Authors: William Shakespeare
MENTEITH
The wood of Birnam.
MALCOLM
Let every soldier hew him down a bough
And bear’t before him: thereby shall we
shadow
7
The numbers of our
host
8
and make
discovery
Err
9
in report of us.
A SOLDIER
It shall be done.
SIWARD
We learn no other but the confident tyrant
Keeps
12
still in Dunsinane and will endure
Our
setting down
13
before’t.
MALCOLM
’Tis his main hope:
For
where there is advantage to be given
15
,
Both
more and less have given him the revolt
16
,
And none serve with him but constrainèd things
Whose hearts are absent too.
MACDUFF
Let our just censures
Attend the true event
19
, and put we on
Industrious soldiership.
SIWARD
The time approaches
That will with
due
23
decision make us know
What we shall say we have and what we
owe
24
.
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate
25
:
Towards which advance the war.
Exeunt, marching
Location: Macbeth’s castle at Dunsinane
Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers with Drum and Colours
MACBETH
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
4
eat them up.
Were they not
forced
5
with those that should be ours,
We might have met them
dareful
6
, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.
A cry within of women
What is that noise?
SEYTON
It is the cry of women, my good lord.
Exit or goes to the door
MACBETH
I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek, and my
fell of hair
11
Would at a dismal
treatise
12
rouse and stir
As
13
life were in’t. I have
supped full
with horrors:
Direness
14
, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once
start me
15
.—
Seyton re-enters or comes forward
Wherefore was that cry?
To Seyton
SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter
17
:
There would have been a time for
such a word
18
.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this
petty
20
pace from day to day
To the last
syllable
21
of
recorded
time:
And all our yesterdays have
lighted
22
fools
The way to
dusty
23
death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking
shadow
24
, a
poor
player
That struts and
frets
25
his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury
27
,
Signifying nothing.
Enter a Messenger
Thou com’st to use thy tongue:
thy story quickly
29
.
MESSENGER
Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do’t.
MACBETH
Well, say, sir.
MESSENGER
As I
did stand my watch
34
upon the hill,
I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought
The wood began to move.
MACBETH
Liar and slave!
MESSENGER
Let me endure your wrath if’t be not so.
Within this three mile may you see it coming:
I say, a moving grove.
MACBETH
If thou speak’st false,
Upon the next tree shall thou hang alive
Till famine
cling
43
thee: if thy speech be
sooth
,
I care not if thou
dost for me as much
44
.—
I
pull in resolution
45
, and begin
To doubt th’equivocation of the
fiend
46
That lies like truth. ‘Fear not, till Birnam Wood
Do come to Dunsinane’, and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane.—Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he
avouches
50
does appear,
There is
nor flying hence nor tarrying here
51
.—
I
’gin
52
to be aweary of the sun,
And wish
th’estate
53
o’th’world were now undone.—
Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind, come
wrack
54
,
At least we’ll die with
harness
55
on our back.
Exeunt
Location: outside Macbeth’s castle at Dunsinane
Drum and Colours. Enter Malcolm, Siward, Macduff and their army, with boughs
MALCOLM
Now near enough. Your leafy screens throw down,
And
show
2
like those you are. You, worthy
uncle
,
Shall with my cousin, your right noble son,
Lead our first
battle
4
. Worthy Macduff and we
Shall take upon’s what else remains to do,
According to our
order
6
.
SIWARD
Fare you well.
Do
8
we but find the tyrant’s
power
tonight,
Let us be beaten if we cannot fight.
MACDUFF
Make all our trumpets speak: give them all breath,
Those clamorous
harbingers
11
of blood and death.
Exeunt. Alarums continued
Enter Macbeth
MACBETH
They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But
bear-like
2
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
YOUNG SIWARD
What is thy name?
MACBETH
Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.
YOUNG SIWARD
No, though thou call’st thyself a hotter name
Than any
is
8
in hell.
MACBETH
My name’s Macbeth.
YOUNG SIWARD
The devil himself could not pronounce a title
More hateful to mine ear.
MACBETH
No, nor more fearful.
YOUNG SIWARD
Thou liest, abhorrèd tyrant: with my sword
I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st.
Fight and Young Siward slain
MACBETH
Thou wast born of woman.
But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,
Brandished by man that’s of a woman born.
Exit
Alarums. Enter Macduff
MACDUFF
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
kerns
21
, whose arms
Are hired to bear their
staves
22
: either thou, Macbeth,
Or else my sword with an unbattered edge
I sheathe again
undeeded
24
. There thou shouldst be:
By this great clatter, one of greatest
note
25
Seems
bruited
26
. Let me find him, Fortune,
And more I beg not.
Exit. Alarums
Enter Malcolm and Siward
SIWARD
This way, my lord. The castle’s
gently rendered
28
:
The tyrant’s people on both sides do fight,
The noble thanes do bravely in the war,
The day almost itself professes yours
31
,
And little is to do.
MALCOLM
We have met with foes that
strike beside us
33
.
SIWARD
Enter, sir, the castle.
Exeunt. Alarum
Enter Macbeth
MACBETH
Why should I
play the Roman fool and die
On mine own sword
35
? Whiles I see
lives
36
, the gashes
Do better upon them.
Enter Macduff
MACDUFF
Turn, hell-hound, turn.
MACBETH
Of all
men else
39
I have avoided thee.
But get thee back: my soul is too much
charged
40
With blood of thine already.
MACDUFF
I have no words:
My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain
Than
terms can give thee out
44
.
Fight. Alarum
MACBETH
Thou
losest labour
45
.
As easy mayst thou the
intrenchant
46
air
With thy
keen
47
sword
impress
as make me bleed.
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable
crests
48
:
I bear a charmèd life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.
MACDUFF
Despair thy charm,
And let the
angel
52
whom thou still hast served
Tell thee: Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely
54
ripped.
MACBETH
Accursèd be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath
cowed
56
my
better part of man
.
And be these
juggling
57
fiends no more believed
That
palter
58
with us in a double sense,
That
keep the word of promise to our ear
And break it to our hope
59
. I’ll not fight with thee.
MACDUFF
Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the
show and gaze o’th’time
62
:
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole
64
, and
underwrit
,
‘Here may you see the tyrant.’
MACBETH
I will not yield
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet
And to be baited with the
rabble
68
’s curse.
Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou
opposed
70
, being of no woman born,
Yet I will
try the last
71
. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield.
Lay on
72
, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’
Exeunt fighting. Alarums
Enter fighting, and Macbeth slain
[
Exit Macduff with Macbeth’s body
]
Retreat and flourish. Enter, with Drum and Colours, Malcolm, Siward, Ross, Thanes and Soldiers
MALCOLM
I
would
74
the friends we miss were safe arrived.
SIWARD
Some must
go off
75
: and yet, by
these
I see
So great a day as this is cheaply bought.
MALCOLM
Macduff is missing, and your noble son.
ROSS
Your son, my lord, has paid a
soldier’s debt
78
:
To Siward
He only lived but till he was a man,
The which no sooner had his
prowess
80
confirmed
In the
unshrinking station
81
where he fought,
But like a man he died.
SIWARD
Then he is dead?
ROSS
Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
SIWARD
Had he his hurts
before
87
?