Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure Our setting down before 't. Mal. 'Tis his main hope: For where there is advantage to be given' And none serve with him but constrained things, Maed. Let our just censures Siw. The time approaches, That will with due decision make us know V. Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers, with drums and colours. Mes. 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, 5 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 the equivocation of the fiend, 10 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 no flying hence, nor tarrying here. 151 'gin to be a-weary of the sun, [done.And wish the estate o' the world were now unRing the alarum bell :-Blow, wind! come, wrack) At least we'll die with harness on our back. [Exe. SCENE VI. |20|Drum and Colours. Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, and their Army, with boughs. Mal. Now near enough; your leavy screens throw down, Macb. Hang out our banners on the outward walls; 4 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 hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir As life were in't: I have supt full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts, Cannot once start me.-Wherefore was that cry Sey. The queen, my lord, is dead. Macb. She should have dy'd 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! 45 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale, Told by an ideot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Enter a Messenger. Thou com'st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.) 1 I should report that which I say I saw, But know not how to do't. Mach. Well, say, sir. Mes. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move. Mucb. Liar, and slave! 6 [Striking him. 50 Enter Young Siward. Yo. Siw. What is thy name? Macb. Thou'lt be afraid to hear it. [name 55 But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, Brandish'd by man that's of a woman born. [Exit. Alarums. Enter Macduff Macd. That way the noise is:thy face; -Tyrant, shew That is, opportunity to be gone. More and less is the same with greater and less. 3. e. determine. My hairy part, my capillitium. Fell is skin. Recorded is probably here used for recording, or recordable. Clung, in the northern counties, signifies any thing that is shrivelled or shrunk up. By famine, the intestines are, as it were, stuck together. To be clem'd is a Staffordshire expres sion signifying to be starv'd. To cling likewise siguifies to compress, to embrace. If thou be'st slain, and with no stroke of mine, Macd. I have no words, 30 My voice is in my sword; thou bloodier villain As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air2 I would not wish them to a fairer death; And so his knell is knoll'd. Mal. He's worth more sorrow, And that I'll spend for him. Siw. He's worth no more: They say, he parted well, and paid his score: And so, God be with him! Here comes newer comfort. Re-enter Macduff with Macbeth's head. With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed: 35 Macd. Hail, king! for so thou art: Behold, Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life, which must not yield Macd. Despair thy charm; And let the angel, whom thou still hast serv'd, Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb Untimely ripp'd. Macb. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, And live to be the shew and gaze o' the time, Mach. I will not yield, where stands The usurper's cursed head: the time is free ; 40 Whose voices I desire aloud with mine,- [Fourish. All. Hail, king of Scotland! Mal. We shall not spend a large expence of time, Before we reckon with your several loves, [men, 45 And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsHenceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland In such an honour nam'd. What's more to do, Which would be planted newly with the time,A calling home our exil'd friends abroad, 50 That fled the snares of watchful tyranny; Producing forth the cruel ministers Of this dead butcher, and his fiend-like queen ; Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands Took off her life;-This, and what needful else To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, 55 That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace, And to be baited with the rabble's curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, And thou oppos'd, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the last: Before my body We will perform in measure, time, and place: Citizens of Angiers, Heralds, Executioners, Messengers, Soldiers, and other Attendants. SCENE I. Northampton. A room of state in the palace. ACT I. And put the same into young Arthur's hand, K. John. What follows, if we disallow of this? Euter King John, Queen Elinor, Pembroke, Es- 5 To inforce these rights so forcibly withheld. [war, sex, and Salisbury, with Chatillon. K. John. NOW, say, Chatillon, what would France with us? [France, Chat. Thus, after greeting, speaks the king of Eli. A strange beginning-borrow'd majesty! 