Table of Contents
ACT 4, SCENE 3
Setting: England. Before the King's palace.
[Enter MALCOLM and MACDUFF]
| MALCOLM | Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there | |
| Weep our sad bosoms empty. | ||
| MACDUFF | Let us rather | |
| Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men | ||
| Bestride our down–fall'n birthdom: each new morn | ||
| New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows | ||
| Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds | ||
| As if it felt with Scotland and yell'd out | ||
| Like syllable of dolour. | ||
| MALCOLM | What I believe I'll wail, | |
| What know believe, and what I can redress, | ||
| As I shall find the time to friend, I will. | 10 | |
| What you have spoke, it may be so perchance. | ||
| This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, | ||
| Was once thought honest: you have loved him well. | ||
| He hath not touch'd you yet. I am young; | ||
| but something | ||
| You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom | ||
| To offer up a weak poor innocent lamb | ||
| To appease an angry god. | ||
| MACDUFF | I am not treacherous. | |
| MALCOLM | But Macbeth is. | |
| A good and virtuous nature may recoil | ||
| In an imperial charge. But I shall crave | ||
| your pardon; | 20 | |
| That which you are my thoughts cannot transpose: | ||
| Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell; | ||
| Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, | ||
| Yet grace must still look so. | ||
| MACDUFF | I have lost my hopes. | |
| MALCOLM | Perchance even there where I did find my doubts. | |
| Why in that rawness left you wife and child, | ||
| Those precious motives, those strong knots of love, | ||
| Without leave–taking? I pray you, | ||
| Let not my jealousies be your dishonours, | ||
| But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just, | 30 | |
| Whatever I shall think. | ||
| MACDUFF | Bleed, bleed, poor country! | |
| Great tyranny! lay thou thy basis sure, | ||
| For goodness dare not cheque thee: wear thou | ||
| thy wrongs; | ||
| The title is affeer'd! Fare thee well, lord: | ||
| I would not be the villain that thou think'st | ||
| For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp, | ||
| And the rich East to boot. | ||
| MALCOLM | Be not offended: | |
| I speak not as in absolute fear of you. | ||
| I think our country sinks beneath the yoke; | ||
| It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash | 40 | |
| Is added to her wounds: I think withal | ||
| There would be hands uplifted in my right; | ||
| And here from gracious England have I offer | ||
| Of goodly thousands: but, for all this, | ||
| When I shall tread upon the tyrant's head, | ||
| Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country | ||
| Shall have more vices than it had before, | ||
| More suffer and more sundry ways than ever, | ||
| By him that shall succeed. | ||
| MACDUFF | What should he be? | |
| MALCOLM | It is myself I mean: in whom I know | 50 |
| All the particulars of vice so grafted | ||
| That, when they shall be open'd, black Macbeth | ||
| Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state | ||
| Esteem him as a lamb, being compared | ||
| With my confineless harms. | ||
| MACDUFF | Not in the legions | |
| Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn'd | ||
| In evils to top Macbeth. | ||
| MALCOLM | I grant him bloody, | |
| Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, | ||
| Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin | ||
| That has a name: but there's no bottom, none, | 60 | |
| In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters, | ||
| Your matrons and your maids, could not fill up | ||
| The cistern of my lust, and my desire | ||
| All continent impediments would o'erbear | ||
| That did oppose my will: better Macbeth | ||
| Than such an one to reign. | ||
| MACDUFF | Boundless intemperance | |
| In nature is a tyranny; it hath been | ||
| The untimely emptying of the happy throne | ||
| And fall of many kings. But fear not yet | ||
| To take upon you what is yours: you may | 70 | |
| Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty, | ||
| And yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink. | ||
| We have willing dames enough: there cannot be | ||
| That vulture in you, to devour so many | ||
| As will to greatness dedicate themselves, | ||
| Finding it so inclined. | ||
| MALCOLM | With this there grows | |
| In my most ill–composed affection such | ||
| A stanchless avarice that, were I king, | ||
| I should cut off the nobles for their lands, | ||
| Desire his jewels and this other's house: | 80 | |
| And my more–having would be as a sauce | ||
| To make me hunger more; that I should forge | ||
| Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, | ||
| Destroying them for wealth. | ||
| MACDUFF | This avarice | |
| Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root | ||
| Than summer–seeming lust, and it hath been | ||
| The sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear; | ||
| Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will. | ||
| Of your mere own: all these are portable, | ||
| With other graces weigh'd. | 90 | |
| MALCOLM | But I have none: the king–becoming graces, | |
| As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, | ||
| Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, | ||
| Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, | ||
| I have no relish of them, but abound | ||
| In the division of each several crime, | ||
| Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should | ||
| Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, | ||
| Uproar the universal peace, confound | ||
| All unity on earth. | ||
| MACDUFF | O Scotland, Scotland! | 100 |
| MALCOLM | If such a one be fit to govern, speak: | |
| I am as I have spoken. | ||
| MACDUFF | Fit to govern! | |
| No, not to live. O nation miserable, | ||
| With an untitled tyrant bloody–scepter'd, | ||
| When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again, | ||
| Since that the truest issue of thy throne | ||
| By his own interdiction stands accursed, | ||
| And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father | ||
| Was a most sainted king: the queen that bore thee, | ||
| Oftener upon her knees than on her feet, | 110 | |
| Died every day she lived. Fare thee well! | ||
| These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself | ||
| Have banish'd me from Scotland. O my breast, | ||
| Thy hope ends here! | ||
| MALCOLM | Macduff, this noble passion, | |
| Child of integrity, hath from my soul | ||
| Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts | ||
| To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth | ||
| By many of these trains hath sought to win me | ||
| Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me | ||
| From over–credulous haste: but God above | 120 | |
| Deal between thee and me! for even now | ||
| I put myself to thy direction, and | ||
| Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure | ||
