Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies | Page 6

understand it thus,
"If that which I am about to do, when it is once done and executed,
were done and ended without any following effects, it would then be

best _to do it quickly_; if the murder could terminate in itself, and
restrain the regular course of consequences, if its success could secure
its surcease, if being once done successfully, without detection, it could
fix a period to all vengeance and enquiry, so that this blow might be all
that I have to do, and this anxiety all that I have to suffer; if this could
be my condition, even here in this world, in this contracted period of
temporal existence, on this narrow bank in the ocean of eternity, I
would jump the life to come, I would venture upon the deed without
care of any future state. But this is one of these cases in which
judgment is pronounced and vengeance inflicted upon as here in our
present life. We teach others to do as we have done, and are punished
by our own example." (1773)
I.vii.4 (428,3) With his surcease, success] I think the reasoning requires
that we should read,
With its success surcease.
I.vii.6 (429,4) shoal of time] This is Theobald's emendation,
undoubtedly right. The old edition has school, and Dr. Warburton
shelve.
I.vii.22 (429,7) or heavens cherubin, hors'd/Upon the sightless couriers
of the air] [W: couriers] Courier is only runner. Couriers of air are
winds, air in motion. Sightless is invisible.
I.vii.25 (430,8) That tears shall drown the wind] Alluding to the
remission of the wind in a shower.
I.vii.28 (430,9) _Enter Lady_] The arguments by which lady Macbeth
persuades her husband to commit the murder, afford a proof of
Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature. She urges the excellence
and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has dazzled mankind
from age to age, and animated sometimes the house-breaker, and
sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism Macbeth has for ever
destroyed, by distinguishing true from false fortitude, in a line and a
half; of which it may almost be said, that they ought to bestow
immortality on the author, though all his other productions had been

lost:
_I dare do all that become a man, Who dares do more, is none_.
This topic, which has been always employed with too much success, is
used in this scene with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman.
Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier, and the reproach of
cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great
impatience.
She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder
Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes
deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would
be criminal in others is virtuous in them; this argument Shakespeare,
whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted,
though he might easily have shewn that a former obligation could not
be vacated by a latter: that obligations laid on us by a higher power,
could not be over-ruled by obligations which we lay upon ourselves.
I.vii.41 (431,1)
--Whouldst thou have that, Which then esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem?]
In this there seems to be no reasoning. I should read,
Or _live a coward in thine own esteem_?
Unless we choose rather,
--Wouldst thou leave that.
I.vii.45 (431,2) Like the poor cat i' the adage?] The adage alluded to is,
_The cat loves fish, but dares not wet her feet, Catus amat pisces, sed
men vult tingere plantas_.
I.vii.64 (432,5) Will I with wine and wassel so convince] To convince
is in Shakespeare to overpower or subdue, as in this play,

--Their malady convinces The great assay of art.
I.vii.67 (433,6) A limbeck only] That is, shall be only a vessel to emit
fumes or vapours.
I.vii.71 (433,7) our great quell] Quell is murder. manquellers being in
the old language the term for which murderers is now used.
II.i (434,8) _Enter Banquo, and Fleance with a torch before him_] The
place is not mark'd in the old edition, nor is it easy to say where this
encounter can be. It is not in the hall, as the editors have all supposed it,
for Banquo sees the sky; it is not far from the bedchamber, as the
conversation shews: it must be in the inner court of the castle, which
Banquo might properly cross in his way to bed.
II.i.25 (435,2) If you shall cleave to my consent, Then 'tis,/It shall make
honour for you] Macbeth expressed his thought with affected obscurity;
he does not mention the royalty, though he apparently has it in his mind,
If you shall cleave to my consent, if you shall concur with me when I
determine to accept