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| The Tragedy of Macbeth |
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Shakespeare homepage
| Macbeth
| Act 5, Scene 5
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Enter MACBETH, SEYTON, and Soldiers, with drum and coloursMACBETH
Hang out our banners on the outward walls;SEYTON
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 forced with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.
A cry of women within
What is that noise?
It is the cry of women, my good lord.MACBETH
Exit
I have almost forgot the taste of fears;SEYTON
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
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 slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me.
Re-enter SEYTON
Wherefore was that cry?
The queen, my lord, is dead.MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;Messenger
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
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
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Enter a Messenger
Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
Gracious my lord,MACBETH
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.
Well, say, sir.Messenger
As I did stand my watch upon the hill,MACBETH
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.
Liar and slave!Messenger
Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so:MACBETH
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.
If thou speak'st false,
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
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.
I gin to be aweary 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.
Exeunt
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Shakespeare homepage
| Macbeth
| Act 5, Scene 5
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