The Tragedy Of Macbeth

1 Enter Malcolm and Macduff.
2 MALCOLM.
3 Let us seek out some desolate shade and there
4 Weep our sad bosoms empty.
5 MACDUFF.
6 Let us rather
7 Hold fast the mortal sword, and, like good men,
8 Bestride our down-fall’n birthdom. Each new morn
9 New widows howl, new orphans cry; new sorrows
10 Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds
11 As if it felt with Scotland, and yell’d out
12 Like syllable of dolour.
13 MALCOLM.
14 What I believe, I’ll wail;
15 What know, believe; and what I can redress,
16 As I shall find the time to friend, I will.
17 What you have spoke, it may be so, perchance.
18 This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
19 Was once thought honest: you have loved him well;
20 He hath not touch’d you yet. I am young; but something
21 You may deserve of him through me; and wisdom
22 To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb
23 To appease an angry god.
24 MACDUFF.
25 I am not treacherous.
26 MALCOLM.
27 But Macbeth is.
28 A good and virtuous nature may recoil
29 In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon.
30 That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose.
31 Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell:
32 Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
33 Yet grace must still look so.
34 MACDUFF.
35 I have lost my hopes.
36 MALCOLM.
37 Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.
38 Why in that rawness left you wife and child,
39 Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,
40 Without leave-taking?—I pray you,
41 Let not my jealousies be your dishonours,
42 But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just,
43 Whatever I shall think.
44 MACDUFF.
45 Bleed, bleed, poor country!
46 Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
47 For goodness dare not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs;
48 The title is affeer’d.—Fare thee well, lord:
49 I would not be the villain that thou think’st
50 For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp
51 And the rich East to boot.
52 MALCOLM.
53 Be not offended:
54 I speak not as in absolute fear of you.
55 I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
56 It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
57 Is added to her wounds. I think, withal,
58 There would be hands uplifted in my right;
59 And here, from gracious England, have I offer
60 Of goodly thousands: but, for all this,
61 When I shall tread upon the tyrant’s head,
62 Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country
63 Shall have more vices than it had before,
64 More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever,
65 By him that shall succeed.
66 MACDUFF.
67 What should he be?
68 MALCOLM.
69 It is myself I mean; in whom I know
70 All the particulars of vice so grafted
71 That, when they shall be open’d, black Macbeth
72 Will seem as pure as snow; and the poor state
73 Esteem him as a lamb, being compar’d
74 With my confineless harms.
75 MACDUFF.
76 Not in the legions
77 Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d
78 In evils to top Macbeth.
79 MALCOLM.
80 I grant him bloody,
81 Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
82 Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
83 That has a name: but there’s no bottom, none,
84 In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,
85 Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up
86 The cistern of my lust; and my desire
87 All continent impediments would o’erbear,
88 That did oppose my will: better Macbeth
89 Than such an one to reign.
90 MACDUFF.
91 Boundless intemperance
92 In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
93 Th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne,
94 And fall of many kings. But fear not yet
95 To take upon you what is yours: you may
96 Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty,
97 And yet seem cold—the time you may so hoodwink.
98 We have willing dames enough; there cannot be
99 That vulture in you, to devour so many
100 As will to greatness dedicate themselves,
101 Finding it so inclin’d.
102 MALCOLM.
103 With this there grows
104 In my most ill-compos’d affection such
105 A staunchless avarice, that, were I king,
106 I should cut off the nobles for their lands;
107 Desire his jewels, and this other’s house:
108 And my more-having would be as a sauce
109 To make me hunger more; that I should forge
110 Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,
111 Destroying them for wealth.
112 MACDUFF.
113 This avarice
114 Sticks deeper; grows with more pernicious root
115 Than summer-seeming lust; and it hath been
116 The sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear;
117 Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will,
118 Of your mere own. All these are portable,
119 With other graces weigh’d.
120 MALCOLM.
121 But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
122 As justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness,
123 Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
124 Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
125 I have no relish of them; but abound
126 In the division of each several crime,
127 Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should
128 Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
129 Uproar the universal peace, confound
130 All unity on earth.
131 MACDUFF.
132 O Scotland, Scotland!
133 MALCOLM.
134 If such a one be fit to govern, speak:
135 I am as I have spoken.
136 MACDUFF.
137 Fit to govern?
138 No, not to live.—O nation miserable,
139 With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d,
140 When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,
141 Since that the truest issue of thy throne
142 By his own interdiction stands accus’d,
143 And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father
144 Was a most sainted king. The queen that bore thee,
145 Oft’ner upon her knees than on her feet,
146 Died every day she lived. Fare thee well!
147 These evils thou repeat’st upon thyself
148 Have banish’d me from Scotland.—O my breast,
149 Thy hope ends here!
150 MALCOLM.
151 Macduff, this noble passion,
152 Child of integrity, hath from my soul
153 Wiped the black scruples, reconcil’d my thoughts
154 To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth
155 By many of these trains hath sought to win me
156 Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me
157 From over-credulous haste: but God above
158 Deal between thee and me! for even now
159 I put myself to thy direction, and
160 Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure
161 The taints and blames I laid upon myself,
162 For strangers to my nature. I am yet
163 Unknown to woman; never was forsworn;
164 Scarcely have coveted what was mine own;
165 At no time broke my faith; would not betray
166 The devil to his fellow; and delight
167 No less in truth than life: my first false speaking
168 Was this upon myself. What I am truly,
169 Is thine and my poor country’s to command:
170 Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach,
171 Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men,
172 Already at a point, was setting forth.
173 Now we’ll together, and the chance of goodness
174 Be like our warranted quarrel. Why are you silent?
175 MACDUFF.
176 Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
177 ’Tis hard to reconcile.
