THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH

Act 4 Scene 3

(Enter Malcolm and Macduff)
l1l	Malcolm	 Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there
l2l		Weep our sad bosoms empty.
	Macduff	Let us rather
l3l		Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men
l4l		Bestride our downfall birthdom. Each new morn
l5l		New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
l6l		Strike heaven on the face that it resounds
l7l		As if it felt with Scotland and yelled out
l8l		Like syllable of dolour.
	Malcolm	What I believe I’ll wail,
l9l		What know believe# and what I can redress,
l10l		As I shall find the time to friend, I will.
l11l		What you have spoke it may be so, perchance.
l12l		This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
l13l		Was once thought honest. You have loved him well.
l14l		He hath not touched you yet. I am young, but something
l15l		You may discern of him through me: and wisdom
l16l		To offer up a weak poor innocent lamb
l17l		T’ appease an angry god.
l18l	Macduff	I am not treacherous.
l19l	Malcolm	But Macbeth is.
l20l		A good and virtuous nature may recoil
l21l		In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon.
l22l		That which you are my thoughts cannot transpose.
l23l		Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
l24l		Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
l25l		Yet grace must still look so.
	Macduff	I have lost my hopes.
l26l	Malcolm	Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.
l27l		Why in that rawness left you wife and child,
l28l		Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,
l29l		Without leave-taking? I pray you,
l30l		Let not my jealousies be your dishonours,
l31l		But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just,
l32l		Whatever I shall think.
	Macduff	Bleed, bleed, poor country!
l33l		Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
l34l		For goodness dare not check thee. Wear thou thy wrongs#
l35l		The title is affeered. Fare thee well, lord.
l36l		I would not be the villain that thou think’st
l37l		For the whole space that’s in the tyrant’s grasp,
l38l		And the rich east to boot.
	Malcolm	Be not offended.
l39l		I speak not as in absolute fear of you.
l40l		I think our country sinks beneath the yoke.
l41l		It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash
l42l		Is added to her wounds. I think withal
l43l		There would be hands uplifted in my right,
l44l		And here from gracious England have I offer
l45l		Of goodly thousands. But for all this,
l46l		When I shall tread upon the tyrant’s head,
l47l		Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country
l48l		Shall have more vices than it had before,
l49l		More suffer, and more sundry ways, than ever,
l50l		By him that shall succeed.
	Macduff	What should he be?
l51l	Malcolm	It is myself I mean, in whom I know
l52l		All the particulars of vice so grafted
l53l		That when they shall be opened black Macbeth
l54l		Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state
l55l		Esteem him as a lamb, being compared
l56l		With my confineless harms.
	Macduff	Not in the legions
l57l		Of horrid hell can come a devil more damned
l58l		In evils to top Macbeth.
	Malcolm	I grant him bloody,
l59l		Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
l60l		Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
l61l		That has a name. But there’s no bottom, none,
l62l		In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters,
l63l		Your matrons, and your maids could not fill up
l64l		The cistern of my lust, and my desire
l65l		All continent impediments would o’erbear
l66l		That did oppose my will. Better Macbeth
l67l		Than such an one to reign.
	Macduff	Boundless intemperance
l68l		In nature is a tyranny. It hath been
l69l		Th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne,
l70l		And fall of many kings. But fear not yet
l71l		To take upon you what is yours. You may
l72l		Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty
l73l		And yet seem cold. The time you may so hoodwink.
l74l		We have willing dames enough. There cannot be
l75l		That vulture in you to devour so many
l76l		As will to greatness dedicate themselves,
l77l		Finding it so inclined.
	Malcolm	With this there grows
l78l		In my most ill-composed affection such
l79l		A staunchless avarice that were I king
l80l		I should cut off the nobles for their lands,
l81l		Desire his jewels and this other’s house,
l82l		And my more having would be as a sauce
l83l		To make me hunger more, that I should forge
l84l		Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,
l85l		Destroying them for wealth.
	Macduff	This avarice
l86l		Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root
l87l		Than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been
l88l		The sword of our slain kings. Yet do not fear.
l89l		Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will
l90l		Of your mere own. All these are portable,
l91l		With other graces weighed.
l92l	Malcolm	But I have none. The king-becoming graces,
l93l		As justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness,
l94l		Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
l95l		Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
l96l		I have no relish of them, but abound
l97l		In the division of each several crime,
l98l		Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power I should
l99l		Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
l100l		Uproar the universal peace, confound
l101l		All unity on earth.
	Macduff	O Scotland, Scotland!
l102l	Malcolm	If such a one be fit to govern, speak.
l103l		I am as I have spoken.
	Macduff	Fit to govern?
l104l		No, not to live. O nation miserable,
l105l		With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered,
l106l		When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,
l107l		Since that the truest issue of thy throne
l108l		By his own interdiction stands accursed
l109l		And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father
l110l		Was a most sainted king. The Queen that bore thee,
l111l		Oft’ner upon her knees than on her feet,
l112l		Died every day she lived. Fare thee well.
l113l		These evils thou repeat’st upon thyself
l114l		Hath banished me from Scotland. O, my breast—
l115l		Thy hope ends here!
	Malcolm	Macduff, this noble passion,
l116l		Child of integrity, hath from my soul
l117l		Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts
l118l		To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth
l119l		By many of these trains hath sought to win me
l120l		Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me
l121l		From over-credulous haste# but God above
l122l		Deal between thee and me, for even now
l123l		I put myself to thy direction and
l124l		Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure
l125l		The taints and blames I laid upon myself
l126l		For strangers to my nature. I am yet
l127l		Unknown to woman, never was forsworn,
l128l		Scarcely have coveted what was mine own,
l129l		At no time broke my faith, would not betray
l130l		The devil to his fellow, and delight
l131l		No less in truth than life. My first false-speaking
l132l		Was this upon myself. What I am truly
l133l		Is thine and my poor country’s to command,
l134l		Whither indeed, before thy here-approach,
l135l		Old Siward with ten thousand warlike men,
l136l		Already at a point, was setting forth.
l137l		Now we’ll together# and the chance of goodness
l138l		Be like our warranted quarrel!—Why are you silent?
l139l	Macduff	Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
l140l		’Tis hard to reconcile.
		(Enter a Doctor)
l141l	Malcolm	 Well, more anon.
		(To the Doctor)
		Comes the King forth, I pray you?
l142l	Doctor	Ay, sir. There are a crew of wretched souls
l143l		That stay his cure. Their malady convinces
l144l		The great essay of art, but at his touch,
l145l		Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand,
l146l		They presently amend.
	Malcolm	I thank you, doctor.
		(Exit Doctor)
l147l	Macduff	 What’s the disease he means?
	Malcolm	’Tis called the evil—
l148l		A most miraculous work in this good King,
l149l		Which often since my here-remain in England
l150l		I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven
l151l		Himself best knows, but strangely visited people,
l152l		All swoll’n and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
l153l		The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
l154l		Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
l155l		Put on with holy prayers# and ’tis spoken,
l156l		To the succeeding royalty he leaves
l157l		The healing benediction. With this strange virtue
l158l		He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
l159l		And sundry blessings hang about his throne
l160l		That speak him full of grace.
		(Enter Ross)
		
