Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies | Page 3

became not only unpolite, but criminal, to doubt it; and as prodigies are always seen in proportion as they are expected, witches were every day discovered, and multiplied as fast in some places, that bishop Hall mentions a village in Lancashire, where their number was greater than that of the houses. The jesuits and sectaries took advantage of this universal error, and endeavoured to promote the interest of their parties by pretended cures of persons afflicted by evil spirits; but they were detected and exposed by the clergy of the established church.
Upon this general infatuation Shakespeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially since he has followed with great exactness such histories as were then thought true; nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting.
I.i.10 (396,5) Fair is foul, and foul is fair] I believe the meaning is, that to us, perverse and malignant as we are, _fair is foul, and foul is fair_.
I.ii.14 (398,9) And Fortune, on his damned quarry smiling] Thus the old copy; but I am inclined to read quarrel. Quarrel was formerly used for cause, or for the occasion of a quarrel, and is to be found in that sense in Hollingshed's account of the story of Macbeth, who, upon the creation of the prince of Cumberland, thought, says the historian, that he had a just quarrel, to endeavour after the crown. The sense therefore is, Fortune smiling on his excrable cause, &c. This is followed by Dr. Warburten. (see 1765, VI, 373, 4).
I.ii.28 (400,4) Discomfort swells] Discomfort the natural opposite to comfort. _Well'd_, for flawed, was an emendation. The common copies have, discomfort swells.
I.ii.37 (400,5) As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks, So they Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe]
Mr. Theobald has endeavoured to improve the sense of this passage by altering the punctuation thus:
--_they were As cannons overcharg'd, with double cracks So they redoubled strokes_--
He declares, with some degree of exultation, that he has no idea of a _cannon charged with double cracks_; but surely the great author will not gain much by an alteration which makes him say of a hero, that he redoubles strokes with double cracks, an expression not more loudly to be applauded, or more easily pardoned than that which is rejected in its favour. That a cannon is charged with thunder, or with double thunders, may be written, not only without nonsense, but with elegance, and nothing else is here meant by cracks, which in the time of this writer was a word of such emphasis and dignity, that in this play he terms the general dissolution of nature the crack of doom.
The old copy reads,
They doubly redoubled strokes.
I.ii.46 (401,8) So should he look, that seems to speak things strange] The meaning of this passage, as it now stands, is, _so should he look, that looks as if he told things strange_. But Rosse neither yet told strange things, nor could look as if he told them; Lenox only conjectured from his air that he had strange things to tell, and therefore undoubtedly said,
_What haste looks thro' his eyes? So should he look, that_ teems to speak thinks strange.
He looks like one that is big with something of importance; a metaphor so natural that it is every day used in common discourse.
I.ii.55 (402,1) Confronted him with self-comparisons] [Theobald interpreted "him" as Cawdor; Johnson, in 1745, accused Shakespeare of forgetfulness on the basis of Theobald's error; and Warburton here speaks of "blunder upon blunder."] The second blunderer was the present editor.
I.iii.6 (403,5) _Aroint thee, witch_!] In one of the folio editions the reading is Anoint thee, in a sense very consistent with the common accounts of witches, who are related to perform many supernatural acts by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the places where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense, _anoint thee, Witch_, will mean, _Away, Witch, to your infernal assembly_. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word aroint in no other authour till looking into Hearne's Collections I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting the devils into great confusion by his presence, of whom one that is driving the damned before him with a prong, has a label issuing out of his mouth with these words, OUT OUT ARONGT, of which the last is evidently the same with aroint, and used in the same sense as in this passage.
I.iii.15 (405,8) And the very points they blew] As the word very is here of no other use than to fill up the verse, it is likely that Shakespeare