178 Enter a Doctor.
179 MALCOLM.
180 Well; more anon.—Comes the King forth, I pray you?
181 DOCTOR.
182 Ay, sir. There are a crew of wretched souls
183 That stay his cure: their malady convinces
184 The great assay of art; but at his touch,
185 Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,
186 They presently amend.
187 MALCOLM.
188 I thank you, doctor.
189 [_Exit Doctor._]
190 MACDUFF.
191 What’s the disease he means?
192 MALCOLM.
193 ’Tis call’d the evil:
194 A most miraculous work in this good king;
195 Which often, since my here-remain in England,
196 I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,
197 Himself best knows, but strangely-visited people,
198 All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
199 The mere despair of surgery, he cures;
200 Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
201 Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken,
202 To the succeeding royalty he leaves
203 The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,
204 He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy;
205 And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
206 That speak him full of grace.
207 Enter Ross.
208 MACDUFF.
209 See, who comes here?
210 MALCOLM.
211 My countryman; but yet I know him not.
212 MACDUFF.
213 My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
214 MALCOLM.
215 I know him now. Good God, betimes remove
216 The means that makes us strangers!
217 ROSS.
218 Sir, amen.
219 MACDUFF.
220 Stands Scotland where it did?
221 ROSS.
222 Alas, poor country,
223 Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
224 Be call’d our mother, but our grave, where nothing,
225 But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
226 Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks, that rent the air,
227 Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
228 A modern ecstasy. The dead man’s knell
229 Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
230 Expire before the flowers in their caps,
231 Dying or ere they sicken.
232 MACDUFF.
233 O, relation
234 Too nice, and yet too true!
235 MALCOLM.
236 What’s the newest grief?
237 ROSS.
238 That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker;
239 Each minute teems a new one.
240 MACDUFF.
241 How does my wife?
242 ROSS.
243 Why, well.
244 MACDUFF.
245 And all my children?
246 ROSS.
247 Well too.
248 MACDUFF.
249 The tyrant has not batter’d at their peace?
250 ROSS.
251 No; they were well at peace when I did leave ’em.
252 MACDUFF.
253 Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes’t?
254 ROSS.
255 When I came hither to transport the tidings,
256 Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour
257 Of many worthy fellows that were out;
258 Which was to my belief witness’d the rather,
259 For that I saw the tyrant’s power afoot.
260 Now is the time of help. Your eye in Scotland
261 Would create soldiers, make our women fight,
262 To doff their dire distresses.
263 MALCOLM.
264 Be’t their comfort
265 We are coming thither. Gracious England hath
266 Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;
267 An older and a better soldier none
268 That Christendom gives out.
269 ROSS.
270 Would I could answer
271 This comfort with the like! But I have words
272 That would be howl’d out in the desert air,
273 Where hearing should not latch them.
274 MACDUFF.
275 What concern they?
276 The general cause? or is it a fee-grief
277 Due to some single breast?
278 ROSS.
279 No mind that’s honest
280 But in it shares some woe, though the main part
281 Pertains to you alone.
282 MACDUFF.
283 If it be mine,
284 Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.
285 ROSS.
286 Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
287 Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
288 That ever yet they heard.
289 MACDUFF.
290 Humh! I guess at it.
291 ROSS.
292 Your castle is surpris’d; your wife and babes
293 Savagely slaughter’d. To relate the manner
294 Were, on the quarry of these murder’d deer,
295 To add the death of you.
296 MALCOLM.
297 Merciful heaven!—
298 What, man! ne’er pull your hat upon your brows.
299 Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
300 Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
301 MACDUFF.
302 My children too?
303 ROSS.
304 Wife, children, servants, all
305 That could be found.
306 MACDUFF.
307 And I must be from thence!
308 My wife kill’d too?
309 ROSS.
310 I have said.
311 MALCOLM.
312 Be comforted:
313 Let’s make us med’cines of our great revenge,
314 To cure this deadly grief.
315 MACDUFF.
316 He has no children.—All my pretty ones?
317 Did you say all?—O hell-kite!—All?
318 What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
319 At one fell swoop?
320 MALCOLM.
321 Dispute it like a man.
322 MACDUFF.
323 I shall do so;
324 But I must also feel it as a man:
325 I cannot but remember such things were,
326 That were most precious to me.—Did heaven look on,
327 And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,
328 They were all struck for thee! Naught that I am,
329 Not for their own demerits, but for mine,
330 Fell slaughter on their souls: heaven rest them now!
331 MALCOLM.
332 Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief
333 Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.
334 MACDUFF.
335 O, I could play the woman with mine eyes,
336 And braggart with my tongue!—But, gentle heavens,
337 Cut short all intermission; front to front,
338 Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
339 Within my sword’s length set him; if he ’scape,
340 Heaven forgive him too!
341 MALCOLM.
342 This tune goes manly.
343 Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready;
344 Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
345 Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
346 Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may;
347 The night is long that never finds the day.
348 [_Exeunt._]