The Tragedie of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
Title: The Tragedie of Macbeth.
Author: William Shakespeare.
Genre: Literature, fiction, play, tragedy.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1606.
Summary: Based on Macbeth, King of Scotland, Macduff, and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), the play tells of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth receiving a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his ruthless wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. But as the guilt and paranoia begin to consume him, and he's forced to become a tyrant and commit more and more murders and crimes that lead to bloodshed and civil war, he pulls himself and everything he loves into the realms of madness and death.
My rating: 8.5/10.
My review:
♥ All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
♥ Captain. As whence the sun 'gins his reflection
Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring whence comfort seemed to come
Discomfort swells.
♥ Malcolm. The worthy Thane of Ross.
Lennox. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look
That seems to speak things strange.
♥ King. No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive
Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death,
And with his former title greet Macbeth.
Ross. I'll see it done.
King. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.
♥ First Witch. ..And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters tat they know
I' th' shipman's card.
I'll drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his penthouse lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary sev'nights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.
♥ All. The weïrd sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus do go about, about:
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
♥ Banquo. What are these
So withered, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth,
And yet are on't? Live you, or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
♥ Banquo. If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favors nor your hate.
♥ Banquo. The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them. Whither are they vanished?
Macbeth. Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted
As breath into the wind. Would they have stayed!
Banquo. Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner?
Macbeth. Your children shall be kings.
Banquo. You shall be King.
♥ Macbeth. Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me
Promised no less to them?
Banquo. [Aside to Macbeth] That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray 's
In deepest consequence.
♥ Macbeth. [Aside] This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
♥ Macbeth. [Aside] Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
♥ Malcolm. ..That very frankly he confessed his treasons,
Implored your Highness' pardon and set forth
A deep repentance: nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it. He died
As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he owed
As 'twere a careless trifle.
King. There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.
♥ Macbeth. The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness' part
Is to receive our duties: and our duties
Are to your throne and state children and servants;
Which do but what they should, by doing every thing
Safe toward your love and honor.
♥ Macbeth. That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
♥ Lady Macbeth. Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou'dst have, great Glamis,
That which cries "Thus thou must do" if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valor of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.
♥ Lady Macbeth. The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up 'th access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctions visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, "Hold, hold!"
♥ Lady Macbeth. Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like th' innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.
..Only look up clear.
To alter favor ever is to fear.
Leave all the rest to me.
♥ King. The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,
Which still we thank as love.
♥ Macbeth. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th' inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends th' ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
♥ Macbeth. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on th' other-
♥ Lady Macbeth. Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would,"
Like the poor cat i' th' adage?
..What beast was 't then
THat made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
Mabeth. If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth. We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.
..Macbeth. Bring forth men-children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.
..I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
♥ Banquo. Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in heaven.
Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursèd thoughts that nature
Give way to in repose!
♥ Banquo. So I lose nonse
In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,
I shall be counseled.
♥ Macbeth. Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight, or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing.
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
A bell rings.
I go; and it is done: the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.
♥ Lady Macbeth. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;
What hath quenched them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it.
♥ Lady Macbeth. These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad.
Macbeth. Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep"-the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast-
♥ Macbeth. What hands are here? Ha! They pluck out mine eyes!
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Enter Lady [Macbeth].
Lady Macbeth My hands are of your color, but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
♥ Lady Macbeth. Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
Macbeth. To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself.
♥ Porter. Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
Macduff. What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.
Macduff. I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.
Porter. That it did, sir, i' the very throat on me: but I requited him for his lie, and, I think, being too strong for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet I make a shift to cast him.
♥ Macduff. I know this is a joyful trouble to you;
But yet 'tis one.
Macbeth. The labor we delight in physics pain.
This is the door.
Macduff. I'll make so bold to call,
For 'tis my limited service.
♥ Lennox. The night has been unruly. Where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' th' air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
New hatched to 'th woeful time: the obscure bird
Clamored the livelong night. Some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake.
Macbeth. 'Twas a rough night.
Lennox. My young remembrance cannot parallel
A fellow to it.
♥ Macduff. Ring the alarum bell. Murder and Treason!
Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! Awake!
Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
And look on death itself! Up, up, and see
The great doom's image! Malcolm! Banquo!
As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites,
To countenance this horror. Ring the bell.
Bell rings. Enter Lady [Macbeth].
Lady Macbeth. What's the business,
That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley
The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!
Macduff. O gentle lady,
'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak:
The repetition, in a woman's ear,
Would murder as it fell.
♥ Macbeth. Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had lived a blessèd time; for from this instant
There's nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys. Renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
♥ Macbeth. Who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make 's love known?
♥ Malcolm. Let's not consort with them.
To show an unfelt sorrow is an office
Which the false man does easy.
