But fcrew your courage to the fticking-place,3

And we'll not fail.

When Duncan is alleep,

thereby know the extent of our misfortune, Yet our fuccefs is certain, if you are refolute,

Lady Macbeth is unwilling to afford her husband time to ftate any reafons for his doubt, or to expatiate on the obvious confequences of miscarriage in his undertaking. Such an interval for reflection to act in, might have proved unfavourable to her purpofes. She therefore cuts him fhort with the remaining part of a common faying, to which his own words had offered an apt though accidental introduction.

This reply, at once cool and determined, is fufficiently characteriflick of the fpeaker :-according to the old pun&uation, he is reprefented as rejecting with contempt (of which he had already manifefted enough) the very idea of failure. According to the mode of pointing now fuggefted, fhe admits a poffibility of mifcarriage, but at the fame inftant fhows herself not afraid of its refult. Her anfwer therefore communicates no difcouragement to her husband. We fail! is the hafty interruption of fcornful impaWe fail. is the calm deduction of a mind which, having weighed all circumftances, is prepared, without loss of confidence in itself, for the worft that can happen. So Hotspur:

tience.

"If we fall in, good night:-or fink, or swim."

STEEVENS.

3 But fcrew your courage to the flicking-place,] This is a metaphor from an engine formed by mechanical complication. The flickingplace is the top which fufpends its powers, till they are difcharged on their proper object; as in driving piles, &c. So, in Sir W. Davenant's Cruel Brother, 1630:

"Which spends its ftrength by force of nimble wheels;
"For they, oncefcrewed up, in their return

"Will rive an oak."

Again, in Coriolanus, A& I. fc. viii :

"Wrench up thy power to the higheft."

Perhaps indeed Shakspeare had a more familiar image in view, and took his metaphor from the forewing up the chords of ftringinftruments to their proper degree of tenfion, when the peg remains faft in its flicking-place, i. e. in the place from which it is not to move. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens's laft interpretation is, in my apprehenfion, the true Sir W. D'Avenant mifunderftood this paffage. By the sticking

onc.

(Whereto the rather fhall his day's hard journey Soundly invite him.) his two chamberlains Will I with wine and waffel fo convince,4

place, he feems to have thought the poet meant the ftabbing place; the place where Duncan was to be wounded.; for he reads,

Will I with wine and waffel so convince, &c.] The circumftance relative to Macbeth's flaughter of Duncan's Chamberlains, (as I obferved fo long ago, as in our editiou 1773,) is copied from Holinfhed's account of king Duffe's murder by Donwald.

Mr. Malone has fince tranfcribed the whole narrative of this event from the Chronicle; but being too long to ftand here as a note, it is given, with other bulky extracts, at the conclufion of the play. STEEVFNS.

To convince is, in Shakspeare, to overpower or fubdue, as in this play :

-Their malady convinces

The great affay of art." JOHNSON.

So, in the old tragedy of Cambyfes :

"If that your heart addicted be the Egyptians to convince." Again:

By this his grace, by conqueft great the Egyptians did

convince."

Again, in Holinfhed :——___ thus mortally fought, intending to

vanquish and convince the other." STEEVENS.

——and waffel ——] What was anciently called was-haile (as appears from Selden's notes on the ninth fong of Drayton's Polyolbion) was an annual cuftom obferved in the country on the vigil of the new year; and had its beginning, as fome fay, from the words which Ronix daughter of Hengift ufed, when the drank to Vortigern, loverd king was-hail; he answering her, by direc tion of an interpreter, drinc-heile; and then, as Geoffry of Monmouth fays,

Kufte hire and fitte hire adoune and glad dronke hire heil;

"And that was tho in this land the verft was-hail,

"As in langage of Saxoyne that me might evere iwite,
And fo wel he paith the folc about, that he is not yut
voryute."

