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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [964]

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Which weighs upon the heart?

DOCTOR.

Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

MACBETH.

Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.

Come, put mine armor on; give me my staff.

Seyton, send out. Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.

Come, sir, dispatch. If thou couldst, 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, cyme, or what purgative drug

Would scour these English hence? Hearst thou of them?

DOCTOR.

Ay, my good lord, your royal preparation

Makes us hear something.

MACBETH.

Bring it after me.

I will not be afraid of death and bane

Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.

DOCTOR.

[Aside.] Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,

Profit again should hardly draw me here. Exeunt.

SCENE IV. Country near Birnam Wood. Drum and colors.

Enter Malcolm, old Seward and his Son, Macduff, Menteith,

Caithness,

Angus, Lennox, Ross, and Soldiers, marching.

MALCOLM.

Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand

That chambers will be safe.

MENTEITH.

We doubt it nothing.

SIWARD.

What wood is this before us?

MENTEITH.

The Wood of Birnam.

MALCOLM.

Let every 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.

SOLDIERS.

It shall be done.

SIWARD.

We learn no other but the confident tyrant

Keeps still in Dunsinane and will endure

Our setting down before't.

MALCOLM.

'Tis his main hope;

For where there is advantage to be given,

Both more and less have given him the revolt,

And none serve with him but constrained things

Whose hearts are absent too.

MACDUFF.

Let our just censures

Attend the true event, and put we on

Industrious soldiership.

SIWARD.

The time approaches

That will with due decision make us know

What we shall say we have and what we owe.

Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,

But certain issue strokes must arbitrate.

Towards which advance the war.

Exeunt Marching.

SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the castle.

Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers, with drum and colors.

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 eat them up.

Were they not forced with those that should be ours,

We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,

And beat them backward home.

A cry of women within.

What is that noise?

SEYTON.

It is the cry of women, my good lord. Exit.

MACBETH.

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 hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors;

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,

Cannot once start me.

Re-enter Seyton.

Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON.

The Queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH.

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

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!

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 comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.

MESSENGER.

Gracious my lord,

I should report that which I say I saw,

But know not how to do it.

MACBETH.

Well, say, sir.

MESSENGER.

As I did stand my watch upon the hill,

I look'd 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

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