Act 5, Scene 2

The Country near Dunsinane.

[Enter. with drum and colours, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, and Soldiers.]
Menteith
2026 The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,
2027 His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff.
2028 Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes
2029 Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm
2030 Excite the mortified man.
Angus
2031 Near Birnam wood
2032 Shall we well meet them; that way are they coming.
Caithness
2033 Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?
Lennox
2034 For certain, sir, he is not: I have a file
2035 Of all the gentry: there is Siward's son
2036 And many unrough youths, that even now
2037 Protest their first of manhood.
Menteith
2038 What does the tyrant?
Caithness
2039 Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies:
2040 Some say he's mad; others, that lesser hate him,
2041 Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain,
2042 He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
2043 Within the belt of rule.
Angus
2044 Now does he feel
2045 His secret murders sticking on his hands;
2046 Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
2047 Those he commands move only in command,
2048 Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
2049 Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
2050 Upon a dwarfish thief.
Menteith
2051 Who, then, shall blame
2052 His pester'd senses to recoil and start,
2053 When all that is within him does condemn
2054 Itself for being there?
Caithness
2055 Well, march we on,
2056 To give obedience where 'tis truly ow'd:
2057 Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal;
2058 And with him pour we, in our country's purge,
2059 Each drop of us.
Lennox
2060 Or so much as it needs,
2061 To dew the sovereign flower, and drown the weeds.
2062 Make we our march towards Birnam.
[Exeunt, marching.]

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Notes

TLN 2028archaic vocab
“Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm Excite the mortified man.”
'Mortified' here means made dead or deadened — spiritually numbed, drained of all feeling. Menteith says that even a man reduced to utter numbness (the mortified man, as dead inside as if already in the grave) would be roused to fight by these causes. The word comes from Latin mortificare, 'to cause to die'; it also carries a religious sense of one who has killed off worldly feeling through penance — making the image even more extreme.
TLN 2034archaic vocab
“I have a file Of all the gentry: there is Siward's son And many unrough youths, that even now Protest their first of manhood.”
A 'file' here is a list or roll-call — a written catalogue of names, the sense from which 'filing' a document derives. 'Unrough' means unbearded, too young to have grown a beard (rough = bearded or hairy). 'Protest their first of manhood' means publicly demonstrate for the first time that they are men — young soldiers earning their spurs in this campaign. Lennox is reporting that the army includes not just seasoned nobles but boys making their first appearance as fighting men.
TLN 2042rhetorical device
“cannot buckle his distemper'd cause Within the belt of rule”
Caithness and Angus use a sustained clothing metaphor to describe Macbeth's failed kingship. 'Distemper'd' means diseased or disordered (a 'distemper' is an illness); he cannot buckle — fasten with a belt — his swollen, diseased cause within the rule of law. The metaphor runs on: he feels his stolen title 'hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief.' A king's role is an office that must fit the man who holds it. Macbeth the usurper wears authority like a garment made for someone else.
historical The king's two bodieshistorical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 2046archaic vocab
“Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach”
'Minutely' means 'at every minute' — continuously, without pause. 'Faith-breach' is Angus's coinage for Macbeth's treachery, literally a breaking of faith. The line says that rebellions happening every minute of the day rebuke Macbeth for being the original oath-breaker.
TLN 2057rhetorical device
“medicine of the sickly weal; And with him pour we, in our country's purge, Each drop of us”
Caithness and Lennox cast Malcolm as a physician and Scotland as a diseased patient. 'Weal' means 'commonwealth' or 'welfare' (as in the old phrase 'the common weal'). A 'purge' was a medical dose to cleanse the body of corrupt matter. The lords offer themselves as medicine — each drop of their blood a drop of the cure — to flush out Macbeth's tyranny. Lennox extends the metaphor: they will 'dew' (moisten, nourish) Malcolm, 'the sovereign flower,' and drown the weeds — where 'sovereign' means both 'royal' and, in medical usage, 'supremely effective as a remedy.'
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)