The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 319
GENTLEWOMAN Why, it stood by her. She has light by her continually. ’Tis her command.
DOCTOR You see her eyes are open.
GENTLEWOMAN Ay, but their sense are shut.
DOCTOR What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
GENTLEWOMAN It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.
LADY MACBETH Yet here’s a spot.
DOCTOR Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
LADY MACBETH Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two,—why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
DOCTOR Do you mark that?
LADY MACBETH The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that. You mar all with this starting.
DOCTOR Go to, go to. You have known what you should not.
GENTLEWOMAN She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she has known.
LADY MACBETH Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O!
DOCTOR What a sigh is therel The heart is sorely charged.
GENTLEWOMAN I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.
DOCTOR Well, well, well.
GENTLEWOMAN Pray God it be, sir.
DOCTOR This disease is beyond my practice. Yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds.
LADY MACBETH Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried. He cannot come out on’s grave.
DOCTOR Even so?
LADY MACBETH To bed, to bed. There’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.
Exit
DOCTOR Will she go now to bed?
GENTLEWOMAN Directly.
DOCTOR
Foul whisp’rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine than the physician.
God, God forgive us all! Look after her.
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night.
My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight.
I think, but dare not speak.
GENTLEWOMAN
Good night, good doctor.
Exeunt
5.2 Enter Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, soldiers, with a drummer and colours
MENTEITH
The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,
His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff.
Revenges burn in them, for their dear causes
Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm
Excite the mortified man.
ANGUS
Near Birnam Wood
Shall we well meet them. That way are they coming.
CAITHNESS
Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?
LENNOX
For certain, sir, he is not. I have a file
Of all the gentry. There is Siward’s son,
And many unrough youths that even now 10
Protest their first of manhood.
MENTEITH
What does the tyrant?
CAITHNESS
Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies.
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.
MENTEITH
Who then shall blame
His pestered senses to recoil and start
When all that is within him does condemn
Itself for being there?
CAITHNESS
Well, march we on
To give obedience where ’tis truly owed.
Meet we the medicine 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 drown the weeds.
Make we our march towards Birnam.
Exeunt, marching
5.3 Enter Macbeth, the Doctor of Physic, and attendants
MACBETH
Bring me no more reports. Let them fly all.
Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:
‘Fear not, Macbeth. No man that’s born of woman
Shall e’er have power upon thee.’ Then fly, false thanes,
And mingle with the English epicures.
The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.
Enter Servant
The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where gott’st thou that goose look?
SERVANT There is ten thousand-
MACBETH Geese, villain?
SERVANT
Soldiers, sir. 15
MACBETH
Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear,
Thou lily-livered boy. What soldiers, patch?
Death of thy soul, those linen cheeks of thine
Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?
SERVANT The English force, so please you.
MACBETH
Take thy face hence.
Exit Servant
Seyton!-I am sick at heart
When I behold-Seyton, I say!—This push
Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but in their stead
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.
Seyton!
Enter Seyton
SEYTON What’s your gracious pleasure?
MACBETH
What news more?
SEYTON
All is confirmed, my lord, which was reported.
MACBETH
I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked.
Give me my armour.
SEYTON ’Tis not needed yet.
MACBETH I’ll put it on.
Send out more horses. Skirr the country round.
Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.
How does your patient, doctor?
DOCTOR
Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.
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 fraught bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the hear
t?
DOCTOR
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
MACBETH
Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.
(To an attendant) Come, put mine armour on. Give me
my staff.
Seyton, send out. Doctor, the thanes fly from me.
(To an attendant) Come, sir, dispatch.—If thou couldst,
doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again. (To an attendant) Pull’t off,
I say.
(To the Doctor) What rhubarb, cyme, or what
purgative drug
Would scour these English hence? Hear’st thou of
them?
DOCTOR
Ay, my good lord. Your royal preparation
Makes us hear something.
MACBETH (To an attendant) Bring it after me.
I will not be afraid of death and bane
Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.
DOCTOR (aside)
Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,
Profit again should hardly draw me here.
Exeunt
5.4 Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, Siward’s Son, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, and soldiers, marching, with a drummer and colours
MALCOLM
Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
That chambers will be safe.
MENTEITH
We doubt it nothing.
SIWARD
What wood is this before us?
MENTEITH
The wood of Birnam.
MALCOLM
Let every soldier hew him down a bough
And bear’t before him. Thereby shall we shadow
The numbers of our host, and make discovery
Err in report of us.
A SOLDIER
It shall be done.
SIWARD
We learn no other but the confident tyrant
Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure
Our setting down before’t.
MALCOLM
’Tis his main hope,
For where there is advantage to be gone,
Both more and less have given him the revolt,
And none serve with him but constrained things,
Whose hearts are absent too.
MACDUFF
Let our just censures
Attend the true event, and put we on
Industrious soldiership.
SIWARD
The time approaches
That will with due decision make us know
What we shall say we have, and what we owe.
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;
Towards which, advance the war. Exeunt, marching
5.5 Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and soldiers, with a drummer and colours
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 forced with those that should be ours
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.
A cry within of women
What is that noise?
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 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.
⌈Enter Seyton⌉
Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON
The Queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
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.
Enter a Messenger
Thou com’st to use
Thy tongue: thy story quickly.
MESSENGER
Gracious my lord,
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 looked toward Birnam, and anon methought
The wood began to move.
MACBETH
Liar and slave!
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 shall thou hang alive
Till famine cling thee. If thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pall 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
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.
Ring the alarum bell. Alarums Blow wind, come wrack,
At least we’ll die with harness on our back. Exeunt
5.6 Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, and their army with boughs, with a drummer and colours
MALCOLM
Now near enough. Your leafy screens throw down,
And show like those you are.
They throw down the boughs
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
According to our order.
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.
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.
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.
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YOUNG SIWARD
Thou liest, abhorred tyrant. With my sword
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,
Brandished by man that’s of a woman born.
Exit ⌈with the body ⌉
5.8 Alarums. Enter Macduff
MACDUFF
That way the noise is. Tyrant, show thy face!
If thou beest slain and with no stroke of mine,
My wife and children’s ghosts will haunt me still.
I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms
Are hired to bear their staves. Either thou, Macbeth, 5
Or else my sword with an unbattered edge
I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;
By this great clatter one of greatest note
Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune,
And more I beg not.
Exit. Alarums
5.9 Enter Malcolm and Siward
SIWARD
This way, my lord. The castle’s gently rendered.
The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight.
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
5.10 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.
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 charged
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; alarum
MACBETH
Thou losest labour.
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;