Act 4, Scene 3

England. Before the King's Palace.

[Enter Malcolm and Macduff.]
Malcolm
1679 Let us seek out some desolate shade and there
1680 Weep our sad bosoms empty.
Macduff
1681 Let us rather
1682 Hold fast the mortal sword, and, like good men,
1683 Bestride our down-fall'n birthdom: each new morn
1684 New widows howl; new orphans cry; new sorrows
1685 Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds
1686 As if it felt with Scotland, and yell'd out
1687 Like syllable of dolour.
Malcolm
1688 What I believe, I'll wail;
1689 What know, believe; and what I can redress,
1690 As I shall find the time to friend, I will.
1691 What you have spoke, it may be so perchance.
1692 This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
1693 Was once thought honest: you have loved him well;
1694 He hath not touch'd you yet. I am young; but something
1695 You may deserve of him through me; and wisdom
1696 To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb
1697 To appease an angry god.
Macduff
1698 I am not treacherous.
Malcolm
1699 But Macbeth is.
1700 A good and virtuous nature may recoil
1701 In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon;
1702 That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose;
1703 Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell:
1704 Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
1705 Yet grace must still look so.
Macduff
1706 I have lost my hopes.
Malcolm
1707 Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.
1708 Why in that rawness left you wife and child,—
1709 Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,—
1710 Without leave-taking?—I pray you,
1711 Let not my jealousies be your dishonors,
1712 But mine own safeties:—you may be rightly just,
1713 Whatever I shall think.
Macduff
1714 Bleed, bleed, poor country!
1715 Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
1716 For goodness dare not check thee! wear thou thy wrongs,
1717 The title is affeer'd.—Fare thee well, lord:
1718 I would not be the villain that thou think'st
1719 For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp
1720 And the rich East to boot.
Malcolm
1721 Be not offended:
1722 I speak not as in absolute fear of you.
1723 I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
1724 It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
1725 Is added to her wounds. I think, withal,
1726 There would be hands uplifted in my right;
1727 And here, from gracious England, have I offer
1728 Of goodly thousands: but, for all this,
1729 When I shall tread upon the tyrant's head,
1730 Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country
1731 Shall have more vices than it had before;
1732 More suffer, and more sundry ways than ever,
1733 By him that shall succeed.
Macduff
1734 What should he be?
Malcolm
1735 It is myself I mean: in whom I know
1736 All the particulars of vice so grafted
1737 That, when they shall be open'd, black Macbeth
1738 Will seem as pure as snow; and the poor state
1739 Esteem him as a lamb, being compar'd
1740 With my confineless harms.
Macduff
1741 Not in the legions
1742 Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn'd
1743 In evils to top Macbeth.
Malcolm
1744 I grant him bloody,
1745 Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
1746 Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
1747 That has a name: but there's no bottom, none,
1748 In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters,
1749 Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up
1750 The cistern of my lust; and my desire
1751 All continent impediments would o'erbear,
1752 That did oppose my will: better Macbeth
1753 Than such an one to reign.
Macduff
1754 Boundless intemperance
1755 In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
1756 The untimely emptying of the happy throne,
1757 And fall of many kings. But fear not yet
1758 To take upon you what is yours: you may
1759 Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty,
1760 And yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink.
1761 We have willing dames enough; there cannot be
1762 That vulture in you, to devour so many
1763 As will to greatness dedicate themselves,
1764 Finding it so inclin'd.
Malcolm
1765 With this there grows,
1766 In my most ill-compos'd affection, such
1767 A stanchless avarice, that, were I king,
1768 I should cut off the nobles for their lands;
1769 Desire his jewels, and this other's house:
1770 And my more-having would be as a sauce
1771 To make me hunger more; that I should forge
1772 Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,
1773 Destroying them for wealth.
Macduff
1774 This avarice
1775 Sticks deeper; grows with more pernicious root
1776 Than summer-seeming lust; and it hath been
1777 The sword of our slain kings: yet do not fear;
1778 Scotland hath foysons to fill up your will,
1779 Of your mere own: all these are portable,
1780 With other graces weigh'd.
Malcolm
1781 But I have none: the king-becoming graces,
