The Tragedy of Macbeth
Act V.
Scene i. Dunsinane. Ante-room in the castle.
- Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentlewoman
- Doctor: I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive
- no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?
- Gentlewoman: Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen
- her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon
- her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it,
- write upon't, read it, afterwards seal it, and again
- return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.
- Doctor: A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once
- the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of
- watching! In this slumbery agitation, besides her
- walking and other actual performances, what, at any
- time, have you heard her say?
- Gentlewoman: That, sir, which I will not report after her.
- Doctor: You may to me: and 'tis most meet you should.
- Gentlewoman: Neither to you nor any one; having no witness to
- confirm my speech.
- Enter Lady Macbeth, with a taper
- Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise;
- and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.
- Doctor: How came she by that light?
- Gentlewoman: Why, it stood by her: she has light by her
- continually; 'tis her command.
- Doctor: You see, her eyes are open.
- Gentlewoman: Ay, but their sense is shut.
- Doctor: What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands.
- Gentlewoman: It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus
- washing her hands: I have known her continue in
- this a quarter of an hour.
- Lady Macbeth: Yet here's a spot.
- Doctor: Hark! she speaks: I will set down what comes from
- her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
- Lady Macbeth: Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why,
- then, 'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my
- lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
- fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
- account?—Yet who would have thought the old man
- to have had so much blood in him.
- Doctor: Do you mark that?
- Lady Macbeth: The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?—
- What, will these hands ne'er be clean?—No more o'
- that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with
- this starting.
- Doctor: Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.
- Gentlewoman: She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of
- that: heaven knows what she has known.
- Lady Macbeth: Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
- perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
- hand. Oh, oh, oh!
- Doctor: What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.
- Gentlewoman: I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the
- dignity of the whole body.
- Doctor: Well, well, well,—
- Gentlewoman: Pray God it be, sir.
- Doctor: This disease is beyond my practise: yet I have known
- those which have walked in their sleep who have died
- holily in their beds.
- Lady Macbeth: Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so
- pale.—I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he
- cannot come out on's grave.
- Doctor: Even so?
- Lady Macbeth: To bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate:
- come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's
- done cannot be undone.—To bed, to bed, to bed!
- Exit
- Doctor: Will she go now to bed?
- Gentlewoman: Directly.
- Doctor: Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds
- Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
- To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets:
- More needs she the divine than the physician.
- God, God forgive us all! Look after her;
- Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
- And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night:
- My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight.
- I think, but dare not speak.
- Gentlewoman: Good night, good doctor.
- Exeunt
Scene ii. The country near Dunsinane.
- Drum and colours. Enter [Menteith], [Caithness], [Angus], [Lennox], and Soldiers
- Menteith: The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,
- His uncle Siward and the good Macduff:
- Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes
- Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm
- Excite the mortified man.
- Angus: Near Birnam wood
- Shall we well meet them; that way are they coming.
- Caithness: Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?
- Lennox: For certain, sir, he is not: I have a file
- Of all the gentry: there is Siward's son,
- And many unrough youths that even now
- Protest their first of manhood.
- Menteith: What does the tyrant?
- Caithness: Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies:
- Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate him
- Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain,
- He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
- Within the belt of rule.
- Angus: Now does he feel
- His secret murders sticking on his hands;
- Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
- Those he commands move only in command,
- Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
- Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
- Upon a dwarfish thief.
- Menteith: Who then shall blame
- His pester'd senses to recoil and start,
- When all that is within him does condemn
- Itself for being there?
- Caithness: Well, march we on,
- To give obedience where 'tis truly owed:
- Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,
- And with him pour we in our country's purge
- Each drop of us.
- Lennox: Or so much as it needs,
- To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.
- Make we our march towards Birnam.
- Exeunt, marching
Scene iii. Dunsinane. A room in the castle.
- Enter [Macbeth], Doctor, and Attendants
- Macbeth: Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:
- Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
- I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
- Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
- All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:
- 'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman
- Shall e'er have power upon thee.' Then fly,
- false thanes,
- And mingle with the English epicures:
- The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
- Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.
- Enter a Servant
- The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
- Where got'st thou that goose look?
- Servant: There is ten thousand—
- Macbeth: Geese, villain!
- Servant: Soldiers, sir.
- Macbeth: Go prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,
- Thou lily-liver'd boy. What soldiers, patch?
- Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine
- Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?
- Servant: The English force, so please you.
- Macbeth: Take thy face hence.
- Exit Servant
- Seyton!—I am sick at heart,
- When I behold—Seyton, I say!—This push
- Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
- I have lived long enough: my way of life
- Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
- And that which should accompany old age,
- As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
- I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
- Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
- Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. Seyton!
- Enter Seyton
- Seyton: What is your gracious pleasure?
- Macbeth: What news more?
- Seyton: All is confirm'd, my lord, which was reported.
- Macbeth: I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd.
- Give me my armour.
- Seyton: 'Tis not needed yet.
- Macbeth: I'll put it on.
- Send out more horses; skirr the country round;
- Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.
- How does your patient, doctor?
- Doctor: Not so sick, my lord,
- As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
- That keep her from her rest.
- Macbeth: Cure her of that.
- Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
- Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
- Raze out the written troubles of the brain
- And with some sweet oblivious antidote
- Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
- Which weighs upon the heart?
- Doctor: Therein the patient
- Must minister to himself.
- Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
- Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff.
- Seyton, send out. Doctor, the thanes fly from me.
- 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.—Pull't off, I say.—
- 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: 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
Scene iv. Country near Birnam wood.
