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MACB. Give me your favour: -my dull brain

was wrought

With things forgotten.1 Kindgentlemen, your pains
Are register'd where every day I turn

The leaf to read them.2-Let us toward the king.-
Think upon what hath chanc'd; and, at more time,
The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak
Our free hearts each to other.

1

BAN.

Very gladly.

MACB. Till then, enough.-Come, friends.

[Exeunt.

-favour:] i. e. indulgence, pardon. STEEVENS.

-my dull brain was wrought

With things forgotten.] My head was worked, agitated,

put into commotion. JOHNSON.

So, in Othello:

" Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
" Perplex'd in the extreme."

*where every day I turn

STEEVENS.

The leaf to read them.] He means, as Mr. Upton has observed, that they are registered in the table-book of his heart. So Hamlet speaks of the table of his memory. MALONE.

* The interim having weigh'd it,] This intervening portion of time is also personified: it is represented as a cool impartial judge; as the pauser Reason. Or, perhaps, we should readI' th' interim. STEEVENS.

I believe the interim is used adverbially: " you having weighed it in the interim." MALONE.

SCENE IV.

Fores. A Room in the Palace.

Flourish. Enter DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, and Attendants.

DUN. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not

Those in commission yet return'd?

MAL.

My liege, They are not yet come back. But I have spoke With one that saw him die: who did report, That very frankly he confess'd his treasons; Implor'd your highness' pardon; and set forth A deep repentance: nothing in his life Became him, like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death,

6

4

-Are not-] The old copy reads-Or not. The emendation was made by the editor of the second folio.

MALONE.

* With one that saw him die:] The behaviour of the thane of Cawdor corresponds, in almost every circumstance, with that of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, as related by Stowe, p. 793. His asking the Queen's forgiveness, his confession, repentance, and concern about behaving with propriety on the scaffold, are minutely described by that historian. Such an allusion could not fail of having the desired effect on an audience, many of whom were eye-witnesses to the severity of that justice which deprived the age of one of its greatest ornaments, and Southampton, Shakspeare's patron, of his dearest friend. STEEVENS.

6

-- studied in his death,] Instructed in the art of dying. It was usual to say studied, for learned in science. JOHNSON.

His own profession furnished our author with this phrase. To be studied in a part, or to have studied it, is yet the technical term of the theatre. MALONE.

To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,
As 'twere a careless trifle.

DUN.

There's no art,

To find the mind's construction in the face :"
He was a gentleman on whom I built

An absolute trust. - O worthiest cousin!

Enter MACBETH, BANQUO, Rosse, and Angus.

The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy on me: Thou art so far before,
That swiftest wing of recompense is slow
To overtake thee. 'Would thou hadst less deserv'd;
That the proportion both of thanks and payment

So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: "Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study."

The same phrase occurs in Hamlet. STEEVENS.

To find the mind's construction in the face:] The construction of the mind is, I believe, a phrase peculiar to Shakspeare: it implies the frame or disposition of the mind, by which it is determined to good or ill. JOHNSON..

Dr. Johnson seems to have understood the word construction in this place, in the sense of frame or structure; but the schoolterm was, I believe, intended by Shakspeare. The meaning is-We cannot construe or discover the disposition of the mind by the lineaments of the face. So, in King Henry IV. P. II : "Construe the times to their necessities."

In Hamlet we meet with a kindred phrase :

These profound heaves

"You must translate; 'tis fit we understand them." Our author again alludes to his grammar, in Troilus and

Cressida:

"I'll decline the whole question."

In his 93d Sonnet, however, we find a contrary sentiment asserted:

" In many's looks the false heart's history
"Is writ." MALONE.

Might have been mine! only I have left to say, More is thy due than more than all can pay.

3

MACB. The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part Is to receive our duties; and our duties Are to your throne and state, children, and servants; Which do but what they should, by doing every

thing

Safe toward your love and honour.1

• More is thy due than more than all can pay.] More is due to thee, than, I will not say all, but more than all, i. e. the greatest recompense, can pay. Thus in Plautus: Nihilo minus.

There is an obscurity in this passage, arising from the word all, which is not used here personally, (more than all persons can pay) but for the whole wealth of the speaker. So, more clearly, in King Henry VIII:

" More than my all is nothing."

This line appeared obscure to Sir William D'Avenant, for he altered it thus :

" I have only left to say,

"That thou deservest more than I have to pay."

9servants;

MALONE.

Which do but what they should, by doing every thing -] From Scripture: "So when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants : we have done that which was our duty to do." HENLEY.

Which do but what they should, by doing every thing
Safe toward your love and honour.] Mr. Upton gives the

word safe as an instance of an adjective used adverbially.
Read-

STEEVENS.

"Safe (i. e. saved toward you love and honour;" and then the sense will be-" Our duties are your children, and servants or vassals to your throne and state; who do but what they should, by doing every thing with a saving of their love and honour toward you." The whole is an allusion to the forms of doing homage in the feudal times. The oath of allegiance, or liege homage, to the king, was absolute, and without any exception; but simple homage, when done to a subject for

Welcome hither :

I have begun to plant thee, and will labour

lands holden of him, was always with a saving of the allegiance (the love and honour) due to the sovereign. "Sauf la foy que jeo doy a nostre seignor le roy," as it is in Littleton. And though the expression be somewhat stiff and forced, it is not more so than many others in this play, and suits well with the situation of Macbeth, now beginning to waver in his allegiance. For, as our author elsewhere says, [in Julius Cæsar:]

:

" When love begins to sicken and decay,

"It useth an unforced ceremony." BLACKSTONE.

A similar expression occurs also in the Letters of the Paston

66

Family, Vol. II. p. 254: -ye shalle fynde me to yow as kynde as I maye be, my consciense and worshyp savy'd."

STEEVENS.

A passage in Cupid's Revenge, a comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, adds some support to Sir William Blackstone's emendation:

"I'll speak it freely, always my obedience

" And love preserved unto the prince."

So also the following words, spoken by Henry Duke of Lancaster, to King Richard II. at their interview in the Castle of Flint, (a passage that Shakspeare had certainly read, and perhaps remembered): "My sovereign lorde and kyng, the cause of my coming, at this present, is, [your honour saved,] to have againe restitution of my person, my landes, and heritage, through your favourable licence." Holinshed's Chron. Vol. III.

Our author himself also furnishes us with a passage that likewise may serve to confirm this emendation. See The Winter's Tale, Act IV. sc. iii :

"Save him from danger; do HIM love and honour."

Again, in Twelfth-Night:

"What shall you ask of me that I'll deny,

"That honour sav'd may upon asking give?"

Again, in Cymbeline :

" I something fear my father's wrath, but nothing

" (Always reserv'd my holy duty) what

"His rage can do on me."

Our poet has used the verb to safe in Antony and Cleopatra :

"best you saf'd the bringer

"Out of the host." MALONE.

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