Are with a most indissoluble tie Macb. Ride you this afternoon? which the following words to the which-can possibly refer." 9 to the which, my duties Are with a most indissoluble tie M. Mason. For ever knit.] So, in our author's Dedication of his Rape of Lucrece, to lord Southampton, 1594: "What I have done is yours, being part in all I have devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; mean time as it is, it is bound to your lordship." Malone. 1 - we'll take to-morrow.] Thus the old copy, and, in my opinion, rightly. Mr. Malone would read " we'll talk to-morrow. Steevens. I proposed this emendation some time ago, and having since met with two other passages in which the same mistake has happened, I trust I shall be pardoned for giving it a place in my text. In King Henry V, edit. 1623, we find, "For I can take (talke] for Pistol's cock is up." Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1623, p. 31: "It is no matter for that, so she sleep not in her take." [instead of talke, the old spelling of talk.] On the other hand, in the first scene of Hamlet, we find in the folio, 1623: " then no planet strikes, "No fairy talkes." So again, in the play before us: "The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak "Our free hearts each to other." Again, Macbeth says to his wife: 66 We will speak further." Again, in a subsequent scene between Macbeth and the as sassins: "Was it not yesterday we spoke together?" In Othello we have almost the same sense, expressed in other words: To-morrow, with the earliest, "Let me have speech with you." Had Shakspeare written take, he would surely have said"but we 'll take 't to-morrow." So, in the first scene of the second Act, Fleance says to his father: "I take 't, 'tis later, sir." Malone. ! Is 't far you ride'? Ban. As far, my lord, as will fill up the time 'Twixt this and supper: go not my horse the better, I do not perceive the necessity of change. The poet's meaning could not be misunderstood. His end was answered, if his language was intelligible to his audience. He little supposed the time would arrive, when his words were to abide the strictest scrutiny of verbal criticism. With the ease of conversation, therefore, he copied its incorrectness. To take, is to use, to employ. To take time is a common phrase; and where is the impropriety of saying-" we 'll take to-morrow?" i. e. we will make use of to-morrow. So, in King Henry VI, P. III, Act V, sc. i: "Come, Warwick, take the time." Banquo, "without a prompter," must have understood, by this familiar expression, that Macbeth would employ to-morrow, as he wished to have employed to-day. When Pistol says-" I can take"-he means, he can kindle, or lay hold, as fire does on its object.-So Dryden, speaking of flames: "At first they warm, then scorch, and then they take." Again, in Froissart's Chronicle, Vol. II, cap. C.xcii, fol. CCxliii, b. " - he put one of the torches that his servauntes helde, so nere, that the heate of the fyre entered into the flaxe (wherein if fyre take, there is no remedy);" &c. That the words talk and take may occasionally have been printed for each other, is a fact which no man conversant with the press will deny: and yet the bare possibility of a similar mistake in the present instance, ought to have little weight in opposition to an old reading sufficiently intelligible. The word take is employed in quite a different sense by Fleance, and means to understand in any particular sense or manner. So, Bacon: "I take it, that iron brass, called white brass, hath some mixture of tin." Again, in King Henry VIII: there, I take it, "They may, cum privilegio, wear away "The lag end of their lewdness." Steevens. 2-go not my horse the better,] i. e if he does not go well. Shakspeare often uses the comparative for the positive and superlative. So, in Ling Kear: " her smiles and tears "Were like a better day." Again, in Macbeth: "it hath cow'd my better part of man." Again, in King John: "Nay, but make haste; the better foot before." Again, in P. Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. B. IX, c. xlvi: "Many are caught out of their fellowes hands, if they I must become a borrower of the night, For a dark hour, or twain. Macb. Ban. My lord, I will not. Fail not our feast. Mach. We hear, our bloody cousins are bestow'd And so I do commend you to their backs.3 Let every man be master of his time [Exit BAN. The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself Till supper-time alone: while then, God be with you. [Exeunt Lady M. Lords, Ladies, &c. bestirre not themselves the better." Thus also Virgil: " - oblitos famæ melioris amantes." It may, however, mean, If my horse does not go the better for the haste I shall be in to avoid the night. Steevens. 