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Dramatis Personae
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/ Home / Library / Complete Shakespeare / Macbeth / Act IV Scene III
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Macbeth: Act 4 Scene 3
Scene III England. Before the King's palace.
- [Enter MALCOLM and MACDUFF]
- MALCOLM
- Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there
- Weep our sad bosoms empty.
- MACDUFF
- Let us rather
- 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
- Like syllable of dolour.
- MALCOLM
- 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.
- This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
- Was once thought honest: you have loved 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
- To appease an angry god.
- MACDUFF
- I am not treacherous.
- MALCOLM
- But Macbeth is.
- A good and virtuous nature may recoil
- In an imperial charge. But I shall crave
- your pardon;
- 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.
- MACDUFF
- I have lost my hopes.
- MALCOLM
- 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,
- But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just,
- Whatever I shall think.
- MACDUFF
- Bleed, bleed, poor country!
- Great tyranny! lay thou thy basis sure,
- For goodness dare not cheque thee: wear thou
- thy wrongs;
- 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.
- MALCOLM
- Be not offended:
- 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;
- 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,
- More suffer and more sundry ways than ever,
- By him that shall succeed.
- MACDUFF
- What should he be?
- MALCOLM
- It is myself I mean: in whom I know
- All the particulars of vice so grafted
- 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 compared
- With my confineless harms.
- MACDUFF
- Not in the legions
- Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn'd
- In evils to top Macbeth.
- MALCOLM
- I grant him bloody,
- Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
- Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
- 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
- That did oppose my will: better Macbeth
- Than such an one to reign.
- MACDUFF
- Boundless intemperance
- In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
- The untimely emptying of the happy throne
- 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
- That vulture in you, to devour so many
- As will to greatness dedicate themselves,
- Finding it so inclined.
- MALCOLM
- With this there grows
- In my most ill-composed affection such
- 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
- Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,
- Destroying them for wealth.
- MACDUFF
- This avarice
- Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root
- Than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been
- 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.
- MALCOLM
- But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
- 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,
- 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.
- MACDUFF
- O Scotland, Scotland!
- MALCOLM
- If such a one be fit to govern, speak:
- I am as I have spoken.
- MACDUFF
- Fit to govern!
- No, not to live. O nation miserable,
- With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
- When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,
- Since that the truest issue of thy throne
- By his own interdiction stands accursed,
- And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father
- Was a most sainted king: the queen that bore thee,
- Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
- Died every day she lived. Fare thee well!
- These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself
- Have banish'd me from Scotland. O my breast,
- Thy hope ends here!
- MALCOLM
- Macduff, this noble passion,
- Child of integrity, hath from my soul
- Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts
- To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth
- By many of these trains hath sought to win me
- 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
- 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
- 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 poor country's to command:
- Whither indeed, before thy here-approach,
- Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike 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?
- MACDUFF
- Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
- 'Tis hard to reconcile.
- [Enter a Doctor]
- MALCOLM
- Well; more anon.--Comes the king forth, I pray you?
- DOCTOR
- Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls
- That stay his cure: their malady convinces
- The great assay of art; but at his touch--
- Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand--
- They presently amend.
- MALCOLM
- I thank you, doctor.
- [Exit Doctor]
- MACDUFF
- What's the disease he means?
- MALCOLM
- '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,
- 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
- 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.
- [Enter ROSS]
- 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
- The means that makes us strangers!
- ROSS
- Sir, amen.
- MACDUFF
- 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,
- But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
- Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend 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
- Expire before the flowers in their caps,
- Dying or ere they sicken.
- MACDUFF
- O, relation
- Too nice, and yet too true!
- MALCOLM
- What's the newest grief?
- ROSS
- That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker:
- 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,
- 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
- Would create soldiers, make our women fight,
- To doff their dire distresses.
- MALCOLM
- Be't their comfort
- We are coming thither: gracious England hath
- Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;
- 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,
- Where hearing should not latch them.
- MACDUFF
- What concern they?
- The general cause? or is it a fee-grief
- Due to some single breast?
- ROSS
- No mind that's honest
- But in it shares some woe; though the main part
- Pertains to you alone.
- MACDUFF
- If it be mine,
- Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.
- ROSS
- Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
- Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
- That ever yet they heard.
- MACDUFF
- Hum! I guess at it.
- ROSS
- Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
- Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
- Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer,
- To add the death of you.
- MALCOLM
- Merciful heaven!
- What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
- Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
- Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
- MACDUFF
- My children too?
- ROSS
- Wife, children, servants, all
- That could be found.
- MACDUFF
- And I must be from thence!
- My wife kill'd too?
- ROSS
- I have said.
- MALCOLM
- Be comforted:
- Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,
- To cure this deadly grief.
- MACDUFF
- 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?
- MALCOLM
- Dispute it like a man.
- MACDUFF
- 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,
- 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!
- MALCOLM
- Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief
- Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.
- MACDUFF
- 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,
- Heaven forgive him too!
- MALCOLM
- 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
- Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may:
- The night is long that never finds the day.
- [Exeunt]
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