Page 43
Doctor:
This disease is beyond my practice: yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds.
Lady Macbeth:
Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave.
Doctor:
Even so?
Lady Macbeth:
To bed, to bed. There’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.
(Exit.)
Doctor:
Will she go now to bed?
Gentlewoman:
Directly.
Doctor:
Foul whisp’rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine than the physician.—
God, God, forgive us all! Look after her;
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night:
My mind she has mated, and amaz’d my sight.
I think, but dare not speak.
Gentlewoman:
Good night, good doctor.
(Exeunt.)
Scene Two. The Country near Dunsinane.
Enter, with drum and colours Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox and Soldiers.
Menteith:
The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,
His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff.
Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes
Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm
Excite the mortified man.
Angus:
Near Birnam wood
Shall we well meet them. That way are they coming.
Caithness:
Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?
Lennox:
For certain, sir, he is not. I have a file
Of all the gentry: there is Siward’s son
And many unrough youths, that even now
Protest their first of manhood.
Menteith:
What does the tyrant?
Caithness:
Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies.
Some say he’s mad; others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain,
He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause
Within the belt of rule.
Angus:
Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Menteith:
Who, then, shall blame
His pester’d senses to recoil and start,
When all that is within him does condemn
Itself for being there?