MALCOLM Now we’ll together, and the chance of goodness
Be like our warranted quarrel. Why are you silent?
MACDUFF Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
’Tis hard to reconcile.
Enter a Doctor
MALCOLM Well, more anon.—Comes the King forth, I pray you?
DOCTOR Ay, sir. There are a crew of wretched souls
That stay his cure. Their malady convinces
The great assay of art; but at his touch,
Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,
They presently amend.
MALCOLM I thank you, doctor.
Exit [Doctor] (4.3.137-146)
Malcolm’s really perked up, emboldened by being upfront with Macduff as well as assured of his loyalty, and of course by being able to tell Macduff that he has an army behind him: now we’ll together, that is, you and me, and Siward, and this army, we’ll return to Scotland together, and may the chance of goodness, a positive outcome, be equal to the justice of our cause, our warranted quarrel. May good fortune be on our side! But why are you silent? Why haven’t you responded to my big reveal, and to this good news?
It’s the shock, says Macduff; I’m not used to good news any more. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once, ’tis hard to reconcile. Now that Malcolm’s playing it straight, the scene swerves back into irony: there is indeed bad news to come, and the audience must wait to see when Macduff will hear about what’s been done to his family. Welcome and unwelcome things at once. Is the Doctor (who will be recognisable from his costume) a messenger, come with that news? More anon, says Malcolm, cutting off whatever he’s about to say; he perhaps really wants to ask the Doctor something, as he does (Comes the King forth, I pray you? is he on his way?) but also he’s still playing it very safe, not wanting to be overheard by anyone as he discusses the plans for an invasion with Macduff. He’s still very much on his guard. So there’s another little interlude, this time sketching goodness, not villainy: a portrait of the English King, Edward the Confessor, who is on his way to ‘touch’ for the ‘King’s Evil’, scrofula, an inflammation of the lymph nodes of the neck, long believed to be healed by the hands of a king. (The custom was practiced by James VI and I.) The sick are wretched souls, and their malady has so far convinced, defied, the great assay of art, the skills of doctors—but the hand of the king has such heaven-sent sanctity that they are healed presently. The Doctor’s language (the wretched souls who will amend) suggests spiritual sickness as well as physical, and this brief evocation of a saintly, healing king can establish a model for Malcolm (and retrospectively sanctify Duncan even more), as well as being an obvious comparison with Macbeth, the tyrant who wounds and harms and kills, whose very land is sickened and polluted by his touch.
