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Editor: Arthur Sherbo
THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
SAMUEL JOHNSON
NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE
Tragedies
Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Sherbo
Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1958
GENERAL EDITORS
ASSISTANT EDITOR
ADVISORY EDITORS
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Introduction on Tragedies
TRAGEDIES
Vol. IV
MACBETH
Most of the notes which the present editor has subjoined to this play were published by him in a small pamphlet in 1745.
Thus, in the time of Shakespeare, was the doctrine of witchcraft at once established by law and by the fashion, and it became not only unpolite, but criminal, to doubt it; and as prodigies are always seen in proportion as they are expected, witches were every day discovered, and multiplied as fast in some places, that bishop Hall mentions a village in Lancashire, where their number was greater than that of the houses. The jesuits and sectaries took advantage of this universal error, and endeavoured to promote the interest of their parties by pretended cures of persons afflicted by evil spirits; but they were detected and exposed by the clergy of the established church.
Upon this general infatuation Shakespeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially since he has followed with great exactness such histories as were then thought true; nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting.
Mr. Theobald has endeavoured to improve the sense of this passage by altering the punctuation thus:
The old copy reads,
That is, posts arrived as fast as they could be counted.
Macbeth is deliberating upon the events which are to befall him, but finding no satisfaction from his own thoughts, he grows impatient of reflection, and resolves to wait the close without harrassing hinaelf with conjectures.
But to shorten the pain of suspense, he calls upon Time In the usual stile of ardent desire, to quicken his motion,
He then comforts himself with the reflection that all his perplexity must have an end,
which the next transcriber observing to be wrong, and yet not being able to discover the real fault, altered to the present reading.
And in another place,
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.
In this there seems to be no reasoning. I should read,
Unless we choose rather,
These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast between them and this passage of Shakespeare may be more accurately observed.
Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of quiet, the other of perturbation. In the night of Dryden, all the disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakespeare, nothing but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake. He that reads Dryden, finds himself lull'd with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation. He that peruses Shakspeare looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover, the other, of a murderer.
This hemiatic will afford the true reading of this place, which is, I think, to be corrected thus:
I believe every one that has attentively read this dreadful soliloquy is disappointed at the conclusion, which, if not wholly unintelligible, is, at least, obscure, nor can be explained into any sense worthy of the authour. I shall therefore propose a slight alteration:
Those lines I think should be rather regulated thus:
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.
very probably, and very poetically.
Accordingly a third murderer joins them afterwards at the place of action.
All of whatever degree, from the highest to the lowest, may be assured that their visit is well received.
The common afflictions which the malice of witches produced were melancholy, fits, and loss of flesh, which are threatened by one of Shakespeare's witches:
It has been already mentioned in the law against witches, that they are supposed to take up dead bodies to use in enchantments, which was confessed by the woman whom king James examined, and who had of a dead body that was divided in one of their assemblies, two fingers for her share. It is observable that Shakespeare, on this great occasion, which involves the fate of a king, multiplies all the circumstanaces of horror. The babe, whose finger is used, must be strangled in its birth; the grease must not only be human, but must have dropped from a gibbet, the gibbet of a murderer; and even the sow, whose blood is used, must have offended nature by devouring her own farrow. These are touches of judgment and genius.
And in a former part,
Many other circumstances might be particularised, in which Shakespeare has shown his judgment and his knowledge.
And again,
This Dr. Warburton has followed.
The allusion is to a man from whom something valuable is about to be taken by violence, and who, that he may defend it without incombrance, lays it on the ground, and stands over it with his weapon in his hand. Our birthdom, or birthright, says he, lies on the ground, let us, like men who are to fight for what is dearest to them, not abandon it, but stand over it and defend it. This is a strong picture of obstinate resolution. So Falstaff says to Hal.
that is, Than angry passion, or boiling lust.
That is, may the event be, of the goodness of heaven, answerable to the cause.
But I am inclined to believe that Shakespeare wrote,
--and the chance, O goodness, Be like our warranted quarrel!--
which Mr. Upton prefers, but it is only an errour by an accidental transposition of the types.
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