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Which weighs upon the heart?

Doct.

Must minister to himself.

Therein the patient

Macb. Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.Come, put mine armour on; give me my

staff.

Seyton, send out.-Doctor, the thanes fly from me.--
Come, sir, dispatch.-If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,

I would applaud thee to the very echo,

That should applaud again.-Pull't off, I say.

What rhubarb, senna', or what purgative drug,

Would scour these English hence ?-Hear'st thou of them? Doct. Ay, my good lord: your royal preparation

Makes us hear something.

Macb.

Bring it after me.

I will not be afraid of death and bane,

Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

[Exit.

Doct. Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,

Profit again should hardly draw me here.

[Exit.

SCENE IV.

Country near Dunsinane: a Wood in view.

Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD, and his Son, MACDUFF, MENTETH, CATHNESS, ANGUS, LENOX, ROSSE, and Soldiers marching.

Mal. Cousins, I hope, the days are near at hand,

That chambers will be safe.

Ment.

We doubt it nothing.

The wood of Birnam.

Siw. What wood is this before us?
Ment.

nor as many more (which might be readily accumulated) would satisfy a judicious and impartial reader with stuff, in opposition to "grief." Even Mr. Dyce mistrusts his own evidence, as he well may, and begs "not to be understood to maintain positively the integrity of the old text."

♦ What rhubarb, SENNA,] "Senna" is misprinted cyme in the folios, and Rowe corrected it to "senna." The Rev. Mr. Dyce tells us (" Remarks," p. 201) that the "Rates of Merchandizes" (where he found the entry of napless fustians, erroneously taken by him to mean Naples fustians," see Vol. iv. p. 637) contains no such drug as cyme: we should have been astonished if it had.

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Mal. Let every soldier hew him down a bough,
And bear't before him: thereby shall we shadow
The numbers of our host, and make discovery
Err in report of us.

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Siw. We learn no other but the confident tyrant Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure

Our setting down before't.

'Tis his main hope;

Mal.
For where there is advantage to be gotten,
Both more and less have given him the revolt,
And none serve with him but constrained things,
Whose hearts are absent too.

Macd.

Attend the true event, and put we on

Industrious soldiership.

Siw.

Let our just censures

The time approaches,

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.

[Exeunt marching.

SCENE V.

Dunsinane. Within the Castle.

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 farc'd with those that should be our's',

6 For where there is advantage to be GOTTEN,] It is "advantage to be given' in the folios, and amended to "advantage to be gotten" in the corr. fo. 1632. There can be little doubt that it was the poet's word: Johnson would read “advantage to be gone;" but "advantage to be got" is more probable, and " advantage to be gotten" more correct.

7 Were they not FARC'D with those that should be our's,] He alludes to the filling up of the ranks of his enemy-the stuffing of them with troops that ought to have fought on his side. The old reading of the folios is forc'd—an easy mis

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 quail'd To hear a night-shriek: and my fell of hair' Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir,

8

As life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors:
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.-Wherefore was that cry?
Sey. The queen, my lord, is dead'.

Macb. 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.

print for "farc'd," to which it is amended in the corr. fo. 1632. To "farce" is to stuff, of which it is needless to cite examples: Shakespeare uses it in Henry V.," A. iv. sc. 1, Vol. iii. p. 604. We may add here that in "Troilus and Cressida," Vol. iv. p. 572, "forced" ought to have been printed farced.

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8 my senses would have QUAIL'D] So the corr. fo. 1632 for the poor word cool'd of the folio, 1623, and the other folios. The blunder, no doubt, arose from the fact that this part of the play, as printed, was originally taken down in shorthand, and that the same letters, kid, spelt “quail'd" and cool'd.

9 and my FELL of hair] "Fell" is properly skin, covered with hair.

1 The queen, my lord, is dead.] We must suppose, that Seyton has gone to what we now call "the wing" of the stage to inquire.

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2 The way to DUSTY DEATH.] Shakespeare was not the first to apply the epithet "dusty to death. Anthony Copley, in his " Fig for Fortune," 1596, has this line:

"Inviting it to dusty death's defeature."

There can be no doubt it is the right word, although the second folio reads “study death" (" dusty" is restored by the old annotator), and Warburton would read dusky. None of the commentators appear to have found an instance of the coupling of the two words " dusty death." The Rev. Mr. Dyce, when putting together his Few Notes," in 1853, and quoting a whole stanza of Copley's poem, must have entirely forgotten that we had already used the same quotation for the same purpose in our first edition, Vol. vii. p. 180. He might have thus spared himself about a page of inapplicable censure.

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Enter a Messenger.

Thou com'st to use thy tongue; thy story, quickly.

Mess. Gracious my lord,

I shall report that which I say I saw,

But know not how to do't.

Macb.

Well, say, sir.

Mess. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move'.

Macb.

Liar, and slave!

Mess. Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so.
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.

Macb.

If thou speak'st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,

I care not if thou dost for me as much.—

I pull in resolution; and begin

To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth: "Fear not, till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane;"—and now a wood

3 The wood began to move.] So in Deloney's ballad in praise of Kentishmen, published in "Strange Histories," 1607, they conceal their numbers from William the Conqueror by the boughs of trees:—

"For when they spied his approach,

in place as they did stand,

Then marched they to hem him in

each one a bough in hand.

"So that unto the Conqueror's sight,
amazed as he stood,

They seemed to be a walking grove,

or els a mooving wood."-P. 7.

This ballad was written, unquestionably, before the year 1600, but Shakespeare, as usual, had his information from Holinshed. In our first edition we never "seemed to suppose," (Dyce's "Remarks," p. 202) that Deloney invented the incident.

Till famine CLING thee:] "Cling" is a word to which it is difficult to assign a precise meaning. The commentators have adduced various passages from other authors, which show that most of them used it in different senses. Steevens says, that "clung, in the northern counties, signifies any thing that is shrivelled or shrunk up." In Craven, when a wet bladder is empty, and therefore collapses, it is said to cling, and the word is there also figuratively used for hungry or empty. See Holloway's "General Provincial Dictionary," 1838. In Sir F. Madden's admirable Glossary to "Syr Gawayne," 4to, 1839, clenged is interpreted tracted or shrunk with cold." "Till famine cling thee" may therefore mean, "till famine shrink thee."

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Comes toward Dunsinane.-Arm, arm, and out !—
If this, which he avouches, does appear,

There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.

I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,

And wish th' estate o' the world were now undone.-
Ring th' alarum bell!-Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.

SCENE VI.

The Same. A Plain before the Castle.

[Exeunt.

Enter, with drums and colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD,
MACDUFF, &c., and their Army with boughs.

Mal. Now near enough: your leafy screens throw down, And show like those you are.-You, worthy uncle,

Shall, with my cousin, your right-noble son,

Lead our first battle: worthy Macduff, and we,

Shall take upon's what else remains to do,
According to our order.

Siw.

Fare you well.

Do we but find the tyrant's power to-night,

Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.

Macd. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

[Exeunt. Alarums continued.

SCENE VII.

The Same. Another Part of the Plain.

Enter MACBETH.

Macb. They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly, But, bear-like, I must fight the course.-What's he, That was not born of woman? Such a one

Am I to fear, or none.

Enter young SIWARD.

Yo. Siw. What is thy name?

Macb.

Thou'lt be afraid to hear it.

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