1 Witch. Where the place? 2 Witch. Upon the heath : 3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. 1 Witch. I come, Graymalkin! 2 Witch. Paddock calls2: 3 Witch. Anon. All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair : Hover through the fog and filthy air3. [Witches vanish. SCENE II. A Camp near Fores. Alarum within. Enter King DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Soldier1. Dun. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt The newest state. 2 Upton observes that, to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad. A paddock most generally signified a toad, though it sometimes means a frog. What we now call a toadstool was anciently called a paddock-stool. 3 I follow Mr. Hunter's regulation of this passage though unauthorised by the old arrangement, because, with him, I think it clearly indicated by the subsequent three times three of the witches: "Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again to make up nine." Coleridge observes that "The Weird Sisters are as true a creation of Shakespeare's as his Ariel and Caliban,-fates, fairies, and materializing witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected from the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature,-elemental avengers without sex or kin.” The first folio reads captain. Mal. This is the sergeant, Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought Sold. Doubtful it stood; As two spent swimmers, that do cling together, And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald (Worthy to be a rebel; for to that 3 The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him), from the western isles 2 Sergeants, in ancient times, were not the petty officers now distinguished by that title; but men performing one kind of feudal military service, in rank next to esquires. 3 Vide Tyrwhitt's Glossary to Chaucer, v. for; and Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, p. 205. For to that means no more than for that; or cause that. The late editions erroneously point this passage, and as erroneously explain it. I follow the punctuation of the first folio. i.e. supplied with armed troops so named. Of and with are indiscriminately used by our ancient writers. Gallowglasses were heavy armed foot soldiers of Ireland and the western isles: Kernes were the lighter armed troops. See Ware's Antiquit. c. xii. p. 57, or Dissertation on the Antient History of Ireland. Dublin, 1753, 8vo. p. 70. 5 But fortune on his damned quarry smiling. Quarry is a term borrowed from the chase, and signified the game pursued; from Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 1, we gather it signified also a heap of what was killed in the chase :- "I'd make a quarry With thousands of these quartered slaves, as high Damned is doomed, or condemned; quarrel has been improperly substituted. 6 The meaning is that Fortune, while she smiled on him, deceived him. 7 Thus the old copy. It has been suggested that we should read all-to-weak, an idiom frequent in our older language, and Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Like valour's minion, Carv'd out his passage, till he fac'd the slave ; Dun. O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman! Compell'd these skipping Kernes to trust their heels; Dun. Dismay'd not this our captains, Macbeth and Sold. Yes; as sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion. If I say sooth, I must report, they were As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks 10 So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe : which is even used by Milton, who has all-to-ruffled, where all-to is merely augmentative: I doubt whether change is necessary here, as the old reading is perfectly intelligible. 8 The old copy reads which nev'r. 9 The allusion is to the storms that prevail in spring, at the vernal equinox-the equinoctial gales. The beginning of the reflexion of the sun (Cf. So from that Spring) is the epoch of his passing from the severe to the milder season, opening however with storms. Break is not in the first folio. The second has breaking. Pope substituted break. 10 Cracks, that is reports. So in the old play of King John, 1591: "As harmless and without effect, As is the echo of a cannon's crack." The anachronism of mentioning cannon as in use at this early period was disregarded by the poet, who has again mentioned them as in use in the reign of King John. Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, I cannot tell :—— But I am faint, my gashes cry for help. Dun. So well thy words become thee, as thy wounds; They smack of honour both :-Go, get him surgeons. [Exit Soldier, attended. Enter Rosse and ANGUS. Who comes here? Mal. The worthy thane of Rosse. Len. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look, that seems to speak things strange11 Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane? 12 Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky12 Assisted by that most disloyal traitor The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict: Point against point, rebellious arm 'gainst arm, Dun. Rosse. That now Great happiness! Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition; 11 That seems to speak things strange, i. e. that seems about to speak them. 12 So in King John: 13 'Mocking the air with colours idly spread." By Bellona's bridegroom Shakespeare means Macbeth. Lapp'd in proof is defended by armour of proof. 14 Confronted him with self-comparisons. By him is meant Norway, and by self-comparisons is meant that he gave him as good as he brought, showed that he was his equal. Nor would we deign him burial of his men, Dun. No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest:-Go, pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth. Rosse. I'll see it done. Dun. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won. [Exeunt. SCENE III. A Heath. Thunder. Enter the three Witches. 1 Witch. Where hast thou been, sister? 2 Witch. Killing swine. 3 Witch. Sister, where thou? 1 Witch. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd :— Give me, quoth I: Aroint thee1, witch! the rump-fed ronyon2 cries. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger : 15 Colmes' is here a dissyllable. Colmes' Inch, now called Inchcomb, is a small island, lying in the Firth of Edinburgh, with an abbey upon it dedicated to St. Columb. Inch or inse, in Erse, signifies an island. The etymology of this imprecation is yet to seek. Rynt ye for out with ye! stand off! is still used in Cheshire; where there is also a proverbial saying, "Rynt ye, witch, qouth Besse Locket to her mother." Tooke thought it was from roynous, and might signify "a scab or scale on thee!" The French have a phrase of somewhat similar sound and import-" Arry-avant, away there ho!" Mr. Douce thinks that "aroint thee" will be found to have a Saxon origin. The instance of its early use adduced by Mr. Hunter, from Berchyl's Rebellion of Perkin Warbeck, cited in the Monthly Mirror, is a palpable and clumsy forgery, possibly by Tom Hill. 2 Rump-fed ronyon, a scabby or mangy woman fed on offals; the rumps being formerly part of the emoluments or kitchen fees of the cooks in great houses. |