1 WITCH. I come, Graymalkin !5 ALL. Paddock calls: - Anon.6

to supply by the introduction of a single pronoun, and by diftributing the hitherto mutilated line among the three speakers :

3 Witch. There to meet with

1 Witch.

2 Witch.

Whom?

Macbeth.

Diftinct replies have now been afforded to the three neceffary

enquiries-When-Where-and Whom the Witches were to meet. Their conference receives no injury from my infertion and arrangement. On the contrary, the dialogue becomes more regular and confiftent, as each of the hags will now have spoken thrice (a magical number) before they join in utterance of the concluding words, which relate only to themselves.-I should add that, in the two prior inftances, it is also the second Witch who furnishes decisive and material answers; and that I would give the words " I come, Graymalkin!" to the third. By affiftance from fuch of our author's plays as had been published in quarto, we have often detected more important errors in the folio 1623, which, unluckily, supplies the most ancient copy of Macbeth, STEEVENS.

5

Graymalkin!] From a little black-letter book, entitled, Beware the Cat, 1584, I find it was permitted to a Witch to take on her a cattes body nine times. Mr. Upton observes, that, to understand this passage, we should suppose one familiar calling with the voice of a cat, and another with the croaking of a toad.

Again, in Newes from Scotland, &c. (a pamphlet of which the reader will find the entire title in a future note on this play): "Moreover the confefsed, that at the time when his majeftie was in Denmarke, shee beeing accompanied with the parties before specially mentioned, tooke a cat and chriftened it, and afterward bound to each part of that cat the cheefeft part of a dead man, and several joyntes of his bodie, and that in the night following the faid cat was convayed into the middest of the fea by all these witches sayling in their riddles or cives as is aforesaid, and so left the said cat right before the towne of Leith in Scotland. This donne, there did arise such a tempeft in the fea, as a greater hath not bene seene," &C. STEEVENS.

Paddock calls:-&c.] This, with the two following lines, is given in the folio to the three Witches. Some preceding editors have appropriated the first of them to the second Witch.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair: 7
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

T

[Witches vanish.

According to the late Dr. Goldsmith, and some other naturalists, a frog is called a paddock in the North; as in the following instance, in Cæfar and Pompey, by Chapman, 1607: "Paddockes, todes, and watersnakes."

Again, in Wyntownis Cronykil, B. I. c. xiii. 55 : "As afk, or eddyre, tade, or pade."

In Shakspeare, however, it certainly means a toad. The representation of St. James in the witches' house (one of the fet of prints taken from the painter called Hellish Breugel, 1566,) exhibits witches flying up and down the chimney on brooms; and before the fire fit grimalkin and paddock, i. e. a cat, and a toad, with feveral baboons. There is a cauldron boiling, with a witch near it, cutting out the tongue of a snake, as an ingredient for the charm. A representation fomewhat fimilar likewife occurs in Newes from Scotland, &c. a pamphlet already quoted. STEEVENS.

"Some fay, they [witches] can keepe devils and spirits, in the likeness of todes and cats." Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, [1584] Book I. c. iv. TOLLET.

7 Fair is foul, and foul is fair:] i. e. we make these sudden changes of the weather. And Macbeth, speaking of this day, foon after says:

So foul and fair a day I have not feen. WARBURTON. The common idea of witches has always been, that they had abfolute power over the weather, and could raise storms of any kind, or allay them, as they pleased. In conformity to this notion, Macbeth addresses them, in the fourth Act:

Though you untie the winds, &C. STEEVENS.

I believe the meaning is, that to us, perverse and malignant as we are, fair is foul, and foul is fair. JOHNSON.

This expreffion feems to have been proverbial, Spenfer has it in the 4th Book of the Fairy Queen:

"Then fair grew foul, and foul grew fair in fight." FARMER.

SCENE II.

A Camp near Fores,

Alarum within. Enter King DUNCAN, MALCOLM, DONALBAIN, LENOX, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Soldier.

DUN. What bloody man is that? He can report, As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

The newest state.

MAL.

This is the fergeant,& Who, like a good and hardy foldier, fought 'Gainst my captivity :-Hail, brave friend!

* This is the sergeant,) Holinshed is the best interpreter of Shakspeare in his historical plays; for he not only takes his facts from him, but often his very words and expreffions. That historian, in his account of Macdowald's rebellion, mentions, that on the first appearance of a mutinous spirit among the people, the king fent a fergeant at arms into the country, to bring up the chief offenders to answer the charge preferred againft them; but they, instead of obeying, misused the messenger with Sundry reproaches, and finally lew him. This sergeant at arms is certainly the origin of the bleeding fergeant introduced on the present occafion. Shakspeare just caught the name from Holinshed, but the rest of the story not suiting his purpose, he does not adhere to it. The stage-direction of entrance, where the bleeding captain is mentioned, was probably the work of the player editors, and not of the poet.