- Drum and colours. Enter Malcolm, Siward and Young Siward, Macduff, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, Ross, and Soldiers, marching
- 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.
- Soldiers: 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 given,
- 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
Scene v. Dunsinane. Within the castle.
- Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers, with drum 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 of women within
- 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 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 slaughterous thoughts
- Cannot once start me.
- Re-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.
- 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 comest 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 it.
- Macbeth: Well, say, sir.
- Messenger: As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
- I look'd 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 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 aweary 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.
- Exeunt
Scene vi. Dunsinane. Before the castle.
- Drum and colours. Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff, and their Army, with boughs
- Malcolm: Now near enough: your leafy screens throw down.
- And show like those you are. You, worthy uncle,
- Shall, with my cousin, your right-noble son,
- Lead our first battle: worthy Macduff and we
- Shall take upon 's what else remains to do,
- According to our order.
- Siward: Fare you well.
- Do we but find the tyrant's power to-night,
- Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.
- Macduff: Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,
- Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.
- Exeunt
Scene vii. Another part of the field.
- Alarums. Enter Macbeth
- Macbeth: They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
- But, bear-like, I must fight the course. What's he
- That was not born of woman? Such a one
- Am I to fear, or none.
- Enter Young Siward
- Young Siward: What is thy name?
- Macbeth: Thou'lt be afraid to hear it.
- Young Siward: No; though thou call'st thyself a hotter name
- Than any is in hell.
- Macbeth: My name's Macbeth.
- Young Siward: The devil himself could not pronounce a title
- More hateful to mine ear.
- Macbeth: No, nor more fearful.
- Young Siward: Thou liest, abhorred tyrant; with my sword
- I'll prove the lie thou speak'st.
- They fight and Young Siward is slain
- Macbeth: Thou wast born of woman
- But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,
- Brandish'd by man that's of a woman born.
- Exit
- Alarums. Enter Macduff
- Macduff: That way the noise is. Tyrant, show thy face!
- If thou be'st slain and with no stroke of mine,
- My wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still.
- I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms
- Are hired to bear their staves: either thou, Macbeth,
- Or else my sword with an unbatter'd edge
- I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;
- By this great clatter, one of greatest note
- Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune!
- And more I beg not.
- Exit. Alarums
- Enter Malcolm and Siward
- Siward: This way, my lord; the castle's gently render'd:
- The tyrant's people on both sides do fight;
- The noble thanes do bravely in the war;
- The day almost itself professes yours,
- And little is to do.
- Malcolm: We have met with foes
- That strike beside us.
- Siward: Enter, sir, the castle.
- Exeunt. Alarums
Scene viii. Another part of the field.
- Enter Macbeth
- Macbeth: Why should I play the Roman fool, and die
- On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes
- Do better upon them.
- Enter Macduff
- Macduff: Turn, hell-hound, turn!
- Macbeth: Of all men else I have avoided thee:
- But get thee back; my soul is too much charged
- With blood of thine already.
- Macduff: I have no words:
- My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain
- Than terms can give thee out!
- They fight
- Macbeth: Thou losest labour:
- As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
- With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:
- Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
- I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,
- To one of woman born.
- Macduff: Despair thy charm;
- And let the angel whom thou still hast served
- Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
- Untimely ripp'd.
- Macbeth: Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
- For it hath cow'd my better part of man!
- And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
- That palter with us in a double sense;
- That keep the word of promise to our ear,
- And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.
- Macduff: Then yield thee, coward,
- And live to be the show and gaze o' the time:
- We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
- Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
- 'Here may you see the tyrant.'
- Macbeth: I will not yield,
- To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
- And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
- Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
- And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
- Yet I will try the last. Before my body
- I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
- And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
- Exeunt, fighting. Alarums
- Retreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colours, Malcolm, Siward, Ross, the other Thanes, and Soldiers
- Malcolm: I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.
- Siward: Some must go off: and yet, by these I see,
- So great a day as this is cheaply bought.
- Malcolm: Macduff is missing, and your noble son.
- Ross: Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt:
- He only lived but till he was a man;
- The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd
- In the unshrinking station where he fought,
- But like a man he died.
- Siward: Then he is dead?
- Ross: Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow
- Must not be measured by his worth, for then
- It hath no end.
- Siward: Had he his hurts before?
- Ross: Ay, on the front.
- Siward: Why then, God's soldier be he!
- Had I as many sons as I have hairs,
- I would not wish them to a fairer death:
- And so, his knell is knoll'd.
- Malcolm: He's worth more sorrow,
- And that I'll spend for him.
- Siward: He's worth no more
- They say he parted well, and paid his score:
- And so, God be with him! Here comes newer comfort.
- Re-enter Macduff, with Macbeth's head
- Macduff: Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands
- The usurper's cursed head: the time is free:
- I see thee compass'd with thy kingdom's pearl,
- That speak my salutation in their minds;
- Whose voices I desire aloud with mine:
- Hail, King of Scotland!
- All: Hail, King of Scotland!
- Flourish
- Malcolm: We shall not spend a large expense of time
- Before we reckon with your several loves,
- And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen,
- Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland
- In such an honour named. What's more to do,
- Which would be planted newly with the time,
- As calling home our exiled friends abroad
- That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
- Producing forth the cruel ministers
- Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
- Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands
- Took off her life; this, and what needful else
- That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,
- We will perform in measure, time and place:
- So, thanks to all at once and to each one,
- Whom we invite to see us crown'd at Scone.
- Flourish. Exeunt
- --oOo-- -