BAN.

New honours come upon him,

Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould,
But with the aid of use.

Come what come may,

MACB.
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
BAN. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.
MACB. Give me your favour :-

My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.
Kind gentlemen, your pains are register'd

Where every day I turn the leaf to read them.-
Let us toward the king.-

Think upon what hath chanc'd; and, at more time,
The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak

Our free hearts each to other.

BAN.

Very gladly.

MACB. Till then, enough.-Come, friends.

150

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.-Forres. A Room in the Palace. Flourish. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, and Attendants.

DUN. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not Those in commission yet return'd?

MAL.

My liege,

They are not yet come back. But I have spoke
With one that saw him die: who did report,
That very frankly he confess'd his treasons;

fate and chance here is as pithily true as that of nature and art in Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3

"Yet nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean."

See also the description of the effect of custom on nature in Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 3, and the sportive remarks on chance in As You Like It, Act i. Sc. 2.

147 Time and the hour. It may be wearisome to wait on destiny; but the lapse of time and the appointed hour will bring round what is to come through all obstacles. Runs: in the singular, because 'time' and the hour' are synonyms. Conversely, we have in ii. 1, 5—

"There's husbandry in heaven, Their candles are all out,"

because the first line means-' those in heaven are economical.'

Implor'd your highness' pardon; and set forth
A deep repentance: nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died
As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 't were a careless trifle.

DUN.

There's no art

To find the mind's construction in the face :
He was a gentleman on whom I built

An absolute trust.-O worthiest cousin!

Enter MACBETH, BANQUO, ROSSE, and ANGUS.

The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy on me: Thou art so far before,
That swiftest wing of recompense is slow

To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserv'd ;
That the proportion both of thanks and payment
Might have been mine! only I have left to say,
More is thy due than more than all can pay.
MACB. The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part
Is to receive our duties and our duties

Are to your throne and state, children and servants;
Which do but what they should, by doing everything
Safe toward your love and honour.

DUN.

Welcome hither:

I have begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing.-Noble Banquo,
That hast no less deserv'd, nor must be known
No less to have done so, let me enfold thee,
And hold thee to my heart.

BAN.

The harvest is your own.

II

There if I grow,

There's no art. Duncan's childlike spirit makes a moment's pause of wonder at the act of treachery, and then flings itself, like Gloster in King Lear, with still more absolute trust and still more want of reflection, into the toils of a far deeper and darker treason. The pause on the word 'trust,' shortening the line by two syllables, is in this point of view very suggestive.

19

That the proportion. That I might have met them with a higher proportion of thanks. The only thing left for me to say is, that your merits are more than I can ever repay.

27 Safe toward your love—in immediate reference to your love.

DUN.
My plenteous joys,
Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow.-Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know,
We will establish our estate upon

Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter
The prince of Cumberland: which honour must
Not, unaccompanied, invest him only,

But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers.

From hence to Inverness,

And bind us further to you.

MACB.

Which is not us❜d for you;

The rest is labour,

I'll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful
The hearing of my wife with your approach;
So humbly take my leave.

DUN.
My worthy Cawdor!
MACB. The prince of Cumberland!-That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'er-leap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires !
Let not light see my black and deep desires :
The eye wink at the hand! yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

40

[Aside. 50

[Exit.

34 Wanton in fulness. Get capricious from their fulness and make me weep. So K. John, iv. I—

"Yet I remember, when I was in France,

Young gentlemen would be as sad as night
Only for wantonness."

39 The prince of Cumberland.

This county had belonged

since A.D. 946 to the Scottish territory; and for it they did homage to the English crown. The cairn under Helvellyn on Dunmail Raise is said to mark the spot where Edmund, king of England, overcame the native princes of Cumbria, with a view to 'subinfeuding' the territory to Malcolm of Scotland. (Palgrave, Anglo-Saxons, p. 187.)

48 That is a step." By the old lawes of the realme," says Holinshed, "the ordinance was that if he that should succeede were not of age, he that was next of blood should be admitted." Whereas the making of Malcolm prince of Cumberland implied his immediate succession, whether of age

or not.

52 The eye wink at the hand. Let the eye not see what the hand does.

DUN. True, worthy Banquo; he is full so valiant ; And in his commendations I am fed ;

It is a banquet to me.

Let's after him

Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome :

It is a peerless kinsman.

[Flourish. Exeunt.

SCENE V.-Inverness. A Room in MACBETH'S Castle.

Enter LADY MACBETH, reading a letter.

LADY M. "They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me, 'Thane of Cawdor'; by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, king that shalt be!' This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness; that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell."

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promis'd :-Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,

To catch the nearest way: Thou wouldst be great :
Art not without ambition: but without

20

The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou 'dst have, great Glamis,
That which cries, "Thus thou must do, if thou have it,"
And that which rather thou dost fear to do,

Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round,

54 Full so valiant.

Quite as brave as you say. Without the illness. Without the evil-doing which naturally accompanies ambition.

20

24 That which cries. You want to have what can only be obtained on conditions which it proclaims of itself; you wish also to have what you rather fear to do than wish not to be done.

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown'd withal.-What is your tidings?
Enter an Attendant.

ATTEN. The king comes here to-night.

LADY M.

30

Thou 'rt mad to say it :

Is not thy master with him? who, wer 't so.

Would have inform'd for preparation.

ATTEN. So please you, it is true; our thane is coming : 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.

He brings great news.

Give him tending,

The raven himself is hoarse

[Exit Attendant.

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse ;
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

40

30 Metaphysical. Supernatural. The word is explained in Ford, Broken Heart, i. I—

"The metaphysics are but speculations

Of the celestial bodies, or such accidents

As, not mixed perfectly, in th' air engendered
Appear to us unnatural; that's all."

Doth seem like ouke, with the future.

32 Thou'rt mad to say it. The lady's self-control breaks down for a moment at hearing that Duncan is rushing into the toils; and is only by a powerful effort regained in the next words. 36 Had the speed of him. Has just outstripped him.

39 The raven himself is hoarse. The raven messenger has lost his breath and voice, and is hoarse in giving his message (so Delius ingeniously and probably interprets).

40 Entrance. A trisyllable, like Eng(e)land, Hen(e)ry, hand (e)ling' so in the next line the pause after 'battlements' supplies the place of a syllable. Again in the line and take my milk for gall,' there is a synizesis of 'and-take,' and also of 'my-milk.'

47 Keep peace. execution.

Allow no truce between the purpose and its