Macbeth - Act 4 - Scene 3

SCENE III. England. Before 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 down-fall'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 yell'd 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 touch'd you yet. I am young;
    but something
    You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom
    To offer up a weak poor innocent lamb
    To 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 cheque thee: wear thou
    thy wrongs;
    The title is affeer'd! 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 open'd, 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 damn'd
    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 an one to reign.

MACDUFF

    Boundless intemperance
    In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
    The 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 stanchless 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 weigh'd.

MALCOLM

    But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
    As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
    Bounty, perseverance, 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-scepter'd,
    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,
    Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
    Died every day she lived. Fare thee well!
    These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself
    Have banish'd 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 over-credulous 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

    Ay, 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 call'd 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 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
    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 call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
    But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
    Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
    Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
    A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell
    Is there scarce ask'd 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 batter'd at their peace?

ROSS

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

MACDUFF

    But 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 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, 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 howl'd 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 slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
    Were, on the quarry of these murder'd 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'er-fraught 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 kill'd 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

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