ROSS                           My dearest coz,

I pray you school yourself. But for your husband,

He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows

The fits o’th’ season. I dare not speak much further,

But cruel are the times when we are traitors

And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour

From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,

But float upon a wild and violent sea

Each way and none. I take my leave of you;

Shall not be long but I’ll be here again.

Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward

To what they were before.               (4.2.14-25)

Ross is doing his best, but he’s too nervous to stick around or to say much more, and what he has to say come across as somewhat patronising. He’s affectionate, addressing Lady Macduff as coz, but also telling her to school herself, get a grip (maybe, stop being a hysterical woman, pull yourself together). But for your husband, he is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows the fits o’th’ season. Macduff knows what he’s doing! And he knows better than anyone how bad things are at the moment, what times we are living in. He’s done the right thing. Cold comfort to this angry, frightened, desperately hurt wife. I dare not speak much further, Ross says, and that much has been plain throughout—but then follows this astonishing little window into the psychology of terror, of living under tyranny, looking over your shoulder every moment. Cruel are the times when we are traitors and do not know ourselves, when we seem to have betrayed others, or the state, without knowing it (and also, when we no longer know ourselves, recognise who we have become). It’s terrible when we hold rumour from what we fear, yet know not what we fear: when we mistrust everything, but believe things based not on truth or reliable evidence but because our fears whisper to us, the fears that we can’t quite articulate, that we can’t name or fully know or understand. We float upon a wild and violent sea each way and none, exposed and assaulted from all sides, and yet also stuck, in limbo, not quite drowning, but never safe.

I take my leave of you, Ross says—he’s got to get out of there, he’s afraid, of saying too much, of being found there, of getting Macduff and his family in even more trouble? But he promises to visit again soon: shall not be long but I’ll be here again. (There’s an option here for this to become horrifically ironic in performance.) Cheer up, he doesn’t quite say: things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before. Either things will get so bad that they can’t get any worse, and therefore they’ll stop, or else they’ll get better. It sounds better than it actually means, and it doesn’t sound great.