SCENE III. England. Before the King's palace. The Tragedy of Macbeth  Shakespeare homepage  |  Macbeth  | Act 4, Scene 3 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  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. 



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