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For brave Macbeth, (well he deserves that name,)
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smok'd with bloody execution,
Like Valour's minion,
Carv'd out his passage, till he fac'd the slave;
And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the [1]nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.[2]
- ↑ he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps.
Some of the annotators, persuaded that wounds cannot be given thus in an upward direction, substitute nape for nave in this passage, and say, that it means the decapitation of the disloyal chieftain. That wounds may, however, be thus inflicted, both judicially and in the chance of war, is clear on the
- ↑ Macbeth, Act i. Sc 2.
