Part 18

Mr. Steevens conceives that _hemlock_ is the root in question; whilst Mr. Malone, after noticing the trouble which the commentators have given themselves, introduces a quotation from Plutarch's life of Antony, ("which," says he, "our author must have diligently read,") that leads him to conclude the name to have been unknown even to Shakspeare himself. There is however another book which has in the course of these notes been shown to have been also read and even studied by the poet, and wherein, it is presumed, he actually found the _name_ of the above root. This will appear from the following passage: "_Henbane_ ... is called _Insana_, mad, for the use thereof is perillous; for if it be eate or dronke, it breedeth madnesse, or slow lykenesse of sleepe. Therefore this hearb is called commonly _Mirilidium_, for it taketh away wit and _reason_." Batman _Uppon Bartholome de propriet. rerum_, lib. xvii. ch. 87.

SCENE 5. Page 373.

ATTEN. One of my fellows had the speed of him; Who _almost dead for breath_, had scarcely more Than would make up his message.

LADY M. Give him tending, He brings great news. _The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan._

The last lines may appear less difficult, if the reader will suppose that at the moment in which the attendant finishes his speech, the raven's voice is heard on the battlements of the castle; when Lady Macbeth, adverting to the situation in which the messenger had just been described, most naturally exclaims, "the raven _himself_ is hoarse," &c. _Entrance_ must be here pronounced as a trisyllable, which is better than to read Dŭncān.

SCENE 5. Page 374.

LADY M. Under my battlements. Come _come_ you spirits.

The second _come_ has been added by Mr. Steevens. On this it may be permitted to remark, that although Shakspeare's versification is unquestionably more smooth and melodious than that of most of his contemporaries, he has on many occasions exhibited more carelessness in this respect than can well be accounted for, unless by supposing the errors to belong to the printers or editors. If the above line was defective, many others of similar construction are still equally so; as for example, this in p. 378,

"This ignorant present, and I feel now,"

which Mr. Steevens strangely maintains to be complete, though undoubtedly as discordant to the ear as the other. Both, strictly speaking, have the full number of syllables; a mode of construction which it is to be feared our elder poets regarded as sufficient in general to give perfection to a line.

SCENE 6. Page 384.

DUN. We cours'd him at the heels, and had a purpose To be his _purveyor_.

The duty of the purveyor, an officer belonging to the court, was to make a general provision for the royal household. It was the office also of this person to travel before the king whenever he made his progresses to different parts of the realm, and to see that every thing was duly provided. The right of purveyance and pre-emption having become extremely oppressive to the subject, was included, among other objects of regulation, under the stat. of 12 Car. II.

SCENE 7. Page 395.

LADY M. But screw your courage to the _sticking-place_.

Mr. Steevens has suggested two metaphors, neither of which seems to advance the explanation. If it could be shown that the stop of a pile-driver, or the bed of a violin peg were ever called _sticking-places_, one might indeed suspect a miserable pun: but it is submitted that all the metaphor lies in the _screwing_. Another learned commentator states that Davenant misunderstood the sense when he supposed that _stabbing_ is alluded to; and yet there are grounds for thinking his opinion correct. Lady Macbeth, after remarking that the enterprise would not fail if her husband would but exert his courage to the commission of the _murder_, proceeds to suggest the particular manner in which it was to be accomplished. In short, if there be a metaphor, abstractedly considered, it signifies nothing; for what would be the use of Macbeth's courage, if, according to Mr. Steevens, _it were to remain fast in that sticking-place from which it was not to move_? The Scots have a proverb, "_Sticking_ goes not by strength, but by guiding of the gooly," _i. e._ the knife.

ACT II.

SCENE 1. Page 401.

BAN. This diamond he greets your wife withal, By the name of most kind hostess; _and shut up In measureless content_.

As the last sentence stands, it is at once ungrammatical and obscure; and neither Mr. Steevens's construction of _shut up_ in the sense of _to conclude_, as referring to the speaker, nor Hanmer's reading _and is shut up_, as connected with Duncan, will render it intelligible. It should seem as if Banquo meant to say that the king was immured in happiness; but then it is obvious that some preceding words have been lost.

