V. 3. MACBETH. Then fly, false thanes, And mingle with the English epicures. It may be doubted whether Shakespeare had any thought of comparing the fare of the Scottish nation with that of the English, the sumptuous feasting of the English being a common topic of reproach. Thus Ariosto While Ronald here is cheered with great excess, (As ever in the English land is found,) I mean to tell how that fair lady sped, &c.-Canto VIII. St. 24. V. 3. MACBETH. My WAY of life Is fallen into the SEAR, the yellow leaf. The sear-month is August in the proverb "Good to cut briars in the sere-month," preserved by Aubrey in his MS. treatise on the Remains of Gentilism in England; and this is favourable to the change proposed by some of the commentators of way into May. Of sere-leaves there are many instances. Sandys compares the roofs of some houses he saw when abroad "to a grove of flourishing trees that have only seere and perished crowns." Travels, p. 93. Hacket affords a better illustration. When Archbishop Williams was in the Tower, he says, "Yet, to give his honest followers their due, the greatest part of them shrunk not, but did their best service that they could afford to their forlorn master, like sear-leaves that hang upon an oak in January; though the tree can give them no sap they are loath to leave it." Part II. p. 127. The meaning of Macbeth is quite evident. V. 3. MACBETH. What rhubarb, SENNA, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence? The first folio has cyme, the second correctly cany, which represents the pronunciation of the name of the drug now called senna in our author's time, and is still the pronunciation of it by the common people. Thus in The Treasurie of Hidden Secrets, 1627, "Take seene of Alexandria one ounce," &c. The line has lost something of its melody by the substitution of senna for the softer word cany, which ought to have been retained. We may go on altering our language if we please, but let us not throw on our dead poets the reproach of having written inharmoniously, when only we have ourselves, through conceit, thought proper to abrogate very good and serviceable terms. V. 3. MACBETH. I will not be afraid of death and bane Fortresses, and perhaps kingdoms, have been lost and won by the effect of old prophecies even in our time. The fortress of Bhurtpore was taken by Lord Combermere, the defence of it being paralysed by an old prophecy that it could never be taken till the waters of its ditch should be swallowed by an alligator. The prediction was supposed by the orientals to be fulfilled in Lord Combermere, out of whose name they made Compare, which in the language of that part of India signifies an alligator. V. 5. SEYTON.-The Queen, my lord, is dead. MACBETH.-She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, The Commentators afford very little assistance to the understanding of this passage, which on a superficial view exhibits, though somewhat obscurely, striking and affecting images. I have often looked at it with despair of being able to trace the coherence which we expect, notwithstanding the distracted state of the mind of Macbeth, and have regarded it, not as a passage which has come down to us corrupted, but as one of those thrown off by this free spirit, in which he trusted to a certain general effect, without being solicitous about the inquiries of a too cold criticism. But having found in a contemporary writer the word foules used for crowds, it occurred to me that for fools we might read foules in this sense of crowds, and this led to what may perhaps have been the real intention of the Poet. Macbeth, when he hears of the death of his lady, thinks first of the unseasonableness of the time; sometime "hereafter" would have been the time for such a piece of intelligence as this: this introduces the idea of the disposition there is in man to procrastinate in every thing; we are for ever saying "to-morrow," and this though we see men dying around us, every "yesterday" having conducted crowds of human beings to the grave. This introduces more general ideas of the vanity of man, who "walketh in a vain show, and is disquieted in vain,” a passage of Scripture which seems to have been in the Poet's mind when he wrote what follows; as is also another beautiful expression of that inexhaustible treasury of beautiful moral and divine sentiment, "we spend our years as a tale that is told." Shakespeare's intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures is observable in all his plays, shewn sometimes in a broad and palpa ble allusion or adaptation, and sometimes, as here, in passages of which the germ only is in that book. At the same time there is something in the passage partaking of the desperation of the thane's position, and perhaps intended to shew what thoughts possess a mind like his, burthened with heavy guilt, and having some reason to think retribution near at hand. The word foule for crowd occurs in Archibold's Evangelical Fruit of the Seraphical Franciscan Order, 1628, MS. Harl. 3888, "The foule of people past over him in time of sermon," f. 81. V. 7. MACDuff.. I see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's PEARL. This is an expression for which it is not easy to account. There is as strange a use of the same word in Sylvester's Du Bartas These parasites are even the pearls and rings (Pearls, said I, perils) in the ears of kings. For, O, what mischief but their wiles can work !—P. 554. The notes upon the passage are nothing to the purpose. It is possible that Shakespeare might allude to this passage of Sylvester. HAMLET. UNLIKE in this respect to the noble tragedy we have just been considering, Hamlet has come down to us with a great variety of texts, each having claims upon our respectful attention. In a few instances it can hardly be doubted that we have two, and in one instance three, readings, which there is every reason to believe are readings of the author himself, who made slight changes in certain passages after the play in one form or other had been printed. The several texts presented to a modern editor are :— 1. That of the Second Folio of 1632;-2. That of the First Folio of 1623;-3. and 4. Those of the Quartos of 1609 and 1611;-5. A copy without date, assigned by Lowndes to 1607;-6. and 7. Those of the Quartos of 1605 and 1604;— and S. That of another Quarto printed in 1603. The last named quarto presents the play in a form nearly approaching to what it originally was, not much more than half the length of the play as we now have it, and with innumerable corruptions of the text of so gross a kind, that there is every reason to think that it was a surreptitious publication of some person who took down, and that most imperfectly, the words as they fell from the mouths of the performers in the theatre. Yet this edition has its value, and has not yet been made to bear as it ought to do on the criticism of this tragedy, either as a whole, or in respect of particular scenes or passages in it. That such an edition had existed was known, or at least surmised on very probable grounds, in the time of the middle-period editors and commentators; but no copy of it was known till the year 1825, when a copy wanting only the last leaf was discovered. Of this a reprint was |