Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  It is probable that this passage was first corrupted by writing safe for save, and the lines then stood thus:

  — doing nothing

  Safe toward your love and honour.

  which the next transcriber observing to be wrong, and yet not being able to discover the real fault, altered to the present reading.

  Dr. Warburton has since changed fiefs to fief’d, and Hanmer has altered safe to shap’d. I am afraid none of us have hit the right word.

  I.v.2 (420, 6) by the perfected report] By the best intelligence. Dr. Warburton would read, perfected, and explains report by prediction. Little regard can be paid to an emendation that instead of clearing the sense, makes it more difficult.

  I.v.23 (420, 7) thoud’st have, great Glamis,/That which cries, Thus thou must do, if thou have it] As the object of Macbeth’s desire is here introduced speaking of itself, it is necessary to read,

  — thoud’st have, great Glamis,

  That which cries, thus thou must do, if thou have me.

  I.v.39 (422, 8) The raven himself is hoarse] Dr. Warburton reads,

  — The raven himself’s not hoarse.

  Yet I think the present words may stand. The messenger, says the servant, had hardly breath to make up his message; to which the lady answers mentally, that he may well want breath, such a message would add hoarseness to the raven. That even the bird, whose harsh voice is accustomed to predict calamities, could not croak the entrance of Duncan but in a note of unwonted harshness.

  I.v.42 (422, 2) mortal thoughts] This expression signifies not the thoughts of mortals, but murtherous, deadly, or destructive designs. So in act 5,

  Hold fast the mortal sword.

  And in another place,

  With twenty mortal murthers.

  I.v.47 (422, 3) nor keep peace between/The effect, and it!] The intent of lady Macbeth evidently is to wish that no womanish tenderness, or conscientious remorse, may hinder her purpose from proceeding to effect; but neither this, nor indeed any other sense, is expressed by the present reading, and therefore it cannot be doubted that Shakespeare wrote differently, perhaps thus,

  That no compunctious visitings of nature

  Shake my fell purpose, nor keep pace between

  Th’ effect, and it. —

  To keep pace between may signify to pass between, to intervene. Pace is on many occasions a favourite of Shakespeare’s. This phrase is indeed not usual in this sease, but was it not its novelty that gave occasion to the present corruption? [The sense is, that no compunctious visitings of nature may prevail upon her, to give place in her mind to peaceful thoughts, or to rest one moment in quiet, from the hour of her purpose to its full completion in the effect. REVISAL.] This writer thought himself perhaps very sagacious that be found a meaning which nobody missed, the difficulty still remains how such a meaning is made by the words. (see 1765, VI, 394, 6)

  I.v.49 (423, 5) take my milk for gall] Take away my milk, and put gall into the place.

  I.v.51 (423, 6) You wait on nature’s mischief!] Nature’s mischief is mischief done to nature, violation of nature’s order committed by wickedness.

  I.v.55 (423,8) To cry, hold, hold!] On this passage there is a long criticism in the Rambler.

  I.v.58 (424,1) This ignorant present time] Ignorant has here the signification of unknowing; that it, I feel by anticipation these future hours, of which, according to the process of nature, the present time would be ignorant.

  I.vi.3 (425,3) our gentle senses] Senses are nothing more than each man’s sense. Gentle senses is very elegant, as it means placid, calm, composed, and intimates the peaceable delight of a fine day. (see 1765, VI,396,2)

  I.vi.7 (426,5) coigne of ‘vantage] Convenient corner.

  I.vi.13 (426,7) How you should bid god-yield as for your pains] I believe yield, or, as it is in the folio of 1623, eyld, is a corrupted contraction of shield. The wish implores not reward but protection.

  I.vii.1 (428,1) If it were done] A man of learning recommends another punctuation:

  If it were done, when ’tis done, then ‘twere well.

  It were done quickly, if, &c.

