Enter Macbeth, Lennox, and Ross

MACBETH      Had I but died an hour before this chance

I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant

There’s nothing serious in mortality.

All is but toys. Renown and grace is dead.

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

Enter Malcolm and Donalbain

DONALBAIN  What is amiss?

MACBETH      You are, and do not know’t.

The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood

Is stopped, the very source of it is stopped.           (2.3.84-93)

Ross here too, now; the stage is filling up, and Macbeth has to deliver, definitely not catching the eye of his wife. (What if she went to him, held his hand? What if she went to him and he warned her off? More interesting choices to be made.) The sentiment and tone may be disingenuous, but he’s not actually telling any lies here, and he may in fact be being profoundly truthful about how he’s feeling, expressing his deep ambivalence. If only I’d died an hour before this—chance—happening—accident?—then I’d regard my life, even if it had been thus cut short, as entirely blessed. From this instant there’s nothing serious in mortality, nothing worth living for, perhaps, or else nothing serious in the condition of being mortal; nothing could be worse than this and, in comparison with the magnitude of this event, all is but toys, everything is trivial. (Lady Macbeth has previously told Macbeth, on his return to the castle, that she feels the future in the instant, as if it’s happening now: this instant, this present moment, is that future.) Renown and grace is dead, the model of kingship, gracious and noble. (What nobility and reputation Macbeth himself has had—that’s gone too.) And a final striking image: the wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of. The blood starts to seep into Macbeth’s language, for the wine must be red, and it’s been drawn, all drained away; all that’s left is the dregs, the lees, a lifeless residue. That’s all that remains to be boasted of under heaven. That’s all that Macbeth can think of and picture, naked and exposed under the sky, a sour, hungover hollowness. The princes, Malcolm and Donalbain, enter; the thanes perhaps tense as they register that the emotional contours of this already fraught moment have just become even more complicated, as a father’s death must be announced, not simply a king’s, especially if the princes are being played as very young. What is amiss? asks Donalbain, the younger of the two princes, not simply what’s going on? but, what’s wrong? He knows something terrible has happened. You are, and do not know it; everything about the situation you’re in is wrong, replies Macbeth. More blood, flowing and gushing, although described as being blocked, cut off: the spring, the head, the fountain of your blood is stopped, the very source of it is stopped. The monarch is the fountain who waters his realm, bringing peace and plenty; such an image had been central to James VI and I’s coronation entry into London less than three years before Macbeth was probably first performed. Duncan has also been the source of his sons’ lives, nourishing them, and passing on his wisdom and his power. Gone. But the image of the bloody fountain remains in the mind’s eye, more literal than anyone except Macbeth (and perhaps the others who have seen the body) could possibly imagine.