I dare do all that become a man,
Who dares do more, is none.
This topic, which has been always employed with too much success, is used in this scene with peculiar propriety, to a soldier by a woman. Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier, and the reproach of cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great impatience.
She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded their consciences, and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them; this argument Shakespeare, whose plan obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted, though he might easily have shewn that a former obligation could not be vacated by a latter: that obligations laid on us by a higher power, could not be over-ruled by obligations which we lay upon ourselves.
I.vii.41 (431,1)
—Whouldst thou have that,
Which then esteem’st the ornament
of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem?]
In this there seems to be no reasoning. I should read,
Or live a coward in thine own esteem?
Unless we choose rather,
—Wouldst thou leave that.
I.vii.45 (431,2) Like the poor cat i’ the adage?] The adage alluded to is, The cat loves fish, but dares not wet her feet, Catus amat pisces, sed men vult tingere plantas.
I.vii.64 (432,5) Will I with wine and wassel so convince] To convince is in Shakespeare to overpower or subdue, as in this play,
—Their malady convinces
The great assay of art.
I.vii.67 (433,6) A limbeck only] That is, shall be only a vessel to emit fumes or vapours.
I.vii.71 (433,7) our great quell] Quell is murder. manquellers being in the old language the term for which murderers is now used.
II.i (434,8) Enter Banquo, and Fleance with a torch before him] The place is not mark’d in the old edition, nor is it easy to say where this encounter can be. It is not in the hall, as the editors have all supposed it, for Banquo sees the sky; it is not far from the bedchamber, as the conversation shews: it must be in the inner court of the castle, which Banquo might properly cross in his way to bed.
II.i.25 (435,2) If you shall cleave to my consent, Then ’tis,/It shall make honour for you] Macbeth expressed his thought with affected obscurity; he does not mention the royalty, though he apparently has it in his mind, If you shall cleave to my consent, if you shall concur with me when I determine to accept the crown, when ’tis, when that happens which the prediction promises, it shall make honour for you.
II.i.49 (437,6) Now o’er the one half world/Nature seems dead] That is, over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have ceased. This image, which is perhaps the most striking that poetry can produce, has been adopted by Dryden in his Conquest of Mexico: