Against the undivulg'd pretence I fight
Of treasonous malice]
Pretence is not act, but simulation, a pretence of the traitor, whoever he might be, to suspect some other of the murder. I here fly to the protector of innocence from any charge which, yet undivulg'd, the traitor may pretend to fix upon me.
II.iii.147 (454,7) This murtherous shaft that's shot,/Hath not yet lighted] The design to fix the murder opon some innocent person, has not yet taken effect.
II.iv.15 (456,9) minions of their race] Theobald reads,
—minions of the race,
very probably, and very poetically.
II.iv.24 (456,1) What good could they pretend?] To pretend is here to propose to themselves, to set before themselves as a motive of action.
III.i.7 (457,2) As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine] Shine, for appear with all the lustre of conspicuous truth.
III.i.56 (459,4) as, it is said,/Mark Anthony's was by Caesar] Though I would not often assume the critic's privilege of being confident where certainty cannot be obtained, nor indulge myself too far in departing from the established reading; yet I cannot but propose the rejection of this passage, which I believe was an insertion of some player, that having so much learning as to discover to what Shakespeare alluded, was not willing that his audience should be less knowing than himself, and has therefore weakened the authour's sense by the intrusion of a remote and useless image into a speech bursting from a man wholly possess'd with his own present condition, and therefore not at leisure to explain his own allusions to himself. If these words are taken away, by which not only the thought but the numbers are injured, the lines of Shakespeare close together without any traces of a breach.