1782 As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
1783 Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
1784 Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
1785 I have no relish of them; but abound
1786 In the division of each several crime,
1787 Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should
1788 Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
1789 Uproar the universal peace, confound
1790 All unity on earth.
Macduff
1791 O Scotland, Scotland!
Malcolm
1792 If such a one be fit to govern, speak:
1793 I am as I have spoken.
Macduff
1794 Fit to govern!
1795 No, not to live!—O nation miserable,
1796 With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
1797 When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,
1798 Since that the truest issue of thy throne
1799 By his own interdiction stands accurs'd
1800 And does blaspheme his breed?—Thy royal father
1801 Was a most sainted king; the queen that bore thee,
1802 Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
1803 Died every day she lived. Fare-thee-well!
1804 These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself
1805 Have banish'd me from Scotland.—O my breast,
1806 Thy hope ends here!
Malcolm
1807 Macduff, this noble passion,
1808 Child of integrity, hath from my soul
1809 Wiped the black scruples, reconcil'd my thoughts
1810 To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth
1811 By many of these trains hath sought to win me
1812 Into his power; and modest wisdom plucks me
1813 From over-credulous haste: but God above
1814 Deal between thee and me! for even now
1815 I put myself to thy direction, and
1816 Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure
1817 The taints and blames I laid upon myself,
1818 For strangers to my nature. I am yet
1819 Unknown to woman; never was forsworn;
1820 Scarcely have coveted what was mine own;
1821 At no time broke my faith; would not betray
1822 The devil to his fellow; and delight
1823 No less in truth than life: my first false speaking
1824 Was this upon myself:—what I am truly,
1825 Is thine and my poor country's to command:
1826 Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach,
1827 Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men
1828 Already at a point, was setting forth:
1829 Now we'll together; and the chance of goodness
1830 Be like our warranted quarrel! Why are you silent?
Macduff
1831 Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
1832 'Tis hard to reconcile.
[Enter a Doctor.]
Malcolm
1833 Well; more anon.—Comes the king forth, I pray you?
Doctor
1834 Ay, sir: there are a crew of wretched souls
1835 That stay his cure: their malady convinces
1836 The great assay of art; but, at his touch,
1837 Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,
1838 They presently amend.
Malcolm
1839 I thank you, doctor.
[Exit Doctor.]
Macduff
1840 What's the disease he means?
Malcolm
1841 'Tis call'd the evil:
1842 A most miraculous work in this good king;
1843 Which often, since my here-remain in England,
1844 I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,
1845 Himself best knows: but strangely-visited people,
1846 All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
1847 The mere despair of surgery, he cures;
1848 Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
1849 Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken,
1850 To the succeeding royalty he leaves
1851 The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,
1852 He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy;
1853 And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
1854 That speak him full of grace.
Macduff
1855 See, who comes here?
Malcolm
1856 My countryman; but yet I know him not.
[Enter Ross.]
Macduff
1857 My ever-gentle cousin, welcome hither.
Malcolm
1858 I know him now. Good God, betimes remove
1859 The means that makes us strangers!
Ross
1860 Sir, amen.
Macduff
1861 Stands Scotland where it did?
Ross
1862 Alas, poor country,—
1863 Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
1864 Be call'd our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
1865 But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
1866 Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks, that rent the air,
1867 Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
1868 A modern ecstasy; the dead man's knell
1869 Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives
1870 Expire before the flowers in their caps,
1871 Dying or ere they sicken.
Macduff
1872 O, relation
1873 Too nice, and yet too true!
Malcolm
1874 What's the newest grief?
Ross
1875 That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker;
1876 Each minute teems a new one.
Macduff
1877 How does my wife?
Ross
1878 Why, well.
Macduff
1879 And all my children?
Ross
1880 Well too.
Macduff
1881 The tyrant has not batter'd at their peace?
Ross
1882 No; they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.
Macduff
1883 Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes't?
Ross
1884 When I came hither to transport the tidings,
1885 Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour
1886 Of many worthy fellows that were out;
1887 Which was to my belief witness'd the rather,
1888 For that I saw the tyrant's power a-foot:
1889 Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland
1890 Would create soldiers, make our women fight,
1891 To doff their dire distresses.
Malcolm
1892 Be't their comfort
1893 We are coming thither: gracious England hath
1894 Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;
1895 An older and a better soldier none
1896 That Christendom gives out.
Ross
1897 Would I could answer
1898 This comfort with the like! But I have words
1899 That would be howl'd out in the desert air,
1900 Where hearing should not latch them.
Macduff
1901 What concern they?
1902 The general cause? or is it a fee-grief
1903 Due to some single breast?
Ross
1904 No mind that's honest
1905 But in it shares some woe; though the main part
1906 Pertains to you alone.
Macduff
1907 If it be mine,
1908 Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.
Ross
1909 Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
1910 Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
1911 That ever yet they heard.
Macduff
1912 Humh! I guess at it.
Ross
1913 Your castle is surpris'd; your wife and babes
1914 Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner
1915 Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer,
1916 To add the death of you.
Malcolm
1917 Merciful heaven!—
1918 What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
1919 Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
1920 Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
Macduff
1921 My children too?
Ross
1922 Wife, children, servants, all
1923 That could be found.
Macduff
1924 And I must be from thence!
1925 My wife kill'd too?
Ross
1926 I have said.
Malcolm
1927 Be comforted:
1928 Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,
1929 To cure this deadly grief.
Macduff
1930 He has no children.—All my pretty ones?
1931 Did you say all?—O hell-kite!—All?
1932 What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
1933 At one fell swoop?
Malcolm
1934 Dispute it like a man.
Macduff
1935 I shall do so;
1936 But I must also feel it as a man:
1937 I cannot but remember such things were,
1938 That were most precious to me.—Did heaven look on,
1939 And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,
1940 They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,
1941 Not for their own demerits, but for mine,
1942 Fell slaughter on their souls: heaven rest them now!
Malcolm
1943 Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief
1944 Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.
Macduff
1945 O, I could play the woman with mine eye,
1946 And braggart with my tongue!—But, gentle heavens,
1947 Cut short all intermission; front to front
1948 Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
1949 Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape,
1950 Heaven forgive him too!
Malcolm
1951 This tune goes manly.
1952 Come, go we to the king; our power is ready;
1953 Our lack is nothing but our leave: Macbeth
1954 Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
1955 Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may;
1956 The night is long that never finds the day.
[Exeunt.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1683archaic vocab
“Bestride our down-fall'n birthdom”
'Birthdom' is an archaic word for one's native country — literally 'the realm into which one was born.' To 'bestride' something fallen means to stand astride it defensively, as a soldier straddles a fallen comrade to protect him. Macduff urges Malcolm to stand over Scotland like a protector rather than weep over it.
TLN 1685rhetorical device
“Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds”
Macduff personifies Scotland's suffering as cries loud enough to slap heaven itself, which resounds 'like syllable of dolour' — an identical echo of grief. 'Dolour' (pain, sorrow) was current but already somewhat formal in 1606. The image presents God as within earshot of his people's agony.
TLN 1692rhetorical device
“whose sole name blisters our tongues”
Malcolm says that merely speaking Macbeth's name is physically painful — the name itself is so poisonous it raises blisters. The figure makes the tyrant's name as dangerous as a brand or acid, and prepares the audience for the rest of the scene's careful avoidance of naming him directly.
TLN 1696biblical allusion
“weak, poor, innocent lamb / To appease an angry god”
Malcolm suspects Macduff has been sent by Macbeth to lure him home: Macduff could be the 'innocent lamb' offered as a sacrifice to buy Malcolm's trust — and then betray him to Macbeth, the 'angry god.' The image draws on Old Testament animal sacrifice, where a blameless lamb was offered to propitiate God.
TLN 1700archaic vocab
“good and virtuous nature may recoil / In an imperial charge”
Malcolm reasons that even a genuinely virtuous person can be bent ('recoil') by a royal command — meaning Macbeth could have ordered or coerced Macduff into this visit. 'Imperial charge' here means a king's direct command; 'recoil' means to spring back or turn from one's nature, like a bow under pressure.
TLN 1703biblical allusion
“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell”
Malcolm's point: Macduff might look virtuous while actually serving Macbeth, since even Lucifer — 'the brightest' angel — fell from heaven through pride. The existence of one corrupt angel does not make all angels suspect, but it does make seeming-virtue unreliable. The allusion is to Satan's expulsion from heaven.
