ACT II. SCENE II.
Reading edition
—Now o'er one half the world (a)Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecat's offerings: and wither'd murther, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With (b)Tarquin's ravishing sides tow'rds his design Moves like a ghost.—Thou sound and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my where-about; And (c)take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it.—
(a)—Now o'er one half the 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.
All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead, The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head: The little birds in dreams their songs repeat, And sleeping flowers beneath the night dews sweat. Even lust and envy sleep!
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 lulled with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation. He that peruses Shakespeare, looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover; the other, that of a murderer.
(b)—Wither'd murder, —thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing sides tow'rds his design, Moves like a ghost.—
This was the reading of this passage in all the editions before that of Mr. Pope, who for sides, inserted in the text strides, which Mr. Theobald has tacitly copied from him, though a more proper alteration might, perhaps, have been made. A ravishing stride is an action of violence, impetuosity, and tumult, like that of a savage rushing on his prey; whereas the poet is here attempting to exhibit an image of secrecy and caution, of anxious circumspection and guilty timidity, the stealthy pace of a ravisher creeping into the chamber of a virgin, and of an assassin approaching the bed of him whom he proposes to murder, without awaking him; these he describes as moving like ghosts, whose progression is so different from strides, that it has been in all ages represented to be, as Milton expresses it,
Smooth sliding without step.
This hemistich will afford the true reading of this place, which is, I think, to be corrected thus:
—and wither'd murder, —thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin ravishing, slides tow'rds his design, Moves like a ghost.
Tarquin is, in this place, the general name of a ravisher, and the sense is: Now is the time in which every one is asleep, but those who are employed in wickedness, the witch who is sacrificing to Hecate, and the ravisher, and the murderer, who, like me, are stealing upon their prey.
When the reading is thus adjusted, he wishes with great propriety, in the following lines, that the earth may not hear his steps.
(c) And take the present horror from the time. Which now suits with it.—
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 author. I shall, therefore, propose a slight alteration,
—Thou sound and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my where-about, And talk—the present horror of the time!— That now suits with it.—
Macbeth has, in the foregoing lines, disturbed his imagination by enumerating all the terrours of the night; at length he is wrought up to a degree of frenzy, that makes him afraid of some supernatural discovery of his design, and calls out to the stones not to betray him, not to declare where he walks, nor to talk.—As he is going to say of what, he discovers the absurdity of his suspicion, and pauses, but is again overwhelmed by his guilt, and concludes that such are the horrours of the present night, that the stones may be expected to cry out against him:
That now suits with it.
He observes in a subsequent passage, that on such occasions stones have been known to move. It is now a very just and strong picture of a man about to commit a deliberate murder, under the strongest convictions of the wickedness of his design.