MACBETH Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still, ‘They come!’ Our castle’s strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie,
Till famine and the ague eat them up.
Were they not forc’d with those that should be ours,
5
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home. What is that noise?
[a cry within, of women]
SEYTON It is the cry of women, my good Lord. Exit.
MACBETH I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
10
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 supp’d full with horrors:
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.
Re-enter SEYTON.
Wherefore was that cry?
15
SEYTON The Queen, my Lord, is dead.
MACBETH She should have died hereafter:
There would have been a time for such a word. –
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
20
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,
25
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Enter a Messenger.
Thou com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
MESSENGER Gracious my Lord,
30
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do’t.
MACBETH Well, say, sir.
MESSENGER As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.
MACBETH Liar, and slave!
35
MESSENGER Let me endure your wrath, if ‘t be not so.
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.
MACBETH If thou speak’st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
40
I care not if thou dost for me as much. –
I pull in resolution; and begin
To doubt th’equivocation of the fiend,
That lies like truth: ‘Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane’; – and now a wood
45
Comes toward Dunsinane. – 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. –
50
Ring the alarum bell! – Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we’ll die with harness on our back. Exeunt.
5.6 Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM, OLD SIWARD, MACDUFF, etc., and their army, with boughs.
MALCOLM
Now, near enough: your leavy screens throw down,
And show like those you are. – You, worthy uncle,
Shall, with my cousin, your right noble son,
Lead our first battle: worthy Macduff, and we,
Shall take upon’s what else remains to do,
5
According to our order.
SIWARD Fare you well. –
Do we but find the tyrant’s power to-night,
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.
10
Exeunt. Alarums continued.
5.7 Enter MACBETH.
MACBETH They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course. – What’s he,
That was not born of woman? Such a one
Am I to fear, or none.
Enter YOUNG SIWARD.
YOUNG SIWARD What is thy name?
MACBETH Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.
5
YOUNG SIWARD
No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name
Than any is in hell.
MACBETH My name’s Macbeth.
YOUNG SIWARD
The devil himself could not pronounce a title
More hateful to mine ear.
MACBETH No, nor more fearful.
YOUNG SIWARD
Thou liest, abhorred tyrant: with my sword
10
I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st.
[They fight, and Young Siward is slain.]
MACBETH Thou wast born of woman: –
But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,
Brandish’d by man that’s of a woman born. Exit.
Alarums. Enter MACDUFF.
MACDUFF
That way the noise is. – Tyrant, show thy face:
If thou be’st slain, and with no stroke of mine,
15
My wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still.
I cannot strike at wretched Kernes, whose arms
Are hir’d to bear their staves: either thou, Macbeth,
Or else my sword, with an unbatter’d edge,
I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;
20
By this great clatter, one of greatest note
Seems bruited. Let me find him, Fortune!
And more I beg not. Exit. Alarum.
Enter MALCOLM and OLD SIWARD.
SIWARD
This way, my Lord; – the castle’s gently render’d:
The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight;
25
The noble Thanes do bravely in the war.
The day almost itself professes yours,
And little is to do.
MALCOLM We have met with foes
That strike beside us.
SIWARD Enter, Sir, the castle.
Exeunt. Alarum.
5.8 Enter MACBETH.
MACBETH Why should I play the Roman fool, and die
On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes
Do better upon them.
Re-enter MACDUFF.
MACDUFF Turn, Hell-hound, turn!
MACBETH Of all men else I have avoided thee:
But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d
5
With blood of thine already.
MACDUFF I have no words;
My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain
Than terms can give thee out! [They fight.]
MACBETH Thou losest labour:
As easy may’st thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed:
10
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life; which must not yield
To one of woman born.
MACDUFF Despair thy charm;
And let the Angel, whom thou still hast serv’d,
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb
15
Untimely ripp’d.
MACBETH Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow’d my better part of man:
And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,
That palter with us in a double sense;
20
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. – I’ll not fight with t
hee.
MACDUFF Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o’th’ time:
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
25
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,
‘Here may you see the tyrant.’
MACBETH I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
30
And thou oppos’d, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last: before my body
I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff;
And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’
Exeunt, fighting. Alarums.
Re-enter fighting, and Macbeth slain.
5.9 Retreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM, OLD SIWARD, ROSSE, thanes and soldiers.
MALCOLM
I would the friends we miss were safe arriv’d.
SIWARD Some must go off; and yet, by these I see,
So great a day as this is cheaply bought.
MALCOLM Macduff is missing, and your noble son.
ROSSE Your son, my Lord, has paid a soldier’s debt:
5
He only liv’d but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirm’d,
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.
SIWARD Then he is dead?
ROSSE
Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow
10
Must not be measur’d by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
SIWARD Had he his hurts before?
ROSSE 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:
15
And so, his knell is knoll’d.
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! – Here comes newer comfort.
Re-enter MACDUFF, with Macbeth’s head.
MACDUFF
Hail, King! for so thou art. Behold, where stands
20
Th’usurper’s cursed head: the time is free.
I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl,
That speak my salutation in their minds;
Whose voices I desire aloud with mine, –
Hail, King of Scotland!
ALL Hail, King of Scotland!
25
[Flourish.]
MALCOLM We shall not spend a large expense of time,
Before we reckon with your several loves,
And make us even with you. My Thanes and kinsmen,
Henceforth be Earls; the first that ever Scotland
In such an honour nam’d. What’s more to do,
30
Which would be planted newly with the time, –
As calling home our exil’d friends abroad,
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher, and his fiend-like Queen,
35
Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; – this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,
We will perform in measure, time, and place.
So thanks to all at once, and to each one,
40
Whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.
Flourish. Exeunt.
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure was first printed in the First Folio in 1623 as the fourth of the comedies, but it was performed at the Court of James I on 26 December 1604; it had probably been written and acted at the Globe earlier that year. Possibly the first play Shakespeare wrote after the accession of James I, it deals with many moral and political issues discussed by James in his Basilicon Doron (1599, reprinted 1603). Composed later than most of the comedies and at a time when Shakespeare was turning increasingly to tragedy, it has been seen as having particular affinities with All’s Well That Ends Well, with which it is sometimes classified as a ‘problem comedy’. All’s Well is difficult to date, but it shares with Measure for Measure a darker tone than the other comedies, a strong, outspoken (and for some, dislikeable) heroine, and a plot resolved by a ‘bed-trick’ – the substitution of one woman for another in bed.
Shakespeare’s sources were Giraldi Cinthio and George Whetstone, both of whom wrote two versions of the story of the magistrate who demands sexual favours in return for mercy: Cinthio told the story first in his Hecatommithi (1565) and dramatized it as Epitia (1573); Whetstone wrote a two-part play Promos and Cassandra (1578) and a prose version in his Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582). Promos and Cassandra seems to have been the main source, but Shakespeare also used the Hecatommithi for the source of Othello which was written close in time to Measure for Measure. In all the previous versions of the story the character who is the equivalent of Isabella does agree to have sex with the magistrate to save her brother’s (or in some versions her husband’s) life, but in none of them is she about to take vows as a nun; and Mariana is Shakespeare’s invention, though the bed-trick was familiar from folklore and romance. The presence throughout of the disguised ruler is also Shakespeare’s invention.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 348