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,
All ready at a point, was setting forth.

Now we'll together; and the chance, of goodness,
Be like our warranted quarrel! Why are you silent?
Macd. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once,
"Tis hard to reconcile.

Enter a Doctor.

+

1

Mal. Well; more anon.-Comes the king forth, I pray you? Doct. Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls, That stay his cure. his cure. Their malady convinces 1 The great assay of art; but at his touch, Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand, They presently amend.

Mal.

I thank you, doctor.

[Exit Doctor.

'Tis called the evil;

Macd. What's the disease he means?
Mal.

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

2

The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,

1 i. e. overcomes it. We have before seen this word used in the same Latin sense, Act i. Sc. 7, of this play. "To convince or convicte, to vanquish and overcome—evinco.”—Baret..

2 A golden stamp, the coin called an angel; the value of which was ten shillings.

He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy;
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
To speak him full of grace.

Macd.

Enter Rosse.

See, who comes here?

Mal. My countryman; but yet I know him not.
Macd. My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Mal. I know him now. Good God, betimes re-

Sir, Amen.

Macd. Stands Scotland where it did?
Rosse.

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 rent1 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.

Macd.

O, relation,

What is the newest grief?

Rosse. That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker; Each minute teems a new one.

Macd.

How does my wife?

Rosse. Why, well.

Macd.

And all my children?

Rosse.

Well too.

Macd. The tyrant has not battered at their peace? Rosse. No; they were well at peace, when I did leave them.

1 "To rent is an ancient verb, which has been long disused," say the editors: in other words, it is the old orthography of the verb to rend. 2 A modern ecstasy is a common grief.

Macd. Be not a niggard of your speech. How

goes it?

Rosse. When I came hither to transport the tidings Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumor

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! Your eye in Scotland
Would create soldiers, make our women fight,
To doff their dire distresses.

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.

Rosse.

'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 latch1 them.

Macd.

What concern they?

The general cause? or is it a fee-grief,2
Due to some single breast?

Rosse.

No mind, that's honest,

But in it shares some woe; though the main part
Pertains to you alone.

Macd.

If it be mine,

Keep it not from me; quickly let me have it.

Rosse. Let not your ears despise my tongue for

ever,

Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
That ever yet they heard.

Macd.

Humph! I guess at it.

Rosse. Your castle is surprised; your wife, and

babes,

Savagely slaughtered: to relate the manner,

1 To latch (in the north) signifies the same as to catch. Thus also Golding, in his translation of the first book of Ovid's Metamorphoses:— "As though he would, at everie stride, betweene his teeth hir latch.” 2 “Or is it a fee-grief," a peculiar sorrow, a grief that hath but a single

owner.

Were, on the quarry' of these murdered deer,
To add the death of you.

Mal.
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.
Macd. My children, too?

Rosse.

That could be found.

Wife, children, servants, all

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.

Macd. He has no

7

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 P2

Mal. Dispute it like a man.3
Macd.

But I must also feel it as a man.

I shall do so;

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! Mal. Be this the whetstone of your sword: let

grief

Convert to anger; blunt not the heart; enrage it. Macd. O, I could play the woman with mine eyes, And braggart with my tongue!But, gentle Heavens,

1 Quarry, the game after it is killed; it is a term used both in hunting and falconry. The old English term querre, is used for the square spot wherein the dead game was deposited. Quarry is also used for the game pursued.

2 "At one fell swoop." Swoop, from the verb to swoop or sweep, is the descent of a bird of prey on his quarry.

3 i. e. contend with your present sorrow like a man.

1

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!

Mal.
This tune2
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.3 Receive what cheer you may;

The night is long that never finds the day. [Exeunt.

ACT V.

SCENE I. Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.

Enter a Doctor of Physic, and a waiting Gentlewoman.

Doct. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?

Gent. 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 it, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

Doct. A great perturbation in nature! to receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching-In this slumbry agitation, besides her walking, and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say?

Gent. That, sir, which I will not report after her.

1 All intermission, all pause, all intervening time.

2 The old copy reads time. The emendation is Rowe's.

3 i. e. encourage, thrust us, their instruments, forward against the tyrant.