fit the sense.  But the meaning is not always so easy to come at as in these two cases.  In Macbeth, v. 4, when others are surmising and forecasting the issue of the war, Macduff says, “Let our just censures attend the true event, and put we on industrious soldiership.”  He wants to have the present time all spent in doing the work, not in speculating of the issue; and his meaning is, Let us not try to judge how things are going, till the actual result enables us to judge rightly; or, Let our judgments wait till the issue is known, that so they may be just.  In this case, the ideas signified by judgment, waiting, result, known, and just were all to be expressed together, and the answering parts of language are disposed in the handiest order for metre and brevity; while the relations which those parts bear to each other in the speaker’s thought are to be gathered from the subject and drift of the foregoing dialogue.

As this is at times a rather troublesome feature in the Poet’s style, I will add a few more instances.  Thus in the same play:  “This castle hath a pleasant seat:  the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses”; that is, the air sweetens our senses into gentleness, or makes them gentle, by its purity and pleasantness.  Again:  “Ere humane statute purg’d the gentle weal”; which means, ere humane laws made the commonwealth gentle by cleansing it from the wrongs and pollutions of barbarism.  So too in King Henry the Fifth, when the conspiring lords find their plot detected, and hear the doom of death pronounced upon them by the King, one of them says, “And God be thanked for prevention; which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice;” meaning, that he is thankful their murderous purpose is defeated, though it be by their death; and that he will heartily rejoice for such defeat, even while suffering the pains it involves.  Again, in King Henry the Fourth, when Hotspur is burning to cross swords with Prince Henry in the forthcoming battle: 

             “And, fellows, soldiers, friends,
    Better consider what you have to do,
    Than I, that have not well the gift of tongue,
    Can lift your blood up with persuasion.”

That is, you can better kindle your spirits to the work by thinking with yourselves what is to be done, than my small power of speech can heat your courage up for the fight by any attempts at persuasion.  The well-known words of Juliet—­“That runaway’s eyes may wink”—­come under the same class of cases; and how hard such forms of language sometimes are to understand, may be judged from the interminable discussion occasioned by that famous passage.  And it must be confessed, I think, that in several cases of this kind perspicuity is not a little sacrificed to metrical convenience and verbal dispatch.  But Shakespeare wrote with the stage in view, not the closet; and he doubtless calculated a good deal on the help of the actor’s looks, tones, and gestures, in rendering his meaning intelligible.