Re-enter Lady MACBETH. Lady M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame mean the aggregate of seas, he must be understood to design the multitude of waves, or the waves that have the appearance of a multitude. In Coriolanus we have—“ the many-headed multitude." Steevens. 3 Making the green-one red.] The same thought occurs in The Downfal of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601: Again: "He made the green sea red with Turkish blood." "The multitudes of seas died red with blood.” Another, not unlike it, is found in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. II, c. x, st. 48: "The whiles with blood they all the shore did stain, Again, in the 19th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion: "And the vast greenish sea discolour'd like to blood.” Steevens. The same thought is also found in The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher, 1634: "Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast turn'd The present passage is one of those alluded to in a note at the end of As you Like it, Vol. V, in which, I apprehend, our author's words have been refined into a sense that he never thought of. The other is in Othello: "Put out the light, and then put out the light." The line before us, on the suggestion of the ingenious author of The Gray's-Inn Journal, has been printed in some late editions in the following manner: Making the green—one red. Every part of this line, as thus regulated, appears to me exceptionable. One red does not sound to my ear as the phraseology of the age of Elizabeth; and the green, for the green one, or for the green sea, is, I am persuaded, unexampled. The quaintness introduced by such a regulation seems of an entirely different colour from the quaintnesses of Shakspeare. He would have written, I have no doubt, "Making the green sea, red," (So, in The Tempest: "And 'twixt the green sea and the azure vault if he had not used the word seas in the preceding line, which "They have all new legs, and lame ones." Again, in The Merchant of Venice: 470107 To wear a heart so white.4 [Knock] I hear a knocking How easy is it then? Your constancy Hath left you unattended.-[ Knocking.] Hark! more knocking: Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, So poorly in your thoughts. Matb. To know my deed-'twere best not know myself.5 [Knock. Wake Duncan with thy knocking! Ay, 'would thou could'st!" [Exeunt. "A stage where every man must play a part, Though the punctuation of the old copy is very often faulty, yet in all doubtful cases it ought, when supported by more decisive circumstances, to have some little weight. In the present instance, the line is pointed as in my text: Making the green one, red. Malone. If the new punctuation be dismissed, we must correct the foregoing line, and read-" the multitudinous sea; for how will the plural-seas, accord with the green one?" Besides, the sense conveyed by the arrangement which Mr. Malone would reject, is countenanced by a passage in Hamlet: "Hath now his dread and black complexion smear'd i. e. one red. The expression" one red," may also be justified by language yet more ancient than that of Shakspeare. In Genesis, ii, 24, (and several other places in scripture) we have"one flesh." Again, in our Liturgy: " be made one fold - under one shepherd." Again, in Milton's Comus, v. 133: "And makes one blot of all the air." But, setting aside examples, are there not many unique phrases in our author? Steevens. My bands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white.] A similar antithesis is found in Marlowe's Lust's Dominion, written before 1593: "Your cheeks are black, let not your soul look white.” Malone, To know my deed,twere best not know myself.] i. e. While I have the thoughts of this deed, it were best not know, or be lost to myself. This is an answer to the lady's reproof: be not lost So poorly in your thoughts. Warburton, SCENE III.8 The same. Enter a Porter. [Knocking within. Port. Here's a knocking, indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. [Knocking.] Knock, knock, knock: Who's there, i' the name of Belzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: Come in time; have napkins enough about you; here you'll sweat 6 Wake Duncan with thy knocking!] Macbeth is addressing the person who knocks at the outward gate.-Sir W. D'Avenant, in his alteration of this play, reads-(and intended probably to point) "Wake, Duncan, with this knocking!" conceiving that Macbeth called upon Duncan to awake. From the same misapprehension, I once thought his emendation right; but there is certainly no need of change. Malone. See Mr. Malone's extract from Mr. Whately's Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakspeare, at the conclusion of this tragedy. Steevens. 7 -Ay, 'would thou could'st!] The old copy has-I; but as ay, the affirmative particle, was thus written, I conceive it to have been designed here. Had Shakspeare meant to express "I would," he might, perhaps, only have given us-'Would, as on many other occasions.