University of Virginia Library

ACT II.

SCENE I.

BAUDRON.
The night advances to that horal bourn,
Where touch the wheels of yesterday and morrow,
And all the castle in defenceless sleep,
Fetter'd lies prostrate. 'Tis the chosen time,
When Rapine girds himself for enterprize;
Treason harangues his sworn conspirators
In dismal vaults, by torches darkly shown;
And Murder grasping firm the gleaming knife,
Stalks, with perturbed pace and soundless tread,
To the devoted couch.—Macbeth's a-foot!—
'Tis hallow-eve, and annual on this night,
Our youthful villagers, with rites and charms,
And old traditionary oracles,
Explore their destin'd boons of love and fortune.
Some say, that licensed from an antient date,
Th'imprison'd mischiefs roam at large to-night;
And in the gay unguarded heart of youth,
By juggling omens, raise perplexing thoughts,
That ravel all their future thread of life.

SCENE II.

Lady and Baudron.
LADY.
Set down the lamp and wait without the door,
To give me notice when the king returns.
Have you heard, Baudron, what this wizzard is,
Whom they have brought again to vex his highness?

BAUDRON.
A solemn knave, that tampers with men's fears.
It grieves me much, that thus his majesty
Should lose the bent of his great character
In a mysterious passion to unfold
The seeds and secrets of the time unknown.

LADY.
This mournful lapse in my dear lord's brave nature,
While 'round the encompassing and trait'rous foes,
Deepen their files, awakes in me such fears,
That I could die for ease. Though I have felt
The pangs of birth, a mother's sleepless cares,
And watch'd my infant's couch with throbbing heart;
Sweet was that watching, and those cares were gentle,
And slight the pains to these I suffer now.
Thou art, I think, a good man; old and wise,
And much hast noted in this mazy world.
Oh! can'st thou not instruct me to redeem
Thy royal master from his cheerless bias,
And to untwine the gnawing serpent here?

BAUDRON.
In camp, and council, and the earnest strife,
Lie the true med'cine for the king's disease:
But solitude and sights of human woe,
And shelterless probation of distress,
Only, can minister to your relief.

LADY.
I have a tower lav'd by the salt-sea waves,
In whose horizon, never sail is seen,
Save the lone ferry-boat in summer calms,
Or stranded vessel in a winter's morn,
With her dead crew all frozen to the masts.
For such a place, so desolate and dread,
I would forsake these gorgeous rooms, and barter
The pomp and servitude around my throne,
If I might taste the Lethé of repose.

BAUDRON.
Alas! great lady.

LADY.
Wherefore so do you pause,
And sighing, wear a look so full of woe?
Why kneel you thus so pale? Rise, Baudron! speak!

BAUDRON.
To gain that sweet oblivious bliss of sleep,
Th'incumber'd spirit must unrobe itself
Of all the garniture of royal pride,
And pray Heav'ns mercy, as an alm, to grant
The nightly down that eases daily toil.
For the proud throne, in ashes you must sit;
Change the rich crimson for a sack-cloth wrap;
Cast from your brow its unblest ornament,
The golden round, and radient type of power;
Yea, on the cold and parent earth degraded,
Confess the dismal secrets of your breast.

LADY.
Begone, old man: intruding prater, hence!

SCENE III.

LADY.
Oh! shall I never know a calm again;
But like the sea, urged by the charter'd storms,
Bursting embarkments, still o'er pass my will
In billowy violence of troubled thought.
The old man, skilful, by Experience taught,
Discerns my soul's conceal'd and cureless sore.
But the afflicting cancer of remorse,
Makes scarcely half my sum of misery.
Macbeth, enchanted by his fatal credence
In the prognostics of bewild'ring lore,
Foregoes the occupation of a king,
For uncouth riddles and phantastic orgies,
Nor, with his wonted prescience, provides
For the dire shock of England's feudal streams,
Which flood the lowlands, to the Granpian's base;
And, swelling with the torrents of our clans,
Impetuous roll to insulate us here.
What, if by such fore-dooming negligence,
Young Malcom seize us in this last retreat,
And cage us for an ignominious show,
Like savages that feed on human carn!

SCENE IV.

Lady and Seaton.
LADY.
Seaton, what now?

SEATON.
The watch upon the hill,
See, by the moon-light, thick-defiling spears
Flick'ring among the boughs of Birnam wood.

LADY.
Hie to the king, and with some hasty speech,
Say, I entreat his special presence here.

