The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  I cannot read. The character I’ll take with wax.

  Our captain hath in every figure skill,

  An aged interpreter, though young in days.

  Before proud Athens he’s set down by this,

  Whose fall the mark of his ambition is. Exit

  5.5 Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his powers, before Athens

  ALCIBIADES

  Sound to this coward and lascivious town

  Our terrible approach.

  A parley sounds. The Senators appear upon the walls

  Till now you have gone on and filled the time

  With all licentious measure, making your wills

  The scope of justice. Till now myself and such

  As slept within the shadow of your power

  Have wandered with our traversed arms, and breathed

  Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush

  When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong,

  Cries of itself ‘No more’; now breathless wrong

  Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,

  And pursy insolence shall break his wind

  With fear and horrid flight.

  FIRST SENATOR

  Noble and young,

  When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,

  Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,

  We sent to thee to give thy rages balm,

  To wipe out our ingratitude with loves

  Above their quantity.

  SECOND SENATOR

  So did we woo

  Transformed Timon to our city’s love

  By humble message and by promised means.

  We were not all unkind, nor all deserve

  The common stroke of war.

  FIRST SENATOR

  These walls of ours

  Were not erected by their hands from whom

  You have received your grief; nor are they such

  That these great tow’rs, trophies, and schools should fall

  For private faults in them.

  SECOND SENATOR

  Nor are they living

  Who were the motives that you first went out.

  Shame that they wanted cunning, in excess,

  Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,

  Into our city with thy banners spread.

  By decimation and a tithed death,

  If thy revenges hunger for that food

  Which nature loathes, take thou the destined tenth,

  And by the hazard of the spotted die

  Let die the spotted.

  FIRST SENATOR

  All have not offended.

  For those that were, it is not square to take,

  On those that are, revenges. Crimes like lands

  Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,

  Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage.

  Spare thy Athenian cradle and those kin

  Which, in the bluster of thy wrath, must fall

  With those that have offended. Like a shepherd

  Approach the fold and cull th’infected forth,

  But kill not all together.

  SECOND SENATOR

  What thou wilt,

  Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile

  Than hew to’t with thy sword.

  FIRST SENATOR

  Set but thy foot

  Against our rampired gates and they shall ope,

  So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before

  To say thou’lt enter friendly.

  SECOND SENATOR

  Throw thy glove,

  Or any token of thine honour else,

  That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress,

  And not as our confusion. All thy powers

  Shall make their harbour in our town till we

  Have sealed thy full desire.

  ALCIBIADES ⌈throwing up a glove⌉

  Then there’s my glove.

  Descend, and open your uncharged ports.

  Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own

  Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof

  Fall, and no more; and to atone your fears

  With my more noble meaning, not a man

  Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream

  Of regular justice in your city’s bounds

  But shall be remedied to your public laws

  At heaviest answer.

  BOTH SENATORS ’Tis most nobly spoken.

  ALCIBIADES Descend, and keep your words.

  ⌈Trumpets sound. Exeunt Senators from the walls.⌉

  Enter Soldier, with a tablet of wax

  SOLDIER

  My noble general, Timon is dead,

  Entombed upon the very hem o’th’ sea;

  And on his gravestone this insculpture, which

  With wax I brought away, whose soft impression

  Interprets for my poor ignorance.

  Alcibiades reads the epitaph

  ALCIBIADES

  ‘Here lies a wretched corpse,

  Of wretched soul bereft.

  Seek not my name. A plague consume

  You wicked caitiffs left!

  Here lie I, Timon, who alive

  All living men did hate.

  Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass

  And stay not here thy gait.’

  These well express in thee thy latter spirits.

  Though thou abhorred‘st in us our human griefs,

  Scorned’st our brains’ flow and those our droplets which

  From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit

  Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye

  On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead

  Is noble Timon, of whose memory

  Hereafter more.

  ⌈Enter Senators through the gates⌉

  Bring me into your city,

  And I will use the olive with my sword,

  Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each

  Prescribe to other as each other’s leech.

  Let our drums strike.