  I.vii.2 (428,2) If the assassination/Could tramel up the consequence] Of this soliloquy the meaning is not very clear; I have never found the readers of Shakespeare agreeing about it. I 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 the crown, when ’tis, when that happens which the prediction promises, it shall make honour for you.

  II.i.49 (437,6) Now o’er the one half world/Nature seems dead] That is, over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have ceased. This image, which is perhaps the most striking that poetry can produce, has been adopted by Dryden in his Conquest of Mexico:

  All things are hush’d as Nature’s self lay dead,

  The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head;

  The little birds in dreams their song repeat,

  And sleeping flow’rs beneath the night dews sweat.

  Even lust and envy sleep!

  These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast between them and this passage of Shakespeare may be more accurately observed.

  Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of quiet, the other of perturbation. In the night of Dryden, all the disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakespeare, nothing but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake. He that reads Dryden, finds himself lull’d with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation. He that peruses Shakspeare looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover, the other, of a murderer.

  II.i.52 (438,8)

  — wither’d Murther,

  — thus with hia stealthy pace,

  With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, tow’rds his design

  moves like a ghost. — ]

  This was the reading of this passage [ravishing sides] in all the editions before that of Mr. Pope, who for sides, inserted in the text strides, which Mr. Theobald has tacitly copied from him, though a more proper alteration might perhaps have been made. A ravishing stride is an action of violence, impetuosity, and tumult, like that of a savage rushing at his prey; whereas the poet is here attempting to exhibit an image of secrecy and caution, of anxious circumspection and guilty timidity, the stealthy pace of a ravisher creeping into the chamber of a virgin, and of an assassin approaching the bed of him whom he proposes to murder, without awaking him; these he describes as moving like ghosts, whose progression is so different from strides, that it has been in all ages represented te be, as Milton expresses it,

  Smooth sliding without step.

  This hemiatic will afford the true reading of this place, which is, I think, to be corrected thus:

  — and wither’d Murder.

  — thus with his stealthy pace.

  With Tarquin ravishing, slides tow’rds his design,

  Moves like a ghost. —

  Tarquin is in this place the general name of a ravisher, and the sense is, Now is the time in which every one is a-sleep, but those who are employed in wickedness; the witch who is sacrificing to Hecate, and the ravisher, and the murderer, who, like me, are stealing upon their prey.

  When the reading is thus adjusted, he wishes with great propriety, in the following lines, that the earth may not hear his steps.

  II.i.59 (439,3) And take the present horrour from the time,/Which now suits with it] Of this passage an alteration was once proposed by me, of which I have now a less favourable opinion, yet will insert it, as it may perhaps give some hint to other critics:

  And take the present horrour from the time,

  Which now suits with it. —

  I believe every one that has attentively read this dreadful soliloquy is disappointed at the conclusion, which, if not wholly unintelligible, is, at least, obscure, nor can be explained into any sense worthy of the authour. I shall therefore propose a slight alteration:

  — Thou sound and firm-set earth,

  Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

  Thy very stones prate of my where-about,

  And talk — the present horrour of the time!

  That now suits with it. —

  Macbeth has, in the foregoing lines, disturbed his imagination by enumerating all the terrors of the night; at length he is wrought up to a degree of frenzy, that makes him afraid of some supernatural discovery of his design, and calls out to the stones not to betray him, not to declare where he walks, nor to talk. — As he is going to say of what, he discovers the absurdity of his suspicion, and pauses, but is again overwhelmed by his guilt, and concludes, that such are the horrors of the present night, that the stones may be expected to cry out against him:

  That now suits with it. —

  He observes in a subsequent passage, that on such occasions stones have been known to move. It is now a very just and strong picture of a man about to commit a deliberate murder under the strongest conviction of the wickedness of his design. Of this alteration, however, I do not now see much use, and certainly see no necessity.

  Whether to take horrour from the time means not rather to 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, a
s 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 the thought but the numbers are injured, the lines of Shakespeare close together without any traces of a breach.