To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb, To appease an angry God. Macd. I am not treacherous. Mal. But Macbeth is. A good and virtuous nature may recoil In an imperial charge 266). But 'crave your pardon; Though all things foul 267) would wear the brows of grace, I have lost my hopes. my Macd. Mal. Perchance, even there, where I did find doubts. Why in that rawness 268) left you wife, and child, (Those precious motives, those strong knots of love) Without leave - taking? Let not my jealousies be But mine own safeties. Whatever I shall think.、 Macd. I pray you, your dishonours, You may be rightly just, Bleed, bleed, poor country! Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis, sure, For goodness dares not check thee! Wear thou thy wrongs, His title is affeer'd 269)! Fare thee well, lord: - I would not be the villain that thou think'st, For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp, Mal. Be not offended; I speak not as in absolute fear of you. I think, our country sinks beneath the yoke: It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash 266) In an imperial charge. A good mind may recede from Johnson. goodness in the execution of a royal commission. 267) The meaning perhaps is this: My suspicions cannot injure you, if you be virtuous, by supposing that a traitor may put on your virtuous appearance. I do not say that your virtuous appearance proves you a traitor; for virtue must wear its proper form, though that form be counterfeited by villainy. Johnson. 268) Why in that rawness. Without previous provision, without due preparation, without maturity of counsel. Johnson. 269) To affeer is to assess, or reduce to certainty. Ritson. Perhaps the meaning is: Poor country, wear thou thy wrongs! Thy title to them is now fully established by law. Or perhaps he addresses Malcolm. Continue to endure tamely the wrongs you suffer: thy just title to the throne is cow'd, has not spirit to establish itself. Malone. Is added to her wounds. I think, withal, Macd. What should he be? That, when they shall be open'd, black Macbeth With my confineless harms. Macd. Not in the legions Of horrid hell, can come a devil more damn'd, Mal. Sudden 270), malicious, smacking of every sin All continent impediments would o'er-bear, Than such a one to reign. In Macd. Better Macbeth, Boundless intemperance nature is a tyranny: it hath been The untimely emptying of the happy throne, And yet seem cold, the time you may so hood-wink. We have willing dames enough; there cannot be That vulture in you, to devour so many, As will to greatness dedicate themselves, Finding it so inclin'd. 270) sudden, violent, hasty. Johnson. Mal. With this, there grows, In my most ill-compos'd affection, such Sticks deeper; grows with more pernicious root Mal. But I have none. The king-becoming graces, In the division of each several crime, Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should Uproar the universal peace, confound All unity on earth 274), Macd. O Scotland! Scotland! Mal. If such a one be fit to govern, speak: I am as I have spoken. 271) summer-seeding lust. The allusion is to plants; and the sense is: Avarice is a perennial weed; it has a deeper and more pernicious root than lust, which is a more annual, and lasts but for a summer, when it sheds its seed and decays." Blackstone. 272) Foysons, means provisions in plenty. Steevens. 273) Portable answers exactly to a phrase now in use. Such failings may be borne with, or are bearable. Steevens. 274) I believe, all that Malcolm designs to say is, that, if he had power, he would even annihilate the gentle source or principle of peace: pour the soft milk by which it is nourished, among the flames of hell, which could not fail to dry it up. Lady Macbeth has already observed that her husband was „, too full of the milk of human kindness."* Steevens. - No, not to live. O nation miserable, With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd, Thy royal father Was a most sainted king; the queen, that bore thee, Died every day she liv'd 275). Fare thee well! Have banish'd me from Scotland. O, my breast, Mal. Macduff, this noble passion, Wip'd the black scruples, reconcil'd my thoughts I put myself to thy direction, and Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure No less in truth, than life: my first false speaking 215) Died every day she lived. The expression is borrowed from the sacred writings: „I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus, I die daily." Malone. 276) From overcredulous haste, from over-hasty credulity. Malone. 277) At a point, may mean all ready at a time;, but Shakspeare meant more: he meant both time and place and certainly wrote: All 122 Now we'll together; and the chance, of goodness, Be like our warranted quarrel 278)! Why are you silent? Macd. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once, "Tis hard to reconcile. Enter a Doctor. Mal. Well; more anon. - Comes the king forth, I pray you? Doct. Ay, Sir; there are a crew of wretched souls, That stay his cure; their malady convinces 279) The great assay of art; but, at his touch, Mal. I thank you, doctor. [Exit Doctor.] 'Tis call'd the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king; To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction 282). With this strange virtue, ready at appoint, i. e. at the place appointed, at the rendezvous. Warburton. 278) There is no need of change. Johnson. And the chance quarrel. That is, may the event be, of the goodness of heaven, (pro justitia divina) answerable to the cause.- But I am inclined to believe that Shakspeare wrote: and the chance, O goodness, Be like our warranted quarrel! If we adopt this reading, the sense will be: And O thou sovereign Goodness, to whom we now appeal, may our fortune answer to subdues. our cause. Johnson. 279) convinces i. e. overpowers, Steevens. 280) The Evil oder the King's Evil, ist die eigenthümliche Benennung der Kröpfe, deren Heilung bekanntermafsen den Königen von England beigelegt wird. Eduard Confessor soll diese Wunderkraft zuerst ausgeübt haben. Eschenburg. 281) A golden stamp. This was the coin called an angel. The value of the coin was ten shillings. Steevens. Shakspeare has merely transcribed what he found in Holingshed. 282) |