This passage is a good example of what may be passed over in the first reading, yet which if understood adds greatly to the force of the effect. If the scholar knows that according to the old superstition a witch could take the form of an animal but could be identified by the fact that the tail was wanting, the idea of the hag's flying through the air on the wind to the tempest-tossed vessel bound for Aleppo, and on it taking the form of a tailless rat to gnaw, and gnaw, and gnaw till the ship springs a leak, is sure to appeal to the youthful imagination. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.—_iii_, 139-142. This is one of those passages which is sure to puzzle the ordinary school-boy, although a little help will enable him to understand it, and to see how natural under the circumstances is the state of mind which it paints. The murder is as yet only imagined (fantastical), and yet the thought of it so shakes Macbeth's individual (single) consciousness (state of man) that the ordinary functions of the mind are lost in confused surmises of what may come as the consequences of the deed; until to his excited fancy nothing seems real (is) but what the dreadful surmise paints, although that does not yet exist. Your servants ever Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt To make their audit to your highness' pleasure, Still to return your own.—_vi_, 25-28. * * * * * His two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassail so convince, That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbec only.—_vii_, 63-67. The whole of Macbeth's soliloquy at the beginning of scene _vii_ is a case in point. It may be taken up here, but to my thinking is better treated after the class is familiar with the circumstances under which it is spoken. IV The taking up of especially striking passages beforehand may be omitted altogether, although what I consider the possible advantages I have already indicated.[175:1] Perhaps the better plan is to do this after the first reading of the play, and before the second reading prepares the way for detailed study. The sort of passage I have in mind is indicated by the following examples: If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not.—_iii_, 58-59. The attention of the pupils may be called to the especial force and fitness of the image. The impossibility of telling from the appearance of a seed whether it will grow or what will spring from it makes very striking this comparison of events to them, so unable are we to say which of these "seeds of time" will produce important results and which will show no more growth than a seed unsprouting.