Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies by Samuel Johnson
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page 10 of 398 (02%)
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_What haste looks thro' his eyes? So should he look, that_ teems _to speak thinks strange_. He looks like one that _is big with_ something of importance; a metaphor so natural that it is every day used in common discourse. I.ii.55 (402,1) Confronted him with self-comparisons] [Theobald interpreted "him" as Cawdor; Johnson, in 1745, accused Shakespeare of forgetfulness on the basis of Theobald's error; and Warburton here speaks of "blunder upon blunder."] The second blunderer was the present editor. I.iii.6 (403,5) _Aroint thee, witch_!] In one of the folio editions the reading is _Anoint thee_, in a sense very consistent with the common accounts of witches, who are related to perform many supernatural acts by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the places where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense, _anoint thee, Witch_, will mean, _Away, Witch, to your infernal assembly_. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word _aroint_ in no other authour till looking into Hearne's Collections I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting the devils into great confusion by his presence, of whom one that is driving the damned before him with a prong, has a label issuing out of his mouth with these words, OUT OUT ARONGT, of which the last is evidently the same with _aroint_, and used in the same sense as in this passage. I.iii.15 (405,8) And the very points they blew] As the word _very_ is here of no other use than to fill up the verse, it is likely that |
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