SEATON.
His majesty approaches.

LADY.
Then, retire.

SCENE V.

Macbeth and Lady.
MACBETH.
Be jocund, heart, good things await us still.
'Tis hallow-eve, and I have cast my fortune,
Which a brave seer hath shrewdly scann'd, and found,
Bating the vexing present's brief ordeal,
Nought but presumptives of prosperity.

LADY.
Fye; be a man, and leave such idle search
To cred'lous girls and boys professionless.
Or, if you will in signs and omens deal,
Survey the visible portents around.

MACBETH.
He has explained them all. The fiery star
Whose nightly apparition, o'er our heads,
Hath shed, of late, such fear into our hearts,
He has convinced me, by astrology,
Is the celestial swift-moving index
Of our hot-headed and far-follow'd foe.

LADY.
The dreadest prodigy of all the time,
Is the delusion that invests thy mind;
And like a spell, denies thee power to thwart
The rising adversaries of thy throne.
E'en while our castle and its mountain base,
Shake by the multitud'nous tramp of war,
No stir of preparation yet is heard.
All those fierce thanes, that favour'd our bold cause,
Who, roused in time, would still have faithful stood;
By this remissness from allegiance slip,
And make their peace with Malcom as he comes.

MACBETH.
There's not a man of them that shall be spared.
I'll taint the air, of the perfidious towns,
With traitors limbs for these desertions.

LADY.
When?

MACBETH.
Ere Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.
Beneath our walls, the English epicures
Shall leave these curs that want the canine faith,
To crouch before us; but to crouch in vain.

LADY.
Infatuated hold! nor with the vaunt
Of wild mythologies and false predictions,
Think to repel our stern antagonists.
Know you, the watch upon the southern hill
Decerns th'advance of bright-defiling spears,
Glimm'ring behind the dark of Birnam wood,
Like the portentous streamers in the sky?
Awake, my thane, and shake thy drouze away;
Summon the council, and with manly charge,
Inspirit all that with our fortunes rank,
And boldly as you won, maintain the crown.
But I grow faint, and must to bed return.
The fervid malady, kindled by care,
Parching, makes head, and withers me to death.
Damsels, without!—Good night, my dearest lord;
Rouse thee to action.—Here; support me hence.—
Come Hope, to him, though thou hast fled from me.

SCENE VI.

MACBETH.
Spirit of valour, more than masculine,
Whom nor disease, nor circumstance can daunt,
But still when heaviest prest springs into strength,
And with its native royalty dilates
Still mightier than before.—Had I but men
Temper'd to half her pitch of energy,
The heav'ns might glare with prodigies of fire,
And hell's grim demons on the clouds appear,
In hideous panoply for Malcom's cause,
Nor change the pride of my collected soul.—
Who waits?—Send to me here the culdee priest.—
If all things be in one great frame conjoined,
The old man should by nat'ral symptom know
The issue of this crisis in my fate.

SCENE VII.

Macbeth and Baudron.
MACBETH.
Thy look is weary, Baudron, and thine eyes
Seem as if grief had meddled with thy rest.

BAUDRON.
My feeble rag of life can ill endure
The perturbation that besets me here.
These lengthen'd vigils prey upon my strength,
And I have used the charter of old age
Too freely, with her majesty, I fear.

MACBETH.
She will forgive thee—I will speak to her;
And when this traitorous investment's o'er,
Which circumscribes us to the castle here,
Thou shalt have 'tendance and the softest down,
To breathe in peace thy latter days away.—
But tell me, Baudron, by what marks to know
The fall and ebbing fortune of a king?

BAUDRON.
Then I must speak what prudence would conceal,
And things relate of harsh ungrateful note
To the sooth'd ear of flatter'd majesty.

MACBETH.
Fear not—my hearing has accustom'd grown
To tidings of adversity; and I
Can listen, to the worst that may befall,
Calm as the swain that hears the fading leaves
Whisp'ring that Winter hastens to disperse.

BAUDRON.
Alas! your highness hath already learnt
The dismal knowledge of your own estate.
The deep low discontents, throughout the land,
Have long been murmuring prelude to the clang
Of foreign war, which now so loudly dins
The dirge and knell of your departed power.

MACBETH.
But I am safe the weird sisters said,
Till Birnam wood shall come to Dunsinane;
And by their greeting upon Forres moor,
Have I not found that they predict the truth?
Nature hath turns that in the plainest course
Perplex our wisdom: and may I not hope,
Who hath received such proof of special fate,
That those sad signals which are wont to show
Disast'rous change to others, shall to me
Prove but precursors to a passing care?
As night is harbinger to the gay morn,
And boist'rous Winter heralds forth the Spring.