TLN 1708archaic vocab
“Why in that rawness left you wife and child”
'Rawness' here means an unprotected, exposed, vulnerable state — the condition of having been left without covering or defence. Malcolm is asking why Macduff left his wife and children behind in an unguarded, dangerous situation, without making any provision for their safety. The word implies they were left raw and open to harm, like an unhealed wound.
TLN 1711archaic vocab
“Let not my jealousies be your dishonors”
'Jealousies' in this period regularly means 'suspicions' rather than the modern sense of romantic envy. Malcolm is asking Macduff not to take offence at being suspected: his distrust of Macduff is about his own safety, not a judgment on Macduff's honour.
TLN 1717archaic vocab
“The title is affeer'd”
'Affeer'd' is a legal term meaning confirmed, ratified, or established as fixed. Macduff says bitterly that if goodness cannot check tyranny, then Macbeth's title to the throne stands as legally confirmed. The word comes from Anglo-Norman legal practice and means assessed and settled as due.
TLN 1745archaic vocab
“Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, / Sudden”
Two words here carry senses no longer standard. 'Luxurious' in Elizabethan English meant lecherous or sexually incontinent, not merely pleasure-loving. 'Sudden' meant violent or rash — quick to explosive anger. Malcolm is listing vices: Macbeth is lecherous, greedy, dishonest, and prone to sudden violent rage.
TLN 1750archaic vocab
“cistern of my lust; and my desire / All continent impediments would o'erbear”
Malcolm claims his sexual appetite is a bottomless tank (a 'cistern,' a large water-storage vessel) that no number of women could fill. A 'continent impediment' is a restraint that contains or limits desire — from Latin 'continere,' to hold in. He says his will would overwhelm any such restraint. Both words were in common educated use but their senses have narrowed in modern English.
TLN 1767historical topical
“stanchless avarice, that, were I king, / I should cut off the nobles for their lands”
'Stanchless' means impossible to staunch — a wound that cannot be stopped from bleeding. Malcolm's second fictional vice is insatiable greed that would lead him to strip nobles of their estates. This matches what contemporary English audiences understood as the chief practical hallmark of a tyrant: arbitrary seizure of property. The Holinshed account of Macbeth's reign includes exactly such confiscations.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1781historical topical
“king-becoming graces, / As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, / Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, / Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude”
Malcolm lists twelve virtues a legitimate king must have. The catalogue is drawn from Renaissance political theory: treatises on kingship from Aristotle through James I's own Basilikon Doron enumerate exactly these qualities. The list defines good kingship by its content — against which both Macbeth (who possesses none) and Malcolm's false self-portrait (which disclaimed all of them) are measured.
historical The divine right of kings
TLN 1788rhetorical device
“Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, / Uproar the universal peace, confound / All unity on earth”
Malcolm reaches the extreme of his self-condemnation: he would not merely be a bad king but would actively destroy peace and unity itself. 'Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell' means to waste or destroy the very substance that keeps society together. 'Uproar' is used as a verb — to throw into uproar. The hyperbole signals that the list of vices has gone past political into cosmic disorder.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 1799archaic vocab
“By his own interdiction stands accurs'd”
'Interdiction' means a formal prohibition or ban — originally a Church term for a sentence that excludes a person from participation in sacred rites. Macduff says Malcolm has banned himself from kingship by his own self-accusation. The word suggests Malcolm's self-condemnation is as binding as a legal or ecclesiastical decree.
TLN 1801biblical allusion
“the queen that bore thee, / Oftener upon her knees than on her feet, / Died every day she lived”
Macduff praises Malcolm's mother as a woman of intense daily prayer and penitence, who 'died every day she lived' — a phrase drawn from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, where dying daily means mortifying worldly desires through prayer and self-denial. The image sets Duncan's queen as a saintly model against which Malcolm's claimed vices seem all the more implausible.
