Macb. The labour, we delight in, physicks & pain.

This is the door.
Macd.

I'll make so bold to call,

For 'tis my limited service 9.

[Exit MACDUFF.

Len. Goes the king hence to-day?

Macb.

He does:-he did appoint it so.

Len. The night has been unruly; Where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say, Lamentings heard i'the air; strange screams of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion, and confus'd events,

New hatch'd to the woful time. The obscure bird Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth Was feverous, and did shake.

Macb.

'Twas a rough night.

Len. My young remembrance cannot parallel A fellow to it.

Re-enter MACDUFF.

Macd. O horror! horror! horror! Tongue, nor

heart,

Cannot conceive, nor name thee 10!

Macb. Len.

What's the matter?

Macd. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope

The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence

The life o'the building.

Macb.

What is't you say? the life?

Len. Mean you his majesty ?

Macd. Approach the chamber, and destroy your

sight

With a new Gorgon :-Do not bid me speak;
See, and then speak yourselves. -Awake! awake!—
[Exeunt MACBeth and Lenox.

Ring the alarum-bell:-Murder! and treason!
Banquo, and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake!
Shake off this drowsy sleep, death's counterfeit,
And look on death itself!-up, up, and see
The great doom's image? Malcolm! Banquo!
As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprights,
To countenance this horror!
[Bell rings.

Lady M.

Enter LADY MACBETH.

What's the business,

That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley

The sleepers of the house? speak, speak,

Macd.

O, gentle lady,

'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak : The repetition, in a woman's ear,

Would murder as it fell11.—O Banquo! Banquo!

Dear Duff, I pr'ythee, contradict thyself,

And say, it is not so.

11

'The repetition, in a woman's ear,
Would murder as it fell.'

So in Hamlet :

He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech.'

And in The Puritan, 1607 :- The punishments that shall follow you in this world would with horrour kill the ear, should hear; them related.'

Re-enter MACBETH and LENOX.

Mach. Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant, There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.

Enter MALCOLM and DONALBAIN.

Don. What is amiss?

Macb.

You are, and do not know it:

The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood
Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd.
Macd. Your royal father's murder'd.

Mal.

O, by whom?

Len. Those of his chamber, as it seem'd, had done't: Their hands and faces were all badg'd with blood, So were their daggers, which, unwip'd, we found Upon their pillows:

They star'd, and were distracted; no man's life
Was to be trusted with them.

Macb. O, yet I do repent me of my fury,

That I did kill them.

Macd.

Wherefore did you so?

Macb. Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate, and

furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition of my violent love

Outran the pauser reason.-Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood 12;

12 His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood.' To gild with blood is a very common phrase in old plays. See also King John, Act ii. Sc. 2.-Johnson says, 'it is not improbable that Shakspeare put these forced and unnatural metaphors into the mouth of Macbeth, as a mark of artifice and dissimulation, to

VOL. IV.

Z

And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature, For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore 13: Who could re

frain,

That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage, to make his love known?

Lady M.

Macd. Look to the lady.
Mal.

Help me hence, ho!

Why do we hold our tongues,

That most may claim this argument for ours?

Don. What should be spoken,

Here, where our fate, hid in an augre-hole,

May rush, and seize us? Let's away; our tears

Are not yet brew'd.

Mal.

Nor our strong sorrow

Upon the foot of motion.

Ban.

Look to the lady:-
[LADY MACBETH is carried out.

And when we have our naked frailties hid 14,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet,
And question this most bloody piece of work,
To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us:
In the great hand of God I stand; and, thence,

show the difference between the studied language of hypocrisy and the natural outcries of sudden passion. This whole speech, so considered, is a remarkable instance of judgment, as it consists of antithesis only.'

13 Breech'd with gore,' covered with blood to their hilts. 14 i. e. when we have clothed our half drest bodies, which may take cold from being exposed to the air. It is possible, as Steevens remarks that, in such a cloud of words, the meaning might escape the reader. The Porter had already said that this ' place is too cold for hell,' meaning the court-yard of the castle in which Banquo and the rest now are. So in Timon of Athens:

Whose naked natures live in all the spight
Of wreakful heaven.'

Against the undivulg'd pretence 15 I fight

Of treasonous malice.

Macb.

All.

And so do I.

So all.

Macb. Let's briefly put on manly readiness,

And meet i' the hall together.

All.

Well contented.

[Exeunt all but MAL. and Don.

Mal. What will you do? Let's not consort with

them:

To show an unfelt sorrow, is an office
Which the false man does easy: I'll to England.

Don. To Ireland, I; our separated fortune
Shall keep us both the safer: where we are,
There's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood,
The nearer bloody 16.

Mal.

This murderous shaft that's shot,

Hath not yet lighted 17; and our safest way

15 Pretence is here put for design or intention. It is so used again in The Winter's Tale: The pretence whereof being by circumstance partly laid open.' Thus again in this tragedy:

What good could they pretend;'

i.e. intend to themselves. Banquo's meaning is 'in our present state of doubt and uncertainty about this murder, I have nothing to do but to put myself under the direction of God; and, relying on his support, I here declare myself an eternal enemy to this treason, and to all its further designs that have not yet come to light.'