Chapter 9

_Len_. The night has been unruly; where we lay Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say, Lamentings heard i'th'air, strange screams of death, And prophesying with accents terrible Of dire combustion, and confused events, _New-hatch'd to the woeful time_. The obscure bird clamour'd the live-long night: Some say, the earth was fev'rous, and did shake.

These lines, I think, should be rather regulated thus:

--prophesying with accents terrible, Of dire combustion and confused events. New-hatch'd to th'woeful 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_. The term _new-hatch'd_ is properly applicable to a _bird_, and that birds of ill omen should be _new-hatch'd to the woeful time_ 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.

NOTE XXII.

--Up, up, and see The great doom's image, Malcolm, Banquo, As from your graves rise up.--

The second line might have been so easily completed, that it cannot be supposed to have been left imperfect by the author, who probably wrote,

--Malcolm! Banquo! rise! As from your graves rise up.--

Many other emendations, of the same kind, might be made, without any greater deviation from the printed copies, than is found in each of them from the rest.

NOTE XXIII.

_Macbeth_.--Here, lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature, For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murtherers Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers _Unmannerly breech'd with gore_.--

An _unmannerly dagger_, and a _dagger breech'd_, or as in some editions _breach'd with gore_, are expressions not easily to be understood, nor can it be imagined that Shakespeare would reproach the murderer of his king only with _want of manners_. There are, undoubtedly, two faults in this passage, which I have endeavoured to take away by reading,

--Daggers _Unmanly drench'd_ with gore.--

_I saw_ drench'd _with the king's Mood the fatal daggers, not only instruments of murder but evidences of_ cowardice.

Each of these words might easily be confounded with that which I have substituted for it by a hand not exact, a casual blot, or a negligent inspection.

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 silver 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 show the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech, considered in this light, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as if consists entirely of antitheses and metaphors.

NOTE XXIV.