Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies. Samuel Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ regular course of consequences, if its success could secure its surcease, if being once done successfully, without detection, it could fix a period to all vengeance and enquiry, so that this blow might be all that I have to do, and this anxiety all that I have to suffer; if this could be my condition, even here in this world, in this contracted period of temporal existence, on this narrow bank in the ocean of eternity, I would jump the life to come, I would venture upon the deed without care of any future state. But this is one of these cases in which judgment is pronounced and vengeance inflicted upon as here in our present life. We teach others to do as we have done, and are punished by our own example." (1773)

      I.vii.4 (428,3) With his surcease, success] I think the reasoning requires that we should read,

      With its success surcease.

      I.vii.6 (429,4) shoal of time] This is Theobald's emendation, undoubtedly right. The old edition has school, and Dr. Warburton shelve.

      I.vii.22 (429,7) or heavens cherubin, hors'd/Upon the sightless couriers of the air] [W: couriers] Courier is only runner. Couriers of air are winds, air in motion. Sightless is invisible.

      I.vii.25 (430,8) That tears shall drown the wind] Alluding to the remission of the wind in a shower.

      I.vii.28 (430,9) Enter Lady] The arguments by which lady Macbeth persuades her husband to commit the murder, afford a proof of Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature. She urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea which has dazzled mankind from age to age, and animated sometimes the house-breaker, and sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism Macbeth has for ever destroyed, by distinguishing true from false fortitude, in a line and a half; of which it may almost be said, that they ought to bestow immortality on the author, though all his other productions had been lost:

      I dare do all that become a man,

      Who dares do more, is none.

      This topic, which has been always employed with too much success, is used in this scene with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman. Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier, and the reproach of cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great impatience.

      She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them; this argument Shakespeare, whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might easily have shewn that a former obligation could not be vacated by a latter: that obligations laid on us by a higher power, could not be over-ruled by obligations which we lay upon ourselves.

      I.vii.41 (431,1)

      —Whouldst thou have that,

      Which then esteem'st the ornament of life,

      And live a coward in thine own esteem?]

      In this there seems to be no reasoning. I should read,

      Or live a coward in thine own esteem?

      Unless we choose rather,

      —Wouldst thou leave that.

      I.vii.45 (431,2) Like the poor cat i' the adage?] The adage alluded to is, The cat loves fish, but dares not wet her feet, Catus amat pisces, sed men vult tingere plantas.

      I.vii.64 (432,5) Will I with wine and wassel so convince] To convince is in Shakespeare to overpower or subdue, as in this play,

      —Their malady convinces

      The great assay of art.

      I.vii.67 (433,6) A limbeck only] That is, shall be only a vessel to emit fumes or vapours.

      I.vii.71 (433,7) our great quell] Quell is murder. manquellers being in the old language the term for which murderers is now used.

      II.i (434,8) Enter Banquo, and Fleance with a torch before him] The place is not mark'd in the old edition, nor is it easy to say where this encounter can be. It is not in the hall, as the editors have all supposed it, for Banquo sees the sky; it is not far from the bedchamber, as the conversation shews: it must be in the inner court of the castle, which Banquo might properly cross in his way to bed.

      II.i.25 (435,2) If you shall cleave to my consent, Then 'tis,/It shall make honour for you] Macbeth expressed his thought with affected obscurity; he does not mention the royalty, though he apparently has it in his mind, If you shall cleave to my consent, if you shall concur with me when I determine to accept the crown, when 'tis, when that happens which the prediction promises, it shall make honour for you.

      II.i.49 (437,6) Now o'er the one half world/Nature seems dead] That is, over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have ceased. This image, which is perhaps the most striking that poetry can produce, has been adopted by Dryden in his Conquest of Mexico:

      All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead,

      The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head;

      The little birds in dreams their song repeat,

      And sleeping flow'rs beneath the night dews sweat.

      Even lust and envy sleep!

      These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast between them and this passage of Shakespeare may be more accurately observed.

      Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of quiet, the other of perturbation. In the night of Dryden, all the disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakespeare, nothing but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake. He that reads Dryden, finds himself lull'd with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation. He that peruses Shakspeare looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover, the other, of a murderer.

      II.i.52 (438,8)

      —wither'd Murther,

      —thus with hia stealthy pace,

      With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rds his design

      moves like a ghost.—]

      This was the reading of this passage [ravishing sides] in all the editions before that of Mr. Pope, who for sides, inserted in the text strides, which Mr. Theobald has tacitly copied from him, though a more proper alteration might perhaps have been made. A ravishing stride is an action of violence, impetuosity, and tumult, like that of a savage rushing at his prey; whereas the poet is here attempting to exhibit an image of secrecy and caution, of anxious circumspection and guilty timidity, the stealthy pace of a ravisher creeping into the chamber of a virgin, and of an assassin approaching the bed of him whom he proposes to murder, without awaking him; these he describes as moving like ghosts, whose progression is so different from strides, that it has been in all ages represented te be, as Milton expresses it,

      Smooth sliding without step.

      This hemiatic will afford the true reading of this place, which is, I think, to be corrected thus:

      —and wither'd Murder.

      —thus with his stealthy pace.

      With Tarquin ravishing, slides tow'rds his design,

      Moves like a ghost.—

      Tarquin СКАЧАТЬ