Sergeant, however, (as the ingenious compiler of the Glossary to A. of Wyntown's Cronykil observes,) is "a degree in military service now unknown."

"Of fergeandys thare and knychtis kene

"He gat a gret cumpany." B. VIII. ch. xxvi. v. 396. The fame word occurs again in the fourth Poem of Lawrence Minot, p. 19:

"He hasted him to the swin, with fergantes snell, "To mete with the Normandes that fals war and fell." According to M. le Grand, (says Mr. Ritson) fergeants were a fort of gens d'armes. STEEVENS.

Say to the king the knowledge of the broil,
As thou didst leave it.

SOLD.

Doubtfully it ftood; 9 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 villainies of nature

Do fwarm upon him,) from the western ifles
Of Kernes and Gallowglasses is supplied ; 3

9

Doubtfully it stood ;) Mr. Pope, who introduced the epithet long, to assist the metre, and reads

Doubtful long it ftood,

has thereby injured the sense, If the comparison was meant to coincide in all circumstances, the struggle could not be long.

I read

Doubtfully it ftood;

The old copy has-Doubtfull-fo that my addition confifts of but a fingle letter. STEEVENS.

1

- Macdonwald-] Thus the old copy. According to Holinshed we should read-Macdowald. STEEVENS.

So also the Scottish Chronicles. However, it is possible that Shakspeare might have preferred the name that has been fubstituted, as better founding. It appears from a subsequent scene that he had attentively read Holinshed's account of the murder of King Duff, by Donwald, Lieutenant of the caftle of Fores; in consequence of which he might, either from inadvertence, or choice, have here written-Macdonwald.

2

MALONE.

to that, &c.] i. e. in addition to that. So, in Troilus and Cressida, Act I. fc. i:

"The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength, " Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant." The foldier who describes Macdonwald, seems to inean, that, in addition to his affumed character of rebel, he abounds with the numerous enormities to which man, in his natural state, is liable. STEEVENS.

3-from the western ifles

Of Kernes and Gallowglasses is supplied;] Whether fupplied of, for supplied from or with, was a kind of Grecism of Shakspeare's expression; or whether of be a corruption of the

And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,4

editors, who took Kernes and Gallowglasses, which were only light and heavy armed foot, to be the names of two of the western islands, I don't know. "Hinc conjecturæ vigorem etiam adjiciunt arma quædam Hibernica, Gallicis antiquis fimilia, jacula nimirum peditum levis armaturæ quos Kernos vocant, nec non secures & loricæ ferreæ peditum illorum gravioris armaturæ, quos Galloglassios appellant." Waræi Antiq. Hiber. cap. vi. WARBURTON.

Of and with are indiscriminately used by our ancient writers. So, in The Spanish Tragedy :

"Peform'd of pleasure by your fon the prince." Again, in God's Revenge against Murder, hift. vi: " Sypontus in the mean time is prepared of two wicked gondoliers,' &c. Again, in The History of Helyas Knight of the Sun, bl. 1. no date: "he was well garnished of spear, fword, and armoure," &c. These are a few out of a thousand instances which might be brought to the fame purpose.

Kernes and Gallowglasses are characterized in The Legend of Roger Mortimer. See The Mirror for Magistrates : "the Gallowglas, the Kerne,

"Yield or not yield, whom so they take, they flay." See also Stanyhurst's Description of Ireland, ch. viii. fol. 28. Holinshed, edit. 1577. STEEVENS.

The old copy has Gallow-groffes. Corrected by the editor of the fecond folio, MALONE.

4 And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,] The old copy has-quarry; but I am inclined to read quarrel. Quarrel was formerly used for cause, or for the occasion of a quarrel, and is to be found in that sense in Holinshed's account of the story of Macbeth, who, upon the creation of the Prince of Cumberland, thought, fays the historian, that he had a juft quarrel to endeavour after the crown. The sense therefore is, Fortune Smiling on his execrable cause, &c. JOHNSON.

The word quarrel occurs in Holinshed's relation of this very fact, and may be regarded as a fufficient proof of its having been the term here employed by Shakspeare: "Out of the western ifles there came to Macdowald a great multitude of people, to affift him in that rebellious quarrel." Befides, Macdowald's quarry (i. e. game) must have consisted of Duncan's friends, and would the speaker then have applied the epithetdamned to them? and what have the smiles of fortune to do