| The taints and blames I laid upon myself, | ||
| For strangers to my nature. I am yet | ||
| Unknown to woman, never was forsworn, | ||
| Scarcely have coveted what was mine own, | ||
| At no time broke my faith, would not betray | ||
| The devil to his fellow and delight | ||
| No less in truth than life: my first false speaking | 130 | |
| Was this upon myself: what I am truly, | ||
| Is thine and my poor country's to command: | ||
| Whither indeed, before thy here–approach, | ||
| Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men, | ||
| Already at a point, was setting forth. | ||
| Now we'll together; and the chance of goodness | ||
| Be like our warranted quarrel! Why are you silent? | ||
| MACDUFF | Such welcome and unwelcome things at once | |
| Tis hard to reconcile. | ||
| [Enter a Doctor] | ||
| MALCOLM | Well; more anon.––Comes the king forth, I pray you? | 140 |
| Doctor | Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls | |
| That stay his cure: their malady convinces | ||
| The great assay of art; but at his touch–– | ||
| Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand–– | ||
| They presently amend. | ||
| MALCOLM | I thank you, doctor. | |
| [Exit Doctor] | ||
| MACDUFF | What's the disease he means? | |
| MALCOLM | Tis call'd the evil: | |
| A most miraculous work in this good king; | ||
| Which often, since my here–remain in England, | ||
| I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, | ||
| Himself best knows: but strangely–visited people, | 150 | |
| All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, | ||
| The mere despair of surgery, he cures, | ||
| Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, | ||
| Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, | ||
| To the succeeding royalty he leaves | ||
| The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, | ||
| He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy, | ||
| And sundry blessings hang about his throne, | ||
| That speak him full of grace. | ||
| [Enter ROSS] | ||
| MACDUFF | See, who comes here? | |
| MALCOLM | My countryman; but yet I know him not. | 160 |
| MACDUFF | My ever–gentle cousin, welcome hither. | |
| MALCOLM | I know him now. Good God, betimes remove | |
| The means that makes us strangers! | ||
| ROSS | Sir, amen. | |
| MACDUFF | Stands Scotland where it did? | |
| ROSS | Alas, poor country! | |
| Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot | ||
| Be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing, | ||
| But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; | ||
| Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air | ||
| Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems | ||
| A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell | 170 | |
| Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives | ||
| Expire before the flowers in their caps, | ||
| Dying or ere they sicken. | ||
| MACDUFF | O, relation | |
| Too nice, and yet too true! | ||
| MALCOLM | What's the newest grief? | |
| ROSS | That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker: | |
| Each minute teems a new one. | ||
| MACDUFF | How does my wife? | |
| ROSS | Why, well. | |
| MACDUFF | And all my children? | |
| ROSS | Well too. | |
| MACDUFF | The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace? | |
| ROSS | No; they were well at peace when I did leave 'em. | |
| MACDUFF | But not a niggard of your speech: how goes't? | 180 |
| ROSS | When I came hither to transport the tidings, | |
| Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour | ||
| Of many worthy fellows that were out; | ||
| Which was to my belief witness'd the rather, | ||
| For that I saw the tyrant's power a–foot: | ||
| Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland | ||
| Would create soldiers, make our women fight, | ||
| To doff their dire distresses. | ||
| MALCOLM | Be't their comfort | |
| We are coming thither: gracious England hath | ||
| Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men; | 190 | |
| An older and a better soldier none | ||
| That Christendom gives out. | ||
| ROSS | Would I could answer | |
| This comfort with the like! But I have words | ||
| That would be howl'd out in the desert air, | ||
| Where hearing should not latch them. | ||
| MACDUFF | What concern they? | |
| The general cause? or is it a fee–grief | ||
| Due to some single breast? | ||
| ROSS | No mind that's honest | |
| But in it shares some woe; though the main part | ||
| Pertains to you alone. | ||
| MACDUFF | If it be mine, | |
| Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it. | 200 | |
| ROSS | Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, | |
| Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound | ||
| That ever yet they heard. | ||
| MACDUFF | Hum! I guess at it. | |
| ROSS | Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes | |
| Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner, | ||
| Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer, | ||
| To add the death of you. | ||
| MALCOLM | Merciful heaven! | |
| What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows; | ||
| Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak | ||
| Whispers the o'er–fraught heart and bids it break. | 210 | |
| MACDUFF | My children too? | |
| ROSS | Wife, children, servants, all | |
| That could be found. | ||
| MACDUFF | And I must be from thence! | |
| My wife kill'd too? | ||
| ROSS | I have said. | |
| MALCOLM | Be comforted: | |
| Let's make us medicines of our great revenge, | ||
| To cure this deadly grief. | ||
| MACDUFF | He has no children. All my pretty ones? | |
| Did you say all? O hell–kite! All? | ||
| What, all my pretty chickens and their dam | ||
| At one fell swoop? | ||
| MALCOLM | Dispute it like a man. | |
| MACDUFF | I shall do so; | 220 |
| But I must also feel it as a man: | ||
| I cannot but remember such things were, | ||
| That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, | ||
| And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff, | ||
| They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, | ||
| Not for their own demerits, but for mine, | ||
| Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now! | ||
| MALCOLM | Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief | |
| Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it. | ||
| MACDUFF | O, I could play the woman with mine eyes | 230 |
| And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle heavens, | ||
| Cut short all intermission; front to front | ||
| Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; | ||
| Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape, | ||
| Heaven forgive him too! | ||
| MALCOLM | This tune goes manly. | |
| Come, go we to the king; our power is ready; | ||
| Our lack is nothing but our leave; Macbeth | ||
| Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above | ||
| Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may: | ||
| The night is long that never finds the day. | 240 | |
| [Exeunt] |