Macd. Let our just censures Attend the true event, and put we on Industrious soldiership. Siw. The time approaches, That will with due decision make us know What we shall say we have, and what we owe*. Towards which, advance the war. SCENE V. Dunsinane. [Exeunt, marching. Within the Castle. Enter, with Drums and Colours, MACBETH, SEYTON, and Soldiers. Macb. 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 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? [A cry within, of women. 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 4 What we shall say we have, and what we owe.' I think, with Mason, that Siward only means to say, in more pompous language, that the time approached which was to decide their fate. 5 Arbitrate, determine. 6 It has been understood that local rhymes were introduced in plays to afford an actor the advantage of a more pointed exit, or to close the scene with additional force. Yet, whatever might be Shakspeare's motive for continuing such a practice, he often seems immediately to repent of it; and in this tragedy, as in other places, has repeatedly counteracted it by hemisticks, which destroy the effect, and defeat the supposed purpose of the antecedent couplets. To hear a night-shriek; and my fell1 of hair Macb. She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word2. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Enter a Messenger. Thou com'st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly. Mess. Gracious my 16 lord, my fell of hair,' my hairy part, my capilititium. Fell is skin, properly a sheep's skin with the wool on it. Thus in King Lear: 'The gougeres shall devour them flesh and fell.' A fell-monger is still the denomination of a dealer in hides. 2 There would have been a time for such a word.' Macbeth might mean that there would have been a more convenient time for such a word, for such intelligence. By a word certainly more than a single one was meant. Thus in King Richard II.: The hopeless word of, never to return, Un mot sometimes means a sentence also in French: and we still say 'word was brought' when intelligence is meant. 3 The last syllable of recorded time' seems to signify the utmost period fixed in the decrees of heaven for the period of life. The record of futurity is indeed no accurate expression; but as we only know transactions, past or present, the language of men affords no term for the volumes of prescience in which future events may be supposed to be written. I shall report that which I say I saw, Macb. Mess. As I did stand Well, say, sir. my watch upon the hill, I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought, Macb. Liar and slave 4! 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, I pull in resolution; 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!— There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here. And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.— [Exeunt. 4 [Striking him]' says the stage direction in the margin of all the modern editions; but this stage direction is not in the old copies it was first interpolated by Rowe; and is now omitted on the suggestion of the late Mr. Kemble. See his Essay on Macbeth and King Richard III. Lond. 1817, p. 111. 5 To cling, in the northern counties, signifies to shrivel, wither, or dry up. Clung-wood is wood of which the sap is entirely dried or spent. The same idea is well expressed by Pope in his version of the nineteenth Iliad, 166:— 6 Clung with dry famine, and with toils declin'd. 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, Siw. 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. The same. [Exeunt. Alarums continued. SCENE VII. Another Part of the Plain. Enter MACBЕТН. Macb. They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, But, bearlike, I must fight the course1.-What's he, That was not born of woman? Such a one Am I to fear, or none. Enter young SIWARD. Yo. Siw. What is thy name? Macb. Thou'lt be afraid to hear it. 7 The first folio reads upon's. 1 " But, bearlike, I must fight the course.' This was a phrase at bear-baiting. Also you shall see two ten dog courses at the great bear.'-Antipodes, by Brome. Yo. Siw. No; though thou call'st thyself a hotter name Than any is in hell. Macb. My name's Macbeth. Yo. Siw. The devil himself could not pronounce a title More hateful to mine ear. Macb. No, nor more fearful. 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. [Exit. Alarums. Enter MACDuff. Macd. That way the noise is:-Tyrant, show thy face: If thou be'st slain, and with no stroke of mine, I sheathe again undeeded. There thou should'st be; Seems bruited 2: Let me find him, fortune! [Exit. Alarum. 2 Bruited is reported, noised abroad; from bruit, Fr. So in King Henry IV. Part II. :— his death Being bruited once,' &c. Any noise or report is called a brute by the writers of Shakspeare's age. Thus Baret:-' False brutes or reportes. Falsæ voculæ.The brute or common reporte was in old time,' &c. |