SCENE 3. Page 428.

Enter MACDUFF.

_Duff_ in the Erse language signifies a captain; _Macduff_, the son of a captain.

SCENE 3. Page 433.

MACD. Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit.

This simile has been elsewhere used by Shakspeare. Thus in _Cymbeline_, he calls sleep _the ape of death_. In _A midsummer night's dream_, he has _death counterfeiting sleep_. It might indeed from its extreme obviousness have occurred to writers of weaker imagination than our poet; yet as he is known to have borrowed so much, it is not impossible that he might in this instance have been indebted to Marlow's translation of a line in Ovid's _Elegies_, book ii. el. 9:

"Foole what is sleepe, but image of cold death?"

or to another version of the same line in Cardanus's _Comfort_:

"Is not our sleepe (O foole) of death an image playne?"

Whoever will take the trouble of reading over the whole of Cardanus's second book as translated by Bedingfield, and printed by T. Marshe, 1576, 4to, will soon be convinced that it had been perused by Shakspeare.

SCENE 3. Page 438.

MACB. ... _their daggers Unmannerly breech'd_ with gore.

Mr. Steevens's explanation must be objected to. Finding that the _lower end_ of a cannon is called its _breech_, he concludes that the _hilt_ or _handle_ of a dagger must be here intended by the like appellation. But is not this literally to mistake the _top_ for the _bottom_? It is conceived that the present expression, though in itself something _unmannerly_, simply means _covered as with breeches_. The idea, uncouth and perhaps inaccurate as it is, might have been suggested from the resemblance of daggers to the legs and thighs of a man. The sentiments of Dr. Farmer on this, as on all occasions, are ingenious, and deserving of the highest respect; but it is hardly possible that Shakspeare could have been deceived in the way he states. To give colour to his opinion, he is obliged in his quotation from Erondell's _French garden_ to print the word _master's_ as a genitive case singular, in order to apply the pronoun _their_ to _daggers_; but without the aid of the French text, the word _their_ is _in the original_ equally applicable to _masters_. Indeed the subsequent mention of stockings, hose and garters, would have satisfied a person of much less penetration than Shakspeare, that _breeches_ were there intended as an article of dress.

The above conjecture that the term _breech'd_ might signify _cover'd_, suggests the mention of a circumstance from which it may on the whole be thought to derive support.

It is well known that some ridicule has been cast on one of our translations of the Bible from the Genevan French edition, on account of the following words, "And they sewed fig-tree leaves together and made themselves _breeches_," Gen. iii. 7; whence it has been called the _Breeches Bible_, and sometimes sold for a high price. It is generally conceived that this peculiarity belongs exclusively to the above Bible, but it is a mistake. The Saxon version by Ælfric has ⁊ ꞅɩƿoꝺon ꝼɩcleaꝼ ⁊ ƿoꞃhꞇon hɩm ƿæꝺbꞃec, _and sewed fig-leaves and worked them_ WEED-BREECH_, or cloaths for the breech_. Wicliffe also translates "and maden hem _breechis_;" and it is singular that Littelton in his excellent dictionary explains _perizomata_, the word used in the Vulgate, by _breeches_. In the manuscript French translation of Petrus Comestor's commentary on the Bible, made by Guiars des Moulins in the thirteenth century, we have "couvertures tout autressint comme unnes petites _braies_."

ACT III.

SCENE 4. Page 476.

MACB. ... Get thee gone; to-morrow We'll hear, _ourselves again_.

i. e. _when I have recovered from my fit, and am once more myself._ It is an ablative absolute. _Ourselves_ is much more properly used than _ourself_, the modern language of royalty.

SCENE 4. Page 482.

MACB. If trembling I _inhibit_ thee, protest me The baby of girl.

