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I'the shipman's card.9
I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall, neither night nor day,

being either negligently read, hastily pronounced, or imperfectly heard. JOHNSON.

The very ports are the exact ports. Very is used here (as in a thousand Instances which might be brought) to express the declaration more emphatically.

Instead of ports, however, I had formerly read points; but erroneoufly. In ancient language, to blow fometimes means to blow upon. So, in Dumain's Ode in Love's Labour's Loft: "Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;-." i. e. blow upon them. We still say, it blows East, or West, without a prepofition. STEEVENS.

The substituted word was first given by Sir W. D'Avenant, who, in his alteration of this play, has retained the old, while at the same time he furnished Mr. Pope with the new, reading:

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" I myself have all the other.

" And then from every port they blow,

" From all the points that seamen know." MALONE.

-the Shipman's card.] So, in The Microcosmos of

John Davies, of Hereford, 4to., 1605:

"Befide the chiefe windes and collaterall

" (Which are the windes indeed of chiefe regard)
"Seamen observe more, thirtie two in all,

" All which are pointed out upon the carde."

The card is the paper on which the winds are marked under the pilot's needle; or perhaps the fea-chart, so called in our author's age. Thus, in The Loyal Subject, by Beaumont and Fletcher:

"The card of goodness in your minds, that shews you "When you fail false."

Again, in Churchyard's Prayse and Reporte of Maister Martyne Forboisher's Voyage to Meta Incognita, &c. 12mo. bl. 1. 1578: "There the generall gaue a speciall card and order to his captaines for the paffing of the straites," &c. STEEVENS.

I

-dry as hay :) So, Spenser, in his Fairy Queen,

B. III. c. ix:

"But he is old and withered as hay." STEEVENS.

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Hang upon his pent-house lid; 2
He shall live a man forbid : 3

Weary fev'n-nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle,4 peak, and pine:

2

Sleep shall, neither night nor day,
Hang upon his pent-house lid;) So, in The Miracles of

Mofes, by Michael Drayton :

"His brows, like two steep pent-houses, hung down
"Over his eye-lids."

There was an edition of this poem in 1604, but I know not whether these lines are found in it. Drayton made additions and alterations in his pieces at every re-impreffion. MALONE.

3 He shall live a man forbid :) i.e. as one under a curse, an interdiction. So, afterwards in this play :

" By his own interdiction stands accurs'd."

So, among the Romans, an outlaw's sentence was, Aquæ & Ignis interdictio; i. e. he was forbid the use of water and fire, which implied the neceffity of banishment. THEOBALD.

Mr. Theobald has very justly explained forbid by accursed, but without giving any reason of his interpretation. To bid is originally to pray, as in this Saxon fragment:

He is pır bir y bore, &c.

He is wife that prays and makes amends.

As to forbid therefore implies to prohibit, in oppofition to the word bid in its present sense, it fignifies by the same kind of oppofition to curse, when it is derived from the fame word in its primitive meaning. JOHNSON.

To bid, in the sense of to pray, occurs in the ancient MS. romance of The Sowdon of Babyloyne, p. 78:

"Kinge Charles kneled adown
"To kiffe the relikes so goode,
"And badde there an oryfon

"To that lorde that deyde on rode."

A forbodin fellow, Scot. fignifies an unhappy one."

STEEVENS.

It may be added that "bitten and Verbieten, in the German, fignify to pray and to interdict." S. W.

* Shall he dwindle, &c.] This mischief was supposed to be put in execution by means of a waxen figure, which represented the person who was to be confumed by flow degrees. So, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfy, 1623:

Though his bark cannot be loft,
Yet it shall be tempeft-toss'd.5
Look what I have.

2 WITCH. Show me, show me.
1 WITCH. Here I have a pilot's thumb,

Wreck'd, as homeward he did come.

3 WITCH. A drum, a drum; Macbeth doth come.

"it wastes me more

[Drum within.

"Than wer't my picture fashion'd out of wax,

"Stuck with a magick needle, and then buried

"In some foul dunghill."

So Holinshed, speaking of the witchcraft practised to destroy King Duffe:

"found one of the witches roafting upon a wooden broch an image of wax at the fire, resembling in each feature the king's perfon, &c.

"for as the image did waste afore the fire, so did the bodie of the king break forth in sweat. And as for the words of the inchantment, they served to keep him still waking from Леере," &c.

This may serve to explain the foregoing passage:
"Sleep fhall neither night nor day
"Hang upon his pent-house lid."

