University of Virginia Library

ACT I.

SCENE I.

Macbeth and Seaton.
MACBETH.
Methought last night, as I lay on my couch,
I saw a silent-footed phantom pass,
In the pale likeness of my faded wife.
It look'd upon me sadly, and withdrew.
Such sights, 'tis said, betoken change and death.
Attends the spæing hermit on our leisure.

SEATON.
He does, an't please your highness.

MACBETH.
Send him in.
Seaton, how fares the queen?

SEATON.
Still worse and worse.
The drousy poppy-draught has shut perception,
But ven'mous dreams creep underneath the sleep,
And sting her spirit as it fetter'd lies.

MACBETH.
Seaton, alas!—But send the culdee here.

SCENE II.

MACBETH.
I would a little learn to know aright,
The dark precursors and ill-boding forms,
That make so wild my fated path of life.

SCENE III.

Macbeth and Baudron.
MACBETH.
Nearer Baudron.—People say that Nature
Hath gifted thee with perspicatious sight,
To ken beyond our general human range,
The viewless mechanism of the world;
That thou hast held familiar colloquy,
With beings to our sense impalpable;
And learnt from them the index of events,
Far in the future and unknown of time.
I would discourse at large on this awhile,
And feed my fancy with thy mystic wisdom.

BAUDRON.
Your majesty confers great honour on me,
But age, dread sir, is all my faculty;
And that strange skill which rumour so proclaims,
Is but the art of noting, meeting things,
Fruit of a long variegated life.
There is in nature, sir, no accidents.
The boundless providential enginry
Still moves harmonious; and the augur-signs
Are but remote accordant parts, discern'd
Without the wedded wheels and linking chains.
For all the motions, in the frame of time,
Proceed combin'd, and rise from one great spring.

MACBETH.
What are those influential energies,
In their own nature substanceless, that take
Corporeal semblance;—Fate's dread oracles,
Who by the heralding of things to be,
Create the purposes that give them birth?

BAUDRON.
These, sir, elude the grasp of our gross wits:
They are like that occult intelligence
Which stirs between the ocean and the moon,
Known to exist by its effects alone.

MACBETH.
My dearest love! but wherefore come you here?
Go to thy couch again. Sweet, how is this
That thou dost wrap thyself so in the sheet?—
Let me take from thee that sepulchral omen.

BAUDRON.
Whom did your majesty just now address?

MACBETH.
Saw you it not?

BAUDRON.
Saw what, my gracious lord?

MACBETH.
A gliding apparition of the queen.
This is the second time it hath appear'd:
Last night it came dress'd in her chamber robes,
And gazing mournful on me, pass'd away;
But now it show'd the grim gaunt look of death,
And vanish'd, mantled in a winding sheet.

BAUDRON.
God save her majesty—

MACBETH.
What moves thee, Baudron?
Such metaphysical phenomenæ
Are sights to which my eyes have grown accustom'd;
And I would know what is't that they foretoken.

BAUDRON.
Alas! the visions that amaze your highness,
Are the conceits of melancholy lymphs,
Mingled by nature in the glowing brain.

MACBETH.
But what do they portend? Interpret this:
Say wherefore twice hath the wan effigy
Of my perturbed, care-afflicted queen,
Risen to view a pale untimely ghost.

BAUDRON.
It was her wraith. The unknown minister
Who gives presentiment of coming woe,
Alas! forewarns that she is doom'd to die.
If it come thrice, call holy men around,
And let your wordly legacies be made;
For then the warding angel of your life
Resigns the keep to all subduing death.
The same day's sun that sees the queen a corpse,
O mighty king! shall never set to thee.

SCENE IV.

MACBETH.
He cows my spirit, like the midnight owl,
The fatal prophet of the battlements,
That in his airy cloister overhears
The cloud-carr'd angels, hailing, as they pass
On dismal purposes of destiny.—
Oh what avails all regal exhibition,
While fest'ring in my bosom lies, the guilt
Of Duncan's blood, and Banquo's feller doom.
The priestly benediction, and the oil,
Nor all the ritual of the stone at Scoone
Can charm my eyes to innocent repose.

SCENE V.

