It is no pleasure to me, in revising my volumes, to observe how much paper is wasted in confutation. Whoever considers the revolutions of learning, and the various questions of greater or less importance, upon which wit and reason have exercised their powers, must lament the unsuccessfulness of inquiry, and the slow advances of truth, when he reflects, that great part of the labour of every writer is only the destruction of those that went before him. The first care of the builder of a new system is to demolish the fabrics which are standing. The chief desire of him that comments an author, is to show how much other commentators have corrupted and obscured him. The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controversy, are refuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion without progress. Thus sometimes truth and error, and sometimes contrarieties of error, take each other's place by reciprocal invasion. The tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence, which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way.

These elevations and depressions of renown, and the contradictions to which all improvers of knowledge must for ever be exposed, since they are not escaped by the highest and brightest of mankind, may surely be endured with patience by critics and anotators, who can rank themselves but as the satellites of the authors. How canst thou beg for life, says Homer's hero to his captive, when thou knowest that thou art now to suffer only what must another day be suffered by Achilles?

Dr. Warburton had a name sufficient to confer celebrity on those who could exalt themselves into antagonists, and his notes have raised a clamour too loud to be distinct. His chief assailants are the authors of The Canons of Criticism, and of The Revisal of Shakspeare's Text;† of whom one ridi. cules his errors with airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assas sin or incendiary. The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;" when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in Macbeth:

"A falcon tow'ring in his pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd." Let me, however, do them justice. One is a wit, and one a scholar. They have both shown acuteness sufficient in the discovery of faults, and have both advanced some probable interpretations of obscure passages; but when they aspire to conjecture and emendation, it appears how falsely we all estimate our own abilities, and the little which they have been able to perform might have taught them more candour to the endeavours of others.

Before Dr. Warburton's edition, Critical Observations on Shakspeare had been published by Mr. Upton,‡ a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste. Many of his explanations are curious and useful, but he likewise, though he professed to oppose the licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill seconded by his skill. Every cold empiric, when his heart expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist, and the laborious collator at some unlucky moment frolics in conjecture. Critical, historical, and explanatory Notes have been likewise published upon Shakspeare by Dr. Grey, whose diligent perusal of the old English writers has enabled him to make some useful observations. What he undertook he has well enough performed, but as he neither attempts judicial nor emendatory criticism, he employs rather his memory than his sagacity. It were to be wished that all would endeavour to imitate his modesty, who have not been able to surpass his knowledge.

I can say with great sincerity of all my predecessors, what I hope will hereafter be said of me, that not one has left Shakspeare without improvement, nor is there one to whom I have not been indebted for assistance and information. Whatever I have taken from them, it was my intention to refer to its original author, and it is certain, that what I' have not given to another, I believed when I wrote it to be my own. In some perhaps I have been anticipated; but if 1 am ever found to encroach upon the remarks of any other commentator, I am willing that the honour, be it more or less, should be transferred to the first claimant, for his right, and his alone, stands above dispute; the second can prove

his pretensions only to himself, nor can himself always die. tinguish invention, with sufficient certainty, from recollection, They have all been treated by me with candour, which they have not been careful of observing to one another. It is not easy to discover from what cause the acrimony of a scholiast can naturally proceed. The subjects to be discus sed by him are of very small importance; they involve neither property nor liberty; nor favour the interest of sect or party. The various readings of copies, and different interpretations of a passage, seem to be questions that might exercise the wit, without engaging the passions. But whether it be, that "small things make mean men proud," and van. ity catches small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous strain of invective and contempt, more eager and venomous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politics against those whom he is hired to defame.

Perhaps the lightness of the matter may conduce to the vehemence of the agency; when the truth to be investigated is so near to inexistence, as to escape attention, its bulk is to be enlarged by rage and exclamation: that to which all would be indifferent in its original state, may attract notice when the fate of a name is appended to it. A commentator has indeed great temptations to supply by turbulence what he wants of dignity, to beat his little gold to a spacious surface, to work that to foam which no art or diligence can exalt to spirit.

The notes which I have borrowed or written are either il. lustrative, by which difficulties are explained; or judicial, by which faults and beauties are remarked; or emendatory, by which depravations are corrected.

The explanations transcribed from others, if I do not sub. join any other interpretation, I suppose commonly to be right, at least I intend by acquiescence to confess, that I have nothing better to propose.

After the labours of all the editors, I found many pas sages which appeared to me likely to obstruct the greater number of readers, and thought it my duty to facilitate their passage. It is impossible for any expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for others. He can only judge what is necessary by his own experience; and how long soever he may deliberate, will at last explain many lines which the learned will think impossible to be mistaken, and omit many for which the ignorant will want his help. These are censures merely relative, and must be quietly endured. I have endeavoured to be neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and hope that I have made my author's meaning accessible to many who before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to the public, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure.