See Vol. IV. p. 227, п. 4. STEEVENS.
5 Though his bark cannot be lost,

Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd.] So, in Newes from Scotland, &c. a pamphlet already quoted: "Againe it is confefsed, that the faid chriftened cat was the cause of the Kinges Majesties Shippe, at his coming forthe of Denmarke, had a contrarie winde to the rest of his shippes then beeing in his companie, which thing was most straunge and true, as the Kinges Majeftie acknowledgeth, for when the rest of the shippes had a faire and good winde, then was the winde contrarie and altogether againft his Majestie. And further the fayde witch declared, that his Majeftie had never come safely from the fea, if his faith had not prevayled above their ententions." To this circumstance perhaps our author's allusion is sufficiently plain. STEEVENS.

ALL. The weird sisters, hand in hand, Pofters of the sea and land,

The weird fifters, hand in hand,] These weird fifters, were the Fates of the northern nations; the three hand-maids of Odin. Hæ nominantur Valkyriæ, quas quodvis ad prælium Odinus mittit. Hæ viros morti deftinant, et victoriam gubernant. Gunna, et Rota, et Parcarum minima Skullda: per aëra et maria equitant femper ad morituros eligendos; et cædes in potestate habent. Bartholinus de Caufis contemptæ à Danis adhuc Gentilibus mortis. It is for this reason that Shakspeare makes them three; and calls them,

Posters of the fea and land;

and intent only upon death and mischief. However, to give this part of his work the more dignity, he intermixes, with this Northern, the Greek and Roman superftitions; and puts Hecate at the head of their enchantments. And to make it still more familiar to the common audience (which was always his point) he adds, for another ingredient, a sufficient quantity of our own country fuperftitions concerning witches; their beards, their cats, and their broomsticks. So that his witch-scenes are like the charm they prepare in one of them; where the ingredients are gathered from every thing Shocking in the natural world, as here, from every thing abfurd in the moral. But as extravagant as all this is, the play has had the power to charm and bewitch every audience, from that time to this. WARBURTON.

Wierd comes from the Anglo-Saxon pynd, fatum, and is used as a substantive fignifying a prophecy by the tranflator of Hector Boethius, in the year 1541, as well as for the Destinies, by Chaucer and Holinshed. Of the weirdis gevyn to Makbethe and Banghuo, is the argument of one of the chapters. Gawin Douglas, in his tranflation of Virgil, calls the Parce, the weird fisters; and in Ane verie excellent and delectabill Treatise intitulit PHILOTUS, quhairin we may persave the greit Inconveniences that fallis out in the Mariage betweene Age and Zouth, Edinburgh, 1603, the word appears again : "How does the quheill of fortune go, "Quhat wickit wierd has wrocht our wo."

Again :

"Quhat neidis Philotus to think ill,
"Or zit his wierd to warie?"

The other method of spelling [weyward] was merely a blunder of the transcriber or printer.

Thus do go about, about;
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine:
Peace! the charm's wound up.

Enter MACBETH and BANQUO.

MACB. So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
BAN. How far is't call'd to Fores? - What are

these,

The Valkyrie, or Valkyriur, were not barely three in number. The learned critic might have found, in Bartholinus, not only Gunna, Rota, et Skullda, but also, Scogula, Hilda, Gondula, and Geirofcogula. Bartholinus adds, that their number is yet greater, according to other writers who speak of them. They were the cupbearers of Odin, and conductors of the dead. They were diftinguished by the elegance of their forms; and it would be as just to compare youth and beauty with age and deformity, as the Valkyriæ of the North with the Witches of Shakspeare. STEEVENS.

The old copy has-weyward, probably in consequence of the tranfcriber's being deceived by his ear. The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. The following passage in Bellenden's tranflation of Hector Boethius, fully supports the emendation : "Be aventure Makbeth and Banquho were paffand to Fores, quhair kyng Duncane hapnit to be for ye tyme, and met be ye gait thre women clothit in elrage and uncouth weid. They wer jugit be the pepill to be weird fifters." So also Holinshed,

MALONE.

7 How far is't call'd to Fores ?] The king at this time resided at Fores, a town in Murray, not far from Inverness. "It fortuned, (fays Holinshed) as Macbeth and Banquo journeyed towards Fores, where the king then lay, they went sporting by the way, without other company, fave only themselves, when suddenly in the midst of a laund there met them three women in ftraunge and ferly apparell, resembling creatures of an elder world," &c. STEEVENS.

The old copy reads-Soris. Corrected by Mr. Pope.

MALONE;

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