(To an attendant) Come, put mine armour on. Give me
my staff.
Seyton, send out. Doctor, the thanes fly from me.
(To an attendant) Come, sir, dispatch.—If thou couldst,
doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again. (To an attendant) Pull’t off,
I say.
(To the Doctor) What rhubarb, cyme, or what
purgative drug
Would scour these English hence? Hear’st thou of
them?
DOCTOR
Ay, my good lord. Your royal preparation
Makes us hear something.
MACBETH (To an attendant) Bring it after me.
I will not be afraid of death and bane
Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.
DOCTOR (aside)
Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,
Profit again should hardly draw me here.
Exeunt
5.4 Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, Siward’s Son, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, and soldiers, marching, with a drummer and colours
MALCOLM
Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
That chambers will be safe.
MENTEITH
We doubt it nothing.
SIWARD
What wood is this before us?
MENTEITH
The wood of Birnam.
MALCOLM
Let every soldier hew him down a bough
And bear’t before him. Thereby shall we shadow
The numbers of our host, and make discovery
Err in report of us.
A SOLDIER
It shall be done.
SIWARD
We learn no other but the confident tyrant
Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure
Our setting down before’t.
MALCOLM
’Tis his main hope,
For where there is advantage to be gone,
Both more and less have given him the revolt,
And none serve with him but constrained things,
Whose hearts are absent too.
MACDUFF
Let our just censures
Attend the true event, and put we on
Industrious soldiership.
SIWARD
The time approaches
That will with due decision make us know
What we shall say we have, and what we owe.
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;
Towards which, advance the war. Exeunt, marching
5.5 Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and soldiers, with a drummer and colours
MACBETH
Hang out our banners on the outward walls.
The cry is still ‘They come.’ Our castle’s strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up.
Were they not forced with those that should be ours
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.
A cry within of women
What is that noise?
SEYTON
It is the cry of women, my good lord.
[Exit]
MACBETH
I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in’t. I have supped full with horrors.
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.
⌈Enter Seyton⌉
Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON
The Queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Enter a Messenger
Thou com’st to use
Thy tongue: thy story quickly.
MESSENGER
Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do’t.
MACBETH
Well, say, sir.
MESSENGER
As I did stand my watch upon the hill
I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought
The wood began to move.
MACBETH
Liar and slave!
MESSENGER
Let me endure your wrath if’t be not so.
Within this three mile may you see it coming.
I say, a moving grove.
MACBETH
If thou speak’st false
Upon the next tree shall thou hang alive
Till famine cling thee. If thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pall in resolution, and begin
To doubt th‘equivocation of the fiend,
That lies like truth. ’Fear not till Birnam Wood
Do come to Dunsinane‘—and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out.
If this which he avouches does appear
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish th‘estate o’th’ world were now undone.
Ring the alarum bell. 
At least we’ll die with harness on our back. Exeunt
5.6 Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, and their army with boughs, with a drummer and colours
MALCOLM
Now near enough. Your leafy screens throw down,