10 K. John. Here have we war for war, and blood (20 'Mr. Theobald remarks, that though this play had the title of The Life and Death of King John, yet the action of it begins at the thirty-fourth year of his life; and takes in only some transactions of his reign at the time of his demise, being an interval of about seventeen years. Mr. Steevens observes, that Hall, Hollinshed, Stowe, &c. are closely followed not only in the conduct, but sometimes in the expressions throughout the following historical dramas; viz. Macbeth, this play, Richard II. Henry IV. 2 parts, Henry V. Henry VI. 3 parts, Richard III. and Henry VIII. 2 William Mareshall Jeffrey Fitzpeter, Ch. J. of England. William Longsword, son to Henry II. by Rosamond Clifford. Roger, Earl of Norfolk and Suffolk. i. e. in my character. i. e. opposition. Cc 2 How 3 4 K. John. Our strong possession, and our right for Eli.Yourstrong possession,much more than your Or else it must go wrong with you, and me: [right; So much my conscience whispers in your ear: Which none but heaven, and you, and I, shall hear. Enter the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, who whispers Essex. 5 10 Essex. My liege,here is the strangest controversy, 15 This expedition's charge.-What men are you? K. John. What art thou? Rob. The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge. Phil. Most certain of one mother, mighty king, Eli. Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame And wound her honour with this diffidence. 20 O old Sir Robert, father, on my knee I give heaven thanks, I was not like to thee. Eli. He hath a trick2 of Cœur-de-lion's face, K.John. Mine eye hath well examined his parts, Phil. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land; 30 Phil. I, madam? no, I have no reason for it; Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance? Phil. I know not why, except to get the land. And were our father, and this son like him ; 2 K. John. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate; 50 55 Phil. Of no more force to dispossess me, sir, Than was his will to get me, as I think. Eli. Whether hadst thou rather, be a Faul conbridge, And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land; That is, conduct, administration. Meaning, that peculiarity of face which may be sufficiently shewn by the slightest outline. Our author is here knowingly guilty of an anachronism, as he alludes to a coin not struck till the year 1504, in the reign of king Henry VII. viz. a groat, which, as well as the half groat, bare but half faces impressed. The groats of all our kings of England, and indeed all their other coins of silver, one or two only excepted, had a full face crown'd; till Henry VII. at the time above mentioned, coined groats and half groats, as also some shillings, with half faces, i. e. faces in profile, as all our coin has now. The first groats of king Henry VIII. were like those of his father; though afterwards he returned to the broad faces again. In the time of King John there were no groats at all, they being first, as far as appears, coined in the reign of king Edward III. Or Act 1. Scene 1.] Or the reputed son of Cœur-de-lion, KING JOHN. Lord of thy presence', and no land beside? [tune, chance: Your face hath got five hundred pound a-year; Eli. Nay, I wouldhave yougo before ine thither. Phil. Philip, my liege; so is my name begun; K. John. From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bear'st: Phil. Brother, adieu; Good fortune come to thee, [Exeunt all but Philip. A foot of honour better than I was; 5 But many a many foot of land the worse. For your conversing. Now your traveller, Kneel thou down Philip, but arise more great; Eli. The very spirit of Plantagenet !— Something about, a little from the right, In at the window, or else o'er the hatch': K. John. Go, Faulconbridge; now hast thou A landless knight makes thee a landed 'squire,— It draws towards supper in conclusion so. 12 For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising.- 2 1i. e. master of thy majestic figure and dignified appearance. The meaning is, "If I had his shape-Sir Robert's--as he has." Sir Robert his, for Sir Robert's, is agreeable to the practice of that time, when the 's added to the nominative was believed, I think erroneously, to be a contraction of We must observe, his. Theobald says, that in this very obscure passage our poet is anticipating the date of another coin; humorously to rally a thin face, eclipsed, as it were, by a full-blown rose. to explain this allusion, that queen Elizabeth was the first, and indeed the only prince, who coined in England three-half-pence, and three-farthing pieces. She at one and the same time coined shillings, sixpences, groats, three-pences, two-pences, three-half-pence, pence, three-farthings, and half-pence; and these pieces all had her head, and were alternately with the rose behind, and without the rose. The But Dr. Warburton obshilling, groat, two-pence, penny, and half-penny, had it not: the other intermediate coins, viz. the "What then? These exsix-pence, three-pence, three-half-pence, and three-farthings had the rose. Faulconbridge here serves, that the sticking roses about them was then all the court-fashion. pressions mean, says Mr. Steevens, to be born out of wedlock, i. e. a step. entertains himself with the ideas of greatness.-Good den, Sir Richard, he supposes to be the salutation of a vassal. God-a-mercy, fellow, his own supercilious reply to it. i. e. respectful. To pick the teeth, and wear a piqued beard, were, in that time, marks of a traveller, or man affecting foreign fashions. 1° See note, p. 164. i. e. as they then spoke and wrote it, an absey-book, meaning à çatechism. 13 Dr. Johnson says, our author means, that a woman that travelled about like a 12 Which for this. 10 32 11 post, was likely to horn her husband, 7 9 |