♥ Donalbain. Where we are
There's daggers in men's smiles; the near in blood,
The nearer bloody.
♥ Malcolm. Therefore to horse;
And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,
But shift away. There's warrant in that theft
Which steals itself when there's no mercy left.
♥ Ross. Ha, good father,
Thou seest the heavens, as toubled with man's act,
Threatens his bloody stage. By th' clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp:
Is 't night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?
♥ Macduff. Well, may you see things well done there.
Adieu,
Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!
Ross. Farewell, father.
Old Man. God's benison go with you, and with those
That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!
♥ Macbeth. To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus-
Our fears in Banquo stick deep,
And in his royalty of nature reigns that
Which would be feared. 'Tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor
To act in safety. There is none but he
Whose being I do fear: and under him
My genius is rebuked, as it is said
Mark Antony's was by Cæsar. He child the sisters,
When first they put the name of King upon me,
And bade them speak to him; then prophetlike
They hailed him father to a line of kings.
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my gripe,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding. If 't be so,
For Banquo's issue have I filled my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered;
Put rancors in the vessel of my peace
Only for them, and mine eternal jewel
Given to the common enemy of man,
To make them kings, the seeds of Banquo kings!
Rather than so, come, fate, into the list,
And champion me to th' utterance!
♥ Macbeth. Do you find
Your patience so predominant in your nature,
That you can let this go? Are you so gospeled,
To pray for this good man and for his issue,
Whose heavy hand hath bowed you to the grave
And beggared yours for ever?
First Murderer. We are men, my liege.
Macbeth. Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept
All by the name of dogs: the valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
The housekeeper, the hunter, every one
According to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive
Particular addition, from the bell
That writes them all alike: and so of men.
♥ Second Murderer. I am one, my liege,
Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Hath so incensed that I am reckless what
I do to spite the world.
First Murderer. And I another,
So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance,
To men it or be rid on 't.
♥ Macbeth. It is concluded: Banquo, thy soul's flight,
If it find heaven, must find it out tonight.
♥ Lady Macbeth. Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
♥ Lady Macbeth. Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.
♥ Macbeth. But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shakes us nightly: better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.
♥ Lady Macbeth. You must leave this.
Macbeth. O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
♥ Macbeth. Ere the bat hath flown
His cloistered flight, ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.
♥ Macbeth. Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to th' rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
Thou marvel'st at my words: but hold thee still;
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill:
So, prithee, go with me.
♥ Macbeth. There's blood upon thy face.
Murderer. 'Tis Banquo's then.
Macbeth. 'Tis better thee without than he within.
Is he dispatched?
Murderer. My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.
♥ Ross. Gentlemen, rise, his Highness is not well.
Lady Macbeth. Sit, worthy friends. My lord is often thus,
And hath been from his youth.
..-Are you a man?
Macbeth. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
Which might appall the devil.
Lady Macbeth. O proper stuff!
This is the very painting of your fear.
This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,
Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts,
Impostors to true fear, would well become
A woman's story at a winter's fire,
Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
Why do you make such faces? When all's done,
You look but on a stool.
♥ Macbeth. It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augures and understood relations have
By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood.
♥ Macbeth. For mine own good
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
Strange things I have in head that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.
♥ Hecate. How did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death;
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?
And, which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful: who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
But make amends now: get you gone,
And at the out of Acheron
Meet me i' th' morning: thither he
Will come to know his destiny.
Your vessels and your spells provide,
Your charms and everything beside.
I am for th' air: this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end:
Great business must be wrought ere noon.
Upon the comet the corner of the moon
There hangs a vap'rous drop profound;
I'll catch it ere it come to ground:
And that distilled by magic sleights
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion.
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
And you all know security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.
♥ Lennox. Some holy angel
Fly to the court of England and unfold
His message ere he come, that a swift blessing
May soon return to this our suffering country
Under a hand accursed!
♥ First Witch. Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed.
Second Witch. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Third Witch. Harpier cries. 'Tis time, 'tis time.
First Witch. Round about the caldron go:
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelt'red venom sleeping pot,
Boil thou first i' th' charmèd pot.
All. Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Second Witch. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blindworm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's sing.
For a charm of pow'rful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
All. Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Third Witch. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witch's mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i' th' dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gail of goat, and slips of yew
Slivered in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For th' ingredience of our caldron.
All. Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Second Witch. Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
..By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes:
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!
Enter Macbeth.
♥ Macbeth. I conjure you, by that which you profess,
Howe'er you come to know it, answer me:
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken, answer me
To what I ask you.
♥ Second Apparition. Be bloody, bold, and resolute!
Laugh to scorn
The pow'r of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.
...Third Apparition. Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are:
Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him.
♥ First Witch. Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites,
And show the best of our delights:
I'll charm the air to give a sound,
While you perform your antic round,
That this great king may kindly say
Our duties did his welcome pay.
