THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH ACT FIRST SCENE I A desert place. Thunder and Lightning. Enter three Witches. First Witch. When shall we three meet again Third Witch. That will be ere the set of sun. 1. Perhaps we should follow the punctuation of the Folio, and place a note of interrogation after "again."-I. G. 3. "hurlyburly"; the original and sense of this word are thus given by Peacham in his Garden of Eloquence, 1577: "Onomatopeia, when we invent, devise, fayne, and make a name imitating the sound of that it signifyeth, as hurlyburly, for an uprore and tumultuous stirre." Thus also in Holinshed: "There were such hurlie burlies kept in every place, to the great danger of overthrowing the whole state of all government in this land." Of course the word here refers to the tumult of battle, not to the storm, the latter being their element. The reason of this scene is thus stated by Coleridge: "In Macbeth the Poet's object was to raise the mind at once to the high tragic tone, that the audience might be ready for the precipitate consummation of guilt in the early part of the play. The true reason for the first appearance of the Witches is to strike the key note of the character of the whole drama, as is proved by their reappearance in the third scene, after such an order of the king's as establishes their supernatural power of information.”—H. N. H. Sec. Witch. Upon the heath. Third Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. First Witch. I come, Graymalkin. All. Paddock calls:-anon! Fair is foul, and foul is fair. 10 Hover through the fog and filthy air. [Exeunt. SCENE II A camp near Forres. Alarum within. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant. Dun. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt The newest state. Mal. This is the sergeant Exeunt. "The Weird Sisters," says Coleridge, "are as true a creation of Shakespeare's, as his Ariel and Caliban,-fates, furies, 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, the lawless of human nature,-elemental avengers without sex or kin." Elsewhere he speaks of the "direful music, the wild wayward rhythm, and abrupt lyrics of the opening of Macbeth." Words scarcely less true to the Poet's, than the Poet's are to the characters.-H. N. H. 3. "sergeant"; 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. In the stagedirection of the original this sergeant is called a captain.-H. N. H. Ser. Who like a good and hardy soldier fought Doubtful it stood; As two spent swimmers, that do cling together wald Worthy to be a rebel, for to that The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him-from the western isles 10 And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, name Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel Like valor's minion carved out his passage 20 13. "Of" here bears the sense of with, the two words being then used indiscriminately.—Thus in Holinshed: "Out of Ireland in hope of the spoile came no small number of Kernes and Galloglasses, offering gladlie to serve under him, whither it should please him to lead them." Barnabe Rich thus describes them in his New Irish Prognostication: "The Galloglas succeedeth the Horseman, and he is commonly armed with a scull, a shirt of maile, and a GalloglasThe Kernes of Ireland are next in request, the very drosse and scum of the countrey, a generation of villaines not worthy to live. . . . These are they that are ready to run out with every rebel, and these are the very hags of hell, fit for nothing but the gallows."-H. N. H. axe. 14. "damned quarrel"; Johnson's, perhaps unnecessary, emendation of Ff., “damned quarry” (cp. IV. iii. 206); but Holinshed uses “quarrel" in the corresponding passage.-I. G. "damned" is doomed, fated to destruction.-H. N. H. 20-21. Many emendations and interpretations have been advanced Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, And fix'd his head upon our battlements. Dun. O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman! Ser. As whence the sun 'gins his reflection Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break, So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark: No sooner justice had, with valor arm'd, Compell'd these skipping kerns to trust their heels, 30 But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage, Dun. Ser. Dismay'd not this Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo? Yes; As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion. As cannons overcharged with double cracks; so for this passage; Koppel's explanation (Shakespeare Studien, 1896) is as follows:-"he faced the slave, who never found time for the preliminary formalities of a duel, i. e. shaking hands with and bidding farewell to the opponent”; seemingly, however, “which” should have "he" (i. e. Macbeth) and not "slave" as its antecedent.-I. G. 25, 26. "As storms often come from the east, the region of the dawn, so victory may be the starting-point for a fresh attack.”C. H. H. 37. "so they"; Ff. give these words at the beginning of 1. 38. The |