The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [2452]
IV.iii.26 (502,6) Why in that rawness left you wife and children] Without previous provision, without due preparation, without maturity of counsel.
IV.iii.33 (502,7) Wear thou thy wrongs] That is, Poor country, wear thou thy wrongs.
IV.iii.69 (503,1) Sudden, malicious] [Sudden, for capricious. WARBUR.] Rather violent, passionate, hasty.
IV.iii.85 (504,2) Than summer seeming lust] When I was younger and bolder I corrected it thus,
Than fume, or seething lust.
that is, Than angry passion, or boiling lust. (1773)
IV.iii.135 (506,4) All ready at a point] [W: at appoint] There is no need of change.
IV.iii.136 (506,5) and the chance of goodness/Be like our warranted quarrel!] The chance of goodness, as it is commonly read, conveys no sense. If there be not some more important errour in the passage, it should at least be pointed thus:
—and the chance, of goodness,
Be like our warranted quarrel!—
That is, may the event be, of the goodness of heaven, [pro justitia divina] answerable to the cause.
The author of the Revisal conceives the sense of the passage to be rather this: And may the success of that goodness, which is about to exert itself in my behalf, be such as may be equal to the justice of my quarrel.
But I am inclined to believe that Shakespeare wrote,
—and the chance, O goodness,
Be like our warranted quarrel!—
This some of his transcribers wrote with a small o, which another imagined to mean of. If we adopt this reading, the sense will be, and O thou sovereign Goodness, to whom we now appeal, may our fortune answer to our cause. (see 1765, VI, 462, 7)
IV.iii.170 (508,9) A modern ecstacy] I believe modern is only foolish or trifling.
IV.iii.196 (509,2), fee-grief] A peculiar sorrow; a grief that hath a single owner. The expression is, at least to our ears, very harsh.
IV.iii.216 (511,4) He has no children] It has been observed by an anonymous critic, that this is not said of Macbeth, who had children, but of Malcolm, who having none, supposes a father.
V.i.86 (515,8) My mind she has mated] [Conquer'd or subdued. POPE.] Rather astonished, confounded.
V.ii.24 (516,1) When all that is within him does condemn/Itself, for being there?] That is, when all the faculties of the mind are employed in self-condemnation.
V.iii.1 (516,2) Bring me no more reports] Tell me not any more of desertions—Let all ny subjects leave me—I am safe till, &c.
V.iii.8 (517,3) English Epicures] The reproach of Epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is nothing more than a natural invective uttered by an inhabitant of a barren country, against, those who have more opportunities of luxury.
V.iii.22 (518,6) my way of life/Is fall'n into the sear] As there is no relation between the way of life, and fallen into the sear, I am inclined to think that the W is only an M inverted, and that it was originally written,
—my May of life.
I am now passed from the spring to the autumn of my days, but I am without those comforts that should succeed the spriteliness of bloom, and support me in this melancholy season.
The authour has May in the same sense elsewhere.
V.iv.8 (521,1) the confident tyrant/Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure/Our setting down before't] He was confident of success; so confident that he would not fly, but endure their setting down before his castle.
V.iv.11 (521,2) For where there is advantage to be given,/ Both more and less have given him the revolt] The impropriety of the expression, advantage to be given, and the disagreeable repetition of the word given in the next line, incline me to read,
—where there is a 'vantage to be gone,
Both more and less have given him the revolt.
Advantage or 'vantage, in the time of Shakespeare, signified opportunity. He shut up himself and his soldiers, (says Malcolm) in the castle, because when there is an opportunity to be gone they all desert him.
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