♥ Macbeth. [Aside] Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits.
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook
Unless the deed go with it. From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand. And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise;
Seize upon Fife; give to th' edge o' th' sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;
This deed I'll do before this purpose cool:
But no more sights!-Where are these gentlemen?
Come, bring me where they are.
♥ Lady Macduff. His flight was madness. When our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.
Ross. You know not
Whether it was his wisdom or his fear.
♥ Ross. My dearest coz,
I pray you, school yourself. But, for your husband,
He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows
The fits o' th' season. I dare not speak much further:
But cruel are the times, when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea
Each way and move. I take my leave of you.
Shall not be long but I'll be here again.
Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward
To what they were before. My pretty cousin,
Blessing upon you!
♥ Lady Macduff. Sirrah, your father's dead:
And what will you do now? How will you live?
Son. As birds do, mother.
Lady Macduff. What, with worms are flies?
Son. With what I get, I mean; and so do they.
Lady Macduff. Poor bird! thou'dst never fear the net nor lime,
The pitfall nor the gin.
Son. Why should I, mother? Poor birds they are not set for.
♥ Son. What is a traitor?
Lady Macduff. Why, one that swears and lies.
Son.And be all traitors that do so?
Lady Macduff. Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.
Son. And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?
Lady Macduff. Every one.
Son. Who must hang them?
Lady Macduff. Why, the honest men.
Son. Then the liars and swearers are fools; for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.
Lady Macduff. Now, God help thee, poor monkey! But how wilt thou do for a father?
Son. If he were dead, you'd weep for him. If you would not, it were a good sign that I should quickly have a new father.
♥ Lady Macduff. I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world, where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,
Do I put up that womanly defense,
TO say I have done no harm?
♥ Malcolm. This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
Was once thought honest: you have loved him well;
He hath not touched you yet. I am young; but something
You may deserve of him through me; and wisdom
To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb
T' appease an angry god.
♥ Macduff. Bleed, bleed, poor country:
Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
For goodness dare not check thee: wear thou thy wrongs;
The title is affeered.
..Malcolm. ..I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash
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.
♥ Malcolm. ..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 damned
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,
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 ippose my will. Better Macbeth
Than such an one to reign.
Macduff. Boundless intemperance
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And fall of many kings.
..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:
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.
..But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temp'rance, 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 pow'r, I should
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth.
Macduff. O Scotland, Scotland!
..Thy royal father
Was a most sainted king: the queen that bore thee,
Oft'ner upon her knees than on her feet,
Died every day she lived. Fare thee well!
These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself
Hath banished me from Scotland. O my breast,
They hope ends here!
Malcolm. Macduff, this noble passion,
Child of fertility, hath from my soul
Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts
To thy good truth and honor. 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
Deal between thee and me! For even now
I put myself to thy direction, and
Unspeak my 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
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.
♥ Malcolm. What's the newest grief?
Ross. That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker;
Each minute teems a new one.
♥ Malcolm. Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
♥ 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.
..Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief
Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.
♥ Malcolm. Receive what cheer you may.
The night is long that never finds the day.
♥ Doctor. Foul whisp'rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
♥ Caithness. Some say he's mad; others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain,
He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus. Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach.
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
♥ Caithness. Well, march we on,
To give obedience where 'tis truly owed.
Meet we the med'cine of the sickly weal,
And with him pour we, in our country's purge,
Each drop of us.
Lennox. Or so much as it needs
To dew the sovereign flower and down the weeds.
Make we our march towards Birnam.
♥ Macbeth. The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.
♥ Macbeth. I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Seyton!
♥ Macbeth. Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
♥ Macbeth. I will not be afraid of death and bane
Till Birnan Forest come to Dunsinane.
Doctor. [Aside] Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,
Profit again should hardly draw me here.
♥ Malcolm. ..For where there is advantage to be given
Both more and less have given him the revolt,
And none serve with him but constrainèd things
Whose hearts are absent too.
♥ Macbeth. I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my sense would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in 't. I have supped full with horrors.
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.
♥ Macbeth. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
♥ Macbeth. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I 'gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish th' estate o' th' world were now undone.
Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind, come wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.
♥ Siward. Fare you well.
Do we but find the tyrant's power tonight,
Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.
Macduff. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.
♥ Ross. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt:
He only lived but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirmed
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.
Siward. Then he is dead?
Ross. Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
Siward. Had he his hurts before?
Ross. Ay, on the front.
Siward. Why then, God's soldier be he!
Had I as many sons as I have hairs,
I would not wish them to a fairer death:
And so his knell is knolled.
Malcolm. He's worth more sorrow,
And that I'll spend for him.
Siward. He's worth no more:
They say he parted well and paid his score:
And so God be with him!