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England. Before the KING’S Palace. | |
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Enter MALCOLM and MACDUFF. | |
| Mal. Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there | |
| Weep our sad bosoms empty. | |
| Macd. Let us rather | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| Like syllable of dolour. | |
| Mal. What I believe I’ll wail, | |
| What know believe, and what I can redress, | |
| As I shall find the time to friend, I will. | |
| What you have spoke, it may be so perchance. | 15 |
| This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, | |
| Was once thought honest: you have lov’d 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 | 20 |
| To appease an angry god. | |
| Macd. I am not treacherous. | |
| Mal. But Macbeth is. | |
| A good and virtuous nature may recoil | |
| In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon; | 25 |
| 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. | |
| Macd. I have lost my hopes. | 30 |
| Mal. 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, | 35 |
| But mine own safeties: you may be rightly just, | |
| Whatever I shall think. | |
| Macd. Bleed, bleed, poor country! | |
| Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, | |
| For goodness dares not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs; | 40 |
| 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. | |
| Mal. Be not offended: | 45 |
| 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 | |
| Is added to her wounds: I think withal, | |
| There would be hands uplifted in my right; | 50 |
| 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, | 55 |
| More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever, | |
| By him that shall succeed. | |
| Macd. What should he be? | |
| Mal. It is myself I mean; in whom I know | |
| All the particulars of vice so grafted, | 60 |
| 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 compar’d | |
| With my confineless harms. | |
| Macd. Not in the legions | 65 |
| Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d | |
| In evils to top Macbeth. | |
| Mal. I grant him bloody, | |
| Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, | |
| Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin | 70 |
| 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 | 75 |
| That did oppose my will; better Macbeth | |
| Than such an one to reign. | |
| Macd. Boundless intemperance | |
| In nature is a tyranny; it hath been | |
| Th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne, | 80 |
| And fall of many kings. But fear not yet | |
| To take upon you what is yours; you may | |
| 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 | 85 |
| That vulture in you, to devour so many | |
| As will to greatness dedicate themselves, | |
| Finding it so inclin’d. | |
| Mal. With this there grows | |
| In my most ill-compos’d affection such | 90 |
| 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 | 95 |
| Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, | |
| Destroying them for wealth. | |
| Macd. This avarice | |
| Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root | |
| Than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been | 100 |
| 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. | |
| Mal. But I have none: the king-becoming graces, | 105 |
| 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, | 110 |
| 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. | |
| Macd. O Scotland, Scotland! | 115 |
| Mal. If such a one be fit to govern, speak: | |
| I am as I have spoken. | |
| Macd. Fit to govern! | |
| No, not to live. O nation miserable, | |
| With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter’d, | 120 |
| When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again, | |
| Since that the truest issue of thy throne | |
| By his own interdiction stands accurs’d, | |
| And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father | |
| Was a most sainted king; the queen that bore thee, | 125 |
| Oft’ner upon her knees than on her feet, | |
| Died every day she liv’d. Fare thee well! | |
| These evils thou repeat’st upon thyself | |
| Have banish’d me from Scotland. O my breast, | |
| Thy hope ends here! | 130 |
| Mal. Macduff, this noble passion, | |
| Child of integrity, hath from my soul | |
| Wip’d the black scruples, reconcil’d my thoughts | |
| To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth | |
| By many of these trains hath sought to win me | 135 |
| 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 mine own detraction, here abjure | 140 |
| 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 | 145 |
| 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 poorcountry’s to command; | |
| Whither indeed, before thy here-approach, | 150 |
| Old Siward, with ten thousand war-like 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? | |
| Macd. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once | 155 |
| ’Tis hard to reconcile. | |
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Enter a Doctor. | |
| Mal. Well; more anon. Comes the king forth, I pray you? | |
| Doct. Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls | |
| That stay his cure; their malady convinces | 160 |
| The great assay of art; but, at his touch, | |
| Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, | |
| They presently amend. | |
| Mal. I thank you, doctor. [Exit Doctor. | |
| Macd. What’s the disease he means? | 165 |
| Mal. ’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, | 170 |
| 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 | 175 |
| 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. | |
| Macd. See, who comes here? | 180 |
| Mal. My countryman; but yet I know him not. | |
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Enter ROSS. | |
| Macd. My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither. | |
| Mal. I know him now. Good God, betimes remove | |
| The means that make us strangers! | 185 |
| Ross. Sir, amen. | |
| Macd. 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, | 190 |
| But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; | |
| Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rent the air | |
| Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems | |
| A modern ecstasy; the dead man’s knell | |
| Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives | 195 |
| Expire before the flowers in their caps, | |
| Dying or ere they sicken. | |
| Macd. O! relation | |
| Too nice, and yet too true! | |
| Mal. What’s the newest grief? | 200 |
| Ross. That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker; | |
| Each minute teems a new one. | |
| Macd. How does my wife? | |
| Ross. Why, well. | |
| Macd. And all my children? | 205 |
| Ross. Well too. | |
| Macd. The tyrant has not batter’d at their peace? | |
| Ross. No; they were well at peace when I did leave ’em. | |
| Macd. Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes ’t? | |
| Ross. When I came hither to transport the tidings, | 210 |
| 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 | 215 |
| Would create soldiers, make our women fight, | |
| To doff their dire distresses. | |
| Mal. Be ’t their comfort, | |
| We are coming thither. Gracious England hath | |
| Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men; | 220 |
| 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, | 225 |
| Where hearing should not latch them. | |
| Macd. What concern they? | |
| The general cause? or is it a fee-grief | |
| Due to some single breast? | |
| Ross. No mind that’s honest | 230 |
| But in it shares some woe, though the main part | |
| Pertains to you alone. | |
| Macd. If it be mine | |
| Keep it not from me; quickly let me have it. | |
| Ross. Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, | 235 |
| Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound | |
| That ever yet they heard. | |
| Macd. Hum! I guess at it. | |
| Ross. Your castle is surpris’d; your wife and babes | |
| Savagely slaughter’d; to relate the manner, | 240 |
| Were, on the quarry of these murder’d deer, | |
| To add the death of you. | |
| Mal. Merciful heaven! | |
| What! man; ne’er pull your hat upon your brows; | |
| Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak | 245 |
| Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break. | |
| Macd. My children too? | |
| Ross. Wife, children, servants, all | |
| That could be found. | |
| Macd. And I must be from thence! | 250 |
| My wife kill’d too? | |
| Ross. I have said. | |
| Mal. Be comforted: | |
| Let’s make us medicine of our great revenge, | |
| To cure this deadly grief. | 255 |
| Macd. 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? | |
| Mal. Dispute it like a man. | 260 |
| Macd. I shall do so; | |
| 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! | 265 |
| 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! | |
| Mal. Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief | |
| Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it. | 270 |
| Macd. O! I could play the woman with mine eyes, | |
| 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, | 275 |
| Heaven forgive him too! | |
| Mal. 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 | 280 |
| Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may; | |
| The night is long that never finds the day. [Exeunt. | |
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