Like valour's minion, carv'd out his passage, Till he fac'd the slave;

Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Dun. O, valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!
Sold. As whence the sun 'gins his reflection
Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break;a
So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come,
Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark :
No sooner justice had, with valour arm'd,

Compell'd these skipping kernes to trust their heels,
But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms, and new supplies of men,
Began a fresh assault.

Dun. Dismay'd not this our captains, Macbeth and
Banquo?

Sold. Yes: As sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion. If I say sooth, I must report they were

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks;

So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:
Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
Or memorize another Golgotha,

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 honour both :-Go, get him surgeons. [Exit Soldier, attended.

Who comes here?

Mal.

Enter Rosse.

The worthy thane of Rosse.

Len. What a haste looks through his eyes!

So should he look that seems to speak things strange.
Rosse. God save the king!

Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane?
Rosse. From Fife, great king,

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,
And fan our people cold.

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict:
Till that Bellona's bridegroom,b lapp'd in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons,
Point against point, rebellious arm 'gainst arm,
Curbing his lavish spirit: And, to conclude,
The victory fell on us;-

Dun.

Rosse. That now

Great happiness!

1 Witch. A sailor's wife had chesnuts in her lap. And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd :-"Give me," quoth I:

The word break is not in the original. The second folio adds breaking. Some verb is wanting; and the reading of the second folio is some sort of authority for the introduction of break, Beilona's bridegroom is here undoubtedly Macbeth. This is the original punctuation, which we think, with Tierk, is better than

"Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm.

"Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
And like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, and I 'll do.

2 Witch. I'll give thee a wind.

1 Witch. Th' art kind.

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' the shipman's card.

I'll drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid :
Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd.
Look what I have.

2 Witch. Show me, show me.

1 Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wrack'd, as homeward he did come.

3 Witch. A drum, a drum:

Macbeth doth come.

с

All. The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about; Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again, to make up nine: Peace!-the charm's wound up.

[Drum within.

Enter MACBETH and BANQUO.

Macb. So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
Ban. How far is 't call'd to Forres?-What are these,

So wither'd and so wild in their attire ;

That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on 't? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips :-You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.

Macb. Speak, if you can ;-What are you?
1 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane ď
Glamis!

2 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane A Cawdor!

3 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter.

Ban. Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?—I' the name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
You greet with present grace, and great prediction
Of noble having, and of royal hope,

That he seems rapt withal; to me you speak not:
If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say, which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear,
Your favours nor your hate.

1 Witch. Hail!

2 Witch. Hail!

3 Witch. Hail!

1 Witch. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. 2 Witch. Not so happy, yet much happies.

a Aroint thee.-See King Lear, Act III. Scene 4.

b Ronyon.-See As You Like It, Act II, Scene 2.

c Weird. There can be no doubt that this term is derive! from the Anglo-Saxon wyrd, word spoken; and in the sam way that the word fate is anything spoken, weird and futzi a synonymous, and equally applicable to such mysterious he as Macbeth's witches.

d Fantastical-belonging to fantasy-imaginary

3 Witch. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none : So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

1 Witch. Banquo, and Macbeth, all hail!
Macb. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:
By Sinel's death, I know I am thane of Glamis;
But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman; and, to be king,
Stands not within the prospect of belief,

No more than to be Cawdor. Say, from whence
You owe this strange intelligence? or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting?-Speak, I charge you.
[Witches vanish.

Ban. The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them: Whither are they vanish'd?
Macb. Into the air: and what seem'd corporal,
melted

As breath into the wind.-'Would they had staid! Ban. Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root,a

That takes the reason prisoner?

Macb. Your children shall be kings.
Ban.
You shall be king.
Macb. And thane of Cawdor too; went it not so?
Ban. To the self-same tune, and words. Who's here?
Enter Rosse and ANGUS.

