As the last sentence stands, it is at once ungrammatical and obscure; and neither Mr. Steevens's construction of shut up in the sense of to conclude, as referring to the speaker, nor Hanmer's reading and is shut up, as connected with Duncan, will render it intelligible. It should seem as if Banquo meant to say that the king was immured in happiness; but then it is obvious that some preceding words have been lost.
Scene 3. Page 428.
Enter Macduff.
Duff in the Erse language signifies a captain; Macduff, the son of a captain.
Scene 3. Page 433.
Macd. Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit.
This simile has been elsewhere used by Shakspeare. Thus in Cymbeline, he calls sleep the ape of death. In A midsummer night's dream, he has death counterfeiting sleep. It might indeed from its extreme obviousness have occurred to writers of weaker imagination than our poet; yet as he is known to have borrowed so much, it is not impossible that he might in this instance have been indebted to Marlow's translation of a line in Ovid's Elegies, book ii. el. 9:
"Foole what is sleepe, but image of cold death?"
or to another version of the same line in Cardanus's Comfort: