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.
Now is the time of help. (To Malcolm) 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
H’m, 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!
(To Macduff) 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 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
5.1 Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentlewoman
DOCTOR I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?
GENTLEWOMAN Since his majesty went into the field I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed, yet all this while in a most fast sleep.
DOCTOR A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching. In this slumbery agitation besides her walking and other actual performances, what at any time have you heard her say?
GENTLEWOMAN That, sir, which I will not report after her.
DOCTOR You may to me; and ’tis most meet you should.
GENTLEWOMAN Neither to you nor anyone, having no witness to confirm my speech.
Enter Lady Macbeth with a taper
Lo you, here she comes. This is her very guise, and,
upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her. Stand close.
DOCTOR How came she by that light?
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!