The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,$ barrassment to the knitter or weaver. Heath. Drayton, a poet of Shakspeare's age, has likewise alluded to sleaved or ravelled silk, in his Quest of Cynthia: "At length I on a fountain light, Langton. It is Sleave is properly silk which has not been twisted mentioned in Holinshed's History of England, p. 835: Eight wild men all apparelled in green moss made with sleved silk." Again, in The Muses' Elizium, by Drayton: 66 thrumb'd with grass "As soft as sleave or sarcenet ever was." Again, ibid: "That in the handling feels as soft as any sleave." Steevens. Sleave appears to have signified coarse, soft, unwrought silk. Seta grossolana, Ital. Cotgrave, in his DICT. 1660, renders soye flosche, "sleave silk." See also, ibid: "Cadarce, pour faire capiton. The tow, or coarsest part of silke, whereof sleave is made."-In Troilus and Cressida we have-" Thou idle immaterial skein of sleave silk." Malone. Ravelled means entangled. So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Thurio says to Proteus, speaking of Sylvia "Therefore as you unwind her love from him, M. Mason. 5 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, &c.] In this encomium upon sleep, amongst the many appellations which are given it, significant of its beneficence and friendliness to life, we find one which conveys a different idea, and by no means agrees with the rest, which is-The death of each day's life. I make no question but Shakspeare wrote The birth of each day's life. The true characteristick of sleep, which repairs the decays of labour, and assists that returning vigour which supplies the next day's activity. Warburton. The death of each day's life, means the end of each day's labour, the conclusion of all that bustle and fatigue that each day's life brings with it. Thus also Chapman, in his version of the nineteenth Iliad: "But none can live without the death of sleep." Steevens. Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Baim of hurt minds,] Is it not probable that Shakspeare remembered the following verses in Sir Philip Sydney's Astrophel and Stella, a poem, from which he has quoted a line in The Merry Wives of Windsor ? Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Lady M. What do you mean? Marb Still it cried, Sleep no more! to all the house: Glamis hath murder'd leep; and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!" "Come sleepe, O sleepe, the certain knot of peace, "The bathing place of wits, the balm of woe, "The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, "The indifferent judge between the high and low." So also, in The famous Historie of George Lord Fauconbridge, &c. bl. 1. "Yet sleep, the comforter of distressed minds, could not lock up her eyes Again, in Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, B. VIII, 1587: 66 At such a time as folkes are wont to find release “Of cares that all the day before were working in their heds, "By sleep," &c. Again, ibid. B. XI: "O sleepe, quoth she, the rest of things, O gentlest of the goddes, "Sweete sleepe, the peace of mind, with whom crookt care is ave at odds; "Which cherishest men's weary limbs appall'd with tooling sore, "And makest them as fresh to worke, and lustie as before." The late Mr. Gray had perhaps our author's "death of each day's life" in his thoughts, when he wrote "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." Malone. He might as probably have thought on the following passage in the first scene of The Second Part of King Henry IV: 66 a sullen bell “Remember'd knolling a departed friend." Steevens. • Chief nourisher in life's feast;] So, in Chaucer's Squiere's Tale, v. 10.661; Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition: "The norice of digestion, the sleepe." Steevens. ▾ Glamis bath murder'd sleep; and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!] This triple menace, accommodated to the different titles of Macbeth, is too quaint to be received as the natural ebullition of a guilty mind. Introduce the adjuncts of a modern nobleman in the same manner, and the fault of the passage will become yet more conspicuous: as for instance Norfolk bath murder'd sleep; and therefore Surrey Steevens Lady M. Who was it, that thus cried? Why, wor thy tuane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think Macb. I'll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on 't again, I dare not. Infirm of purpose! Lady M. Give me the daggers: The sleeping, and the dead, Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood, That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt. [Exit. Knocking within. 'tis the eye of childhood, That fears a painted devil ] So, in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: 66 • gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt.] Could Shakspeare mean to play upon the similitude of gild and guilt? Johnson. This quibble too frequently occurs in the old plays. A few instances (for I could produce a dozen at least) may suffice: "Cand. You have a silver beaker of my wife's? "Flu. You say not true, 'tis gilt. "Cand. Then you say true: "And being gilt, the guilt lies more on you." Again, in Middleton's comedy of 4 mac World my Masters, 1608: "Though guilt condemns, 'tis gilt must make us glad.” And, lastly, from Shakspeare himself: "England shall double gild his treble guilt," Henry IV. P. II. Again, in King Henry V : "Have for the gilt of France, O guilt indeed!" Steevens, 1 Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood &c,] "Suscipit, & Gelli, quantum non ultima Tethys, "Nec genitor nympharum abluit oceanus." Catullus in Gellium, 83. Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnardine,2 Sophoc. Oedip. “ Οἶμαι γὰρ ἔτ αν Ιστρον ε' τε Φᾶσιν αν Again, in one of Hall's Satires: "If Trent or Thames-." &c. Steevens. "Non, si Neptuni fluctu renovare operam des; Lucret. L. VI, v. 1074. H. White. So, in The Insatiate Countess, by Marston, 1613: 66 Although the waves of all the northern sea "Should flow for ever through these guilty hands, "Yet the sanguinolent stain would extant be." Malone. 2 The multitudinous seas incarnardine,] To incarnardine is to stain any thing of a flesh colour, or red. Carnardine is the old term for carnation. So, in a comedy called Any Thing for a quiet Life: Steevens. Grograms, sattins, velvet fine, "The rosy-colour'd carnardine." Shakspeare's word may be exemplified from Carew's Obsequies to the Lady Anne Hay: "One shall ensphere thine eyes; another shall "Thy rosy cheek" Wakefield. By the multitudinous seas, perhaps, the poet meant, not the seas of every denomination, as the Caspian, &c. (as some have thought) nor the many-coloured seas, (as others contend) but the seas which swarm with myriads of inhabitants. Thus Homer: 6 Ποντον επ' ΙΧΘΥΟΕΝΤΑ φιλων απάνευθε φερεσιν.” The word is used by Ben Jonson, and by Thomas Decker, in The Wonderful Year, 1603, in which we find " the multitudinous spawn." It is objected, by Mr. Kenrick, that Macbeth, in his present disposition of mind, would hardly have adverted to a property of the sea, which has so little relation to the object immediately before him; and if Macbeth had really spoken this speech in his castle of Inverness, the remark would be just, But the critick should have remembered, that this speech is not the real effusion of a distempered mind, but the composition of Shakspeare; of that poet, who has put a circumstantial account of an apothecary's shop into the mouth of Romeo, the moment after he has heard the fatal news of his beloved Juliet's VOL. VII." I Making the green-one red.3 death; and has made Othello, when in the anguish of his heart he determines to kill his wife, digress from the object which agitates his soul, to describe minutely the course of the Pontick sea. Mr. Steevens objects, in the following note, to this explanation, thinking it more probable that Shakspeare should refer "to some visible quality in the ocean," than "to its concealed inhabitants;" ;" "to the waters that might admit of discoloration,” than "to the fishes whose hue could suffer no change from the tinct of blood." But in what page of our author do we find his allusions thus curiously rounded, and complete in all their parts? Or, rather, does not every page of these volumes furnish us with images, crouded on each other, that are not naturally connected, and sometimes are even discordant? Hamlet's proposing to take up arms against a sea of troubles is a well-known example of this kind, and twenty others might be produced. Our author certainly alludes to the waters, which are capable of discoloration, and not to the fishes. His allusion to the waters is expressed by the word seas; to which, if he has added an epithet that has no very close connexion with the subject immediately before him, he has only followed his usual practice. If, however, no allusion was intended to the myriads of inhabitants with which the deep is peopled, I believe, by the multitudinous seas, was meant, not the many-waved ocean, as is suggested, but the countless masses of waters wherever dispersed on the surface of the globe; the multitudes of seas, as Heywood has it, in a passage quoted below, that perha s our author remembered: and, indeed, it must be owned, that his having the plural, seas, seems to countenance such an interpretation; for the singular, sea, is equally suited to the epithet multitudinous, in the sense of vora, and would certainly have corresponded better with the subsequent line. Malone. I believe that Shakspeare referred to some visible quality in the ocean, rather than to its concealed inhabitants; to the waters that might admit of discoloration, and not to the fishes, whose hue could suffer no change from the tinct of blood. Waves appearing over waves are no unapt symbol of a croud. "A sea of heads" is a phrase employed by one of our ligitimate poets, but by which of them I do not at present recollect. Blackmore, in his Job, has swelled the same idea to a ridiculous bulk: "A waving sea of heads was round me spread, "And still fresh streams the gazing deluge fed.” He who beholds an audience from the stage, or any other multitude gazing on any particular object, must perceive that their heads are raised over each other, velut unda supervenit undam. af, therefore, our author, by the "multitudinous sea" does no": |