a death-knell is heard in Scotland, people scarcely ask for whom it is rung, it has become so common.
IV. iii. 219. Dispute it. This is usually taken to mean 'contend with your sorrow.' More probably Malcolm is again urging Macduff to seek vengeance.
V. iii. 21. disease. The reading of the First Folio is 'dis-eate.' This is obviously a misprint, and modern editors take their choice between 'disseat' and 'disease.' The former makes a more vigorous sentence: but 'disease' offers a more natural antithesis to 'cheer'; it is the reading of all the Folios except the First; and it was commonly used in Shakespeare's time in the sense here attributed to it. Cf. Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603), Act IV, Scene iii: 'I should disease my friend, and be a trouble to the whole house.'
V. vii. 2. course. In the favorite sport of bear-baiting, a bear was tied to a stake, and dogs were set upon him in relays, sometimes ten at a time.
V. vii. 30. Roman fool. This is a scornful allusion to the ancient Roman conception of suicide as an act of heroism. Shakespeare may or may not have had in mind the individual cases of Brutus and Cassius, whose stories he had already dramatized in Julius Cæsar.
