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.

Macd. I am not treacherous.

Mal. But Macbeth is.

A good and virtuous nature may recoil,

In an imperial charge.* But 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.

Mucd. I have lost my hopes.

Mal. Perchance, even there, where I did find my doubts. Why in that rawnesst 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.

Macd. Bleed, bleed, poor country!

Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,

For goodness dares not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs,

Thy title is affeer'dt-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 an 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 our 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.

Macd. 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 compared

With my confineless harms.

Macd. Not in the legions

Of horrid hell, can come a devil more damn'd
In evils, to top Macbeth.

Mal. I grant him bloody.

* Commission.

+ Bareness.

Confirmed.

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'er-bear,
That did oppose my will: Better Macbeth,
Than such a one to reign.

Macd. 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.

Mal. 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.

Macd. This avarice

Sticks deeper; grows with more pernicious root
Than summer-seedingt lust: and it hath been
The sword of our slain kings: Yet do not fear;
Scotland hath foysons§ to fill up your will,
Of your mere own: All these are portable,||
With other graces weigh'd.

Mal. But I have none: The king-becoming graces,

As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
Bounty, perséverance, 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.

Macd. O Scotland! Scotland!

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

I am as I have spoken.

Macd. Fit to govern!

*Lascivious.

§ Plenty.

+ Passionate.

Seeded, as an annual.

Endurable.

No, not to live.-O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptred,
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!

Mal. 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,
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?
Macd. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once,
'Tis hard to reconcile.

Enter a DOCTOR.

Mal. Well; more anon.-Comes the king forth, I pray you? Doct. Ay, Sir: there are a crew of wretched souls,

That stay his cure: their malady convincest

The great assay of art; but, at his touch,
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,

They presently amend.

Mal. I thank you, doctor.

Macd. What is the disease he means?
Mal. 'Tis call'd the evil :

A most miraculous work in this good king;

Which often, since my here-remain in England,

* Over-hasty credulity.

[Exit DOCTOR.

† Overpowers, subdues.

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.

Macd. See, who comes here ?

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

Enter ROSSE.

Maed. My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Mal. I know him now: Good God, betimes remove
The means that make us strangers!

Rosse. Sir, Amen.

Macd. Stands Scotland where it did ?

Rosse. 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;t 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.

Macd. O, relation,

Too nice, and yet too true!

Mal. 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 batter'd at their peace?

Rosse. No; they were well at peace, when I did leave them. Macd. Be not a niggard of your speech; How goes it? Rosse. 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.

*The coin called an angel.

+ Common distress.

Mal. Be it their comfort,

We are coming thither: gracious England hatlı
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,
That would be howl'd out in the desert air,
Where hearing should not latch* them.
Macd. What concern they?

The general cause? or is it a fee-grief,
Due to some single breast?

Rosse. No mind, that's honest,

But in it shares some woe; though the main part
Pertains to you alone.

Macd. If it be mine,

Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.

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 it.

Rosse. Your castle is surprised: your wife, and babes, Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,

Were, on the quarryt 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.
Macd. My children too?

Rosse. Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

Macd. And I must be from thence!

My wife kill'd too?

Rosse. I have said.

Mal. Be comforted:

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?

Mal. Dispute it like a man.

Macd. I shall do so;

But I must also feel it as a man:

I cannot but remember such things were,

That were not 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!

* Catch.

+ The game after it is killed.