The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/38/04_03

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 12KB | 352 lines

England. A Room in 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 downfall'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 yelled 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 touched you yet. I am young, but something
    You may discern of him through me; and wisdom
    To offer up a weak poor innocent lamb,
    T' 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 check thee! Wear thou thy wrongs;
    The title is affeered. 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 opened, 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 damned
    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 a one to reign.

Macduff                                Boundless intemperance
    In nature is a tyranny. It hath been
    Th' 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 staunchless 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 weighed.

Malcolm    But I have none. The king-becoming graces,
    As justice, verity, temp'rance, stableness,
    Bounty, persev'rance, 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-sceptered,
    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,
    Oft'ner upon her knees than on her feet,
    Died every day she lived. Fare thee well.
    These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself
    Hath banished 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 overcredulous 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    Aye, 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 called 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 swoll'n 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 called our mother, but our grave; where nothing
    But who knows nothing is once seen to smile;
    Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rent the air
    Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
    A modern ecstasy. The dead man's knell
    Is there scarce asked 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 battered at their peace?

Ross    No; they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.

Macduff    Be 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 witnessed the rather
    For that I saw the tyrant's power afoot.
    [To MALCOLM.] 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 howled 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 slaughtered. To relate the manner
    Were, on the quarry of these murdered 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'erfraught 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 killed too?

Ross                        I have said.

Malcolm                                    Be comforted.
    Let's make us med'cines 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.