TLN 1834historical topical
“a crew of wretched souls / That stay his cure: their malady convinces / The great assay of art; but, at his touch, / Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, / They presently amend”
The English Doctor describes King Edward the Confessor curing sufferers from scrofula — a tuberculosis-like swelling of the lymph glands in the neck, called 'the King's Evil' — by touching them. The disease 'convinces' (defeats, overwhelms) all medical skill, but the king's touch heals it. English monarchs were believed to possess this God-given power, which was taken as proof of their sacred legitimacy.
historical Touching for the King's Evil
TLN 1841archaic vocab
“'Tis call'd the evil”
'The evil' is the popular English name for scrofula — a bacterial infection (now understood as tuberculosis of the lymph nodes) that causes swollen, ulcerated lumps in the neck. The name 'King's Evil' came from the belief that a king's touch could cure it. When Macduff asks 'What's the disease he means?' the question tells the audience that 'the evil' needs explanation — it was a specifically English ceremony, unfamiliar to a Scotsman abroad.
historical Touching for the King's Evil
TLN 1867archaic vocab
“violent sorrow seems / A modern ecstasy”
'Modern' here means commonplace, ordinary, or everyday — not new or up to date. 'Ecstasy' means extreme mental agitation or frenzy (from Greek 'ekstasis', a standing outside oneself). Ross is saying that in Scotland under Macbeth, even violent grief has become so routine that it barely registers — wild sorrow is now just another ordinary reaction.
TLN 1875archaic vocab
“That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker; / Each minute teems a new one”
Ross means that news an hour old is already stale enough to earn a hiss of impatience — as if an audience were booing an actor for repeating outdated material. 'Teems' means brings forth or gives birth to (like a teeming womb). The paired images — news so outdated it earns theatrical mockery; each minute giving birth to fresh grief — capture how rapidly Macbeth's tyranny generates new disasters.
TLN 1902archaic vocab
“is it a fee-grief / Due to some single breast”
A 'fee-grief' is a grief held in private ownership — like a 'fee simple' in law, which is land held absolutely by one person rather than shared. Macduff asks whether Ross's news is a public calamity (the 'general cause') or a sorrow belonging to one individual alone. The legal phrasing captures how loss can be both private and part of a larger national disaster.
TLN 1915wordplay
“on the quarry of these murder'd deer, / To add the death of you”
Ross uses a hunting image: 'quarry' is the pile of slaughtered game at the end of a hunt. But 'deer' is also the homophone of 'dear' — loved ones — making the murdered family both literal game and dearly-beloved people. Ross is saying that to describe how they died would be, in effect, to kill Macduff with grief too — adding him to the heap.
TLN 1930syntax grammar
“He has no children”
'He has no children' is one of the most debated short lines in Shakespeare. The most natural reading is that Macduff means Macbeth has no children — so could not understand what losing children costs, and therefore no revenge could fit the crime. Some editors take 'he' to mean Malcolm: he tells Macduff to 'dispute it like a man' — easy advice for a man without children. Either reading captures Macduff's anguish that words and actions are inadequate to this loss.
TLN 1931cultural context
“O hell-kite!—All? / What, all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop”
A 'kite' was a common scavenging bird of prey, seen daily above London streets feeding on offal and waste; it was a byword for low predatory rapacity. A 'hell-kite' is a kite from hell — a devil in bird form. Macduff casts Macbeth as a swooping predator who has taken his whole brood of 'chickens' (children) and their 'dam' (mother) in 'one fell swoop' — one sudden, savage strike. 'Fell' means fierce, savage.
TLN 1938biblical allusion
“Did heaven look on, / And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff, / They were all struck for thee”
Macduff blames himself for his family's deaths: because he sinned and fled without protecting them, God allowed them to be killed as punishment for him, not for anything they had done. The theology is the Old Testament pattern of collective punishment — the sins of the father visited on his household — which runs through Exodus 20:5 and is widely invoked in tragedy to explain innocent suffering.
TLN 1953historical topical
“Macbeth / Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above / Put on their instruments”
Malcolm frames the coming campaign against Macbeth as a divine mission: 'the powers above' (God and the angels) are arming themselves, and Malcolm's army is their instrument. 'Put on their instruments' means to arm or equip their human agents. The language of providential war — God working through earthly soldiers — places the assault on a tyrant in the same frame as the great-chain-of-being doctrine that regicide disorders creation.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)