That memory, the warder of the brain,5
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only: When in fwinish fleep
Their drenched natures lie, as in a death,

8

Afterwards it appears that was-haile, and drinc-heil, were the usual phrases of quaffing among the English, as we may fee from Thomas de la Moore in the Life of Edward II. and in the lines of Hanvil the monk, who preceded him:

"Ecce vagante cifo diftento gutture wass-heil,

"Ingeminant wass-heil————

But Selden rather conjectures it to have been a usual ceremony among the Saxons before Hengift, as a note of health-wishing, fuppofing the expreffion to be corrupted from wish-heil.

Waffel or Waffail is a word ftill in ufe in the midland counties, and fignifies at prefent what is called Lambs-Wool, i. e. roafted apples in ftrong beer, with fugar and fpice. See Beggars Bush, A& IV. ft. iv:

Sempfter and fongfter, her page bearing a brown bowl dreft with ribbands and refemary, before her.

Waffel is, however, fometimes ufed for general riot, intemperance, or feftivity. On the prefent occafion I believe it means intemperance. STEEVENS.

5

the warder of the brain,] A warder is a guard, a fentinel. So, in King Henry VI. P. I:

6

"Where be these warders, that they wait not here?"

STEEVENS.

the receipt of reason] i. e. the receptacle. MALONE.

A limbeck only] That is, fhall be only a veffel to emit fumes or vapours. JOHNSON.

The limbeck is the veffel, through which diftilled liquors pafs into the recipient. So fhall it be with memory; through which every thing fhall pafs, and nothing remain.

A. C.

8 Their drenched natures-] i. e. as we should fay at prefent,feaked, faturated with liquor. STEEVENS.

What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
His fpungy officers; who fhall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?

MACB.

Bring forth men-children only! For thy undaunted mettle fhould compose Nothing but males. Will it not be receiv'd, When we have mark'd with blood thofe fleepy two Of his own chamber, and us'd their very daggers, That they have don't?

LADY M.

Who dares receive it other,

As we fhall make our griefs and clamour roar
Upon his death?

MACB.

I am fettled, and bend up2

who fhall bear the guilt

Of our great quell] Quell is murder, manquellers being in the old language the term for which murderers is now used.

JOHNSON.

So, in Chaucer's Tale of the Nonnes Prief, v. 15396, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit:

"The dokes cryeden as men wold hem quelle."

The word is ufed in this fenfe by Holiathed, p. 567 :“ —the poor people ran about the freets, calling the capteins and governors murtherers and manquellers." STEEVENS.

-he bur

9 Who dares receive it other.] So, in Holinfhed: then'd the chamberleins, whom he had flaine, with all the fault, they having the keyes of the gates committed to their keeping all the night, and therefore it could not be otherwife (said he) but that they were of counsel in the committing of that almost deteftable murther." MALONE.

--and bend up-] A metaphor from the bow. So, in K. Henry V:

-bend up every spirit

"To his full height."

The fame phrafe occurs in Melvil's Memoirs: " but that rather the fhould bend up her Spirit by a princely &c. behaviour." Edit, 1735. p. 148.

Till this inftant, the mind of Macbeth has been in a ftate of uncertainty and fluctuation. He has hitherto proved neither refo

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away, and mock the time with faireft fhow:
Faife face muft hide what the falfe heart doth

know.

[Exeunt.

lutely good, nor obftinately wicked. Though a bloody idea had arifen in his mind, after he had heard the prophecy in his favour, yet he contentedly leaves the completion of his hopes to chance.— At the conclufion, however, of his interview with Duncan, he inclines to haften the decree of fate, and quits the stage with an apparent resolution to murder his lovereign. But no tooner is the king under his roof, than, reflecting on the peculiarities of his own relative fituation, he determines uot to offend against the laws of hofpitality, or the ties of fubje&ion, kindred, and gratitude wife then affails his conftancy afresh. He yields to her suggestions, and, with his integrity, his happiness is destroyed.

His

I have enumerated thefe particulars, because the waverings of Macbeth have, by fome criticks, been regarded as unnatural and contradictory circumftances in his character; not remembering that hemo repente fuit turpiffimus, or that (as Angelo obferves)

when once our grace we have forgot,

"Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not -: a paffage which contains no unapt juftification of the changes that happen in the conduct of Macbeth. STEEVENS.