Rosse. The king hath happily receiv'd, Macbeth,
The news of thy success: and when he reads
Thy personal venture in the rebels' fight,
His wonders and his praises do contend,
Which should be thine, or his : Silenc'd with that
In viewing o'er the rest o' the self-same day,
He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,
Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,
Strange images of death, as thick as tale
Can post with post; and every one did bear
Thy praises in his kingdom's great defence,
And pour'd them down before him.
Ang.
We are sent,
To give thee, from our royal master, thanks;
Only to herald thee into his sight, not pay thee.
Rosse. And, for an earnest of a greater honour,
He bade me, from him, call thee thane of Cawdor:
In which addition, hail, most worthy thane!
For it is thine.

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme.-I thank you, gentlemen.———
This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill; cannot be good:-If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:

My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not.

Ban.

Look, how our partner's rap. Macb. If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,

Without my stir.

Ban.

New honours come upon him,

Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould,
But with the aid of use.
Macb.
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Ban. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.
Macb. Give me your favour :-

My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.
Kind gentlemen, your pains are register'd
Where every day I turn the leaf to read them.-
Let us toward the king.-

Think upon what hath chanc'd; and, at more time,
The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak
Our free hearts each to other.

Ban.

Very gladly.

dress me In borrow'd robes?

A deep repentance: nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death, To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd, As 't were a careless trifle.

To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built

An absolute trust.-O worthiest cousin!

Enter MACBETH, BANQUO, ROSSE, and ANGUS.

The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy on me: Thou art so far before,
That swiftest wing of recompense is slow

To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserv'd;
That the proportion both of thanks and payment
Might have been mine! only I have left to say,
More is thy due than more than all can pay.
Macb. The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part
Is to receive our duties and our duties

:

Dun.
My plenteous joys,
Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow.-Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know,
We will establish our estate upon

Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter
The prince of Cumberland: which honour must
Not, unaccompanied, invest him only,
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers. From hence to Inverness,
And bind us further to you.

My worthy Cawdor!

Macb. The rest is labour, which is not us'd for you: I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful The hearing of my wife with your approach; So humbly take my leave. Dun. Macb. The prince of Cumberland!-That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'er-leap, [Aside. For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your tires! Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be,

Enter LADY MACBETH, reading a letter. Lady M. "They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all hailed me, Thane of Cawdor;' by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with Hail, king that shalt be! This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness; that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by be ng ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell."

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promis'd:-Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,

To catch the nearest way: Thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst

highly,

That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou 'dst have, great
Glamis,

That which cries, "Thus thou must do, if thou have it:
And that which rather thou dost fear to do,
Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical" aid doth seem

To have thee crown'd withal.—What is your tidings?
Enter an Attendant.

Atten. The king comes here to-night.
Lady M.

Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more Than would make up his message.

Lady M.

Give him tending,

He brings great news. The raven himself is hoarse
[Exit Attendant

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse;
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect, and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry,
"Hold, hold!"- -Great Glamis, worthy
Cawdor!

Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters :-To beguile the time.
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent
flower,

But be the serpent under it. He that's coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.
Macb. We will speak further.
Lady M.

To alter favour ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me.

Only look up clear;

SCENE VI. The same. Before the Castle.

Hautboys. Servants of Macbeth attending.

Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, BANQUO
LENOX, MACDUFF, ROSSE, ANGUS, and Attendants.
Dun. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.

Ban.
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant crad'e:
The air is delicate.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observu,

Dun.

Enter LADY MACBETH.

Is not thy master with him? who, wer 't so,
Would have inform'd for preparation.

Atten. So please you, it is true; our thane is coming:
One of my fellows had the speed of him;
Metaphysical-u, crnatural.

aif fear, compassion, or any other compunctious visitin stand between a cruel purpose and its realization, they may e said to keep peace between them, as one who interieres to tween a violent man and the object of his wrath keeps peace

Enter LADY MACBETH.

Lady M. He has almost supp'd: why bave you. left the chamber?

Macb. Hath he ask'd for me?

