quarrel_, and is to be found in that sense in Hollingshed's account of
the story of Macbeth, who, upon the creation of the prince of
Cumberland, thought, says the historian, that he had _a just quarrel_ to
endeavour after the crown. The sense, therefore, is, _fortune smiling on
his execrable cause, &c_.


NOTE III.

If I say sooth, I must report, they were
As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks.
So they redoubled strokes upon the foe.

Mr. Theobald has endeavoured to improve the sense of this passage by
altering the punctuation thus:

--They were
As cannons overcharg'd; with double cracks
So they redoubled strokes.--

He declares, with some degree of exultation, that he has no idea of _a
cannon charged with double cracks_; but, surely, the great author will
not gain much by an alteration which makes him say of a hero, that he
_redoubles strokes with double cracks_, an expression not more loudly to
be applauded, or more easily pardoned, than that which is rejected in
its favour. That a _cannon is charged with thunder_ or _with double
thunders_ may be written, not only without nonsense, but with elegance:
and nothing else is here meant by _cracks_, which in the time of this
writer was a word of such emphasis and dignity, that in this play he
terms the general dissolution of nature the _crack of doom_.