SCENE V.

Dunsinane. Within the Castle.

Enter, with Drums and Colours, MACBETH, SEYTON, and Soldiers.

Mach. Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still, "They come !" Our castle's strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie,
Till famine and the ague eat them up.

Were they not forc'd with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home. What is that noise?
[A cry within, of Women.

Sey. It is the cry of women, my good lord.
Mach. I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair2
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir,

As life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors:
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.- -Wherefore was that cry?
Sey. The queen, my lord, is dead3.

2 and my FELL of hair] “Fell" is skin, and is still in use in the word "fellmonger." I am indebted to Mr. Barron Field for a very happy emendation of an obviously corrupt passage in "Midsummer's-Night's Dream," Vol. ii. p. 460, which, as it relates to the word "fell," in the sense of skin or hide, I may insert here, regretting that the suggestion was not in time to be added in the proper place. The lines usually run thus :

"Then krow, that I, one Snug the joiner, am

A lion fell, nor else no lion's dam.”

Mr. Field amends them as follows:

Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
A lion's fell, nor else no lion's dam."

"Fell" has hitherto, as he states, been erroneously taken in the sense of cruel, "A lion fell ;" but the insertion of a single letter, which had accidentally dropped out in the press, makes the whole perspicuous: Snug informing the ladies, who were likely to be frightened, that he was not "a lion fell," but merely "a lion's fell," or a man in the skin of a lion.

3 The queen, my lord, is dead.] We must suppose, that Seyton has gone to what we now call "the wing" of the stage to inquire.

Mach. She should have died hereafter:

There would have been a time for such a word.-
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death'. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Enter a Messenger.

Thou com'st to use thy tongue; thy story, quickly.
Mess. Gracious my lord,

I shall report that which I say I saw,

But know not how to do't.

Macb.

Well, say, sir.

Mess. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move3.

The way to DUSTY DEATH.] Shakespeare was not the first to apply the epithet "dusty to death. Anthony Copley, in his “ Fig for Fortune,” 1596, has this line :

There can be no doubt it is the right word, although the second folio reads "study death," and Warburton would read dusky. None of the commentators appear to have found an instance of the coupling of the two words "dusty death."

5 The wood began to move.] So in Deloney's ballad in praise of Kentishmen, published in "Strange Histories," 1607, (reprinted by the Percy Society) they conceal their numbers by the boughs of trees :

"For when they spied his approach,

in place as they did stand,
Then marched they to hem him in
each one a bough in hand.

"So that unto the Conqueror's sight,

amazed as he stood,

They seemed to be a walking grove,

or els a mooving wood."-P. 7.

This ballad was written, unquestionably, before the year 1600.

Macb.

Liar, and slave!

Mess. Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so. Within this three mile may you see it coming;

I say, a moving grove.

Macb.

If thou speak'st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,

I care not if thou dost for me as much.—

I pull in resolution; and begin

To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth: "Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane ;"-and now a wood

Comes toward Dunsinane.-Arm, arm, and out!-
If this, which he avouches, does appear,

There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.

I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,

And wish th' estate o' the world were now undone.-
Ring the alarum bell!-Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back. [Exeunt.

SCENE VI.

The Same. A Plain before the Castle.

Enter, with Drums and Colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD, MACDUFF, &c., and their Army with Boughs.

Mal. Now near enough: your leafy screens throw down,

Till famine CLING thee:] "Cling" is a word to which it is difficult to assign a precise meaning. The commentators have adduced various passages from other authors, which show that most of them used it in different senses. Steevens says, that "dlung, in the northern counties, signifies any thing that is shrivelled or shrunk up." In Craven, when a wet bladder is empty, and it therefore collapses, it is said to cling, and the word is there also figuratively used for hungry or empty. See Holloway's "General Provincial Dictionary," 1838. In Sir F. Madden's admirable Glossary to "Syr Gawayne," 4to, 1839, clenged is interpreted “contracted or shrunk with cold.” “Till famine cling thee" may therefore mean," till famine shrink thee."

And show like those you are.-You, worthy uncle,
Shall, with my cousin, your right-noble son,
Lead our first battle: worthy Macduff, and we,

Shall take upon's what else remains to do,
According to our order.

Siw.

Fare you well.—

Do we but find the tyrant's power to-night,

Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.

Macd. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all

breath,

Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

[Exeunt. Alarums continued.

SCENE VII.

The Same. Another Part of the Plain.

Enter MACBETH.

Macb. They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly, But, bear-like, I must fight the course.-What's he, That was not born of woman? Such a one

Am I to fear, or none.

Enter young SIWARD.

Yo. Siw. What is thy name?

Macb.

Thou'lt be afraid to hear it.

Yo. Siw. No; though thou call'st thyself a hotter

name,

Than any is in hell.

Macb.

My name's Macbeth.

Yo. Siw. The devil himself could not pronounce a

title

More hateful to mine ear.

Macb.

No, nor more fearful.

with my

sword

Yo. Siw. Thou liest, abhorred tyrant: with I'll prove the lie thou speak'st.

Mach.

[They fight, and young SIWARD is slain.
Thou wast born of woman :-

But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,
Brandish'd by man that's of a woman born.

Alarums. Enter MACDUFF.

[Exit.

Macd. That way the noise is. - Tyrant, show thy face!

If thou be'st slain, and with no stroke of mine,
My wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still.
I cannot strike at wretched kernes', whose arms
Are hir'd to bear their staves: either thou, Macbeth,
Or else my sword, with an unbatter'd edge,

I sheathe again undeeded. There thou should'st be;
By this great clatter, one of greatest note

Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune!
And more I beg not.

[Exit. Alarum.

Enter MALCOLM and old SIWARD.

Siw. This way, my lord. The castle's gently ren

der'd:

The tyrant's people on both sides do fight;

The noble thanes do bravely in the war.

The day almost itself professes yours,

And little is to do.

Mac. Why should I play the Roman fool, and die

wretched KERNES,] The word "kernes seems here used with greater licence than usual, as mercenaries. See Vol. v. p. 161.

8 Seems BRUITED.] i. e. Noised or reported. See Vol. vi. p. 584.