Lady M.
Know you not he has ?
Mach. We will proceed no further in this business.
He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.

Lady M.
Was the hope drunk,
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time,
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour,
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have tha
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem;
Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat i' the adage?"
Macb.

Prithee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none.
Lady M.

What beast was 't then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would

It were done quickly: If the assassination

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Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all, here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come.-But in these cases,
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed: then, as his host,
Who should against his murtherer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off:
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.-I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,d
And falls on the other-How now, what news?

We have restored the old familiar expression God-eyld, as suiting better with the playfulness of Duncan's speech than the God yield us of the modern text. There is great refinement in the sentiment of the passage, but the meaning is tolerably clear. The love which follows us is sometimes troublesome; so we give you trouble, but look you only at the love we bear to you, and

so bless us and thank us.

b Hermits-beadsmen-bound to pray for a benefactor. Shoal-in the original, schoole. Theobald corrected the word to shoal, "by which," says Steevens, our author means the shallow ford of life." We shall not disturb the received reading, which is unquestionably the safest.

It has been proposed to read, instead of itself, its sell, its | saddle. However clever may be the notion, we can scarcely admit the necessity for the change of the original. A person (and vaulting ambition is personified) might be said to overleap himself, as well as overbalance himself, or overcharge himself, er overlabour himself, or overmeasure himself, or overreach himself. The word over in all these cases is used in the sense of too much.

• After other Hanmer introduced side. The commentators say that the addition is unnecessary, inasmuch as the plural noun sides, occurs just before. But surely this notion is to uro

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck; and know
How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn,
As you have done to this.

If we should fail,———

We fail.

Macb. Lady M. But screw your courage to the sticking place, And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep, (Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey Soundly invite him,) his two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassel so convince, b That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only: When in swinish sleep Their drenched natures lie, as in a deatli, What cannot you and I perform upon The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon His spongy officers; who shall bear the guilt Of our great quell d

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Macb. Bring forth men-children only, For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males. Will it not be receiv'd, When we have mark'd with blood those sleepy two Of his own chamber, and us'd their very daggers, That they have done 't? Lady M.

Who dares receive it other

As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar
Upon his death?
Macb.

I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know

[Exeunt.

duce a jumble of the metaphor. Macbeth compares his intert to a courser I have no spur to urge him on. Unprepared I am about to vault into my seat, but I overleap myself and fall. It appears to us that the sentence is broken by the entrance of the messenger; that it is not complete in itself; and would not have been completed with side.

a We find the adage in Heywood's Proverbs, 1556:-"The cat would eat fish and would not wet her feet." b Convince overpower.

• Limbeck--alembic. 4 Quell murder.

Enter BANQUO and FLEANCE, and a Servant with a torch before them.

Ban. How goes the night, boy?

With Tarquin's ravishing sides, 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,
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

Their candles are all out.-Take thee that too.
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep: Merciful powers!
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!-Give me my sword;—

Enter MACBETH, and a Servant with a torch. Who's there?

Macb. A friend.

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.

SCENE II.-The same. Enter LADY MACBETH.

[A bell rings.

[Ex.

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,

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.

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 Serv. 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 marshall'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
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep: witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd murther,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

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, hoa! Lady M. Alack! I am afraid they have awak'd, And 't is 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!
Enter МАСВЕТН.

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

Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry Did not you speak?

Macb.

Lady M.

Macb.

Lady M. Ay.

Macb. Hark!

When?

Now.

As I descended?

Consider it not so deeply, Mach. But wherefore could not I pronounce, amen! I had most need of blessing, and amen Stuck in my throat.

Lady M. These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad.

Sides.-This is the word of the old copies; but Pope chang

it to strides. A doubt arises whether this word is compatible with "stealthy pace." The word, in its usual acceptation, and looking at its etymology, does not convey the notion of stealthy and silent movement. Can we reconcile then the word with the context? Tieck contends that sides has been received as the seat of the passions, and is so here poetically used.