The complete explanation of an author not systematic and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are suppressed, must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs, too minute to attract the notice of law, yet such as modes of dress, formalities of conversation, rules of visits, disposition of furniture, and practices of ceremony, which naturally find places in familiar dialogue,are so fugitive and unsubstantial, that they are not easily retained or recovered. What can be known will be collected by chance, from the recesses of obscure and obsolete papers, perhaps used commonly with some other view. Of this knowledge every man has some, and none has much; but when an author has engaged the public attention, those who can add any thing to his illustration, communicate their discoveries, and time produces what had eluded diligence.

To time I have been obliged to resign many passages, which, though I did not understand them, will perhaps here after be explained, having, I hope, illustrated some, which, others have neglected or mistaken, sometimes by short remarks, or marginal directions, such as every editor has added at his will, and often by comments more laborious than the matter will seem to deserve; but that which is most difficult is not always most important, and to an editor nothing is a trifle by which his author is obscured.

The poetical beauties or defects I have not been very diligent to observe. Some plays have more, and some fewer judicial observations, not in proportion to their difference of merit, but because I gave this part of my design to chance and to caprice. The reader, I believe, is seldom pleased to find his opinion anticipated; it is natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we receive. Judgment, like other faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table-book. Some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have therefore shown so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover the rest.

To the end of most plays I have added short strictures containing a general censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which I know not how much 1 have concurred with the current opinion; but I have not, by any affectation of sin

gularity, deviated from it. Nothing is minutely and partiCarly examined, and therefore it is to be supposed, that in the plays which are condemned there is much to be praised, and in these which are praised much to be condemned.

The part of criticism in which the whole succession of editors has laboured with the greatest diligence, which has occasioned the most arrogant ostentation, and excited the keenest acrimony, is the emendation of corrupted passages, to which the public attention having been first drawn by the violence of the contention between Pope and Theobald, has been continued by the persecution, which, with a kind of conspiracy, has been since raised against all the publishers of Shakspeare.

That many passages have passed in a state of depravation through all the editions, is indubitably certain; of these, the restoration is only to be attempted by collation of copies, or sagacity of conjecture. The collator's province is safe and easy, the conjecturer's perilous and difficult. Yet as the greater part of the plays are extant only in one copy, the peril must not be avoided, nor the difficulty refused.

Of the readings which this emulation of amendment has hitherto produced, some from the labours of every publisher I have advanced into the text; those are to be considered as in my opinion sufficiently supported; some I have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous; some I have left in the notes without censure or approbation, as resting in equipoise between objection and defence; and some, which seemed specious but not right, I have inserted with a subsequent animadversion.

Having classed the observations of others, I was at last to try what I could substitute for their mistakes, and how I could supply their omissions. I collated such copies as I could procure, and wished for more, but have not found the collectors of these rarities very communicative. Of the editions which chance or kinduess put into my hands I have given an enumeration, that I may not be blamed for neglecting what I had not the power to do.

By examining the old copies, 1 soon found that the later publishers, with all their boast of diligence, suffered many pas sages to stand unauthorized, and contented themselves with Rowe's regulation of the text, even where they knew it to be arbitrary, and with a little consideration might have found it to be wrong. Some of these alterations are only the ejection of a word for one that appeared to him more elegant or more intelligible. These corruptions I have often silently rectified; for the history of our language, and the true force of our words, can only be preserved, by keeping the text of authors free from adulteration. Others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure on these I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that some liberties may be easily permitted. But this practice I have not suffered to proceed far, having restored the primitive diction wherever it could for any reason be preferred.

The emendations, which comparison of copies supplied, I have inserted in the text; sometimes, where the improvement was slight, without notice, and sometimes with an account of the reasons of the change.

Conjecture, though it be sometimes unavoidable, I have not wantonly nor licentiously indulged. It has been my settled principle, that the reading of the ancient books is probably true, and therefore is not to be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity, or mere improvement of the sense. For though much credit is not due to the fidelity, nor any to the judgment of the first publishers, yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to read it right, than we who read it only by imagination. But it is evident that they have often made strange mistakes by ignorance or negligence, and that therefore something may be properly attempted by criticism, keeping the middle way between presumption and timidity.

Such criticism I have attempted to practise, and where any passage appeared inextricably perplexed, have endeav oured to discover how it may be recalled to sense, with least violence. But my first labour is, always to turn the old text on every side, and try if there be any interstice, through which light can find its way; nor would Huetius himself condemn me, as refusing the trouble of research, for the ambition of alteration. In this modest industry, I have not been unsuccessful. I have rescued many lines from the violations of temerity, and secured many scenes from the inroads of correction. I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honourable to save a citizen, than to kill an enemy, and have been more careful to protect than to attack. I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts, though I believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority. Some of those which are divided in the later editions have no division in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no division in the preceding copies. The settled mode of the theatre requires four intervals in the play, but few, if any, of our author's compositions, can be properly distributed in that marner. An act is so much of the drama as passes without intervention of time, or

change of place. A pause makes a new act. In every real, and therefore in every imitative action, the intervals may be more or fewer, the restriction of five acts being accident and arbitrary. This Shakspeare knew, and this he prac tised; his plays were written, and at first printed in one unbroken continuity, and ought now to be exhibited with short pauses, interposed as often as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to pass. This method would at once quell a thousand absurdities.

