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NOTE III.
If I say sooth, I must report, they were
As cannons overcharg’d with double cracks.
So they redoubled strokes upon the foe.

Mr. Theobald has endeavoured to improve the sense of this passage by altering the punctuation thus:

–They were
As cannons overcharg’d; with double cracks
So they redoubled strokes.–

He declares, with some degree of exultation, that he has no idea of a cannon charged with double cracks; but, surely, the great author will not gain much by an alteration which makes him say of a hero, that he redoubles strokes with double cracks, an expression not more loudly to be applauded, or more easily pardoned, than that which is rejected in its favour. That a cannon is charged with thunder or with double thunders may be written, not only without nonsense, but with elegance: and nothing else is here meant by cracks, which in the time of this writer was a word of such emphasis and dignity, that in this play he terms the general dissolution of nature the crack of doom.

There are among Mr. Theobald’s alterations others which I do not approve, though I do not always censure them; for some of his amendments are so excellent, that, even when he has failed, he ought to be treated with indulgence and respect.

NOTE IV.

King. But who comes here?

Mal. The worthy Thane of Rosse.

Len. What haste looks through his eyes?

So should he look, that seems to speak things strange. The meaning of this passage, as it now stands, is, so should he look, that looks as if he told things strange. But Rosse neither yet told strange things, nor could look as if he told them; Lenox only conjectured from his air that he had strange things to tell, and, therefore, undoubtedly said,

–What haste looks through his eyes?
So should he look, that teems to speak things strange.

He looks like one that is big with something of importance; a metaphor so natural, that it is every day used in common discourse.

NOTE V.

SCENE III.

[Thunder. Enter the three Witches.]

1 Witch. Where hast thou been, sister?

2 Witch. Killing swine.

3 Witch. Sister, where thou?

1 Witch.
A sailor’s wife had chesnuts in her lap,
And mouncht, and mouncht, and mouncht. Give me, quoth I.
(a) Aroint thee, witch!–the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ Tyger:
But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,
And like a rat without a tail,
I’ll do–I’ll do–and I’ll do.

2 Witch. I’ll give thee a wind.

1 Witch. Thou art kind.

3 Witch. And I another.

1 Witch.
I myself have all the other.
And the (b) very points they blow;
All the quarters that they know,
I’ th’ ship-man’s card.–
I will drain him dry as hay,
Sleep shall neither night nor day,
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man (c) forbid;
Weary sev’n nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine;
Tho’ his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
Look, what I have.

2 Witch. Shew me, Shew me.

(a) Aroint thee, witch! In one of the folio editions the reading is anoint thee, in a sense very consistent with the common accounts of witches, who are related to perform many supernatural acts by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the place where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense anoint thee, witch, will mean, away, witch, to your infernal assembly. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word aroint in no other author; till looking into Hearne’s Collections, I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting the devils into great confusion by his presence, of whom one that is driving the damned before him with a prong, has a label issuing out from his mouth with these words, “OUT OUT ARONGT,” of which the last is evidently the same with aroint, and used in the same sense as in this passage.