt. My mind she has mated,] Astonished, confounded. that so young a warrior JOHNSON. "Should bide the shock of such approved knights, 66 woman, Soliman and Perseda. "Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds." Orlando Furioso, by R. Greene, 1599. "Not mad, but mated." Comedy of Errors. In the following instances, (both taken from the ancient metrical romance of The Sowdon of Babyloyne, MS.) the allusion to chess is still more evident: "The dikes there so develye depe "Thai held them selfe chek mate." P. 7. "Richard raught him with a barr of bras "That he caught at the gate; "He brake his legges, he cryed alas, "And felle alle chek mate." STEEVENS. Scory, in the commendatory verses prefixed to Drayton's Heroicall Epistles, makes use of this phrase, and exactly in the same sense: "Yet with these broken reliques, mated mind, "And what a justly-grieved thought can say." HOLT WHITE. Our author, as well as his contemporaries, seems to have used the word as explained by Dr. Johnson. Mr. Pope supposes mated to mean here conquered or subdued; but that clearly is not the sense affixed to it by Shakspeare; though the etymology, supposing the expression to be taken from chess-playing, might favour such an interpretation. "Cum sublatis gregariis agitur regis de vita et sanguine, sic cum nulla est elabendi via, nullum |