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Show'd like a rebel's whore: 5 But all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth, (well he deferves that name,)
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smok'd with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion,

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

over a carnage, when we have defeated our enemies? Her business is then at an end. Her smiles or frowns are no longer of any confequence. We only talk of these, while we are purfuing our quarrel, and the event of it is uncertain.

The word quarrel, in the fame sense, occurs also in MS. Harl. 4690: "Thanne fir Edward of Bailoll towke his leve off king Edwarde, and went ayenne into Scottelonde, and was fo grete a lorde, and so moche had his wille, that he touke no hede to hem that halpe him in his quarelle;" &C. STEEVENS.

The reading proposed by Dr. Johnson, and his explanation of it, are strongly supported by a passage in our author's King John:

"

-And put his cause and quarrel "To the difpofing of the cardinal."

Again, in this play of Macbeth:

"and the chance, of goodness,
"Be like our warranted quarrel."

Here we have warranted quarrel, the exact oppofite of damned quarrel, as the text is now regulated.

Lord Bacon, in his Essays, uses the word in the same sense : "Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurfes; so as a man may have a quarrel to marry, when he will." MALONE.

5 Show'd like a rebel's whore :) I suppose the meaning is, that fortune, while she smiled on him, deceived him. Shakspeare probably alludes to Macdowald's first successful action, elated by which he attempted to pursue his fortune, but loft his life. MALONE.

• Like valour's minion,

Carv'd out his paffage, till he fac'd the slave;] The old copy reads

Like valour's minion, carv'd out his passage
Till he fac'd the Slave.

As an hemistich must be admitted, it seems more favourable to the metre that it should be found where it is now left.

And ne'er fhook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unfeam'd him from the nave to the chaps, And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Till he fac'd the flave, could never be designed as the be ginning of a verse, if harmony were at all attended to in its conftruction. STEEVENS.

Like valour's minion,] Só, in King John : "fortune shall cull forth,

"Out of one fide, her happy minion." MALONE.

And ne'er Shook hands, &c.] The old copy reads-Which

nev'r.
-Shook hands-] So, in King Henry VI. P. III :

"Till our King Henry had shook hands with death."
STEEVENS.

Mr. Pope, instead of which, here, and in many other places, reads-who. But there is no need of change. There is scarcely one of our author's plays in which he has not used which for who. So, in The Winter's Tale : "-the old fhepherd, which stands by," &c. MALONE.

The old reading-Which never, appears to indicate that some antecedent words, now irretrievable, were omitted in the playhouse manufcript; unless the compofitor's eye had caught which from a foregoing line, and printed it instead of And. Which, in the present instance, cannot well have been substituted for who, because it will refer to the flave Macdonwald, instead of his conqueror Macbeth. STEEVENS.

8

- he unfeam'd him from the nave to the chaps,] We seldom hear of fuch terrible crofs blows given and received but by giants and miscreants in Amadis de Gaule. Befides, it must be a strange aukward stroke that could unrip him upwards from the navel to the chaps. But Shakspeare certainly wrote:

- he unfeam'd him from the nape to the chaps. i. e. cut his skull in two; which might be done by a Highlander's sword. This was a reasonable blow, and very naturally expressed, on fuppofing it given when the head of the wearied combatant was reclining downwards at the latter end of a long duel. For the nape is the hinder part of the neck, where the vertebræ join to the bone of the skull. So, in Coriolanus:

1

"O! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks."

The word unfeamed likewife becomes very proper, and alludes

DUN. O, valiant coufin! worthy gentleman!
SOLD. As whence the fun 'gins his reflexion

to the future which goes cross the crown of the head in that direction called the futura fagittalis; and which, confequently, muft be opened by such a stroke. It is remarkable, that Milton, who in his youth read and imitated our poet much, particularly in his Comus, was misled by this corrupt reading. For in the manufcript of that poem, in Trinity-College library, the following lines are read thus :

"Or drag him by the curls, and cleave his scalpe
"Down to the hippes."

An evident imitation of this corrupted passage. But he altered

it with better judgment to

66

to a foul death

"Curs'd as his life."

WARBURTON.

The old reading is certainly the true one, being justified by a passage in Dido Queene of Carthage, by Thomas Nash, 1594: "Then from the navel to the throat at once

"He ript old Priam."