SCENE VIII.

Macbeth, Seaton, and Baudron.
MACBETH.
Well! what new chance hath so amaz'd thy wits,
That they seem ready in thy straining eyes
To leap from some great jeopardy?

SEATON.
My lord,
The tartan'd Celts that from the western isles,
And the fierce Donalds from Benevis' side,
Who lay upon the heath, have left their ground,
And with th'outrageous insolence of pipes,
Are seen by all the wardens on the walls,
Precipitously hurrying to the foe.

MACBETH.
Well, let them run; I little priz'd their faith.
These mountain aborigines have been
The stubbornest to tame, of all beneath
The antient scepter of the scottish kings.
This waste in loyalty smites the great arm
Of royal vengeance with paralysis,
And makes the tasks that press upon our time,
Of heavy labour and uncertain fruit.—
Seaton, why stand you here?—

SEATON.
I have but half
The errand of my coming-in reported.

MACBETH.
What hast thou more? Who else deserts from us?

SEATON.
By urgent summons from the queen herself,
The chieftains lodged within the keep attend
Your highness' presence in the council-hall.

MACBETH.
We shall be there anon—Seaton command
The armourer to have my mail prepared.

SCENE IX.

Macbeth and Baudron.
MACBETH.
My soul is kindling, Baudron, for the fight,
And they who dare disturb the lion's den,
Shall rue the boyhood that provokes his rage.
I was a famous soldier in my day,
And my heart leaps for this impending strife,
As when the trumpet call'd me up to arms,
On the proud dawn of battle. But I feel
That eighteen years of vexing monarchy,
Have cool'd the martial ardour in my heart,
And the entanglement of crafty care
Has long destroy'd the frankness of my youth.

BAUDRON.
Alas! dread sir, so is the course of life.
There have been men that nature meant for heroes,
So overborn by fortune's accidents,
That at their exit from the world's great stage,
Instead of plaudits, and the full resound
Of admiration irresistible,
They have been followed by the damning hiss,
So ill and slovenly they did perform.

MACBETH.
Would I had still but a free soldier liv'd,
And been unstain'd by any other blood
Than the red trophy of my country's foes.

BAUDRON.
Why starts your majesty?

MACBETH.
See you not these?

BAUDRON.
Where? What?

MACBETH.
It is the selfsame heraldry
With which the gentle Duncan was convey'd
To the last mansion of the scottish kings!

BAUDRON.
I see it not—Alas my gracious lord!—

MACBETH.
What can this dismal pageantry betide?
Another and another! still they come
Solemnly marshall'd—ha! the sable bier!
It stops—and see the sheeted dead thereon
Doth raise itself. My wife!—'tis all away.—
Baudron—

BAUDRON.
What would your highness?

MACBETH.
Good old man,
To live so long and fear no sights like these.

BAUDRON.
My royal lord—

MACBETH.
Baudron, didst thou not say,
That if the spectral vision of the queen
Rose thrice before me, her decided death
Should mine foretoken, on the selfsame day?
Now thrice the airy semblance has appear'd,
And this time with such charnel exhibition,
That none may question what the sign portends.

BAUDRON.
The lonely shepherds in the isles forlorn,
And pale enthusiasts bred in silent glens,
Have oft by metaphysical discernment,
Seen these sad shows, and verified the bode.

SCENE X.

Lady, Macbeth and Baudron.
LADY.
Macbeth! Why start you so aghast, my thane?
Why touch you thus, and look to the old man?
Thy cheek is ashy, and thy restless eye
Denotes strange fear and doubt mysterious.

MACBETH.
Alas! the constancy of my sad mind
Is put to dreadful proof. Around me rise
Such prodigies and omens of dismay,
That were my spirit fram'd of temper'd steel,
And to the stroke invulnerably firm,
I need must quake to witness what I see.

LADY.
I left him hopeful—tell me how is this?
Hast thou been with thy priestly exhortation,
Cowing the hope that he so much requires?

MACBETH.
Oh! there are things in this mirac'lous world,
Which time, nor learning, never can explain.

LADY.
Good, good, my lord—but to the council come;
Malignant Fortune wins by our default.
This fatal sadness, that unmans you so,
Would better suit the weak of my disease.