Macbeth has, in the foregoing lines, disturbed his imagination by enumerating all the terrors 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 horrors 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 conviction of the wickedness of his design. Of this alteration, however, I do not now see much use, and certainly see no necessity. Whether to _take horrour from the time_ means not rather to _catch_ _it_ as communicated, than to _deprive the time of horrour_, deserves te be considered. II.ii.37 (443,6) sleave of care] A skein of silk is called a _sleave_ of silk, as I learned from Mr. Seward, the ingenious editor of Beaumont and Fletcher. II.ii.56 (444,8) gild the faces of the grooms withal,/For it must seem their guilt] Could Shakespeare possibly mean to play upon the similitude of _gild_ and _guilt_. II.iii.45 (447,5) I made a shift to cast him] To _cast him up_, to ease my stomach of him. The equivocation is between _cast_ or _throw_, as a term of wrestling, and _cast_ or _cast up_. II.iii.61 (448,7) --strange screams of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible Of dire combustions, and confus'd events, New hatch'd to the woeful time: The obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night: some say the earth Was feverous, and did shake] Those lines I think should be rather regulated thus: --_prophecying with accents terrible, Of dire combustions and cosfus'd events. New-hatch'd to th' woful time, the obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say the earth Was fev'rous and did shake._ A _prophecy_ of an _event new hatch'd_, seems to be a _prophecy_ of an _event past_. And _a prophecy new hatch'd_ is a wry expression. The term _new hatch'd_ is properly applicable to a _bird_, and that birds of ill omen should be _new-hatch'd to the woful time_, that is, should appear in uncommon numbers, is very consistent with the rest of the prodigies here mentioned, and with the universal disorder into which nature is described as thrown, by the perpetration of this horrid murder. (see 1765, VI, 413, 7)