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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:

He hath been in unusual pleasure, and

Sent forth great largess to your offices:"
This diamond he greets your wife withal,

By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up
In measureless content.

Macb.

Being unprepar'd,

Our will became the servant to defect;
Which else should free have wrought."

8

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,
Would spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.

Ban.
At your kind'st leisure.
Macb. If you shall cleave to my consent,-when

'tis,'

7 Sent forth great largess to your offices:] Offices are the rooms appropriated to servants and culinary purposes. Duncan was pleased with his entertainment, and dispensed his bounty to those who had prepared it. All the modern editors have transferred this largess to the officers of Macbeth, who would more properly have been rewarded in the field, or at their return to court. STEEVENS.

8

shut up] To shut up, is to conclude.

9 Being unprepar'd, &c.] This is obscurely expressed. The meaning seems to be:-Being unprepared, our entertainment was necessarily defective, and we only had it in our power to show the King our willingness to serve him. Had we received sufficient notice of his coming, our zeal should have been more clearly manifested by our acts.

If you shall cleave to my consent,-when 'tis,] Consent for will. So that the sense of the line is, If you shall go into my

It shall make honour for you.

Ban.

So I lose none,

In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear,

I shall be counsel'd.

Macb.

Good repose, the while!

Ban. Thanks, sir; The like to you!

[Exit BANQUO. 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.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind; a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.

Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still;
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

measures when I have determined of them, or when the time comes that I want your assistance. WARBURTON.

Mr. Malone thinks we should read content, and strengthens his opinion by various quotations.

And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood,] Though dudgeon sometimes signifies a dagger, it more properly means the haft, or handle of a dagger, and is used for that particular sort of handle which has some ornament carved on the top of it.

Nature seems dead,3 and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy

pace,

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his

design

Moves like a ghost.-Thou sure and firm-set

earth,

Hear 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.Whiles I threat, he

lives;

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.' [A bell rings.

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Nature seems dead,] That is, over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have ceased. This image, which is, perhaps, the most striking that poetry can produce, has been adopted by Dryden, in his Conquest of Mexico:

"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.
"Even lust and envy sleep!"

These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast between them and this passage of Shakspeare may be more accurately observed.

Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of quiet, the other of perturbation. In the night of Dryden, all the disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakspeare, nothing but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake. He that reads Dryden, finds himself lulled with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation. He that peruses Shakspeare, looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover; the other, of a murderer. JOHNSON.

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it.] i. e. lest the noise from the stones

I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

[Exit.

SCENE II.

The same.

Enter Lady MАСВЕТН.

Lady M. That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold:

What hath quench'd them, hath given me fire:-
Hark! Peace!

It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it:
The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd
their possets,

That death and nature do contend about them,
Whether they live, or die.

Macb. [Within.] Who's there?-what, ho! Lady M. Alack! I am afraid they have awak'd, And 'tis not done:-the attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us:-Hark!-I laid their daggers ready, He could not miss them.-Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't.—My husband?

take away from this midnight season that present horror which suits so well with what is going to be acted in it. What was the horror he means? Silence, than which nothing can be more horrid to the perpetrator of an atrocious design. This shows a great knowledge of human nature. WARBURTON.

Whiles I threat, he lives;

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.] Here is evidently a false concord; but it must not be corrected, for it is necessary to the rhyme. Nor is this the only place in which Shakspeare has sacrificed grammar to rhyme.

Enter MACBETH.

Macb. I have done the deed:-Didst thou not hear a noise?

Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the crick

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Macb. This is a sorry sight.

Donalbain.

[Looking on his hands. Lady M. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. Macb. There's one did laugh in his sleep, and one

cried, murder!

That they did wake each other; I stood and heard them:

But they did say their prayers, and address'd them Again to sleep.

Lady M.

There are two lodg'd together.

Macb. One cried, God bless us! and, Amen, the

other;

As they had seen me," with these hangman's hands.

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My father as he slept, I had done't.] This is very artful. For, as the poet has drawn the lady and her husband, it would be thought the act should have been done by her. It is likewise highly just; for though ambition had subdued in her all the sentiments of nature towards present objects, yet the likeness of one past, which she had been accustomed to regard with reverence, made her unnatural passions, for a moment, give way to the sentinents of instinct and humanity. WARBURTON.

7 As they had seen me,] i, e. as if.

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