Acting in many ways. Nay, had I power, I should All unity on earth. Macd. O Scotland! Scotland! Mal. If such a one be fit to govern, speak. I am as I have spoken. Macd. Fit to govern! No, not to live.—O nation miserable, With an untitled' tyrant bloody-sceptred, When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again? By his own interdiction stands accursed, And does blaspheme his breed?-Thy royal father Died every day she lived. Fare thee well! Have banished me from Scotland.-O, my breast, Mal. Macduff, this noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts By many of these trains hath sought to win me For even now I put myself to thy direction, and Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure 1 "With an untitled tyrant." Thus in Chaucer's Manciple's Tale: "Right so betwix a titleless tiraunt And an outlawe." 2 Credulous haste, overhasty credulity. The devil to his fellow; and delight No less in truth, than life: my first false speaking Is thine, and my poor country's to command; Now we'll together; and the chance, of goodness, Enter a Doctor. Mal. Well; more anon.-Comes the king forth, I pray you? 1 Doct. Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls, Such sanctity hath Heaven given his hand, Mal. I thank you, doctor. [Exit Doctor. Macd. What's the disease he means? 'Tis called the evil; A most miraculous work in this good king; The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, 1 i. e. overcomes it. We have before seen this word used in the same Latin sense, Act i. Sc. 7, of this play. "To convince or convicte, to vanquish and overcome-evinco."-Baret. 2 A golden stamp, the coin called an angel; the value of which was ten shillings. He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy; Macd. Enter ROSSE. See, who comes here? Mal. My countryman; but yet I know him not. move The means that make us strangers! Ross. Sir, Amen. Macd. Stands Scotland where it did ? Alas, poor country! Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot Be called our mother, but our grave; where nothing, air, Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy: the dead man's knell Is there scarce asked, for who; and good men's lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying, or ere they sicken. Macd. Too nice, and yet too true! Mal. O, relation, What is the newest grief? Rosse. That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker; Each minute teems a new one. Macd. How does my wife? Rosse. Why, well. Macd. And all my children? Rosse. Well too. Macd. The tyrant has not battered at their peace? Rosse. No; they were well at peace, when I did leave them. 1 "To rent is an ancient verb, which has been long disused," say the editors: in other words, it is the old orthography of the verb to rend. 2 A modern ecstasy is a common grief. Macd. Be not a niggard of your speech. How goes it? Rosse. When I came hither to transport the tidings Now is the time of help! Your eye in Scotland We Mal. Be it their comfort, e 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. Rosse. 'Would I could answer This comfort with the like! but I have words, 1 What concern they? Macd. Rosse. But in it shares some woe; Pertains to you alone. Keep it not from me; No mind, that's honest, though the main part If it be mine, Rosse. Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever, Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound That ever yet they heard. Macd. Humph! I guess at i Rosse. Your castle is surprised; your wife, and babes, Savagely slaughtered: to relate the manner, 1 To latch (in the north) signifies the same as to catch. Thus also Golding, in his translation of the first book of Ovid's Metamorphoses:"As though he would, at everie stride, betweene his teeth hir latch." 2 "Or is it a fee-grief," a peculiar sorrow, a grief that hath but a single owner. Were, on the quarry1 of these murdered deer, Mal. Rosse. That could be found. Macd. Wife, children, servants, all And I must be from thence! My wife killed too? Rosse. I have said. Be comforted. Mal. Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief. Macd. 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?2 Mal. Dispute it like a man.3 But I must also feel it as a man. I shall do so; 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! Mal. Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart; enrage it. Macd. O, I could play the woman with mine eyes, And braggart with my tongue!--But, gentle Heavens, 1 Quarry, the game after it is killed; it is a term used both in hunting and falconry. The old English term querre, is used for the square spot wherein the dead game was deposited. Quarry is also used for the game pursued. 2 "At one fell swoop." Swoop, from the verb to swoop or sweep, is the descent of a bird of prey on his quarry. 3 i. e. contend with your present sorrow like a man. |