thought, he was inspired with the gift or prophesie, and also to have had the gift of healing infirmities and diseases. He used to helpe those that were vexed with the disease commonlie called the King's evil, and left that virtue as it were a portion of inheritance unto his successors, the Kings of this realme." Holinshed, Vol. I. p.195. MALONE. P. 71, 1. 8. Mal. My countryman; but yet I know him not.] Malcolm discovers Rosse to be his countryman, while he is yet at soine distance from him, by his dress. This circumstance loses its propriety on our stage, as all the characters are uniforinly represented in English habits. STEEVENS. P. 71, 1. 21. To rent is an ancient verb which has been long ago disused. STEEVENS. P. 71, l. 23. 24. where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstacy; That is, no more regarded than the contorsions that fanatics throw themselves into. The author was thinking of those of his own times. WARBURTON. I believe modern is only foolish or trifling. JOHNSON. Modern is generally used by Shakspeare to signify trite, common; as "modern instances," in As you like It, &c. &c. STEEVENS. Ecstacy, is used by Shakspeare for a temporary alienation of mind. MALONE. P. 71, 1. 30. Too nice, and yet too true!] The redundancy of this hemistich induces me to believe our author only wrote → Too nice, yet true! STEEVENS. P. 72, 1. 19. To doff is to do off, to put off. STEEVENS. 1 P. 72, 1. 28. To latch (in the North country. dialect) signifies the same as to catch. STEEVENS. P. 72, 1. 30. a fee-grief,] A peculiar sorrow; a grief that hath a single owner. pression is, at least to our ears, very harsh. JOHNSON. So, in our author's Lover's Complaint : 66 The ex My woeful self that did in freedom stand, "And was my own fee-simple.' MALONE. It must, I think, be allowed that in both the foregoing instances the Attorney has been guilty of a flat trespass on the Poet. STEEVENS. P.73, 1. 9. Quarry is a term used both in hunting and falconry. In both sports it means the game after it is killed. STEEVENS. P. 73, 1. 24. He has no children.] It has been observed by an anonymous critic, that this is not said of Macbeth, who had children, but of Malcolm, who, having none, supposes a father can be so easily comforted. JOHNSON. The meaning of this may be, either that Macduff could not by retaliation revenge the murder of his children, because Macbeth had none himself; or that if he had any, a father's feelings for a father would have prevented him from the deed. I know not from what passage we are to infer that Macbeth had children alive. Holinshed's Chronicle does not, as I remember, mention any. The same thought occurs again in K. John: He talks to me that never had a son." Again in K. Henry VI. P. III : "You have no children: butchers, if you had, "The thought of them would have stirr'd up remorse. STEEVENS. Surely the latter of the two interpretations offered by Mr. Steevens is the true one, supposing these words to relate to Macbeth. The passage, however, quoted from King John, seems in favour of the supposition that these words relate to Malcolm. That Macbeth had children at some period, appears from what Lady Macbeth says in the first act: "I have given suck," &c. I am still more strongly confirmed in thinking these words relate to Malcolm, and not to Macbeth, because Macbeth had a son then alive, named Lulah, who after his father's death was proclaimed King by some of his friends, and slain at Strathbolgie, about four months after the battle of Dunsinane. See Fordun. Scoti-Chron. L. V. c. viii, Whether Shakspeare was apprized of this circumstance, cannot be now ascertained; but we cannot prove that he was unacquainted with it. MALONE. P. 73, 1. 28. Swoop is the descent of a bird of prey on his quarry. It is frequently, however, used by Drayton, in his Polyolbion, to express the swift descent of rivers, STEEVENS. P. 73, 1. 29. Dispute it like a man.] i. e. contend with your present sorrow like a man. www STEEVENS.. P. 74, 1. 11. all intermission;] i. e. all escape my vengeance, also. if he 'scape, let him That is, if he escape that of Heaven The meaning, I believe, is, if heaven be so unjust as to let him escape my vengeance, I am content that it should proceed still further in its injustice, and to impunity in this world add forgiveness hereafter. MALONE. P. 75, 1.8 and fol. Since his Majesty went into the field, &c.] This is one of Shakspeare's oversights. He forgot that he had shut up Macbeth in Dunsinane, and surrounded him with besiegers. That he could not go into the field, is observed by himself with splenetic impatience: our castle's strength "Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie "We might have met them dareful, beard "And beat them backward home." It is clear also from other passages, that Macbeth's motions had long been circumscribed by the walls of his fortress. The truth may be, that Shakspeare thought the spirit of Lady Macbeth could not be so effectually subdued, and her peace of mind so speedily unsettled by reflection on her guilt, as during the absence of her husband: deserto jacuit dum frigida lecto, Dum queritur tardos ire relicta dies. For the present change in her disposition, therefore, our poet (though in the haste of finishing his play he forgot his plan,) might mean to have provided, by allotting her such an interval of solitude as would subject her mind to perturbation, and dispose her thoughts to repentance. It does not appear from any circumstance within the compass of this drama, that she had once been #parated from her hushand, after his return from 302 NOTES TO MACBETH. the victory over Macdonwald and the King of Norway. STEEVENS. (2013 2013 P76, 1. 16. One; Two ;] Macbeth does not, previously to the murder, mention the hour at which, Lady Macbeth is to strike upon the b bell, obWhich was to be the signal for his going into Duncan's chamber to execute his wicked purpose; but Droit seems that Lady Macbeth is now thinking of the moment when she rang the bell; and that two 'clock was the hour when the deed was perpetrated. This agrees with the scene that immediately precedes the murder, but not with that which follows it. MALONE. q. 304 bus P. 76, 1. 17. Murky is dark. Lady Macbeth is acting over, in a dream, the business of the murder of Duncan, and encouraging her husband as when awake. She, therevifore, would not have even hinted the terrors of hell to one whose conscience she saw was too much alarmed already for her purpose. She certainly imagines herself here talking to Macbeth, who, (she supposes), had just said, Hell is murky, (i. e. hell is a dismal place to go to in consequence of such a deed,) and repeats his words in contempt of his cowardice. Hell is murky! Fie, my Lord, fie! a soldier, and afear'd? This explanation, I think, gives a spirit to the passage, which has hitherto appeared languid, being perhaps misapprehended, by those who placed a full point at the conclusion of it. STEEVENS. P. 76, 1. 20. 21. Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? Statius, speaking of the sword by which an old man was slain, calls it egentem sanguinis ensem; and Ovid, [Met. L. VII.] describing a wound in |