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?

Doct.

Must minister to himself.

Therein the patient

Macb. 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, despatch :-if thou could'st, 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, senna, or what purgative drug,

Would scour these English hence?-Hearest thou of them? Doct. Aye, my good lord; your royal preparation

Makes us hear something.

Macb.

I will not be afraid of death and bane,

Bring it after me.—

Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

[Exit.

Doct. Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,

Profit again should hardly draw me here.

[Exit.

SCENE IV.-Country near Dunsinane. A Wood in View. Enter, with drums and colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD and his Son, MACDUFF, MENTETH, CATHNESS, ANGUS, LENOX, ROSSE, and Soldiers, marching.

Mal. Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand,

That chambers will be safe.

Ment.

We doubt it nothing.

The wood of Birnam?

Siw. What wood is this before us?
Ment.

Mul. Let ever 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.

Siw. We learn no other, but the confident tyrant Keeps still in Dunsinane, and will endure

Our setting down before 't.

Mal.

"Tis his main hope:

For where there is advantage to be given,1

(1) Advantage to be given, &c. Advantage here means opportunity. The meaning of the passage is, that wherever any opportunity is offered, both more and less (great and small) have deserted from Macbeth.

Both more and less have given him the revolt;
And none serve with him but constrained things,
Whose hearts are absent too.

Macd.

Let our just censures

Attend the true event, and put we on
Industrious soldiership.

Siw.

The time approaches,

That will with due decision make us know

What we shall say we have, and what we owe.1
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate;
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate:
Towards which advance the war.

SCENE V.- Dunsinane.

[Exeunt marching.

Within the Castle.

Enter, with drums and colours, MACBETH, SEYTON, and Soldiers.

Macb. 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 forc'd2 with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home. What is that noise?
[A cry within, of women.

Sey. It is the cry of women, my good lord.
Macb. 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 hair3
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir

As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.- -Wherefore was that cry?
Sey. The queen, my lord, is dead.

Macb. 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!

(1) What we shall say we have, and what we owe, i.e. what is our own property, and what the allegiance we owe our king.

(2) Forced is here used for reinforced.

(3) Fell of hair,-my hair, my skin with the hair on it.

(4) Dusty death.-We are indebted to Douce for an illustration from "The Vision of Pierce Plowman," which shows us the peculiar beauty and propriety of this expression. It is as follows

"Death came drivynge after, and all to dust pashed
Kynges and Kaysers, knightes and popes.'

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 com'st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
Mess. Gracious my lord,

I should report that which I say I saw,

But know not how to do it.

Macb.

Well, say, sir.

Mess. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and, anon, methought, The wood began to move.

Liar, and slave!

[Striking him.

Macb.
Mess. Let me endure your wrath if 't be not so;
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.

Macb.

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;2 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 towards Dunsinane.-Arm, arm, and out!—
If this which he avouches does appear,

There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.

I 'gin to be a-weary 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.-The same. A Plain before the Castle.

Enter, with drums and colours, MALCOLM, old SIWARD, Macduff, &c., and their Army with boughs.

Mal. Now, near enough; your leavy 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 us what else remains to do,
According to our order.

(1) Cling thee, i. e. shrivel, parch thee up.
(2) I pull in resolution, i. e. I begin to despair.

Siw.

Fare you well.—

Do we but find the tyrant's power to-night,

Let us be beaten if we cannot fight.

Macd. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath, Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

SCENE VII.-The same.

[Exeunt. Alarums continued.

Another part of the Plain.

Enter MACBETH.

Macb. 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.

Thou 'lt be afraid to hear it.

Yo. Siw. What is thy name?

Macb.

Yo. Siw. No; though thou call'st thyself a hotter name Than any is in hell.

Macb. My name's Macbeth.

Yo. Siw. The devil himself could not pronounce a title More hateful to mine ear.

Macb.

No, nor more fearful.

Yo. Siw. Thou liest, abhorred tyrant; with my sword I'll prove the lie thou speak'st.

[They fight, and Young SIWARD is slain.
Thou wast born of woman.-

Macb.
But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,
Brandish'd by man that's of a woman born.

Alarums. Enter MACDUFF.

[Exit.

Macd. 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 kernes, whose arms

Are hir'd to bear their staves; either thou, Macbeth,

Or else my sword, with an unbatter'd edge,

I sheathe again undeeded. There thou should'st be;
By this great clatter, one of greatest note

Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune!

And more I beg not.

[Exit. Alarum.

Enter MALCOLM and Old SIWARD.

Siw. 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,

Mach. Why should I play the Roman fool, and die On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes Do better upon them.

Macd.

Re-enter MACDUFF.

Turn, hell-hound, turn.

Macb. Of all men else I have avoided thee: But get thee back, my soul is too much charg'd With blood of thine already.

Macd.

I have no words, My voice is in my sword; thou bloodier villain

Than terms can give thee out.

Macb.

Thou losest labour:

As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air1

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.

Macd.
Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

Mucb. 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 believ'd,

That palter with us in a double sense;2
That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope.-I'll not fight with thee.
Macd. 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 upon a pole; and underwrit,

"Here may you see the tyrant."

Macb.

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 oppos'd, being of no woman born,

(1) Intrenchant air, i. e. the air which cannot be cut.

[They fight.

(2) That palter, &c.,-that shuffle with us in ambiguous expressions.