66 Mr. Steevens's first interpretation is, I believe, the true one. It is supported by the following passage in Stowe's Survey of London, 1603: - and hee that hit it not full, if he rid not the faster, had a sound blow in his neck, with a bag full of sand hanged on the other end." Malone. And so I do commend you to their backs.] In old language one of the senses of to commend was to commit, and such is the meaning here. So, in King Kichard II: "And now he doth commend his arms to rust." Malone. So, in Milton's Comus, v. 831: "Commended her fair innocence to the flood." Commend, however, in the present instance, may only be a civil term, signifying-send. Thus, in King Henry VIII: "The king's majesty commends his good opinion to you." Thus also, in Chapman's version of the eighteenth Book of Homer's Odyssey: "The others other wealthy gifts commended What Macbeth, therefore, after expressing his friendly wis relative to their horses, appears to mean, is-so I send (or dismiss) you to mount them. Steevens. Sirrah, a word: 4 Attend those men our pleasure? Atten. They are, my lord, without the palace gate, Macb. Bring them before us.-[Exit Atten.] To bę thus, is nothing; But to be safely thus: - Our fears in Banquo Reigns that, which would be fear'd: 'Tis much hẹ dares; And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, Mark Antony's was by Cæsar. He chid the sisters, 4 Sirrab, a word: &c.] The old copy reads Sirrah, a word with you: Attend those men our pleasure? The words I have omitted are certainly spurious. The metre is injured by them, and the sense is complete without them. Steevens: 5 - royalty of nature - Royalty, in the present instance, signifies nobleness, supreme excellence. Thus, in Twelfth Night, we have "Sport royal," for excellent sport; and Chaucer, in his Squiere's Tale, has " crowned malice," for eminence of malignity. Steevens. 6 7 -to-] i. e. in addition to. See p. 15, n. 4. Steevens. - to that dauntless temper of bis mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide bis valour -] So, in Chapman's version of the fifteenth Iliad: 66 - superior to his sire in feet, fight, noblenes "Of all the virtues; and all those did such a wisdome guide," Steevens. My genius is rebuk'd; as, it is said, Mark Antony's was by Cæsar.] For the sake of metre, the prænomen-Mark (which probably was an interpolation) might safely be omitted. Steevens. Though I would not often assume the critick's privilege of being confident where certainty cannot be obtained, nor indulge myself too far in departing from the established reading; yet I cannot but propose the rejection of this passage, which I believe was an insertion of some player, that, having so much learning as to discover to what Shakspeare alluded, was not willing that his audience should be less knowing than himself, and has therefore weakened the author's sense, by the intrusion of a remote and useless image into a speech bursting from a man wholly When first they put the name of king upon me, possessed with his own present condition, and therefore not at leisure to explain his own allusions to himself. If these words are taken away, by which not only the thought, but the numbers are injured, the lines of Shakspeare close together without any traces of a breach: My genius is rebuk'd. He chid the sisters -. This note was written before I was fully acquainted with Shakspeare's manner, and I do not now think it of much weight: for though the words which I was once willing to eject, seem interpolated, I believe they may still be genuine, and added by the author in his revision. Mr. Heath cannot admit the measure to be faulty. There is only one foot, he says, put for another. This is one of the effects of literature in minds not naturally perspicacious. Every boy or girl finds the metre imperfect, but the pedant comes to its defence with a tribrachys or an anapæst, and sets it right at once, by applying to one lan guage the rules of another. If we may be allowed to change feet, like the old comick writers, it will not be easy to write a line not metrical. To hint this once is sufficient. Johnson. Our author having alluded to this circumstance in Antony and Cleopatra, there is no reason to suspect any interpolation here; "Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side: "Thy dæmon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is "Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, "Where Cæsar's is not; but near him thy angel "Becomes a fear, as being o'erpower'd." Malone. • For Banquo's issue bave I fil'd my mind;) We should read: 'filed my mind; i. e. defiled. Warburton. This mark of contraction is not necessary. To file is in the Bishops Bible. Johnson. So, in The Revenger's Tragedy, 1608: "He call'd his father villain, and me strumpet, Again, in The Miseries of inforc'd Marriage, 1607: " -like smoke through a chimney that files all the way it goes." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. III, c.i: "She lightly lept out of her filed bed." Steevens. |