Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Act 4 - Scene 3
England. Before the King’s palace.
Malcolm : Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there
[p]Weep our sad bosoms
empty.
Macduff : Let us rather
[p]Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good
men
[p]Bestride our down-fall'n birthdom: each new morn
[p]New widows
howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
[p]Strike heaven on the face, that
it resounds
[p]As if it felt with Scotland and yell'd out
[p]Like
syllable of dolour.
Malcolm : What I believe I'll wail,
[p]What know believe, and what I can
redress,
[p]As I shall find the time to friend, I will.
[p]What you
have spoke, it may be so perchance.
[p]This tyrant, whose sole name
blisters our tongues,
[p]Was once thought honest: you have loved him
well.
[p]He hath not touch'd you yet. I am young;
[p]but
something
[p]You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom
[p]To offer
up a weak poor innocent lamb
[p]To appease an angry god.
Macduff : I am not treacherous.
Malcolm : But Macbeth is.
[p]A good and virtuous nature may recoil
[p]In an
imperial charge. But I shall crave
[p]your pardon;
[p]That which you
are my thoughts cannot transpose:
[p]Angels are bright still, though
the brightest fell;
[p]Though all things foul would wear the brows of
grace,
[p]Yet grace must still look so.
Macduff : I have lost my hopes.
Malcolm : Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.
[p]Why in that
rawness left you wife and child,
[p]Those precious motives, those
strong knots of love,
[p]Without leave-taking? I pray you,
[p]Let not
my jealousies be your dishonours,
[p]But mine own safeties. You may be
rightly just,
[p]Whatever I shall think.
Macduff : Bleed, bleed, poor country!
[p]Great tyranny! lay thou thy basis
sure,
[p]For goodness dare not cheque thee: wear thou
[p]thy
wrongs;
[p]The title is affeer'd! Fare thee well, lord:
[p]I would not
be the villain that thou think'st
[p]For the whole space that's in the
tyrant's grasp,
[p]And the rich East to boot.
Malcolm : Be not offended:
[p]I speak not as in absolute fear of you.
[p]I think
our country sinks beneath the yoke;
[p]It weeps, it bleeds; and each
new day a gash
[p]Is added to her wounds: I think withal
[p]There
would be hands uplifted in my right;
[p]And here from gracious England
have I offer
[p]Of goodly thousands: but, for all this,
[p]When I
shall tread upon the tyrant's head,
[p]Or wear it on my sword, yet my
poor country
[p]Shall have more vices than it had before,
[p]More
suffer and more sundry ways than ever,
[p]By him that shall succeed.
Macduff : What should he be?
Malcolm : It is myself I mean: in whom I know
[p]All the particulars of vice so
grafted
[p]That, when they shall be open'd, black Macbeth
[p]Will seem
as pure as snow, and the poor state
[p]Esteem him as a lamb, being
compared
[p]With my confineless harms.
Macduff : Not in the legions
[p]Of horrid hell can come a devil more
damn'd
[p]In evils to top Macbeth.
Malcolm : I grant him bloody,
[p]Luxurious, avaricious, false,
deceitful,
[p]Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
[p]That has a
name: but there's no bottom, none,
[p]In my voluptuousness: your
wives, your daughters,
[p]Your matrons and your maids, could not fill
up
[p]The cistern of my lust, and my desire
[p]All continent
impediments would o'erbear
[p]That did oppose my will: better
Macbeth
[p]Than such an one to reign.
Macduff : Boundless intemperance
[p]In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
[p]The
untimely emptying of the happy throne
[p]And fall of many kings. But
fear not yet
[p]To take upon you what is yours: you may
[p]Convey your
pleasures in a spacious plenty,
[p]And yet seem cold, the time you may
so hoodwink.
[p]We have willing dames enough: there cannot be
[p]That
vulture in you, to devour so many
[p]As will to greatness dedicate
themselves,
[p]Finding it so inclined.
Malcolm : With this there grows
[p]In my most ill-composed affection such
[p]A
stanchless avarice that, were I king,
[p]I should cut off the nobles
for their lands,
[p]Desire his jewels and this other's house:
[p]And
my more-having would be as a sauce
[p]To make me hunger more; that I
should forge
[p]Quarrels unjust against the good and
loyal,
[p]Destroying them for wealth.
Macduff : This avarice
[p]Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root
[p]Than
summer-seeming lust, and it hath been
[p]The sword of our slain kings:
yet do not fear;
[p]Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will.
[p]Of
your mere own: all these are portable,
[p]With other graces weigh'd.
Malcolm : But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
[p]As justice, verity,
temperance, stableness,
[p]Bounty, perseverance, mercy,
lowliness,
[p]Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
[p]I have no
relish of them, but abound
[p]In the division of each several
crime,
[p]Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should
[p]Pour the
sweet milk of concord into hell,
[p]Uproar the universal peace,
confound
[p]All unity on earth.
Macduff : O Scotland, Scotland!
Malcolm : If such a one be fit to govern, speak:
[p]I am as I have spoken.
Macduff : Fit to govern!
[p]No, not to live. O nation miserable,
[p]With an
untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
[p]When shalt thou see thy wholesome
days again,
[p]Since that the truest issue of thy throne
[p]By his own
interdiction stands accursed,
[p]And does blaspheme his breed? Thy
royal father
[p]Was a most sainted king: the queen that bore
thee,
[p]Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
[p]Died every day
she lived. Fare thee well!
[p]These evils thou repeat'st upon
thyself
[p]Have banish'd me from Scotland. O my breast,
[p]Thy hope
ends here!
Malcolm : Macduff, this noble passion,
[p]Child of integrity, hath from my
soul
[p]Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts
[p]To thy
good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth
[p]By many of these trains
hath sought to win me
[p]Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks
me
[p]From over-credulous haste: but God above
[p]Deal between thee
and me! for even now
[p]I put myself to thy direction, and
[p]Unspeak
mine own detraction, here abjure
[p]The taints and blames I laid upon
myself,
[p]For strangers to my nature. I am yet
[p]Unknown to woman,
never was forsworn,
[p]Scarcely have coveted what was mine own,
[p]At
no time broke my faith, would not betray
[p]The devil to his fellow
and delight
[p]No less in truth than life: my first false
speaking
[p]Was this upon myself: what I am truly,
[p]Is thine and my
poor country's to command:
[p]Whither indeed, before thy
here-approach,
[p]Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike
men,
[p]Already at a point, was setting forth.
[p]Now we'll together;
and the chance of goodness
[p]Be like our warranted quarrel! Why are
you silent?
Macduff : Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
[p]'Tis hard to reconcile.
Malcolm : Well; more anon.--Comes the king forth, I pray you?
Doctor : Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls
[p]That stay his cure:
their malady convinces
[p]The great assay of art; but at his
touch--
[p]Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand--
[p]They
presently amend.
Malcolm : I thank you, doctor.
Macduff : What's the disease he means?
Malcolm : 'Tis call'd the evil:
[p]A most miraculous work in this good
king;
[p]Which often, since my here-remain in England,
[p]I have seen
him do. How he solicits heaven,
[p]Himself best knows: but
strangely-visited people,
[p]All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the
eye,
[p]The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
[p]Hanging a golden
stamp about their necks,
[p]Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis
spoken,
[p]To the succeeding royalty he leaves
[p]The healing
benediction. With this strange virtue,
[p]He hath a heavenly gift of
prophecy,
[p]And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
[p]That speak
him full of grace.
Macduff : See, who comes here?
Malcolm : My countryman; but yet I know him not.
Macduff : My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Malcolm : I know him now. Good God, betimes remove
[p]The means that makes us
strangers!
Ross : Sir, amen.
Macduff : Stands Scotland where it did?
Ross : Alas, poor country!
[p]Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
[p]Be
call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
[p]But who knows
nothing, is once seen to smile;
[p]Where sighs and groans and shrieks
that rend the air
[p]Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow
seems
[p]A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell
[p]Is there scarce
ask'd for who; and good men's lives
[p]Expire before the flowers in
their caps,
[p]Dying or ere they sicken.
Macduff : O, relation
[p]Too nice, and yet too true!
Malcolm : What's the newest grief?
Ross : That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker:
[p]Each minute teems a
new one.
Macduff : How does my wife?
Ross : Why, well.
Macduff : And all my children?
Ross : Well too.
Macduff : The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace?
Ross : No; they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.
Macduff : But not a niggard of your speech: how goes't?
Ross : When I came hither to transport the tidings,
[p]Which I have heavily
borne, there ran a rumour
[p]Of many worthy fellows that were
out;
[p]Which was to my belief witness'd the rather,
[p]For that I saw
the tyrant's power a-foot:
[p]Now is the time of help; your eye in
Scotland
[p]Would create soldiers, make our women fight,
[p]To doff
their dire distresses.
Malcolm : Be't their comfort
[p]We are coming thither: gracious England
hath
[p]Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;
[p]An older and a
better soldier none
[p]That Christendom gives out.
Ross : Would I could answer
[p]This comfort with the like! But I have
words
[p]That would be howl'd out in the desert air,
[p]Where hearing
should not latch them.
Macduff : What concern they?
[p]The general cause? or is it a fee-grief
[p]Due
to some single breast?
Ross : No mind that's honest
[p]But in it shares some woe; though the main
part
[p]Pertains to you alone.
Macduff : If it be mine,
[p]Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.
Ross : Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
[p]Which shall possess
them with the heaviest sound
[p]That ever yet they heard.
Macduff : Hum! I guess at it.
Ross : Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
[p]Savagely slaughter'd:
to relate the manner,
[p]Were, on the quarry of these murder'd
deer,
[p]To add the death of you.
Malcolm : Merciful heaven!
[p]What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your
brows;
[p]Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
[p]Whispers
the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
Macduff : My children too?
Ross : Wife, children, servants, all
[p]That could be found.
Macduff : And I must be from thence!
[p]My wife kill'd too?
Ross : I have said.
Malcolm : Be comforted:
[p]Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,
[p]To
cure this deadly grief.
Macduff : He has no children. All my pretty ones?
[p]Did you say all? O
hell-kite! All?
[p]What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
[p]At
one fell swoop?
Malcolm : Dispute it like a man.
Macduff : I shall do so;
[p]But I must also feel it as a man:
[p]I cannot but
remember such things were,
[p]That were most precious to me. Did
heaven look on,
[p]And would not take their part? Sinful
Macduff,
[p]They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,
[p]Not
for their own demerits, but for mine,
[p]Fell slaughter on their
souls. Heaven rest them now!
Malcolm : Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief
[p]Convert to anger;
blunt not the heart, enrage it.
Macduff : O, I could play the woman with mine eyes
[p]And braggart with my
tongue! But, gentle heavens,
[p]Cut short all intermission; front to
front
[p]Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
[p]Within my
sword's length set him; if he 'scape,
[p]Heaven forgive him too!
Malcolm : This tune goes manly.
[p]Come, go we to the king; our power is
ready;
[p]Our lack is nothing but our leave; Macbeth
[p]Is ripe for
shaking, and the powers above
[p]Put on their instruments. Receive
what cheer you may:
[p]The night is long that never finds the day.
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Next: Act 5 - Scene 1
