University of Virginia Library

SCENE VI.

Baudron, Lady, and Macbeth.
BAUDRON.
O spare me, spare, dreadful majestic dame;
Tremendous lady, spare my feeble life.

MACBETH.
Hold, dearest, hold: what would'st thou with this dagger?

BAUDRON.
Thou shalt in sulphur burn for sorcery.
He holds cabals and traffickings accurst,
With the malignants that make murk the mind;
And doth suborn them to beset my couch,
With bosoms smear'd, and visages all grim;
Like dead men rising from their mid-night beds.

MACBETH.
Hast thou then, Baudron, pow'r with imps of ill?

BAUDRON.
My lord, my gracious lord; her highness' brain
Yields to the fervour of the fever's rage.

LADY.
I feel his devilish conjurations work,
Constraining me by terrible conceits,
To crawl dishevel'd, like the eastern king,
Whose locks were matted by the rain of heav'n.

MACBETH.
If thou hast cunning to concoct the thoughts
To these persuasions, old man, stay not here;
Hie thee to Malcom's camp, and there employ
Thy subtile metaphysics to dismay.

LADY.
Look there, Macbeth, where his black art hath brought
That pale, thin, meek, old, hoary king asleep,
So like my father when I saw him die.
Anon, anon, the spell doth work apace,
And the botch'd bosom shows all foul with blood.
Whose are these gory sacrilegious hands?
One holds a dagger, and the other gropes,
As 'twere, to find the corpse.—They are my own!