When I behold-Seyton, I say!—This push
Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare
Seyton!-

not.

Enter SEYTON.

That will with due decision make us know What we shall say we have, and what we owe. Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate; But certain issue strokes must arbitrate: Towards which, advance the war.

Enter, with drums and colours, MACBETH,
SEYTON, and Soldiers.

Macb. Hang out our banners on the outward walls;

The cry is still, "They come." Our castle's

strength

Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie, Till famine and the ague eat them up:

Were they not forced with those that should be ours,

We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home. What is that
noise? [A cry within, of women.
Sey. It is the cry of women, my good lord.
Macb. I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in 't: I have supped full with hor-

rors;

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.-Wherefore was that cry?

Sey. The queen, my lord, is dead.

Mach. She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word.To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Macd. That way the noise is.-Tyrant, shew thy face:

If thou beest slain, and with no stroke of mine, My wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still.

I cannot strike at wretched kernes, whose arms Are hired to bear their staves: either thou, Macbeth,

Or else my sword, with an unbattered edge,

I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;

By this great clatter, one of greatest note
Seems bruited. Let me find him, Fortune!
And more I beg not.

[Exit. Alarum.

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield To one of woman born.

Despair thy charm;

Macd. And let the angel whom thou still hast served, Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb Untimely ripped.

Macb. Accurséd be that tongue that tells me

For it hath cowed my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope.-I'll not fight with
thee.

Macd. Then yield thee, coward,

And live to be the show and gaze o' the time.
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole; and underwrit,
"Here may you see the tyrant."

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, And to be baited with the rabble's curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, And thou opposed, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the last. Before my body

I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff; And damned be him that first cries, "Hold, enough." [Exeunt, fighting.

Retreat. Flourish. Re-enter, with drums and colours, MALCOLM, Old SIWARD, ROSSE, LENOX, ANGUS, CATHNESS, MENTETH, and Soldiers. Mal. I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.

Siw. Some must go off: and yet, by these I see, So great a day as this is cheaply bought.

Mal. Macduff is missing, and your noble son. Rosse. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt:

He only lived but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirmed
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.

Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland
In such an honour named. What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,—
As calling home our exiled friends abroad,
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
Producing forth the cruel ministers

Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen
(Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life);—this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,
We will perform in measure, time, and place:
So thanks to all at once, and to each one,
Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.
[Flourish. Exeunt.

"When the hurlyburly's done."-Act I., Scene 1. Peacham, in his "GARDEN OF ELOQUENCE," elevates the now vulgar phrase "hurlyburly" into one of the ornaments of language:-"Onomatopeia: when we invent, devise, feign, and make a name intimating the sound of that it signifieth; as hurlyburly, for an uproar and tumultuous stir."

"1ST WITCH. I come, Graymalkin.

ALL. Paddock calls."-Act I., Scene 1.

Here, it is probable, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad.

“Of kernes and gallowglasses is supplied.”—Act I., Scene 2.

Barnaby Riche, in his " NEW IRISH PROGNOSTICATION," describes the troops here mentioned :-"The galloglas succeedeth the horseman, and he is commonly armed with a scull, a shirt of mail, and a galloglas axe." The kernes, he denounces as "the very dross and scum of the country; a generation of villains not fit to live."

“Till ke disbursed, at St. Colmés' inch.”—Act I., Scene 2. Colmes' inch, now called Inchcomb, is a small island, lying in the frith of Edinburgh, with an abbey upon it, dedicated to St. Columb; called by Camden, Inch Colm, or the Isle of Columba. Inch, or inche, in the Irish and Erse languages, signifies an island. Holinshed thus relates the circumstance alluded to in the play: "The Danes that escaped, and got once to their ships, obtained of Macbeth, for a great sum of gold, that such of their friends as were slain might be buried in St. Colmes' inch. In memory whereof, many old sepultures are yet in the said inch there to be seen, graven with the arms of the Danes."

The rebellion of Macdonwald, and the invasion by Sweno, were not, in reality, contemporaneous events. The facts are these:-During the reign of Duncan, Banquo having been plundered, by the people of Lochaber, of some of the king's revenue, and being dangerously wounded in the affray, the parties concerned in the outrage were summoned to appear at a certain day. This led to the formidable rebellion headed by Macdonwald, which was finally suppressed by Macbeth and Banquo. It was at a subsequent period, in the last year of Duncan's reign, that Sweno, King of Norway, invaded Scotland. Duncan's successful generals were again employed. Sweno won the first battle, but was routed in the second with great slaughter, and escaped to Norway with very few followers.-Shakspere has effectively woven these two incidents together; and immediately after the defeat of Sweno, the action of the play

commences.

"But in a sieve I'll thither sail,

And, like a rat without a tail."-Act I., Scene 3.

In a book "declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian," is the following passage :-" All they (the witches) together went to sea, each one in a riddle or sieve; and went in the same very substantially, with flagons of wine, making merry and drinking by the way, in the same riddles or sieves."

"It was imagined," says Steevens, "that, though a witch could assume the form of any animal she pleased, the tail

would still be wanting. This deficiency has been thus accounted for: though the hands and feet might, by an easy change, be converted into the four paws of a beast, still there was no part about a woman which corresponded to the length of tail common to almost all our four-footed animals."

"I'll give thee a wind."-Act I., Scene 3.

This was making a present of what was usually sold. In "SUMMER'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT," we find :"In Ireland and in Denmark both, Witches for gold will sell a man a wind, Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapped, Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will."

"Weary seven nights, nine times nine,

Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine."-Act I., Scene 3.

This mischief was supposed to be effected by means of a waxen figure, which represented the person who was to be consumed by slow degrees.

"The weird sisters, hand in hand."-Act I., Scene 3. Weird signifies prophetic. Gawin Douglas, in his translation of "VIRGIL," renders the Parcæ (or Fates) by the term weird sisters.

"What are these,

So withered, and so wild in their attire ?"-Act I., Scene 3. The circumstances attending this encounter of Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches are minutely detailed by Holinshed. Shakspere has followed the stream of the colloquy, but greatly enriched it with poetic ornament.

By Sinel's death, I know I am thane of Cawdor." Act I., Scene 3. Sinel, according to Holinshed, was the name of Macbeth's father.

"Or have we eaten of the insane root,

That takes the reason prisoner?"-Act I., Scene 3. This alludes to the qualities anciently ascribed to hemlock. In Greene's "NEVER TOO LATE." 1616, we have "You gazed against the sun, and so blemished your sight; or else you have eaten of the roots of hemlock, that makes men's eyes conceit unseen objects."

"Function

Is smothered in surmise; and nothing is,
But what is not."-Act I., Scene 3.

Dr. Johnson has thus explained this obscure passage:"All powers of action are opposed and crushed by one overwhelming image in the mind, and nothing is present to me but that which is really future."

"We will establish our estate upon

Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter, The Prince of Cumberland."-Act I., Scene 4. Cumberland was, at the time in question, held by Scotland of the crown of England, as a fief. Prince of Cumberland was the title borne by the declared successor to the throne of Scotland. A short extract from Holinshed