-The repentant exclamation of Macbeth, in my judgment, derives force from the present change; a change which has been repeatedly made in spelling this ancient substitute for the word of enforcement-ay, in the very play before us If it be urged, that the line is roughen'd by the reading I would introduce, let not the following verse, in Act III, sc. vi, of this very tragedy, be forgotten: "Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too?" Steevens. & Scene III.] Though Shakspeare (see Sir J. Reynold's excellent note on Act I, sc. vi, p. 60,) might have designed this scene as another instance of what is called the repose in painting, I cannot help regarding it in a different light. A glimpse of comedy was expected by our author's audience in the most serious drama; and where else could the merriment, which he himself was always struggling after, be so happiły introduced? Steevens. 9 be should have old turning the key.] i. e. frequent, more than enough. So, in King Henry IV, P. II, the Drawer says, "Then here will be old utis." See note on this passage. Steevens: for 't. [Knocking.] Knock, knock: Who's there, i' the other devil's name? 'Faith, here 's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake,2 yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator. [Knocking.] Knock, knock, knock: Who 's there? 'Faith, here's an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose:3 Come in, tailor; 1 Othello: napkins enough - i. e. handkerchiefs. So, in "Your napkin is too little " Steevens. 2— ·here's an equivocator,—who committed treason enough for God's sake,] Meaning a Jesuit: an order so troublesome to the state in queen Elizabeth and king James the First's time. The inventors of the execrable doctrine of equivocation. Warburton. 3 bere's an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French bose:] The archness of the joke consists in this, that a French hose being very short and strait, a tailor must be master of his trade who could steal any thing from thence. Warburton. Dr. Warburton has said this at random. The French bose (according to Stubbs, in his Anatomie of Abuses) were in the year 1595 much in fashion: "The Gallic hosen are made very large and wide, reaching down to their knees only, with three or foure gardes apeece laid down along either bose." Again, in The Ladies Privilege, 1640: 66 wear their long "Parisian breeches, with five points at knees, "Whose tags, concurring with their harmonious spurs, "Afford rare music; then have they doublets "So short i' th' waist, they seem as twere begot Upon their doublets by their cloaks, which to save stuff "Are but a year's growth longer than their skirts; "And all this magazine of device is furnish'd "By your French taylor." Again, in The Defence of Coneycatching, 1592: “Blest be the French sleeves and breech verdingales that grants them (the tailors) leave to coney-catch so mightily." Steevens. When Mr. Steevens censured Dr. Warburton in this place, he forgot the uncertainty of French fashions. In The Treasury o ancient and modern Times, 1613, we have an account (from Guyon, I suppose) of the old French dresses: "Mens bose answered in length to their short-skirted doublets; being made close to their limbes, wherein they had no meanes for pockets." And Withers, in his Satyr against Vanity, ridicules the spurze diminitive, neat, Frenchman's hose." Farmer. here you may roast your goose. [Knocking.] Knock, knock: Never at quiet! What are you?-But this place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.* [Knocking.] Anon, anon; I pray you, remember the porter. [Opens the gate. Enter MACDUFF and LENOX. Macd. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, That you do lie so late? Port. 'Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock:5 and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things. Macd. What three things does drink especially pro voke? Port. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and dis From the following passages in The Scornful Lady, by Beaumont and Fletcher, which appeared about the year 1613, it may be collected that large breeches were then in fashion: Saville. [an old steward.] "A comelier wear, I wis, than your dangling slops." Afterwards Young Lovely says to the steward, This is as plain as your old minikin breeches." 4 Hamlet: Malone. the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.] So, in "Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads." Again, in All's Well that Ends Well: "the flowery way that leads &c. to the great fire." Chaucer also, in his Persone's Tale, calls idleness" the greene path-way to hell." Steevens. 5 till the second cock:] Cockcrowing. So, in King Lear: "he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock." Again, in The Twelfth mery Leste of the Widow Edith, 1573: "The time they pas merely til ten of the clok, "Yea, and I shall not lye, till after the first cok." Steevens. It appears, from a passage in Romeo and Juliet, that Shakspeare means, that they were carousing till three o'clock: 66 The second cock has crow'd; "The curfew-bell has toll'd: 'tis three o'clock." Malone. |