Enter Ross and Angus
ROSS The King hath happily received, Macbeth,
The news of thy success; and when he reads
Thy personal venture in the rebels’ fight
His wonders and his praises do contend
Which should be thine or his. Silenced with that,
In viewing o’er the rest o’th’ self-same day
He finds thee in the stout Norwegian ranks
Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make:
Strange images of death. As thick as hail
Came post with post, and every one did bear
Thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence,
And poured them down before him. (1.3.84-95)
This is Ross’s account of the previous scene, with a bit of amplification (has Ross seen the king again?) So. Ross delivers the news that the king is Very Pleased with Macbeth (and relieved, that the rebellion has been so comprehensively put down). The King isn’t reading Macbeth’s contribution, his personal venture, his feats of courage, his completely mad apparently single-handed slaughter of the rebel forces in the sense of reading a letter, he’s reading it in the older sense of considering, weighing it up; processing, it might be said. (This is reading in the sense of King Ethelred the Unready, the ill-advised, the unconsidered; rede as advice.) Anyway: when the King fully understands everything that Macbeth has done, he can’t make his mind up which is more important, simply wondering at what Macbeth’s done (implicitly silently, just shaking his head in wonder, mouthing, wow, the mad bastard) or actually praising him for it out loud. That alone silences the King with admiration—but there’s even more: when he views over, reviews, is debriefed on the other events of very same day, he hears that when Macbeth took on the stout Norwegian ranks (they are stout because they are doughty, fierce warriors; this is not a company of tubby Vikings) he wasn’t daunted either. He made strange images of death, that is, he slaughtered the lot of them too; he wasn’t at all afraid of the prospect of death himself. For the King and his companions, it was like being in a hailstorm of fast messengers (‘News, my lord!’; ‘News, my lord!’), post with post, leaping from their horses, running into the room. And every single one of those breakneck riding, desperately running men brought news of Macbeth, his courage, his superhuman feats of arms on the battlefield. Their words poured #out like hail, a stream of words, a shower of praises—all for Macbeth. (Ross’s dense, vivid delivery gives something of the same impression.)