Lady and Macbeth.
LADY.
Macbeth, Macbeth, rid me of misery.—
All things in nature have become adverse
And daunt me out of life. The glorious sun,
That sheds to all delight and lumination,
Is the remembrancer of that dread dawn
Which show'd us Duncan, murder'd by our hands,
All horrible with his upbraiding gashes;
The beauteous moon that makes black night so fair,
With her chaste splendour as she climbs the sky,
Still wears, at rising, that deep blush of shame,
With which she look'd on Banquo's bleeding corse.
The steller gems, the wakeful eyes of heav'n,
Show as they shine that they kept Argus watch
When we were busy at our midnight crime;
If one but glance at me an eager look,
The time has been when admiration pleas'd,
I shrink appall'd, and trembling shun the gaze;
The soothing phials of the doctor's skill,
Beget suspicion, for they bring to mind
The drugged wassail that seduc'd the grooms
To leave their royal charge in fenceless sleep,
To the foul carve of our ambitious waste;
Yea, my own hands, though costly scents perfume,
Are hateful by the old man's tainting blood;
And thou thyself, my former love and pride,
Art made so terrible by my remorse,
That I am madly urg'd by wicked fiends,
To think thy death would calm the hell that's here.

MACBETH.
What potent sorcery transmutes thy nature,
Changing its high imperial arrogance
Into this weak and timid phantasy?
Rouse thee, dear wife, with that intrepid mind
Which when I shrunk appall'd in my intents,
Was wont by its courageous inspiration,
To nerve my soul with valour like its own.

LADY.
Oh! it hath perish'd with the pageant hope
That marshal'd my ambition. O'er my thoughts
Tremendous fancies fall like chilling shadows
On lonely spots by untold crimes accurs'd,
And a dread vista opening in the tomb,
Has shewn me horrors that dismay Despair
To cling to life.—I would but dare not die.

MACBETH.
And come the apparitions to thee too?

LADY.
As I, enchanted by the poppy's drouze,
Lay on my couch, me-thought time had relaps'd
Back to that night on which we Duncan slew;
And as I would have wash'd my bolter'd hands,
Deep anguish pierc'd me, and in thought I died.
Exposed a space upon the regal bier,
The same on which, we falsely, sad adorn'd
That good man's corpse; me-thought I was convey'd
With dues of heraldry into the vault,
Where all the royalty of Scotland rest,
And plac'd, dread punishment! by Duncan's side.
The requium finish'd and the herald done,
The mouldy yawn of the sepulchre's gloom
Was clos'd, and I, left to resolve to dust.

MACBETH.
Terrible state.

LADY.
Then did I hear around,
The churm and chirruping of busy reptiles,
At hideous banquet on the royal dead.
Full soon, me-thought, the loathsome epicures,
Came thick on me, and underneath my shrowd,
I felt the many-foot and beetle creep;
And on my breast, the cold worm coil and crawl.
When all that was corporeal had resumed
Its elemental essence, I became
Lost in vacuity and silent gloom;
A strange oblivion of sense, space, and time.
Anon I heard a trumpet from afar,
Swell with a sweet melodious invitation;
And saw ascend, millions of radiant forms:
Joyous they rose, and with them Duncan pass'd
More glorious than the Indian gem. His breast
Was ruby-stain'd, Macbeth!

MACBETH.
Our guilty mark!

LADY.
Again the trumpet sounded; but so shrill,
So wild, so dissonant, so dread a shriek,
That I in terror started from the tomb,
And saw around me, all the wretched throng
That wrought on earth, catastrophes of sin.
Thou too wast there, but so, in form, transnatur'd,
That, fear to see thee, broke the spell of sleep.
Why stand you dumb, entranced in moody thought?

MACBETH.
The mind hath other vision than the eyes;
They are but windows in its tenement.—
Baudron is right, and these prospective sights,
Are but the distant coming-round of things.

LADY.
What is't you mean? Believ'st thou in this dream?
Shall we in death, lie conscious of the rot?

MACBETH.
Calm thyself, love—I have a culdee priest,
A wond'rous man, whose years exceed the round
Of a full century; and in his frame,
The faded energy of life renewing,
Puts forth a-fresh, the redolence of youth.
He hath deep insight of this complex world,
And knows the springs and pivots of events;
Th'invisible pervaders that controul
The secret lymphs which bear into the brain,
Those drifting fancies, that industrious Reason
Converts to schemes and knowledge practical;—
All these are known to him. He is a man,
A sage, of rare peculiar faculty,
And will unfold to us, the pith of dreams,
And that imperishable consciousness,
Which wakes in sleep, and may in death survive.

LADY.
Shall we confess to him we kill'd the king,
And mew contrition like two silly urchins,
Sick with the surfeit of the pantry's spoil?

