The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [2446]
And take the present horrour from the time,
Which now suits with it.—
I believe every one that has attentively read this dreadful soliloquy is disappointed at the conclusion, which, if not wholly unintelligible, is, at least, obscure, nor can be explained into any sense worthy of the authour. I shall therefore propose a slight alteration:
—Thou sound and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my where-about,
And talk—the present horrour of the time!
That now suits with it.—
Macbeth has, in the foregoing lines, disturbed his imagination by enumerating all the terrors of the night; at length he is wrought up to a degree of frenzy, that makes him afraid of some supernatural discovery of his design, and calls out to the stones not to betray him, not to declare where he walks, nor to talk.—As he is going to say of what, he discovers the absurdity of his suspicion, and pauses, but is again overwhelmed by his guilt, and concludes, that such are the horrors of the present night, that the stones may be expected to cry out against him:
That now suits with it.—
He observes in a subsequent passage, that on such occasions stones have been known to move. It is now a very just and strong picture of a man about to commit a deliberate murder under the strongest conviction of the wickedness of his design. Of this alteration, however, I do not now see much use, and certainly see no necessity.
Whether to take horrour from the time means not rather to catch it as communicated, than to deprive the time of horrour, deserves te be considered.
II.ii.37 (443,6) sleave of care] A skein of silk is called a sleave of silk, as I learned from Mr. Seward, the ingenious editor of Beaumont and Fletcher.
II.ii.56 (444,8) gild the faces of the grooms withal,/For it must seem their guilt] Could Shakespeare possibly mean to play upon the similitude of gild and guilt.
II.iii.45 (447,5) I made a shift to cast him] To cast him up, to ease my stomach of him. The equivocation is between cast or throw, as a term of wrestling, and cast or cast up.
II.iii.61 (448,7)
—strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible
Of dire combustions, and confus'd events,
New hatch'd to the woeful time: The obscure bird
Clamour'd the live-long night: some say the earth
Was feverous, and did shake]
Those lines I think should be rather regulated thus:
—prophecying with accents terrible,
Of dire combustions and cosfus'd events.
New-hatch'd to th' woful time, the obscure bird
Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say the earth
Was fev'rous and did shake.
A prophecy of an event new hatch'd, seems to be a prophecy of an event past. And a prophecy new hatch'd is a wry expression. The term new hatch'd is properly applicable to a bird, and that birds of ill omen should be new-hatch'd to the woful time, that is, should appear in uncommon numbers, is very consistent with the rest of the prodigies here mentioned, and with the universal disorder into which nature is described as thrown, by the perpetration of this horrid murder. (see 1765, VI, 413, 7)
II.iii.117 (452,3) Here, lay Duncan,/His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood] Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of these lines by substituting goary blood for golden blood; but it may easily be admitted that he who could on such an occasion talk of lacing the silyer skin, would lace it with golden blood. No amendment can be made to this line, of which every word is equally faulty, but by a general blot.
It is not improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to shew the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists entirely of antithesis