--strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible
Of dire combustions, and confus'd events,
New hatch'd to the woeful time: The obscure bird
Clamour'd the live-long night: some say the earth
Was feverous, and did shake]
Those lines I think should be rather regulated thus:
--_prophecying with accents terrible,
Of dire combustions and cosfus'd events.
New-hatch'd to th' woful time, the obscure bird
Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say the earth
Was fev'rous and did shake._
A _prophecy_ of an _event new hatch'd_, seems to be a _prophecy_ of an
_event past_. And _a prophecy new hatch'd_ is a wry expression. The term
_new hatch'd_ is properly applicable to a _bird_, and that birds of ill
omen should be _new-hatch'd to the woful time_, that is, should appear
in uncommon numbers, is very consistent with the rest of the prodigies
here mentioned, and with the universal disorder into which nature is
described as thrown, by the perpetration of this horrid murder. (see
1765, VI, 413, 7)
II.iii.117 (452,3) Here, lay Duncan,/His silver skin lac'd with his
golden blood] Mr. Pope has endeavoured to improve one of these lines by
substituting _goary blood_ for _golden blood_; but it may easily be
admitted that he who could on such an occasion talk of _lacing the
silyer skin_, would _lace it_ with _golden blood_. No amendment can be
made to this line, of which every word is equally faulty, but by a
general blot.
It is not improbable, that Shakespeare put these forced and unnatural
metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth as a mark of artifice and
dissimulation, to shew the difference between the studied language of
hypocrisy, and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech
so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists
entirely of antithesis and metaphor.
II.iii.122 (432,5) Unmannerly breech'd with gore] An _unmannerly
dagger_, and a _dagger breech'd_, or as in some editions _breech'd
with_, gore, are expressions not easily to be understood. There are
undoubtedly two faults in this passage, which I have endeavored to take
away by reading,
--_daggers_
Unmanly drench'd _with gore_:--
_I saw_ drench'd _with the King's blood the fatal daggers, not only
instruments of murder but evidence of cowardice_.
Each of these words might easily be confounded with that which I have
substituted for it, by a hand not exact, a casual blot, or a negligent
inspection, [W: Unmanly reech'd] Dr. Warburton has, perhaps, rightly put
_reach'd_ for _breech'd_.