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MACBETH. 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, | 5 |
| We might have met them dareful, beard to beard, | |
| And beat them backward home.—What is that noise? | |
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A cry within, of women. SEYTON. 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 quail’d | 10 |
| 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? | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| To the last syllable of recorded time; | |
| And all our yesterdays have lighted fools | |
| The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! | |
| Life ’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, | |
| That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, | 25 |
| And then is heard no more. It is a tale | |
| Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, | |
| Signifying nothing.— | |
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Enter a MESSENGER. Thou com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly. | |
| MESS. Gracious my lord, I should report that which | 30 |
| I saw, but know not how to do it. | |
| MACB. Well, say, sir. | |
| MESS. As I did stand my watch upon the hill, | |
| I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought, | |
| The wood began to move. | 35 |
| MACB. Liar and slave! | |
| 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, | 40 |
| 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; and begin | |
| To doubt the equivocation of the Fiend, | 45 |
| 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. | 50 |
| 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. | |
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