:

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 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, sennaa, or what purgative drug,

Would scour these English hence?—Hearest thou of them? Docт. Ay, my good lord; your royal preparation

SCENE IV.-Country near Dunsinane: A Wood in view.

[Exit.

[Exit.

Enter, with drum 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.

The wood of Birnam.

SIW. What wood is this before us?
MENT.
MAL. 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.

a Senna. The original reads cyme.

Let our just censures

More and less. Shakspere uses these words, as Chaucer and Spenser use them, for greater and less.

SIW.

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

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

MACB. Hang out our banners on the outer 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'd with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home. What is that noise?

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 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 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 a death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,

[A cry within, of women.

a Dusty. Warburton would read dusky. In 'Troilus and Cressida' we have "dusty nothing." Douce has the following valuable illustration of the passage: "Perhaps no quotation can be better calculated to show the propriety of this epithet than the following grand lines in 'The Vision of Pierce Plowman,' a work which Shakspeare might have seen:

'Death came drivynge after, and all to dust pashed

Kynges and kaysers, knightes and popes.'

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 a; 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 toward 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.

[Striking him.

[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,

a Monck Mason gives an illustration from Fletcher, which explains the use of pull in:

"All my spirits,

As if they had heard my passing bell go for me,
Pull in their powers, and give me up to destiny."

SIW.

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.

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.

[Exeunt. Alarums continued.

SCENE VII.-The same. 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".

Yo. Siw. What is thy name?

MACB.

Enter young SIWARD.

Thou 'It be afraid to hear it.

Yo. Siw. No; though thou call'st thyself a hotter name

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

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

[They fight, and young SIWARD is slain. Thou wast born of woman.—

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

Alarums. Enter MACDUFf.

MACD. That way the noise is :-Tyrant, show thy face:

If thou be'st slain, and with no stroke of mine,

[Exit.

a We have again the small critics discovering oversights in Shakspere. Mrs. Lenox, the queen of fault-finders, says, "Shakspeare seems to have committed a great oversight in making Macbeth, after he found himself deceived in the prophecy relating to Birnam wood, so absolutely rely on the other, which he had good reason to fear might be equally fallacious." If Mrs. Lenox had known as much of human nature as Shakspere knew, she would have understood that one hope destroyed does not necessarily banish all hope;-that the gambler who has lost thousands still believes that his last guinea will redeem them;—and that the last of a long series of perishing delusions is as firmly trusted as if the great teacher, Time, had taught nothing.

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 shouldst be;
By this great clatter, one of greatest note
Seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune!
And more I beg not.

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,

And little is to do.

MAL.

[Exit. Alarum.

We have met with foes

That strike beside us.

SIW.

Enter, sir, the castle.

[Exeunt. Alarum.

Re-enter MACBETH.

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