In restoring the author's works to their integrity, I have considered the punctuation as wholly in my power; for what could be their care of colons and commas, who corrupted words and sentences? Whatever could be done by adjusting points, is therefore silently performed, in some plays with much diligence, in others with less; it is hard to keep a busy eye steadily fixed upon evanescent atoms, or a dis cursive mind upon evanescent truth.

The same liberty has been taken with a few particles, or other words of slight effect. I have sometimes inserted or omitted them without notice. I have done that some times, which the other editors have done always, and which indeed the state of the text may sufficiently justify.

The greater part of readers, instead of, blaming us for passing trifles, will wonder that on mere trifles so much labour is expended, with such importance of debate, and such solemnity of diction. To these I answer with confidence, that they are judging of an art which they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism, more useful, happier, or wiser.

As I practised conjecture more, I learned to trust it less; and after I had printed a few plays, resolved to insert none of my own reading in the text. Upon this caution I now congratulate myself, for every day increases my doubt of v emendations.

Since I have confined my imagination to the margin, it must not be considered as very reprehensible, if I have suf fered it to play some freaks in its own dominion. There is no danger in conjecture, if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those changes may be safely offered, which are not considered even by him that offers them as necessary or safe.

If my readings are of little value, they have not been ostentatiously displayed or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer notes, for the art of writing notes is not of dif ficult attainment. The work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence, ignorance, and asinine taste. lessness of the former editors, showing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing something, which to superficial readers would seem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the true reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding with loud acclama. tions on the discovery, and a sober wish for the advancement and prosperity of genuine criticism.

All this may be done, and perhaps done sometimes without impropriety. But I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right. The justness of a happy restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied to criticism, quod dubitas ne feceris.

To dread the shore which he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to the sailor. I had before my eye, so many critical adventures, ended in miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every page wit struggling with its own sophistry, and learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossessing their emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may be by some other editor defended and established. "Critics I saw, that others' names efface,

And fix their own, with labour, in their place;
Their own, like others, soon their place resign'd,
Or disappear'd, and left the first behind."

POPE.

That a conjectural critic should often be mistaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others, or himself, if it be considered that in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomati. cal truth that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of error is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under plea. sure. The allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible, Conjecture has all the joy and the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise against it.

Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learn ed world; nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised so many ghty minds, from the revival of

learning to our own age, from the Bishop of Aleria to English Bentley. The critics on ancient authors have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the editor of Shakspeare is condemned to want. They are employed upon grammatical and settled languages, whose construction contributes so much to perspicuity, that Homer has fewer passages unintelligible than Chaucer. The words have not only a known regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and confine the choice. There are commonly more manuscripts than one; and they do not often conspire in the same mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to Salmasius how little satisfaction his emendations give him. "Illudunt nobis con. Jecturæ nostræ, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices incidimus." And Lipsius could complain, that critics were making faults, by trying to remove them, "Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur." And indeed, where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often vague and disputable, like mine or Theobald's.

Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the public expectations, which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no opin. ion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight solicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate. In many I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not passed over, with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of zeeming learning upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be Imputed to negligence, that where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have said enough, I have said no more.

Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly en

the Bishop of Aleria-] John Andreas. He was secretary to the Vatican library during the papacy of Paul II. and Sixtus IV. By the former he was employed to superintend such works as were to be multiplied by the new art of printing, at that time brought into Rome. He published Herodotus, Strabo, Aulus Gellius, &c. His school-fellow, Cardinal de Cusa, procured him the bishopric of Accia, a province in Corsica; and Paul II. afterwards appointed him to that of Aleria in the same island, where he died in 1493. See FABRIC. Bibl. Lat. vol. iii. 894-STEEVENS,

gaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Thos bald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue, and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book which he has too diligently studied. Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design, and in its true proportions; a close approach shows the smal ler niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer. It is not very grateful to consider how little the succession of editors has added to this author's power of pleasing. He was read, admired, studied, and imitated, while he was yet de. formed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions understood; yet then aid Dryden pronounce, "that Shakspeare was the man, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those, who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation; he was naturally learn ed: he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to com pare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi."

It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a com. mentary; that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure. But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakspeare, by accident and time; and more than has been suffered by any other writer since the use of types, has been suffered by him through his own negligence of faine, or perhaps by that superiority of mind, which despised its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preserved, which the critics of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining.

