TPTT The Tragedy of Macbeth: ACT IV
Introduction
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.
SCENE II. Fife. Macduff's castle.
SCENE III. England. Before the King's palace.
ACT V
About the Play
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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
5     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
10    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,
15    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
20    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
25    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
30    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,
35    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,
40    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,
45    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
50    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,
55    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
60    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
65    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,
70    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
75    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
80    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,
85    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
90    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:
95    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
100   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,
105   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,
110   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
115   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!
120   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,
125   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
130   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
135   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
140   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,
145   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,
150   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
155   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
160   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
165   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,
170   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,
175   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
180   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
185   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,
190   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
195   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
200   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
205   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,
210   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
215   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;
220   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,
225   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
230   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,
235   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,
240   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
245   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!
250   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
255   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
260   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,
265   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
270   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,
275   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
280   Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may:
      The night is long that never finds the day.
Exeunt
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