Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies | Page 8

catch it as
communicated, than to deprive the time of horrour, deserves te be
considered.
II.ii.37 (443,6) sleave of care] A skein of silk is called a sleave of silk,
as I learned from Mr. Seward, the ingenious editor of Beaumont and
Fletcher.
II.ii.56 (444,8) gild the faces of the grooms withal,/For it must seem
their guilt] Could Shakespeare possibly mean to play upon the
similitude of gild and guilt.
II.iii.45 (447,5) I made a shift to cast him] To cast him up, to ease my
stomach of him. The equivocation is between cast or throw, as a term
of wrestling, and cast or cast up.
II.iii.61 (448,7)
--strange screams of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible Of
dire combustions, and confus'd events, New hatch'd to the woeful time:
The obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night: some say the earth
Was feverous, and did shake]
Those lines I think should be rather regulated thus:
--_prophecying with accents terrible, Of dire combustions and cosfus'd
events. New-hatch'd to th' woful time, the obscure bird Clamour'd the
live-long night. Some say the earth Was fev'rous and did shake._
A prophecy of an _event new hatch'd_, seems to be a prophecy of an
event past. And _a prophecy new hatch'd_ is a wry expression. The
term _new hatch'd_ is properly applicable to a bird, and that birds of ill
omen should be _new-hatch'd to the woful time_, that is, should appear
in uncommon numbers, is very consistent with the rest of the prodigies
here mentioned, and with the universal disorder into which nature is
described as thrown, by the perpetration of this horrid murder. (see
1765, VI, 413, 7)

II.iii.117 (452,3) Here, lay Duncan,/His silver skin lac'd with his golden
blood] Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of these lines by
substituting goary blood for _golden blood_; but it may easily be
admitted that he who could on such an occasion talk of lacing the silyer
skin, would lace it with golden blood. No amendment can be made to
this line, of which every word is equally faulty, but by a general blot.
It is not improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural
metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth as a mark of artifice and
dissimulation, to shew the difference between the studied language of
hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole
speech so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it
consists entirely of antithesis and metaphor.
II.iii.122 (432,5) Unmannerly breech'd with gore] An unmannerly
dagger, and a _dagger breech'd_, or as in some editions _breech'd
with_, gore, are expressions not easily to be understood. There are
undoubtedly two faults in this passage, which I have endeavored to take
away by reading,
--daggers Unmanly drench'd _with gore_:--
I saw drench'd _with the King's blood the fatal daggers, not only
instruments of murder but evidence of cowardice_.
Each of these words might easily be confounded with that which I have
substituted for it, by a hand not exact, a casual blot, or a negligent
inspection, [W: Unmanly reech'd] Dr. Warburton has, perhaps, rightly
put _reach'd_ for _breech'd_.
II.iii.138 (454,8)
In the great hand of God I stand; and thence, Against the undivulg'd
pretence I fight Of treasonous malice]
Pretence is not act, but simulation, a pretence of the traitor, whoever he
might be, to suspect some other of the murder. I here fly to the
protector of innocence from any charge which, yet _undivulg'd_, the

traitor may pretend to fix upon me.
II.iii.147 (454,7) This murtherous shaft that's shot,/Hath not yet lighted]
The design to fix the murder opon some innocent person, has not yet
taken effect.
II.iv.15 (456,9) minions of their race] Theobald reads,
--minions of the race,
very probably, and very poetically.
II.iv.24 (456,1) What good could they pretend?] To pretend is here to
propose to themselves, to set before themselves as a motive of action.
III.i.7 (457,2) As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine] Shine, for
appear with all the lustre of conspicuous truth.
III.i.56 (459,4) as, it is said,/Mark Anthony's was by Caesar] Though I
would not often assume the critic'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 Shakespeare alluded,
was not willing that his audience should be less knowing than himself,
and has therefore weakened the authour's sense by the intrusion of a
remote and useless image into a speech bursting from a man wholly
possess'd 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