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Add the following, v. 1,—

"The posture of your blows are yet unknown."

Note Marmyon, Antiquary, v. 1, Dodsley, vol. x. p. 81, if there be no erratum,-"The sweetness of your looks encourage me, that you will join pity with your beauty.'

i. 2,

MACBETH.

"Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought
'Gainst my captivity: Hail, brave friend!

One might suggest, "Hail, my brave friend!" But a somewhat lesser alteration may suffice to restore the metre,— "Who, like a good and hardy soldier,

Fought against my captivity: Hail, brave friend!"

Or can anything be lost?

16.,

"Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break;

and Var. notes. Perhaps, burst would be better. (Or was the word threat?)

Ib.,

"If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks;
So they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe."

Fol., in one line,—

"So they doubly," &c.

I suspect that doubly is an interpolation. (It reminds me

of the wretched old Hamlet of 1603,

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Chapman, Bussy d'Ambois, v. 1, Old English Plays, 1814, vol. iii. p. 323,

"Where all these have been broken, they are kept,

In doing their justice there with any show

Of the like cruel cruelty: thine arms have lost
Their privilege in lust," &c.)1

Venus and Adonis, St. cxxxix.,—

"And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,

That all the neighbour-caves, as seeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Passion on passion deeply is redoubled."

Does this mean that her groans were re-echoed from the depths of the forest? It seems possible that Shakespeare wrote doubly, as in the common reading of Macbeth.

3,

Qu.,

ii. 3,

"Only to herald thee into his sight,

Not pay thee."

"Only to herald thee to 's (or in's) sight, not pay thee."

equivocates him in a sleep." This is not more harsh to our ears than Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2, "smiles his cheek in years."

66

1 Note the following similar examples, for which, I presume, we may thank compositors: King Henry V. iv., "great greatness." Dumb Knight, ii. 1, Dodsley, vol. iv. p. 399, our high height of bliss." Shirley, Coronation, iv. 1, Gifford and Dyce, vol. iii. p. 509, 1. 4, "great greatness; " (here the metre demands the expulsion of great.) Ezekiel, xx. 47, "the flaming flame shall not be quenched ; Sept. οὐ σβεσθήσεται ἡ φλὸξ ἡ ἐξαφθεῖσα.—Εd.

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Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown'd withal."

Metaphysics are magic, as explained by the commentators;
Marlowe, Faustus, i. 1, Dyce, vol. ii. p. 8,-

"These metaphysics of magicians,

And necromantic books, are heavenly."

Ford, Broken Heart, i. 3, Moxon, p. 52, col. 2,

"The metaphysics are but speculations

Of the celestial bodies, or such accidents
As not mix'd perfectly, in th' air ingender'd,
Appear to us unnatural; that's all."

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Sidney, Defence of Poesy, p. 494, 1. 28,-" And the metaphysic, though it be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth of nature." Ultra-natural" would be more accurate. Harrington, Notes subjoined to B. xxx., -"Another reason of mad mens vnreasonable [i.e., irrational strength, is metaphisicall, or supernaturall, and that is when they are possessed with spirits, of which there are many examples.”

Ib.,

"That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep pace between
Th' effect and it!"

Compare Miseries of Inforced Marriage, iv., Dodsley, vol. v. p. 65,

"These men, like fish, do swim within one stream,

Yet they'd eat one another, making no conscience
To drink with them they'd poison; no offence
Betwixt their thoughts and actions has control,
But headlong run, like an unbias'd bowl."

7,

"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,

?

And falls on th' other.-How now? what news! ""

Evidently, th' other side; and this adds one to the apparently numerous instances of omission in this play.

ii. 1. Arrange,

"I see thee yet in form as palpable

As that which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me
The way that I was going, and such an instrument
I was to use.

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"As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands,
Listening their fear : 2 I could not say Amen," &c.

3, near the beginning," who committed treason enough for God's sake," &c. This allusion to the times is certainly

So in effect Rowe and Capell. Johnson's edition is so strangely pointed just here, that nothing can be made of it. Strange to say, all the other editions, old and new, which I have consulted, put a full stop after hands, and connect "Listening their fear" with what follows.-Ed.

unlike Shakespeare. It strengthens Coleridge's hypothesis of the spuriousness of part of this soliloquy.

Ib. Arrange,

"Look to the lady.

Mal. Why do we hold our tongues, that most may claim
This argument for ours?

Don.

4,

What should be spoken

Here, where our fate, hid in an augre-hole,
May rush and seize us?"

"And Duncan's horses (a thing most strange and certain), Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race," &c.

Read horse. Fairfax, B. vii. St. xxiii. horse is plural,— "But still attentive was his longing ear,

If noise of horse,3 or noise of arms he hear."

Dekker, Old Fortunatus,—

"One of your countrymen is come to court,

A lusty gallant brave in Cyprus isle,

With fifty barr'd horses prancing at his heels."

Horse. (For braue read borne, ápxaïkŵc pro born; for the prince of Cyprus replies immediately,—

"Born in the isle of Cyprus ? what's his name?

though the correction seems too obvious for notice.)

3 Shirley, Witty Fair One, iii. 5,-"fifty ploughs a-going, twenty horse in the stable," &c. Chaucer, Seconde Book of Fame, ed. 1602, fol. 266, col. 2. Phaeton,

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