  ⌈Drums.⌉ Exeunt ⌈through the gates⌉

  MACBETH

  BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ADAPTED BY THOMAS MIDDLETON)

  SHORTLY after James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne, in 1603, he gave his patronage to Shakespeare’s company; the Lord Chamberlain’s Men became the King’s Men, entering into a special relationship with their sovereign. Macbeth is the play of Shakespeare’s that most clearly reflects this relationship. James regarded the virtuous and noble Banquo, Macbeth’s comrade at the start of the action, as his direct ancestor; eight Stuart kings were said to have preceded James, just as, in the play, Banquo points to ‘a show of eight kings’ as his descendants (4.1.127.1-140); and in the play the English king (historically Edward the Confessor) is praised for the capacity, on which James also prided himself, to cure ’the king’s evil’ (scrofula). Macbeth is obviously a Jacobean play, composed probably in 1606.

  But the first printed text, in the 1623 Folio, shows signs of having been adapted at a later date. It is exceptionally short by comparison with Shakespeare’s other tragedies; and it includes episodes which there is good reason to believe are not by Shakespeare. Most conspicuous are Act 3, Scene 5 and parts of Act 4, Scene I: 38.I-60 and 141-8.1. These episodes feature Hecate, who does not appear elsewhere in the play; they are composed largely in octosyllabic couplets in a style conspicuously different from the rest of the play; and they call for the performance of two songs that are found in The Witch, a play of uncertain date by Thomas Middleton. Probably Middleton himself adapted Shakespeare’s play some years after its first performance, adding these and more localized details, and cutting the play elsewhere. We do not attempt to excise passages most clearly written by Middleton, because the adapter’s hand almost certainly affected the text at other, less determinable points. The Folio text of Macbeth cites only the opening words of the songs; drawing on The Witch, we attempt a reconstruction of their staging in Macbeth. />
  Shakespeare took materials for his story from the account in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicle of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (AD 1034-57). Occasionally (especially in the English episodes of Act 4, Scene 2) he closely followed Holinshed’s wording, but essentially the play’s structure is his own. He invented the framework of the three witches who tempted both Macbeth and Banquo with prophecies of greatness. His Macbeth is both more introspective and more intensely evil than the competent warrior-king portrayed by Holinshed; conversely, Shakespeare made Duncan, the king whom Macbeth murders, far more venerable and saintly. Some of the play’s features, notably the character of Lady Macbeth, originate in Holinshed’s account of the murder of an earlier Scottish king, Duff; he was killed in his castle at Forres by Donwald, who had been ‘set on’ by his wife.

  Macbeth is an exciting story of witchcraft, murder, and retribution that can also be seen as a study in the philosophy and psychology of evil. The witches are not easily made credible in modern performances, and Shakespeare seems deliberately to have drained colour away from some parts of his composition in order to concentrate attention on Macbeth and his Lady. It is Macbeth’s neurotic self-absorption, his fear, his anger, and his despair, along with his wife’s steely determination, her invoking of the powers of evil, and her eventual revelation in sleep of her repressed humanity, that have given the play its long-proven power to fascinate readers and to challenge performers.

  THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

  KING DUNCAN of Scotland

  A CAPTAIN in Duncan’s army

  MACBETH, Thane of Glamis, later Thane of Cawdor, then King of

  Scotland

  A PORTER at Macbeth’s castle

  Three MURDERERS attending on Macbeth

  SEYTON, servant of Macbeth

  LADY MACBETH, Macbeth’s wife

  BANQUO, a Scottish thane

  FLEANCE, his son

  MACDUFF, Thane of Fife

  LADY MACDUFF, his wife

  MACDUFF’S SON

  SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland

  YOUNG SIWARD, his son

  An English DOCTOR

  HECATE, Queen of the Witches

  Six WITCHES

  Three APPARITIONS, one an armed head, one a bloody child, one

  a child crowned

  A SPIRIT LIKE A CAT

  Other SPIRITS

  An OLD MAN

  A MESSENGER

  MURDERERS

  SERVANTS

  A show of eight kings; Lords and Thanes, attendants, soldiers, drummers

  The Tragedy of Macbeth

  1.1 Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches

  FIRST WITCH

  When shall we three meet again?

  In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

  SECOND WITCH

  When the hurly-burly’s done,

  When the battle’s lost and won.

  THIRD WITCH

  That will be ere the set of sun.

  FIRST WITCH

  Where the place?

  SECOND WITCH

  Upon the heath.

  THIRD WITCH

  There to meet with Macbeth.