MACBETH.
My dearest partner of unhappy greatness!—

LADY.
Alas! Macbeth—but let us be ourselves,
And strongly master this enthusiasm
Look at that table—see where ranged appears
The esculapian pageantry of death,
And then survey my blanch'd and haggard form,
Which, more than sickness, canker'd thought corrodes.
With these before me, and with this at heart,
I will wear boldly what I've dearly won:
What is done, is; and though my restless couch
Be nightly hideous with phantastic gorgons,
Whose silent transit freeze me into death,
I wake to royalty, and will exact
The dues and reverence of our high estate.

SCENE VI.

Seaton, Macbeth, and Lady.
SEATON.
My gracious lord,—thick-coming messengers
Announce the Southrons o'er the Firth advanced,
Led by Macduff, the fiery thane of Fyfe,
And headed by young Malcom.

MACBETH.
Let them come;
Here, by the bulwarks of our castle safe
And destiny impregnable, we scorn
The shock and larum of approaching war,
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

SCENE VII.

Macbeth and Lady.
MACBETH.
The times grow murky, and our star, dear love,
Hath reached the zenith. Fate's malignant orbs
Show baleful aspect in our horoscope,
And fortune, e'er it wanes, dims with eclipse.
Oh! we have found that every phase of fortune,
From the first faint edge, to the round bright full,
Marks the progression and the rise of care.

LADY.
These pallid fancies, better would become
My dreamy couch, than the bold circumstance
With which thou art assailed. Take courage thane;
Rouse thee to war. Have not the weirds told,
That as in panoply divine incas'd,
Thou art invulnerable to the steel
Of all of woman born? Assert thy fate.

MACBETH.
But I have lost the relish of renown,
And that which made the plaudits of the world
Richer than Music's voice, is mine no more.
O curs'd ambition; in pursuit of thee,
Thou unsubstantial iris of the brain,
I have so far into the desert run,
That all around me seems one blasted heath,
And still the phantom lures to wilder wastes.

LADY.
Come, come, forbear; this idle wonderment—
The dismal crimson that so coarsely glares
In the mind's painting of our secret deeds,
Time, with the mellowing varnish of success,
May yet appease, and the admiring good
Confess the merits of our great designs.
I was not form'd of sterner mould than thou,
Nor yields my couch a calmer sleep than thine;
Yet will not I, in this great game of life,
Spurn at the board because these shiftings vex me.
No, no, Macbeth; we cannot now return;
But on we must go—on, nor look behind:
And when a smoother brighter height we gain,
There plant those purposes of public weal
Which shall protect us; and within their shade,
Repose in honour, and lamented die.

MACBETH.
Yes: I will go, for I am pledged to it;
And like the homeless outcast prostitute,
Still heap the cairn of happiness with sins.

SCENE VIII.

Macbeth, Lady, and Baudron.
MACBETH.
How now is this, if thou canst see afar
The forecast shadows of events, that thus
The pamper'd Southrons, with the fierce Macduff,
Invade our borders, and not I inform'd?

BAUDRON.
My gracious lord; such things particular,
In the vague range of your old slave's dim knowledge,
Have no precursor but the vulgar cry,
Which long and loud hath rumour'd preparation.

LADY.
His boding then is like the raven's croak;
A dismal gibber that but daunts the heart,
Without instructing where the danger lies.—
Send him away—we are ourselves, old man,
Deep-read in this lugubrious lore of fancy.

BAUDRON.
Fain would I shun these honour'd conf'rences,
But still his majesty commands me back.
If 'tis your highness' will, let me retire;
And in my lonely hazel-curtain'd cell,
Forget the court in charity to man.
O! holy Nature, thee I do acquit
Of all the foul that stains thy minion here:
How fair and nobly hast thou done thy part!
How bright and glorious shines the gen'rous sun!
How rich and soft earth's carpeting of flowers!
How fresh and joyous to the corp'ral sense,
The all-embracing dalliance of the air,
Contrasted with the base device of courts,
The dire cabal and mid-night work of blood.

MACBETH.
Traitor! what would'st thou? Darest thou jibe at us?

LADY.
Tut, my good lord, you do mistake the man.
He spoke but in a fit of calenture,
Th'impassion'd poetry of fond desire.—
Baudron, at night, I would converse with thee,
And learn the names by which to know the stars,
That, glittering, course the ocean of the sky;
And whence that radient messenger hath come,
Which, nightly, in our zenith vault, is seen
With unknown splendour, firing half the heavens.
Till then, adieu.—Oh! shame to be so stirr'd.