Every partaker of the rational _Diversions of Purley_ will here call to mind what has been advanced on the subject of this difficult and much contested passage; but with all the respect and admiration that are due to their profound and ingenious writer, will he feel himself altogether satisfied? It were to be wished that not only the above grammarian but another gentleman not less eminently qualified to illustrate any subject he undertakes, had favoured us with some example of the _neutral_ use of _inhabit_ in the sense of _to house_ or _remain at home_. Until this be done, or even then, it may be boldly said, and without much difficulty maintained, that _inhibit_, in point of meaning, was Shakspeare's word. Nor is it a paradox to affirm that _inhabit_, the _original_ reading, is also right; because this may be only one of the numerous instances during the former unsettled state of orthography, where the same word has been spelled in different ways. Mr. Malone has already supplied instances of _inhabit_ for _inhibit_ in a passage from _All's well that ends well_, in all the folios except the first, and another from Stowe's _Survey of London_. In the edition of the _Shepherd's calendar_, printed without date by Wynkyn de Worde in 4to, there is this sentence in chap. xxi.: "Correccyon is for to _inhabyte_ & defende by the bridle of reason all errowres," &c. Later editions have _inhibit_. Are we then to suppose that _all_ these examples are typographical mistakes, rather than a varied orthography?

The difficulty remains to extract a sense from _inhibit_ adapted to the occasion. Mr. Steevens has justly said, "to inhibit is to _forbid_;" but this cannot be the present signification. A man cannot well be said to _forbid_ another who has challenged him. He might indeed _keep back or hesitate_ in such a case, which is the _neutral_ sense now offered, but it must be confessed with nearly the same diffidence in its accuracy which has been expressed as to that of the others.

With respect to the punctuation, it is conceived, that considering the mode in which these plays were published, the authority of Shakspeare is almost out of the question; and therefore a judicious modern editor is entitled to use a great deal of discretion in corrections of this kind. In the present instance there is no great objection to the old pointing, though the comma should seem better _after_ "inhibit," and may render the line more emphatic. "If trembling, I keep back, _then_ protest me," &c. After all, this is one of the many instances in which the real meaning of the author cannot be satisfactorily obtained.

SCENE 5. Page 490.

Enter HECATE.

Mr. Tollett has already vindicated Shakspeare from the supposed impropriety of introducing Hecate among _modern_ witches. The fact seems to be, that acquainted, as he has elsewhere shown himself to have been, with the classical connection which this deity had with witchcraft, but knowing also, as Mr. Tollett's quotation from Scot indicates, that _Diana_ was the name by which she was invoked in modern times, he has preferred the former rather than the latter name of the goddess, for reasons that were best known to himself.

That there existed during the middle ages numerous superstitions relating to a connection that witches were imagined to have had with Diana, it will be no difficult task to prove. From an ecclesiastical statute, promulgated during the reign of Louis II., king of France, it appears that certain mischievous women professed their belief in that goddess, obeying her as their mistress; and that accompanied by her and a great multitude of other females, they travelled over immense spaces of the earth at midnight, mounted upon various animals. Many other ecclesiastical regulations, and some of the councils, notice these superstitions, and denounce very severe vengeance against those persons who were thought to practise them. In one we find the following declaration: "Nulla mulier se nocturnis equitare cum _Diana_ dea Paganorum, vel cum _Herodiade_ seu _Benzoria_ et innumera mulierum multitudine profiteatur; hæc enim dæmoniaca est illusio."--Ducange, _Gloss._ v. Diana. These witches sometimes assembled at the river Jordan, the favourite spot of Diana or Herodias. The Jesuit Delrio very gravely denies the possibility of the above pranks, remarking that there is in reality no Diana, and that Herodias the dancer, whom he here confounds with her daughter, is at present in hell. _Disquisit. magic._ lib. ii. quæst. 16. Eccard, in his preface to Leibnitz's _Collectanea etymologica_, relates that in a journey through Misnia in Saxony, he discovered traces of the German _Hecate_ among the peasants in their _frauholde_ or _frau faute_, i. e. _lady fate_. John Herold or Herolt, a German friar of the fifteenth century, in one of his Sermons exclaims against those "qui deam, quam quidam _Dianam_ nominant, in vulgari _die fraurve unhold_ dicunt cum suo exercitu ambulare."--_Sermones discipuli_, serm. xi. He states this practice to have taken place at Christmas time. See likewise Carpentier _Suppl. ad Ducangii glossar_. v. holda. His majesty King James the First, author of that most sapient work entitled _Dæmonologie_, informs his readers that the spirits whom the gentiles called _Diana and her wandering court_, were known among his countrymen by the name of _pharie_. Other appellations of this personage are likewise to be met with, as _Hera_, _Nicneven_, and _Dame Habunde_; all as the chief or queen of the witches, whom she generally accompanied in their nocturnal dances and excursions through the air.

