V.iii.22 (518,6) my way of life/Is fall’n into the sear] As there is no relation between the way of life, and fallen into the sear, I am inclined to think that the W is only an M inverted, and that it was originally written,

  —­my May of life.

I am now passed from the spring to the autumn of my days, but I am without those comforts that should succeed the spriteliness of bloom, and support me in this melancholy season.

The authour has May in the same sense elsewhere.

V.iv.8 (521,1) the confident tyrant/Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure/Our setting down before’t] He was confident of success; so confident that he would not fly, but endure their setting down before his castle.

V.iv.11 (521,2) For where there is advantage to be given,/ Both more and less have given him the revolt] The impropriety of the expression, advantage to be given, and the disagreeable repetition of the word given in the next line, incline me to read,

  —­where there is a ’vantage to be gone,
  Both more and less have given him the revolt.

Advantage or ’vantage, in the time of Shakespeare, signified opportunity. He shut up himself and his soldiers, (says Malcolm) in the castle, because when there is an opportunity to be gone they all desert him.

More and less is the same with greater and less.  So in the interpolated Mandeville, a book of that age, there is a chapter of India the More and the Less.

V.iv.20 (522,4) arbitrate]—­arbitrate is determine.

V.v.11 (523,3) fell of hair] My hairy part, my capillitium. Fell is skin.

V.v.17 (523,7) She should have dy’d hereafter;/ There would have been a time for such a word] This passage has very justly been suspected of being corrupt.  It is not apparent for what word there would have been a time, and that there would or would not be a time for any word seems not a consideration of importance sufficient to transport Macbeth into the following exclamation.  I read therefore,

  She should have dy’d hereafter. 
  There would have been a time for—­such a world!—­
  Tomorrow, &c.

It is a broken speech in which only part of the thought is expressed, and may be paraphrased thus:  The queen is dead.  Macbeth. Her death should have been deferred to some more peaceful hour; had she liv’d longer, there would at length have been a time for the honours due to her as a queen, and that respect which I owe her for her fidelity and love.  Such is the world—­such is the condition of human life, that we always think_ to-morrow will be happier than to-day, but to-morrow and to-morrow steals over us unenjoyed and unregarded, and we still linger in the same expectation to the moment appointed for our end.  All these days, which have thus passed away, have sent multitudes of fools to the grave, who were engrossed by the same dream of future felicity, and, when life was departing from them, were, like me, reckoning on to-morrow.