	Macduff	 See who comes here.
l161l	Malcolm	My countryman, but yet I know him not.
l162l	Macduff	My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.
l163l	Malcolm	I know him now. Good God betimes remove
l164l		The means that makes us strangers!
	Ross	Sir, amen.
l165l	Macduff	Stands Scotland where it did?
	Ross	Alas, poor country,
l166l		Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
l167l		Be called our mother, but our grave, where nothing
l168l		But who knows nothing is once seen to smile#
l169l		Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
l170l		Are made, not marked# where violent sorrow seems
l171l		A modern ecstasy. The dead man’s knell
l172l		Is there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives
l173l		Expire before the flowers in their caps,
l174l		Dying or ere they sicken.
	Macduff	O relation
l175l		Too nice and yet too true!
	Malcolm	What’s the newest grief?
l176l	Ross	That of an hour’s age doth hiss the speaker#
l177l		Each minute teems a new one.
	Macduff	How does my wife?
l178l	Ross	Why, well.
	Macduff	And all my children?
	Ross	Well, too.
l179l	Macduff	The tyrant has not battered at their peace?
l180l	Ross	No, they were well at peace when I did leave ’em.
l181l	Macduff	Be not a niggard of your speech. How goes ’t?
l182l	Ross	When I came hither to transport the tidings
l183l		Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour
l184l		Of many worthy fellows that were out,
l185l		Which was to my belief witnessed the rather
l186l		For that I saw the tyrant’s power afoot.
l187l		Now is the time of help.
		(To Malcolm)
		 Your eye in Scotland
l188l		Would create soldiers, make our women fight
l189l		To doff their dire distresses.
	Malcolm	Be ’t their comfort
l190l		We are coming thither. Gracious England hath
l191l		Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men#
l192l		An older and a better soldier none
l193l		That Christendom gives out.
	Ross	Would I could answer
l194l		This comfort with the like. But I have words
l195l		That would be howled out in the desert air
l196l		Where hearing should not latch them.
	Macduff	What concern they—
l197l		The general cause, or is it a fee-grief
l198l		Due to some single breast?
	Ross	No mind that’s honest
l199l		But in it shares some woe, though the main part
l200l		Pertains to you alone.
	Macduff	If it be mine,
l201l		Keep it not from me# quickly let me have it.
l202l	Ross	Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
l203l		Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
l204l		That ever yet they heard.
	Macduff	H’m, I guess at it.
l205l	Ross	Your castle is surprised, your wife and babes
l206l		Savagely slaughtered. To relate the manner
l207l		Were on the quarry of these murdered deer
l208l		To add the death of you.
	Malcolm	Merciful heaven!
l209l		(To Macduff)
		 What, man, ne’er pull your hat upon your brows.
l210l		Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
l211l		Whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.
l212l	Macduff	My children too?
	Ross	Wife, children, servants, all
l213l		That could be found.
	Macduff	And I must be from thence!
l214l		My wife killed too?
	Ross	I have said.
	Malcolm	Be comforted.
l215l		Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge
l216l		To cure this deadly grief.
l217l	Macduff	He has no children. All my pretty ones?
l218l		Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
l219l		What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
l220l		At one fell swoop?
l221l	Malcolm	Dispute it like a man.
l222l	Macduff	I shall do so,
l223l		But I must also feel it as a man.
l224l		I cannot but remember such things were
l225l		That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on
l226l		And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,
l227l		They were all struck for thee. Naught that I am,
l228l		Not for their own demerits but for mine
l229l		Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now.
l230l	Malcolm	Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief
l231l		Convert to anger: blunt not the heart, enrage it.
l232l	Macduff	O, I could play the woman with mine eyes
l233l		And braggart with my tongue! But gentle heavens
l234l		Cut short all intermission. Front to front
l235l		Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself.
l236l		Within my sword’s length set him. If he scape,
l237l		Heaven forgive him too.
	Malcolm	This tune goes manly.
l238l		Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready#
l239l		Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
l240l		Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
l241l		Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may:
l242l		The night is long that never finds the day.
		(Exeunt)
	[[ACT INTERVAL]]