For the name of _Herodias_ it is not easy to account. It may not be deemed a very extravagant conjecture, that the common people had converted Herod's wife into a witch from their abhorrence of her cruelty towards Saint John the Baptist; for the old mysteries have preserved to us the indignant manner in which they treated Pontius Pilate. The circumstance too of her daughter's dancing, compared with the predilection of witches for that amusement, might contribute to the idea. The learned Schiller thinks that _Herodias_ was the same as _Juno_. He founds this opinion on the testimony of Gobelinus Persona, a Monk of Paderborn in the fifteenth century, who in his general history of the world had asserted that the Saxons worshipped Juno under the Greek name of _Hera_, and that the common people still believed in the flight of the _lady Hera_ through the air about the time of Christmas; a superstition which seems to have been derived from an older notion, that Juno presided over that element. Ducange imagined he had found the name in _Hera Diana_; but he has not brought forward any instance of the use of such an expression. With respect to _Benzoria_ or _Bensozia_, very little is known. Carpentier, in his Supplement to Ducange's glossary, conjectures that she was designed for the daughter of Herodias, and to assist in the magic dances. It is not improbable that this character is in some way or other connected with the Irish _Banshee_ or _Benshi_, a kind of fairy. In these subjects we can perceive many corruptions which it is impossible to account for.

Dr. Leyden, in p. 318 of the glossary to his edition of _The complaynt of Scotland_, mentions the "gyre carling, the queen of fairies, the great hag _Hecate_, or mother witch of peasants," and cites Polwart's _Flyting of Montgomery_ for "_Nicneven_ and her nymphs." In the fragment of an old Scotish poem in Lord Hyndford's manuscript, in strict conformity with what has been just advanced concerning _Juno_, she is termed "quene of Jowis." See _Ancient Scot. poems_, 1768, p. 231.

As _Dame Habunde_ or _Abunde_ has been classed among the names given to the president of the witches, it becomes necessary to take some further notice of her, though a character of an opposite description to those already mentioned. She appears to have been _the genuine queen of fairies_, and of a most innocuous and benevolent disposition, bestowing happiness and _abundance_ on all her votaries. In the passage before mentioned in Gobelinus Persona, _Hera_ is spoken of as conferring temporal abundance; and although she is represented as flying through the air, it is not by night, nor accompanied by others. Ducange has therefore improperly assimilated her to Diana and her tribe of mischief, and of course his etymology of _Herodias_ is rendered very improbable. In an ancient fabliau by Haisiau, never _entirely_ printed, _Dame Abunde_ is thus introduced:

"Ceste richesce nus abonde Nos lavon de par _Dame Avonde_."

She is also mentioned in the works of William Auvergne, bishop of Paris, in the fourteenth century, as a spirit enriching the houses that she visited. Delrio adds, that on her coming with the rest of the _good ladies_, the superstitious old women used to provide plenty of victuals for them, leaving all the dishes and wine-vessels uncovered to prevent any obstruction to their getting at the food, and expecting on the occasion nothing but plenty and prosperity. See _Disquisit. magic._ 1. ii. quæst. 27. sect. 2. In the life of Saint Germain, bishop of Auxerre, we find these dames paying their respects to the holy man; and as the story is misrepresented in its most material part by Caxton's translation of the _Golden legend_, it shall be given from a valuable manuscript of the same work much older than his time. "Narratio. In a tyme he was herboured in a place wher men made redy the borde for to go to dyner aftir he had soupid, and he was gretli merveiled, and asked for whom the borde was sette aᵹen; and thei seide for _the good women that walke by nyᵹte_; and than Seinte Germayne ordeyned that nyᵹte to be waked. And than at a certeyn hour gret multitude of feendis come to the borde in liknesse of men and of women. And than Germayn comaundid him that thei shold not passe thens, and than he awoke al the meyne, and asked yf thei knewe eny of thoo persones, and they seide that thei wer her neyᵹebores, and than he sente to her housis, and thei wer alle founde in bedde, and than thei alle had gret merveile and thouᵹte wel that thei were feendis that had so longe scorned hem."