Among these candidates of inferior fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the public; and wish that I could confidently produce any commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I should feel little solicitude about the sentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned

SCENE I. AN OPEN PLACE.

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches. 1 Witch. WHEN shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

2 Witch. When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won.

3 Witch. That will be ere set of sun. 1 Witch. Where the place?

2 Witch. Upon the heath.

3 Witch. There to meet with Macbeth.

1 Witch. I come, Graymalkin!

All. Paddock calls:-anon

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air,

[Witches vanish.

SCENE II. A CAMP NEAR FORES.

Alarum within. Enter King Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lenox, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Soldier.

And 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! Sold. 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 valour arm'd, Compell'd these skipping Kernes to trust their But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage, [heels, With furbish'd arms and new supplies of men Began a fresh assault.

Dun. Dismay'd not this
Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
Sold. Yes;

As sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion.
If I say sooth, I must report they were
As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks;

Mal. This is the sergeant,

Who, like a good and hardy soldier, fought
'Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil,
As thou didst leave it.

Sold. Doubtfully it stood;

As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald
(Worthy to be a rebel; for, to that,
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him,) from the western isles
Of Kernes and Gallowglasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore. But all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name,)
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd stcel,
Which smok'd with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion,

Carv'd out his passage, till he fac'd the slave;

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:
Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
Or memorize another Golgotha,

I cannot tell :

But I am faint, my gashes cry for help. [wounds; Dun. So well thy words become thee, as thy They smack of honour both.-Go, get him surgeons. [exit Soldier, attended. Enter Rosse.

Who comes here?

Mal. The worthy thane of Rosse.

Len. What haste looks through his eyes! So That seems to speak things strange. [should he look, Rosse. God save the king!

Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane
Rosse. From Fife, great king,
Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,
And fan our people cold.

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,
Assisted by that most disloyal traitor,
The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict:
A

1 Witch. A sailor's wife had chesnuts in her Aud mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd :Give me, quoth I:

Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o'the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,

And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.

2 Witch. I'll give thee a wind.

1 Witch. Thou art kind.

3 Witch. And I another.

1 Witch. I myself have all the other:

And the very ports they blow,

All the quarters that they know

I' the shipman's card.

I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall, neither night nor da
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary sev'n nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd.
Look what I have.

2 Witch. Show me, show me.

1 Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb,

Wreck'd, as homeward he did come. [drum within. 3 Witch. A drum, a drum;

Macbeth doth come.

All. The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land,

Thus do go about, about;

Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine:
Peace! the charm's wound up.

Enter Macbeth and Banquo.
Macb. So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
Ban. How far is't call'd to Fores? What are
So wither'd, and so wild in their attire, [these,
That look not like the inhabitants o'the earth,
And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand
By each at once her choppy finger laying

[me,

Upon her skinny lips.-You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.

Macb. Speak, if you can:— -What are you?

1 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis ! [of Cawdor!

2 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane 3 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter. [fear

Ban. Good sir, why do you start; and seem to Things that do sound so fair?—I'the name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed [to Witches. Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner Ye greet with present grace, and great prediction Of noble having, and of royal hope, That he seems rapt withal; to me, you speak not: If you can look into the seeds of time, [not, And say, which grain will grow, and which will Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favours nor your hate.

1 Witch. Hail!

2 Witch. Hail!

3 Witch. Hail!

1 Witch. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. 2 Witch. Not so happy, yet much happier. 3 Witch. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be So, all hail, Macbeth and Banquo! [none:

1 Witch. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail! [more! Macb. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me By Sinel's death, I know, I am thane of Glamis; But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman; and to be king, Stands not within the prospect of belief, No more than to be Cawdor. Say, from whence You owe this strange intelligence? or why Upon this blasted heath you stop our way [you. With such prophetic greeting?—-Speak, I charge [Witches vanish.

Ban. The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them.-Whither are they vanish'd? [melted

Macb. Into the air; and what seem'd corporal,
As breath into the wind.-Would they had staid!
Ban. Were such things here as we do speak
Or have we eaten of the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner?

Macb. Your children shall be kings.
Ban. You shall be king.

[about?

Macb. And thane of Cawdor too; went it not so? Ban. To the self-same tune and words. Who's here?

Enter Rosse and Angus.

Rosse. The king hath happily receiv'd, Macbeth,
The news of thy success: and when he reads
Thy personal venture in the rebels' fight,
His wonders and his praises do contend,
Which should be thine, or his. Silenc'd with that,
In viewing o'er the rest o'the self-same day,
He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,
Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,
Strange images of death. As thick as tale,

Came post with post; and every one did bear
Thy praises in his kingdom's great defence.
And pour'd them down before him.
Ang. We are sent,