MALCOLM      I grant him bloody,

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

That has a name; but there’s no bottom, none,

In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters,

Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up

The cistern of my lust, and my desire

All continent impediments would o’erbear

That did oppose my will. Better Macbeth

Than such an one to reign.   (4.3.58-67)

Malcolm keeps going along, his apparent self-disclosure taking a turn that’s especially shocking (and risks being unbelievable) if he’s being played very young. Yes, Macbeth’s bad: I grant him bloody, violent and wrathful. And he’s also luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin that has a name. It’s a pretty standard catalogue of faults, lust, avarice, duplicity and disloyalty, deceit, rashness, malice; Macbeth (apparently, although most of these haven’t been seen by the audience) is guilty of everything he could possibly be charged with. There’s one thing that Malcolm homes in on, however: luxury, lust, voluptuousness. My sexual tastes are depraved, my desires out of control, he says to Macduff. There’s no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness. It’s all I think of, and I’m insatiable: your wives, your daughters, your matrons (respectable middle-aged women) and your maids, young virgins—they could never be enough to satisfy me; they could never fill up the cistern of my lust. (Shakespeare thinks of lustas a tank, a reservoir, constantly emptying and needing to be refilled; it seems also like a cess-pit, dark and foul, where in Othello toads knot and gender, endlessly, obsessively copulating.) My desire all continent impediments would o’erbear that did oppose my will. I’m unstoppable, incontinent, overflowing with lust, out of control, and what I want I take, nothing and no one can stand in my way. (A suggestion here, probably, of violence and rape.) Better Macbeth than such a one to reign, wouldn’t you say, Macduff? Gulp.