Mal.
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.^{1 note} 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.

Mal.
What you have spoke, it may be so perchance.
This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
Was once thought honest: you have lov'd him well;
He hath not touch'd you yet.

Macduff.
I am not treacherous.

Mal.
But Macbeth is.
A good and virtuous nature may recoil,
In an imperial charge.^{2 note}

Macduff.
I have lost my hopes.

Mal.
Perchance, even there, where I did find my doubts.
Why in that rawness^{3 note} 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 dares not check thee!
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.

Mal.
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?

Mal.
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 compar'd
With my confineless harms.

Macduff.
Not in the legions
Of horrid hell, can come a devil more damn'd
In evils, to top Macbeth.

Mal.
I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful:
But there's no bottom, none,
In my voluptuousness, and my desire:
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!

Mal.
If such a one be fit to govern, speak:

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 accurs'd,
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.^{4 note}
Fare thee well!
These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself,
Have banish'd me from Scotland.—O, my breast,
Thy hope ends here!

Mal.
Macduff, this noble passion,
Child of integrity, hath from my soul
Wip'd the black scruples, reconcil'd 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;^{5 note} but Heaven above
Deal between thee and me! for even now
I put myself to thy direction, and
Unspeak my own detraction; here abjure
The taints and blames I laid upon myself,
For strangers to my nature. 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,
All ready 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 Rosse, L.
See, who comes here?

Mal.
My countyman; but yet I know him not.

Macduff.
My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.

Mal.
I know him now: good heav'n, betimes remove
The means that make us strangers!

Ros.
Sir, amen.

Macduff.
Stands Scotland where it did?

Ros.
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 rent the air,
Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstacy,^{6 note} 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!

Mal.
What is the newest grief?

Ros.
That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker;
Each minute teems a new one.

Macduff.
How does my wife?

Ros.
Why, well.

Macduff.
And all my children?

Ros.
Well too.

Macduff.
The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace?

Ros.
No; they were well at peace, when I did leave them.

Macduff.
Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes it?

Ros.
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^{7 note} their dire distresses.

Mal.
Be it 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.

Ros.
'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.^{8 note}

Macduff.
What concern they?
The general cause? or is it a fee-grief,^{9 note}
Due to some single breast?

Ros.
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.

Ros.
Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound,
That ever yet they heard.

Macduff.
Humph! I guess at it.

Ros.
Your castle is surpris'd; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
Were, on the quarry^{10 note} 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.

Macduff.
My children too?

Ros.
Wife, children, servants—all
That could be found.

Macduff.
And I must be from thence!
My wife kill'd too?

Ros.
I have said.

Mal.
Be comforted:

Let's make us med'cines 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?

Mal.
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.

Mal.
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 heaven,
Cut short all intermission;^{11 note} 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! [Exeunt, R.

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