  FIRST WITCH

  I come, Grimalkin.

  SECOND WITCH

  Paddock calls.

  THIRD WITCH

  Anon.

  ALL

  Fair is foul, and foul is fair,

  Hover through the fog and filthy air. Exeunt

  1.2 Alarum within. Enter king Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, with attendants, meeting a bleeding Captain

  KING DUNCAN

  What bloody man is that? He can report,

  As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt

  The newest state.

  MALCOLM

  This is the sergeant

  Who like a good and hardy soldier fought

  ’Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend.

  Say to the King the knowledge of the broil

  As thou didst leave it.

  CAPTAIN

  Doubtful it stood,

  As two spent swimmers that do cling together

  And choke their art. The merciless Macdonald—

  Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

  The multiplying villainies of nature

  Do swarm upon him—from the Western Isles

  Of kerns and galloglasses is supplied,

  And fortune on his damned quarry smiling

  Showed like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak,

  For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name!—

  Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel

  Which smoked with bloody execution,

  Like valour’s minion

  Carved out his passage till he faced the slave,

  Which ne’er shook hands nor bade farewell to him

  Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops,

  And fixed his head upon our battlements.

  KING DUNCAN

  O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman!

  CAPTAIN

  As whence the sun ’gins his reflection

  Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,

  So from that spring whence comfort seemed to come

  Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark.

  No sooner justice had, with valour armed,

  Compelled these skipping kerns to trust their heels

  But the Norwegian lord, surveying vantage,

  With furbished arms and new supplies of men

  Began a fresh assault.

  KING DUNCAN

  Dismayed not this our captains, Macbeth and

  Banquo?

  CAPTAIN

  Yes, as sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion!

  If I say sooth I must report they were

  As cannons overcharged with double cracks,

  So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe.

  Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds

  Or memorize another Golgotha,

  I cannot tell—

  But I am faint. My gashes cry for help.

  KING DUNCAN

  So well thy words become thee as thy wounds:

  They smack of honour both.—Go get him surgeons.

  Exit Captain with attendants

  Enter Ross and Angus

  Who comes here?

  MALCOLM

  The worthy Thane of Ross.

  LENNOX

  What haste looks through his eyes! So should he look

  That seems to speak things strange.

  Ross

  God save the King.

  KING DUNCAN

  Whence cam’st thou, worthy thane?

  Ross

  From Fife, great King,

  Where the Norwegian banners flout the sky

  And fan our people cold.

  Norway himself, with terrible numbers,

  Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

  The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict,

  Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof,

  Confronted him with self-comparisons,

  Point against point, rebellious arm ’gainst arm,

  Curbing his lavish spirit; and to conclude,

  The victory fell on us—

  KING DUNCAN

  Great happiness.

  Ross

  That now

  Sweno, the Norways’ king, craves composition;

  Nor would we deign him burial of his men

  Till he disbursed at Saint Colum’s inch

  Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

  KING DUNCAN

  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 DUNCAN

  What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.

  Exeunt severally

  1.3 Thunder. Enter the three Witches

  FIRST WITCH

  Where
hast thou been, sister?

  SECOND WITCH

  Killing swine.

  THIRD WITCH

  Sister, where thou?

  FIRST WITCH

  A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

  And munched, and munched, and munched. ‘Give

  me,’ quoth I.

  ‘Aroint thee, witch,’ the rump-fed runnion cries.

  Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’th’ Tiger.

  But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,

  And like a rat without a tail

  I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

  SECOND WITCH

  I’ll give thee a wind.

  FIRST WITCH

  Thou’rt kind.

  THIRD WITCH

  And I another.

  FIRST WITCH

  I myself have all the other,

  And the very ports they blow,

  All the quarters that 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 sennights nine times nine

  Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.

  Though his barque cannot be lost,

  Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.

  Look what I have.

  SECOND WITCH

  Show me, show me.

  FIRST WITCH

  Here I have a pilot’s thumb,

  Wrecked as homeward he did come.

  Drum within

  THIRD WITCH

  A drum, a drum—

  Macbeth doth come.

  ALL (dancing in a ring)

  The weird 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.

  Peace! The charm’s wound up.

  Enter Macbeth and Banquo

  MACBETH

  So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

  BANQUO

  How far is’t called to Forres?—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