So likewise in an ancient MS. entitled The Boke of Huntyng, that is cleped Mayfter of Game: Cap. V. "Som men haue sey hym flitte a man fro the kne up to the brest, and flee hym all starke dede at o ftrok." STEEVENS.

Again, by the following paffage in arr unpublished play, entitled The Witch, by Thomas Middleton, in which the same wound is described, though the stroke is reversed :

"Draw it, or I'll rip thee down from neck to NAVEL, "Though there's small glory in't." MALONE.

As whence the fun 'gins his reflexion-] The thought is expressed with fome obscurity, but the plain meaning is this: As the fame quarter, whence the bleffing of day-light arises, Sometimes fends us, by a dreadful reverse, the calamities of Storms and tempests; so the glorious event of Macbeth's victory, which promised us the comforts of peace, was immediately fucceeded by the alarming news of the Norweyan invasion. The natural history of the winds, &c. is foreign to the explanation of this paffage. Shakspeare does not mean, in conformity to any theory, to fay that ftorms generally come from the east. If it be allowed that they fometimes issue from that quarter, it is fufficient for the purpose of his comparison. STEEVENS.

The natural history of the winds, &c. was idly introduced on this occafion by Dr. Warburton. Sir William D'Avenant's

Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break; 1 So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to

come,

Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark :
No fooner juftice had, with valour arm'd,
Compell'd these skipping Kernes to trust their heels;
But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms, and new fupplies of men,
Began a fresh affault.

DUN.

Dismay'd not this

Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?

SOLD.

Yes; 3

reading of this passage, in an alteration of this play, published in quarto, in 1674, affords a reasonably good comment upon it :

I

"But then this day-break of our victory
" Serv'd but to light us into other dangers,

"That spring from whence our hopes did seem to rise."

MALONE.

- thunders break;) The word break is wanting in the oldeft copy. The other folios and Rowe read-breaking. Mr. Pope made the emendation. STEEVENS.

Break, which was suggested by the reading of the fecond folio, is very unlikely to have been the word omitted in the original copy. It agrees with thunders;-but who ever talked of the breaking of a storm? MALONE.

The phrafe, I believe, is sufficiently common. Thus Dryden, in All for Love, &c. Act I:

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the Roman camp

1

"Hangs o'er us black and threat'ning, like a Storm

"Just breaking o'er our heads."

Again, in Ogilby's version of the 17th Iliad:

"Hector o'er all an iron tempeft spreads,

"Th' impending Storm will break upon our heads."

STEEVENS.

2 Discomfort Swells.] Discomfort the natural opposite to comfort. JOHNSON.

3 Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo;

Sold.

Yes; The reader

cannot fail to observe, that some word, necessary to complete

As sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion,
If I fay footh, I must report they were
As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks; 4
So they

Doubly redoubled strokes 5 upon the foe:

the verse, has been omitted in the old copy. Sir T. Hanmer reads

Our captains, brave Macbeth, &c. STEEVENS.

4 As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks; &c.] That is, with double charges; a metonymy of the effect for the caufe. HEATH.

Mr. Theobald has endeavoured to improve the sense of this passage, by altering the punctuation thus :

they were

As cannons overcharg'd; with double cracks
So they redoubled Strokes-

He declares, with fome degree of exultation, that he has no idea of a cannon charged with double cracks; but furely the great author will not gain much by an alteration which makes him say of a hero, that he redoubles Strokes with double cracks, an expression not more loudly to be applauded, or more eafily pardoned, than that which is rejected in its favour.

That a cannon is charged with thunder, or with double thunders, may be written, not only without nonsense, but with elegance, and nothing else is here meant by cracks, which, in the time of this writer, was a word of fuch emphafis and dignity, that in this play he terms the general dissolution of nature the crack of doom. JOHNSON.

Crack is used on a fimilar occafion by Barnaby Googe, in his Cupido Conquered, 1563:

"The canon's cracke begins to roore
" And darts full thycke they flye,
"And cover'd thycke the armyes both,
"And framde a counter-skye."

Barbour, the old Scotch Poet, calls fire-arms-" crakys of war."
STEEVENS.

Again, in the old play of King John, 1591, and applied, as here, to ordnance:

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$ Doubly redoubled strokes &c.] So, in King Richard II: "And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,. "Fall," &c.

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