MACBETH. ACT I. SCENE I. An open Place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches. 1 Witch. WHEN shall we three meet again, In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 2 Witch. When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won. 3 Witch. That will be ere set of sun. 1 Witch. Where the place? 2 Witch. Upon the heath; 3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. 1 Witch. I come, Graymalkin! All. Paddock calls;-Anon.1 Fair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air. [Witches vanish. SCENE II. A Camp near Fores. Alarum within. Enter King DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Soldier.2 Dun. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt The newest state. 1 Upton observes, that, to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a load. A paddock most generally seems to have signified a toad, though it sometimes means a frog. What we now call a toadstool was anciently called a paddock-stool. 2 The first folio reads captain. This is the sergeant,' Mal. Sold. Doubtful it stood; As two spent swimmers, that do cling together, 2 Do swarm upon him) from the Western Isles But all's too weak; For brave Macbeth, (well he deserves that name,) Carved out his passage, till he faced the slave; Dun. O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman! 1 Sergeants, in ancient times, were men performing one kind of feudal military service, in rank next to esquires. 2 Vide Tyrwhitt's Glossary to Chaucer, v. for; and Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, p. 205. For to that means no more than for that, or cause that. 3. e. supplied with armed troops so named. Of and with are indiscriminately used by our ancient writers. Gallowglasses were heavyarmed foot-soldiers of Ireland and the Western Isles; Kernes were the lighter armed troops. 4 "But fortune on his damned quarry smiling."-Thus the old copies. It was altered at Johnson's suggestion to quarrel. But the old copy needs no alteration. Quarry means the squadron (escadre), or square body, into which Macdonwald's troops were formed, better to receive the charge. 5 The meaning is, that Fortune, while she smiled on him, deceived him. 6.The old copy reads which. 7 Sir W. D'Avenant's reading of this passage, in his alteration of the play, is a tolerable comment on it: "But then this daybreak of our victory Served but to light us into other dangers, That spring from whence our hopes did seem to rise." Break is not in the first folio. So from that spring, whence comfort seemed to come, Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark ; No sooner justice had, with valor armed, Compelled these skipping Kernes to trust their heels, With furbished arms, and new supplies of men, Dun. Dismayed not this Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo? Sold. Yes; As sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion. Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe; Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, I cannot tell : But I am faint; my gashes cry for help. Dun. So well thy words become thee, as thy wounds; They smack of honor both.-Go, get him surgeons. [Exit Soldier, attended. Enter ROSSE. Who comes here? Mal. The worthy thane of Rosse. Len. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look, That seems to speak things strange.2 Rosse. God save the king! From Fife, great king, Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane? Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky, Norway himself, with terrible numbers, 1 i. e. make another Golgotha as memorable as the first. Assisted by that most disloyal traitor Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm, Dun. Rosse. That now 3 Great happiness! Sweno, the Norway's king, craves composition; Nor would we deign him burial of his men, Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes' Inch,' Dun. No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest.-Go, pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth. Rosse. I'll see it done. Dun. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won. A Heath. Thunder. SCENE III. A Heath. Enter the three Witches. 1 Witch. Where hast thou been, sister? 2 Witch. Killing swine. 3 Witch. Sister, where thou? [Exeunt. 1 Witch. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, 1 By Bellona's bridegroom Shakspeare means Macbeth. Lapped in proof is defended by armor of proof. 2 "Confronted him with self-comparisons." By him is meant Norway, and by self-comparisons is meant that he gave him as good as he brought, showed that he was his equal. .3 It appears probable, as Steevens suggests, that Sweno was only a marginal reference, which has crept into the text by mistake, and that the line originally stood— "That now the Norway's king craves composition." It was surely not necessary for Rosse to tell Duncan the name of his old enemy, the king of Norway. 4 Colmes' is here a dissyllable. Colmes' Inch, now called Inchcomb, is a small island, lying in the Firth of Edinburgh, with an abbey upon it dedicated to St. Columb. Inch or inse, in Erse, signifies an island. And mounched, and mounched, and mounched. Give me, quoth I; Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon 2 cries. 2 Witch. I'll give thee a wind. 3 Witch. And I another. 1 Witch. I myself have all the other; And the very ports they blow, All the quarters that they know I will drain him dry as hay; 4 Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, 2 Witch. Show me, show me. 1 Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wrecked, as homeward he did come. 3 Witch. A drum, a drum; Macbeth doth come. All. The weird sisters," hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, [Drum within. 1 The etymology of this imprecation is yet to seek. Rynt ye, for out with ye! stand off! is still used in Cheshire, where there is also a proverbial saying," Rynt ye, witch, quoth Besse Locket to her mother." The French have a phrase of somewhat similar sound and import—" Arry-avant, away there, ho!"-Mr. Douce thinks that "aroint thee" will be found to have a Saxon origin. 2 "Rump-fed ronyon," a mangy woman, fed on offals. 3 i. e. the sailor's chart; carte-marine. 4 Forbid, i. e. forespoken, unhappy, charmed or bewitched. A forbodin fellow (Scotice) still signifies an unhappy one. 5 The old copy has weyward, evidently by mistake. Weird, from the Saxon, a witch, Shakspeare found in Holinshed. Gawin Douglas, in his translation of Virgil, renders the Parca by weird sisters. |