Lords.

FROM MACBETH.

What, my good Lord? Macb. Thou canst not say I did it; never shake

Thy gory locks at me.

Rosse. Gentlemen, rise; his highness is not well.
Lady. Sit, worthy friends: my Lord is often thus,
And hath been from his youth. Pray you, keep seat:
The fit is momentary; upon a thought

He will again be well. If much you note him,
You shall offend him, and extend his passion.
Feed, and regard him not.-Are you a man?

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[To Macbeth, aside.

Macb. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that Which might appal the devil.

Lady.

proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said, Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, (Impostors to true fear) would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire,

Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!

Why do you make such faces? When all's done,
You look but on a stool.

[Aside.

Macb. Pr'ythee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you?—

[Pointing at the Ghost.

Why, what care I? if thou canst nod, speak too.

If charnel-houses and our graves must send

Those that we bury back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites.

Lady.

[Ghost disappears.

What! quite unmann'd in folly?

Fie, for shame!

Macb. If I stand here, I saw him.
Lady.

Macb. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,
Ere human statute purged the gentle weal;

Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd

Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,

That, when the brains were out, the man would die,

And there an end; but, now, they rise again,

With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,1

And push us from our stools. This is more strange
Than such a murder is.

Your noble friends do lack you.
Macb.

I do forget.

Do not muse at me, my worthy friends;

I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing

To those that know me. Come, love and health to all!
Then I'll sit down. Give me some wine, fill full :-

I drink to the general joy of the whole table,

1 Crown in this application has lost caste as a word since the days of Shakespeare.

Instances of this occur repeatedly in the works of the older writers.

And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss ;
Would he were here !-to all, and him, we thirst,
And all to all.1

Lords.

Our duties, and the pledgThe Ghost rises again.

Macb. Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes,

Which thou dost glare with!

Lady.

Think of this, good peers,

But as a thing of custom: 'tis no other;
Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.

Macb. What man dare, I dare.

Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble: or, be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword;
If trembling I inhibit thee, protest me

The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow !
Unreal mockery, hence! Why so-being gone,

I am a man again. Pray you, sit still.

[Ghost disappears.

[The Lords rise.

Lady. You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, With most admired disorder.

Macb.

Can such things be,

And overcome us, like a summer's cloud,

Without our special wonder? You make me strange,

Even to the disposition that I owe,2

When now I think you can behold such sights,

And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,

When mine are blanch'd with fear.

Rosse.

What sights, my Lord?

Lady. I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse; Question enrages him; at once, good night.

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once.

Len.

Good night, and better health

Attend his Majesty !

Lady.

A kind good night to all. [Exeunt Lords. Macb. It will have blood.—They say, blood will have blood. Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;

Augurs, and understood relations, have,

By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood.

1 All good wishes to all.

2 Own or possess.

Some editors read "Augurs, that understand relations," but the above is the original text.

FROM MACBETH.

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Act IV.

Scene 3.

MACDUFF RECEIVES THE TIDINGS OF THE SLAUGHTER OF HIS FAMILY.

Macd. The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace?
Rosse. No; they were well at peace when I did leave them.
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 rumour

Of many worthy fellows that were out,1

Which was to my belief witness'd the rather,
For that I saw the tyrant's power a-foot.

Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland
Would create soldiers, and make women fight,
To doff their dire distresses.2

Be it their comfort

Mal.
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.

This comfort with the like!

Would I could answer

But I have words,

That would be howl'd out in the desert air,
Where hearing should not latch them.

Macd.

The general cause? or is it a
Due to some single breast?

Rosse.

But in it shares some woe;
Pertains to you alone.

Macd.

What concern they?

fee-grief3

No mind, that's honest though the main part

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 slaughter'd. To relate the manner,

1 In insurrection against Macbeth's tyranny.

2 Note the beauty of Rosse's unwillingness to answer Macduff's question, while the fulness of his mind with the terrible intelligence urges him to return to it.

"A grief that hath a single owner."-Johnson.

Were, on the quarry1 of these murder'd 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.

Macd.

My wife kill'd too?

Rosse. Mal.

Wife, children, servants,-all

And I must be from thence !

I have said.

Be comforted.

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.

Macd. He has no children.—All my pretty ones?

Did you say all?—Oh, hell-kite!-all!

What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,

At one fell swoop?

Mal. Dispute it like a man:

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 heaven,
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!

Act v. Scene 5.

THE APPROACH OF MACBETH'S FATE.

Macbeth. Hang out our banners on the outward walls;

The cry is still, They come.

Will laugh a siege to scorn.

Our castle's strength

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.

What is that noise?
[A cry within of women.

1 The piled slaughter of a hunting-match.

FROM MACBETH.

Seyton. It is the cry of women, my good lord.
Macb. I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
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 supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me. Wherefore was that cry?
Sey. The Queen, my lord, is dead.

Macb. She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.—
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
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.
Mess. Gracious, my lord,

Thy story quickly.

I shall report that, which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.

Macb.

Well, say, sir.

Mess. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, The wood began to move.

Macb.

Liar and slave!

Mess. Let me endure your wrath if't be not so: Within this three mile may you see it coming;

I say, a moving grove.

Macb.

If thou speak'st false,

Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,

Till famine cling thee; if thy speech be sooth,

I care not if thou dost for me as much.—

I pull in resolution; and begin

To doubt the 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 a-weary of the sun,

And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.-
Ring the alarum bell. Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.

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