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Malcolm:
Why do we hold our tongues,
That most may claim this argument for ours?
Donalbain:
What should be spoken here, where our fate,
Hid in an auger hole, may rush, and seize us?
Let’s away. Our tears are not yet brew’d.
Malcolm:
Nor our strong sorrow
Upon the foot of motion.
Banquo:
Look to the lady:—
(Lady Macbeth is carried out.)
And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure, let us meet,
And question this most bloody piece of work
To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us:
In the great hand of God I stand; and thence
Against the undivulg’d pretence I fight
Of treasonous malice.
Macduff:
And so do I.
All:
So all.
Macbeth:
Let’s briefly put on manly readiness,
And meet i’ th’ hall together.
All:
Well contented.
(Exeunt all but Malcolm and Donalbain.)
Malcolm:
What will you do? Let’s not consort with them:
To show an unfelt sorrow is an office
Which the false man does easy. I’ll to England.
Donalbain:
To Ireland, I. Our separated fortune
Shall keep us both the safer. Where we are,
There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood,
The nearer bloody.
Malcolm:
This murderous shaft that’s shot
Hath not yet lighted; and our safest way
Is to avoid the aim. Therefore to horse;
And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,
But shift away. There’s warrant in that theft
Which steals itself, when there’s no mercy left.
(Exeunt.)
Scene Four. The same. Without the Castle.
Enter Ross and an Old Man.
Old Man:
Threescore and ten I can remember well,
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.
Ross:
Ha, good father,
Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threatens his bloody stage: by the clock ’tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?
Old Man:
’Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.