The _Samogitæ_, a people formerly inhabiting the shores of the Baltic, and who remained idolaters so late as the fifteenth century, believed in the existence of a sort of demi-fairies about a palm high, with beards, whom they called _Kaukie_. To these little beings they made an offering of all kinds of food to avert their displeasure. They likewise invoked a deity called _Putscet_ to send them the _Barstuccæ_ to live with them and make them fortunate. To effect this, they placed every night in the barn a table covered with bread, butter, cheese, and ale; and if these were taken away before morning, they looked for good fortune, but if left, for nothing but ill luck. See Lasicius _De diis Samagitarum_, 1615, 4to, pp. 51, 55. A similar superstition prevailed in England, and is thus recorded in Browne's _Britannia's pastorals_, book i. song 2.

"Within one of these rounds was to be seene A hillocke rise, where oft the _Fairie queene_ At twy-light sate, and did command her elves To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves: And further, if by maidens oversight, _Within doores water were not brought at night_; _Or if they spread no table, set no bread_, They should have nips from toe unto the head: And for the maid that had perform'd each thing, She in the water-paile bad leave a ring."

Mr. Bell, in his _Description of the condition and manners of the Irish peasantry_, relates that the fairies or _good people_ were supposed to enter habitations after the family retired to rest, to indulge in sportive gambols, and particularly to wash themselves in clean water; but if there were no water in the house, to play some mischievous tricks in revenge.

Fairies were also, from their supposed place of residence, denominated _waternymphs_, in the Teutonic languages, _wasserfrauwen_, _wassernixen_, _nocka_, _necker_, and _nicker_, terms, excepting the first, manifestly connected with the Scotish _nicneven_, and most probably with our _old nick_. Very great confusion seems to have arisen in the change of sex and appellation among these supernatural beings. This may have been occasioned by the numerous Pagan superstitions to which the common people were still attached long after the promulgation of Christianity, as well as from their excessive ignorance and credulity, which led them to convert the deities of the heathens into phantoms of their own creation. Thus Diana and Minerva were degraded into witches, and Mercury became the prince of fairies. Neptune was metamorphosed into a _water-fairy_, of whom a most curious account is preserved in the _Otia imperii_ of Gervase of Tilbury, published in Leibnitz's _Scriptores rerum Brunsvic._ p. 980, and partly copied into Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, vol. iv. 268. It seems probable that the name of Neptune is merely disguised in the Scotish _Nicneven_. Some of the Teutonic glossaries render the word _necker_ by _dæmon aquaticus, Neptunus_. A further account of him may be found in Wormii _Monumenta Danica_, p. 17, and in Keysler _Antiquitat. select. septentr._ p. 261, where the etymology of _necker_, viz. from the Latin _necare_, strengthens the preceding conjecture as to that of _Nicneven_, and resolves it into the _destroying or dæmoniacal Neptune_. The reader may likewise consult Wachter's _German glossary_ under the word _necker_, where it would have been of some use to the learned author to have known that this mischievous fairy was remarkable for drowning people, and was called _Nocka_, the Danish term, as he states on another occasion, for _suffocating_. Nor would the contrast of character between this being and the _beneficent queen of fairy_ amount to any solid objection against the proposed etymology. Whoever may attempt an investigation of the fairy system will be sure of finding the greatest disorder and confusion; nor is it possible at this time to offer any reason that will be quite satisfactory why different qualities were ascribed to beings of similar names by different people. We must rest contented with possession of the fact. Thus _Dame Abunde_ has been made to preside over the _white nymphs_, _white ladies_, or _witte wyven_, who all appear to have been of a mischievous disposition, committing nocturnal depredations on men and cattle, but more particularly on pregnant women and infants, whom they shut up in their subterraneous abodes, from which groans and lamentations, and occasionally melodious sounds were often heard to issue. See Kempius _De orig. Frisiæ_, p. 341. Ben Jonson in his _Sad shepherd_ makes the _white faies_ to reside in stocks of trees.