II
These doubtful or obsolete words having been mastered by the class, and the lines in which they occur used as illustrations of their use, the next matter is to take up obscure passages. These may be blind from unusual use of familiar words or from some other cause. Where the difficulty is a matter of diction it is hardly worth while to make further division into groups, and in the first act the following passages may be given to the students to study out for themselves if possible, or to have explained by the teacher if necessary:
Say to the king the knowledge of the broil
As thou did leave it.—ii, 6.
For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bid farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.—ii, 16-23.
Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
Or memorize another Golgotha,
I cannot tell.—ii, 39-41.
Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof,
Confronted him with self-comparisons,
Point against point rebellious, arm 'gainst arm,
Curbing his lavish spirit.—ii, 54-57.
He shall live a man forbid.—iii, 21.
The weird sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land.—iii, 32, 33.
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it.—v, 20-21.
All that impedes thee from the golden round
That fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.—v, 30-31.
To beguile the time
Look like the time.—vi, 63.
—Those honors deep and broad wherewith
Your majesty loads our house: for those of old
And the late dignities heap'd up to them
We rest your hermits.—vi, 16-20.
This Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek.—vii, 16-17.
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell.—vii, 69-72.
This list again may be made longer or shorter, with the same proviso as before, that it be not unnecessarily distended. Phrases like "craves composition" and "insane root," which I have put into the first section, may be grouped here if it seems better. I have not felt it needful to indicate the way in which the meaning of these obscure passages is to be brought out, for the method would be essentially the same as that taken to interest the class in the vocabulary of detached words.